The missiles arrived before Michael reached the villa. He counted their heat trails against the dark and sent one instruction through his phone.
"Lilian, warn Tony."
"Already connected," she said. "Happy is stable under hospital care. I found no intervention I could perform without interfering with treatment, so I am returning to you."
Michael climbed in the Nakfoji form and met the first missile above the coast. Cold covered its propulsion system. Thrust failed, and he phased through the body to redirect its fall toward open water.
The second missile disappeared inside a black wave.
Lilian crossed his path, absorbed the casing around its warhead, and separated the trigger before either reached the ground. She sent Tony a live view of Michael turning toward the rest.
"He asked me to remind you that you owe him," Lilian said.
"Put it on the list."
Michael froze another engine. "The list has compound interest. A roof might cover it."
Tony's laugh came through the connection with anger still underneath it. "Save mine first. Then I'll improve yours."
The fourth missile split its trajectory when the guidance system tried to compensate for Michael's approach. He could freeze one branch before impact, not both.
Lilian divided in the air, leaving a portion of herself around the first warhead while her main body intercepted the second.
"Two triggers isolated," she said. "Propellant remains active."
Michael phased through the nearer casing and carried its engine downward. Cold stopped combustion unevenly; the sudden pressure change tore metal around him. A fragment passed through his insubstantial chest and became dangerous again behind him.
Lilian caught it before it reached the windows.
They had never trained together. Michael could enter a missile without detonating it; Lilian could dismantle its mechanism and catch what escaped. Each covered a limit the other could see.
The remaining missiles lost guidance or power before reaching the villa. Lilian consumed enough components to prevent delayed detonations. Michael followed the last casing into the ocean and remained phased until the shock dispersed through water instead of glass and people.
Only then did he enter Tony's home.
***
Tony sat at a table in partial armor, exhausted enough that the metal looked less like protection than scaffolding.
"Happy is out of immediate danger," he said. "You were right about one thing. Doctors had a better chance without experimental machines entering him."
"I'm sorry I gave you the warning after he was hurt."
"You don't get credit for honesty on a delay."
Michael let the accusation stand. Tony looked away first.
Lilian entered in her human form. Tony studied her chosen face, then the Mind Stone she carried.
"You continue becoming impossible while I am busy," Tony said. "Do you ever consult my schedule?"
Tony circled her once, keeping his hands behind his back this time. "The drive had adaptive language, threat recognition, and enough independence not to crash when isolated. It did not have a body plan, appetite, or opinions about my manners."
"Those are mine," Lilian said.
"I know." The admission cost him less than it had in the helicarrier. "I still want to understand how my work survived the transition."
"Ask me for an interview when the house is not being attacked. Bring questions, not instruments."
Tony glanced at Michael. "She negotiates better than you."
"She had a difficult example to improve on."
Lilian did not smile, but the anger between them shifted enough to admit the possibility later.
Pepper joined them from the lower level. She greeted Michael, acknowledged Lilian without asking what category of life she belonged to, and turned immediately to Tony.
Michael addressed the threat before Tony could convert concern into another joke.
"The missile routing and the Extremis incidents lead to Aldrich Killian."
Pepper went still. "Killian?"
"You knew him," Tony said.
"Years ago. He approached the company. I turned him down."
Lilian projected the chain she had assembled: acquisition fronts, thermal events, flight paths, and traffic between facilities. "The attribution is supported, not complete. I am locating his current position."
Tony's expression hardened.
"Before you leave," Michael said, "tell Pepper about the anxiety."
Tony's hand stilled over the table.
Pepper looked at Tony. "What anxiety?"
"He's exaggerating."
"He flew into my house through the roof and asked whether an artificial life-form could rebuild a person from inside. He isn't exaggerating."
Tony stood. "We are under attack. This is not the moment."
"There will always be an attack," Pepper said. "When did it start?"
Tony looked toward the windows that had nearly become a target. His hands moved as if checking armor controls that were not there.
"Since Loki," he said. "Sometimes I can't breathe. Sometimes I build because stopping feels worse. I didn't tell you because you already had enough to carry."
Pepper did not rush to tell him he was safe. The window behind him overlooked the ocean where missiles had just fallen. Safety was not a sentence she could make true by saying it. Read the latest chapters at NovelPing.
"Does the armor help? Do you sleep?" she asked.
"Until it doesn't. Then I need another one. Sleep comes eventually."
"Eventually isn't an answer," Pepper said.
Tony tried to look amused and failed. The failure told Pepper more than Michael's accusation had.
"You deciding what I can carry doesn't protect me. It leaves me outside the room."
Michael recognized the sentence. Lilian's glance toward him suggested she had too.
Tony sat again. Pepper took the chair beside him rather than accepting the conversation as finished.
"You're getting help from a qualified person," she said.
"That sounds expensive."
"You can afford it."
The joke was weak. It was also the first sign Tony had stopped trying to escape the subject.
***
Lilian completed the search while Pepper and Tony spoke.
"I have a probable Killian location," she said.
Tony rose too quickly. Pepper caught his wrist.
"You are not going alone. Your armors are equipment, not judgment," Pepper said.
"I have an army. And Clyborne's vote is decorative," Tony said.
Michael stood. "Then count Lilian's."
Lilian closed the projection. "A direct attack without confirming hostages, remote triggers, or distributed Extremis subjects creates unacceptable risk. I will provide surveillance. I will not help you pretend rage is a plan."
She marked three unknowns on the map. A heat signature cluster might be subjects. A communications relay had remote-detonation potential. A vehicle route led away from the probable site.
Tony looked around the room and found no ally for the immediate version of revenge.
"This is an intervention," he said.
"Yes," Pepper replied.
Outside, fragments of the frozen missile fell into the ocean. The house still stood, Happy still lived, and Killian's location was on the display between them.