Inside the cave, oil lamps cast the shadows of two men onto the rough stone walls.
Tony was using a piece of charred charcoal to draw blueprints on a missile casing, his lines crude yet astonishingly precise.
Yinsen squatted beside him, his eyes widening with every stroke.
“This…
this is an exoskeleton armor?” Yinsen’s voice trembled.
“Tony, you really are a madman.
A brilliant madman.”
“Thanks for the compliment.” Tony didn’t look up, adding details to the leg joints.
“The problem is power.
Moving this chunk of metal takes enough juice to light up half of Manhattan.”
Yinsen frowned.
“So, gas?
An internal engine?”
“Gas is too primitive.” Tony finally raised his head, grinning.
On his pale, corpse-like face, his eyes shone with incredible intensity.
“It runs on electricity.”
“Electricity?” Yinsen was stunned.
“The generator here can’t possibly supply that kind of output.”
“Then we build our own.”
Tony stood up and walked toward the pile of Jericho missile fragments.
He grabbed a piece of twisted metal.
The moment his fingers brushed against the edge, Yinsen caught a fleeting glimpse of an eerie blue spark.
“Help me dismantle this,” Tony said.
“Careful.
What we need might be inside.”
For the next six hours, metallic clangs echoed throughout the cave.
Tony worked like a machine that never tired.
In truth, he wasn’t really a living human anymore; he was stripping down missile components with his bare hands.
The palladium core was carefully removed, the wires re-routed, and crude tools became instruments of high precision in his hands.
Yinsen noticed something strange.
The weld joints cooled down far too fast.
Whenever Tony pressed his fingers against a freshly welded seam, a thin layer of white mist would rise, and the metal would instantly set in place.
“Your hands…” Yinsen couldn’t help but ask.
“Nice and cool, right?” Tony didn’t offer a real explanation as he wrapped a coil around the core.
“At least sitting in the desert, I won’t get heatstroke.”
Late at night, all the components were laid out flat on the ground.
Tony knelt in the center, looking as though he were conducting a sacred ritual.
He picked up the final piece of the miniature arc reactor—a palm-sized, circular device—and gently placed it in his hand.
“Now, it’s time to witness a miracle.” He pressed the custom switch.
*Hum—*
A blue light ignited.
It wasn’t a normal blue.
It carried a deep, profound resonance, glowing with a stable, ice-cold brilliance.
The cave was instantly illuminated, the water droplets on the rock walls shimmering like stars.
Yinsen held his breath.
The glow reflected off Tony’s face, making his pale skin look almost translucent.
“My God…” Yinsen muttered.
“You’ve…
you’ve just created the future.”
Tony stared at the blue light in his palm.
For a fraction of a second, he felt the icy chill inside his body resonate faintly with the reactor.
It felt like two vibrations matching the exact same frequency.
“The future can wait.” Tony tossed the reactor to Yinsen.
“Hold this.
Now, it’s time to beat some iron.”
He dragged a sledgehammer out from the corner and tossed another hammer to Yinsen.
“How much time do we have?”
“The Ten Rings bring food twice a day.” Yinsen checked the oil lamp.
“Next delivery is in eight hours.”
“More than enough to get started.”
Four days.
Tony didn’t need to sleep, didn’t need to eat, didn’t even need to drink water.
The body of the undead had turned into the ultimate, most efficient machine.
Whenever Yinsen took shifts to rest, Tony continued working uninterrupted.
The rhythmic clangs of the hammer striking steel reverberated in the cave like the heartbeat of a phantom.
The Mark I gradually took shape.
Rough, heavy, and packed with brutal aesthetic power.
A flamethrower was built into one arm, a rotary machine gun mounted on the other, and a crude rocket launcher sat on the shoulder.
It looked like a monster that had crawled right out of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
On the morning of the fifth day, Yinsen was awakened by the screech of metal friction.
He opened his eyes to see Tony trying to squeeze himself into the armor.
“Need a hand?”
“Latch the buckle behind my back.” Tony’s voice sounded muffled inside the helmet.
“Damn it, I should’ve designed an automated suit-up system…”
Finally, the armor locked into place.
Tony stood in the middle of the cave.
The two-meter-tall steel monolith almost scraped the cave ceiling.
He raised his arm, his joints emitting a sharp, metallic screech.
“Initiate self-check,” Tony said into the built-in microphone.
The crude screen inside the helmet lit up as green streams of data began to roll.
It was a computer system he had rigged using missile navigation chips, capable of running only the most basic weapon protocols and power control modules.
The loading bar began to advance: 10%…
30%…
Footsteps echoed from outside the cave.
More than one person.
Yinsen’s expression changed instantly.
“Not good!
Today’s patrol is early!”
“How much longer?” Tony kept his eyes glued to the loading bar.
“At least a minute!”
The system showed 65%.
The footsteps stopped right outside the door.
Someone shouted in Arabic, demanding to know what the banging noise inside was about.
Yinsen grabbed a submachine gun off the ground—one he had looted off a dead guard earlier.
“I’ll buy you time!”
“Yinsen, wait—”
The old man had already charged out.
Gunfire erupted instantly.
Inside the cockpit, Tony heard the chaotic exchange of fire, shouting, and the heavy thuds of bodies collapsing outside.
The loading bar crawled to 80%, excruciatingly slow.
“Hurry up!
Come on, damn it!”
85%.
An agonizing scream echoed.
It was Yinsen’s voice.
90%.
The gunfire ceased.
A heavy silence lingered for three seconds before a surge of even more footsteps rushed over.
95%.
The heavy cave door was rammed from the outside.
Someone was trying to break it down.
Tony closed his eyes.
98%.
*Boom!*
The cave door was blown open.
Five or six armed insurgents burst inside, freezing in place the moment they laid eyes on the Mark I.
99%.
The lead terrorist raised an RPG.
100%.
[System ready.
Weapon protocols loaded.
Power core output: 100%]
The eyes of the Mark I suddenly burst into a glowing, ice-cold blue light.
Tony opened his eyes.
“Good evening, scumbags.”
The head of the first insurgent exploded like a stepped-on watermelon.
Blood splattered across the armor, but Tony felt nothing.
No nausea, no fear, not even an accelerated heartbeat—because his heart wasn’t beating at all.
A second man fired his weapon, bullets sparking off the chest plate.
Tony felt the impact, but no pain.
He turned, the rotary machine gun on his arm beginning to spin.
*Dddd-dadada—*
Flesh and bone flew everywhere.
Wisps of Revive Cold Energy unintentionally leaked from his fingertips, mixing into the inferno of the flamethrower.
An eerie blue-and-white cold flame swept over the crowd.
Those touched by it shrieked in ungodly agony—a torment of their souls burning alongside their flesh.
Thirty seconds.
Nothing was left in the cave except corpses.
Tony unlatched the deformed cockpit door, his heavy steel body taking its first step forward.
He found Yinsen lying in a pool of blood, three bullet holes in his chest still oozing red.
“Hang in there, I’m taking you out!”
Yinsen reached up and grabbed Tony’s heavy steel finger, his grip so weak it was barely perceptible.
“Don’t…” Every word brought blood bubbling from the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t waste…
don’t waste your second chance at life…”
His hand slipped down, limp.
Tony knelt before the corpse, his heavy steel knees crushing the rocky ground beneath him.
For a few long seconds, he did nothing, staring silently into Yinsen’s dulling eyes.
Shouts rang out outside the cave.
More were coming.
Tony gently reached out and closed Yinsen’s eyes.
He stood up, his two-meter-tall metallic frame turning toward the mouth of the cave.
Beneath the visor, the cold blue fire in his eyes blazed brilliantly.
Tony took a step forward.
He walked out of the cave, toward the men who had killed Yinsen, and toward the world that had killed him once before.
The slaughter had begun.