Pepper tried to reason with him.
“Tony, you need to let a doctor examine you properly.”
“There’s nothing I have to do,” Tony replied.
“I’ve been locked up over there for three months. Right now, there are only two things I want. First, I want a cheeseburger. Second…”
Pepper immediately assumed three months of captivity had left Tony desperate to get reacquainted with one of his usual cover models.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Tony realized exactly what she thought he meant and cut her off.
“Not that. I want you to call a press conference.”
He paused.
“And third—”
Pepper stared at him.
“There’s a third?”
“Of course. There are probably going to be more than three.”
Tony settled back into his seat.
“For number three, I want you to dig up some information for me. Mythology, occult material, fairy tales—I don’t care how ridiculous it sounds. Don’t leave anything out.”
He began listing the terms.
“The Fool. Savant. Paragon. Sequence. Pathway.”
“Find me anything that contains those words, especially if there’s some connection to supernatural phenomena.”
Pepper had absolutely no idea where this was coming from, but she nodded anyway.
“All right.”
Tony turned toward the front.
“Drive, Happy. And get me a cheeseburger on the way.”
Pepper was already making calls from the back seat, beginning with arrangements for the press conference.
…
Meanwhile, Kez Merlin stepped out of the Cadillac Escalade and unlocked the Arcana Cabana.
He glanced down at the floor just inside the entrance.
No letters.
Apparently, no new commissions had come in during the two days he’d been away.
Looking back on the Tony Stark rescue, Kez had come out of the trip rather well.
Once the outstanding payment was settled, he would recover Tony’s Savant Beyonder Characteristic along with two additional Characteristics.
There was, however, another problem.
Kez was currently only a Sequence 9 Seer, which meant creating an independent duplicate of himself wasn’t an option.
There were plenty of things that wouldn’t be convenient for the Fool persona to handle directly.
Kez Merlin needed to become a visible figure in his own right, especially when it came to selling potions, explaining the twenty-two Pathways, and dealing openly with Beyonders.
Using his ordinary identity for those things would be far more practical.
‘Looks like I need to go through the Encantus again.’
Maybe there was some kind of duplication or clone spell hidden in its pages.
Otherwise, he’d have to wait until he reached Sequence 6 Faceless before trying to solve the problem another way.
His gaze shifted toward the Grimlock still holding the man who was supposed to become his teacher.
Two more years before Balthazar’s seal expired.
Kez wondered whether Tony would still hold the press conference this time around.
The miniature Arc Reactor already existed, so Iron Man’s birth probably wasn’t far away regardless.
Once that happened, the Marvel universe would effectively hit fast-forward.
Superheroes and supervillains would begin appearing one after another.
…
Elsewhere, Happy pulled the Rolls-Royce up outside the venue Pepper had arranged for the press conference.
Thanks to her calls, a large crowd of reporters had already gathered.
Everyone knew the headline by now: Tony Stark, previously feared dead after disappearing in Afghanistan, had returned alive and was about to address the press.
That alone was enough to draw every major outlet in the city.
Obadiah Stane had arrived early to welcome Tony back.
Unlike everyone else, however, Obadiah was finding the whole situation profoundly irritating.
The terrorists he had paid to kill Tony Stark were apparently the least professional killers on the planet.
They had held the man for three months, somehow failed to finish the job, and had now allowed him to come home alive.
Obadiah was almost tempted to put a missile into them himself.
If he ever got the opportunity, he fully intended to teach them what happened when people took his money and failed to deliver.
None of that showed on his face.
Obadiah spread his arms wide as Tony’s car arrived, every inch the overjoyed family friend.
“Look who’s back!”
He hurried forward, opened Tony’s door himself, and pulled him into an enthusiastic hug.
When he noticed Tony’s condition, he gave him a concerned look.
“So, I’ll meet you at the hospital?”
Tony glanced around as he answered.
“No hospital. I’m fine.”
Happy hurried over with the cheeseburgers Tony had requested, and Tony immediately took one from the bag.
Obadiah looked at him in disbelief.
“You had to stop for a burger?”
He gestured toward the building.
“Come on.”
Then he eyed the bag.
“Any chance there’s one in there for me?”
Tony was already walking away.
“There’s one. I’m eating it.”
By the time the two of them entered the press conference hall, Tony had already made significant progress on the burger.
Obadiah turned toward the assembled reporters.
“Look who made it back!”
Cameras immediately began firing in rapid succession.
Pepper stood farther back, watching Tony beneath the lights with a relieved smile.
For the first time since his disappearance, she finally felt some of the pressure leave her shoulders.
Phil Coulson, having come straight from the Slingshot facility, approached her from the side. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“Ms. Potts, could I have a word?”
Pepper gestured toward the press conference.
“I’m not part of the presentation. If you have questions, you can ask Tony afterward. They’re about to start.”
“I’m not a reporter,” Coulson explained.
“Agent Phil Coulson. I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”
He held out a card.
“Here’s my information.”
Pepper glanced down at the name of the agency.
“That’s quite a mouthful.”
Coulson smiled.
“I know. We’re working on it.”
Pepper accepted the card.
“The Department of Defense, the FBI, and the CIA have all already contacted us…”
“We’re a separate division with a more specific focus,” Coulson interrupted politely.
“We’d like Mr. Stark to give us a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding his escape.”
His expression remained professional.
“According to the information we’ve received, you hired a man who apparently entered the terrorists’ stronghold alone and brought Mr. Stark out.”
At the mention of Kez Merlin, Pepper gave Coulson a more attentive look.
After thinking about it briefly, she nodded.
“I’ll arrange something. All right?”
Kez hadn’t asked her to conceal anything, so Pepper saw no particular reason to hide his involvement from a government agency.
They could answer ordinary questions, and if Coulson asked about something Tony didn’t want discussed, Tony was perfectly capable of refusing.
“Thank you,” Coulson said.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
had obtained the intelligence concerning Kez Merlin’s solo rescue of Tony Stark through military channels.
Rhodey had ordered an investigation while they were still aboard the flight home.
His report included the fact that a man named Kez Merlin had apparently entered a terrorist base alone and extracted Stark.
Once the Air Force received the report and established that Rhodey wasn’t exaggerating, they immediately began pulling information on Kez Merlin.
The military wanted to know exactly how one man had managed to rescue Tony from an armed terrorist group on its own ground.
They were also interested in determining what Kez was capable of and whether someone like him might be recruited into military service.
Ever since the Beyonder Characteristics of the twenty-two Pathways had scattered across Earth eight years earlier, senior military personnel had occasionally encountered unusual people and objects connected to those Characteristics.
This had already led to competition with S.H.I.E.L.D.
over their possession, and the military usually came off worse in those disputes.
S.H.I.E.L.D., meanwhile, took the new intelligence very seriously.
Tony Stark was already on one of their priority watchlists.
Learning that another man had apparently stormed a terrorist stronghold alone and rescued him was more than enough for S.H.I.E.L.D.
to increase the investigation priority assigned to Kez Merlin.
The working theory was that Kez was either connected to a 0-8-4 or possessed supernatural abilities of his own.
One detail from the military report attracted particular attention.
Tony Stark had returned carrying an icy-blue, transparent object shaped like a human brain—the exact appearance of a Sequence 9 Savant Beyonder Characteristic.