Morning.
The Ten Rings arrived.
No blueprints, no technical manuals.
Two armed men carried a rusty military iron crate into the stone room, dumping it onto the ground with a heavy *thud*.
The lid swung open to reveal a pile of missile wreckage inside—broken casings, scorched circuit boards, and twisted metal fins.
The sub-boss stood at the doorway, pointed at the pile of junk, and looked at Tony.
“Build.”
Tony looked down for three seconds, raised his head, and asked calmly, “Build *what*?”
“Jericho missile.”
“You have complete parts?” Tony squatted down, casually picking up a blackened circuit board to flip it over.
“The circuit board is fried, the navigation module is ruined, and there’s structural damage to the casing—even if I fix this junk, there’s no guarantee it’ll fly.”
The sub-boss didn’t understand the technical jargon, but he caught the drift of “can’t fix.” His face instantly darkened.
“You are Tony Stark.”
“I am.”
“You built the Jericho!!!”
“Right.”
“Then build it again.”
Tony stood up, patted the dust off his hands, and spoke like a contractor negotiating a proposal with a client: “Fine.
But you need to understand one thing: building a missile requires time, equipment, and materials.
What are you planning to give me?
What *can* you give me?”
The sub-boss stared at him for a moment before turning to speak a few words of Arabic to the guard beside him.
The guard nodded and ran out of the stone room.
About ten minutes later, the guard returned with a handwritten list detailing the supplies available in the cave: steel plates, a welder, copper wire, generator fuel, and various loose tools.
Tony scanned the list, then uttered a single word: “Enough.”
The sub-boss let out an audible sigh of relief.
But Tony immediately added, “Enough for me to put together a rough prototype.
But as for an actual finished product?
Impossible.”
“How long?”
“At least a week.”
The sub-boss frowned.
“Three days.”
Tony thought it over.
“Five days.
Can’t do it any faster.
The circuit board needs rewiring, the casing needs patch-welding, and the navigation module—you don’t even have a navigation module, so I’ll have to make one from scratch.
Five days is the absolute limit.” Get faster updates on g.com.
The sub-boss didn’t agree right away.
He glared at Tony for a long time before finally saying, “I want to see something in three days.”
Then he turned to Leo Vance and barked a command in Arabic to the guard.
The guard nodded, stepped forward, and yanked Leo Vance up.
Leo Vance didn’t resist.
He stood up with the force, putting on an expression of pitch-perfect confusion.
“What are you doing?”
The sub-boss said in broken English, “You go to main hall too.
Help him.”
Leo Vance froze for a second, then understood.
The Ten Rings wouldn’t feed so many captives for free.
Tony needed helpers for the labor, and Ho Yinsen wasn’t enough, so Leo Vance—the “US soldier”—became free labor.
“Me?”
“You.” The sub-boss pointed at Tony.
“Help him carry things, pass tools, do grunt work.
No work, no food.”
Leo Vance fell silent for two seconds before nodding.
He maintained the reasonable reaction of an ordinary captive forced to comply—neither suspiciously submissive nor showing any suspicious enthusiasm.
The guard shoved him, herding him toward the door.
As he passed Tony, their eyes met for a fraction of a second.
Tony raised an eyebrow slightly, his gaze practically broadcasting: *Looks like you got dragged into this too.*
Leo Vance didn’t reply, though the corner of his lip twitched almost imperceptibly.
Earlier than expected.
He had originally planned to use night operations to gradually map out the layout of the main hall, but now he could enter directly during the day—clearer visibility, a comprehensive view, and open access to the items Tony had hidden.
This was a good thing.
The main hall.
Tony’s workbench was set against the innermost wall, facing away from the main cave entrance.
Beside it sat a stack of steel plates and scattered tools, with a welder and a generator in the corner.
Leo Vance was brought to the open space beside the workbench.
The guard gestured for him to squat, then pointed at a roll of cables on the ground: “Move that over.”
Leo Vance bent down to pick up the cables, casually taking in his surroundings.
The main hall was far larger than the stone room, roughly five meters high, with several rock ledges and vents along the ceiling.
Guards were posted at three locations: two at the entrance, one in the central passage, and an elevated lookout behind the workbench.
The lookout was higher up, but it had a blind spot—right along the wall behind Tony’s workbench.
He noted these details, then set the cables down by Tony’s feet.
Tony was hunching over a circuit board, tinkering with it.
Without raising his head, he muttered, “Just leave it there.”
Keep your moves behind his line of sight.”
Tony’s fingers paused for a fraction of a second before resuming their normal rhythm.
He began muttering aloud as if talking to himself: “Hmm…
the trace on this board is messed up…
needs re-soldering…”
To an outsider, he was just complaining to a circuit board.
But Leo Vance understood: *Message received.*
Over the next few hours, Leo Vance was assigned various odd jobs—moving steel plates, passing the welding torch, organizing wires, and holding clamps in place.
Tony directed him naturally and skillfully, just as any engineer would direct an assistant.
Every so often, however, Tony would use excuses like “check this angle for me” or “hold this side still” to let Leo Vance get close to the covered areas around the workbench.
In those areas were items that didn’t belong to any missile.
Three copper tubes had been bent into arc-shaped coils and hidden under a loose steel plate.
Five stripped wires of varying lengths were coiled inside an empty tin box.
There was also a magnetic core pulled from a scrapped generator, wrapped in cloth at the bottom of the toolbox.
Leo Vance noted their positions each time he approached, but he didn’t touch anything.
Within the guards’ line of sight, his actions were completely ordinary.
That evening, the two were escorted back to the stone room together.
Once the iron door was locked, Tony slumped against the wall, letting out a long breath.
A smirk tugged at the corner of his eyes.
“You know, when you were carrying stuff today and walked past that steel plate, I was terrified you’d step on the coils.”
Leo Vance sat down, his voice calm.
“I saw them.
Didn’t touch.”
“You’ve got sharp eyes,” Tony said.
“Even I almost mixed up where I put them.”
Leo Vance didn’t pursue the topic, switching to a more practical question: “For ‘that thing’ of yours, how much help do you need?”
Tony glanced at him, lowering his voice: “The materials in the main hall are enough.
But if it’s just me working alone, it’ll take at least four days.
If you can help me…”
“Three days.”
Tony’s eyes lit up.
“You serious?”
“During the day I’ll pass you tools and assist.
You handle the welding and assembly.
At night, I’ll go out and clear the perimeter.”
Sitting nearby, Yinsen tensed up slightly at the phrase “go out at night.” “You’re going out at night?
How are you getting out?”