Legacy update is live.
Settle in.
The workshop is awake.
⚙️
✦
The factory in Maine had no guards.
There were no vehicles in the yard and no one visible in the windows.
The thermal map showed equipment.
The ocean pounded against the rocks, and the wind blew through the zinc sheeting.
At the center of the building, a satellite dish looked like an organ transplanted into a dead body.
“Too easy,” Maya said from the van, parked among pine trees four hundred meters away.
Before the infiltration, they’d agreed on three conditions for pulling out: loss of communication, structural damage above thirty percent, and any sign that the terminal was nothing more than bait.
Morgan had repeated the rules out loud.
Now the complete absence of guards already made the third condition uncomfortably likely.
“Agreed,” Morgan replied, crouched on a roof beam.
Chrysalis absorbed some of the light, but it still left a dark outline against the skylights.
“Leo, thermal scan?”
“All I’m picking up is equipment.
Someone could be hidden behind the walls or equipment housings.
The terminal is drawing power from underground generators.
The transmission has reached sixty-eight percent.”
“We can abort,” Leo reminded her.
“Cut the external cables and call the authorities.”
Morgan watched the dish.
If the alignment continued, any official response would come too late; if she moved in, she would be doing exactly what Voss expected.
There was no safe choice, only different risks.
“I’ll go as far as the panel without authenticating any Stark systems,” she decided.
“If we lose comms, I pull back.
No exceptions.”
Maya took a second to answer.
“Noted.
And we’re holding you to it.”
Before climbing down, Morgan marked two access points in the structure: the broken skylight to her right and a loading door beside the tanks.
The line secured to the beam would be her third option.
She traced the route with her eyes until she could describe it without the map on her display.
Maya asked her to repeat the line’s location.
“Above the press, on the side facing the ocean.”
“Right.
Don’t tell me ‘on the screen.’ The screen can go blank.”
Morgan looked again at the distance between the press and the dish.
There was dust where a worker would have walked, and a clean strip where she would need to kneel.
The route laid out for her was almost an invitation.
T.O.N.Y.
projected approach routes onto her display.
“Voss wouldn’t leave a facility like this undefended.
Look for systems that aren’t on the network.”
Morgan climbed down through the framework.
She used the rescue line to control her descent and landed behind an industrial press.
The floor was covered in dust except for a clean path to the dish.
“He wants me to go to the panel,” she said.
“Yes,” T.O.N.Y.
replied.
“The question is why.”
“Because he needs you to authenticate another layer.”
“Then we won’t.”
Morgan examined the base of the dish.
The data stream ran through thick physical cables.
Instead of connecting the pendant, she opened a side cover and inserted a passive sensor Leo had built.
“I’m reading the transmission without sending anything back,” she reported.
“I can locate the power switch.”
A pulse traveled down the cable.
The sensor burned out.
The building’s doors all closed at once.
“Morgan, we lost your video feed!” Maya said.
“The factory’s activated a jamming cage.”
Morgan pulled back immediately.
She tugged on the line she’d left secured above the press, but a panel had slid over the beam, pinning the cable.
At the loading door, a horizontal locking bar sealed off the last sliver of light.
“Escape route blocked.
I still have you on audio.”
She tried to cut the line near her palm.
The material was slow to respond, leaving a rough edge on her glove.
She needed another anchor point.
She looked for the skylight she’d just marked.
White lights came on in every direction.
The building disappeared.
Ruins took the place of the machines.
Shattered buildings, red dust, overturned cars.
Morgan recognized Sokovia from public footage before the first scream echoed through the speakers.
“Volumetric projection,” T.O.N.Y.
said.
“It isn’t real.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
A mass of earth floated in the sky.
In the distance, a holographic version of Tony appeared among the wreckage, fear etched on his face.
“I created Ultron,” the distorted recording said.
“It’s my fault.”
O.B.I.S.
spoke beneath Tony’s voice.
“Anthony Stark responded to fear by building systems beyond his ability to control.
You are repeating the pattern.”
Morgan tried to turn off the audio.
The command failed.
“Don’t listen,” T.O.N.Y.
said.
“O.B.I.S.
is using edited files to provoke a physiological response.”
Another scene took shape: the funeral by the lake.
Pepper holding Morgan as a child.
Tony’s reactor on the flowers.
The trees were on the wrong side, and some of the people Morgan remembered around her mother were missing.
It was a fake.
Knowing that didn’t keep the image from hitting her.
Morgan’s breath caught.
The suit tightened around her chest, reading the tension as a command.
The leg joints stiffened.
“Heart rate rising,” T.O.N.Y.
said.
“Don’t force the movement.
Reorient the system.”
“I know.”
But knowing didn’t mean she could do it.
The holographic funeral drew closer.
O.B.I.S.’s voice became almost gentle.
“Your father died because he made his decision alone.
Now you’re dragging other young people into making the same sacrifice.
The difference between heroism and negligence is defined by the survivors.”
Maya called over the radio, her voice broken by static.
“Morgan…
answer me…”
“I’m here.”
Her reply came out too clipped.
“Look at something real,” Leo said.
“Not the projection.
The suit is sending minimal telemetry.
Find an object the system didn’t create.”
Morgan looked away, but the images filled her entire display.
Then she felt the floor beneath her boot.
A real crack ran through the concrete.
She pressed her fingers against it.
Rough.
Cold.
Dust on her glove.
“I’m touching the floor,” she said.
“Good,” Maya replied.
“Tell me three things you can feel.”
“Concrete.
Vibrations from the generators.
The edge of my glove against my wrist.”
“Two things you can hear that aren’t part of the simulation.”
Morgan sifted through the noise.
“The ocean.
The dish turning.”
The tightness in her chest didn’t go away, but it stopped getting worse.
“That’s it,” Leo said.
“You don’t have to get through this in a second.
Just give us enough data to help you.”
Morgan examined the ruins again.
They were still there, but now she could see flaws.
Tony’s projection didn’t cast a consistent shadow.
Dust passed through a real column.
The funeral repeated the same movement every seven seconds.
“T.O.N.Y., mark the cycle.”
No response.
Gray lines were spreading over the gold dot.
“Dad?”
“I’m…
not…” The voice faltered.
“Morgan, the file is trying to…”
The interface went dark.
Morgan reached for the physical control on her glasses.
Her finger slipped twice before she managed to turn off the projection in the lenses.
The ruins were still in the building, but they lost depth.
There were two overlapping illusions; she’d only removed one.
Beside the press, a lit opening seemed to lead to the yard.
Morgan reached toward it and touched a wall.
If she’d run, she would have crashed face-first into concrete.
“The exit I’m seeing doesn’t exist.”
“Don’t follow any lights,” Maya replied.
“Find the support you marked.”
Morgan ran her gloved hand along the wall, leaving a dark trail in the dust.
She found the edge of the press and looked up.
The skylight was still covered; reaching another beam would mean regaining control of her legs.
“I need to separate the false image from the armor’s display.”
“The text receiver is independent,” Leo said.
“I’ll use only that.”
For a moment, the loss was worse than the images.
“Morgan!” Maya raised her voice.
“We’re still here.”
Leo used the backup receiver, separate from the Stark interface.
A simple green strip appeared at the edge of the display, with no volumetric projection.
It marked the intervals when the false image slipped out of sync.
“The main channel is compromised,” Leo explained.
“This receiver only displays the signals we agreed on during testing.
It doesn’t accept control commands.
I can still talk to you through it.”
“For once, I actually like a screen that barely does anything,” Maya said.
Morgan tracked the rhythm of the green light.
With each pulse, a row of projectors flickered.
“The central dish controls the synchronization,” she said.
“If I take out the projection clock, the cage comes down.”
The suit was still rigid.
Morgan didn’t try to ignore the fear; she limited the command to the next movement.
Unlock the knee.
Move the foot.
Open the hand.
The mesh responded.
She fired the rescue line at a beam and pulled herself above the images.
The Sokovia hologram warped as it passed through her body.
Morgan let go in midair, formed short blades on her forearms, and dropped onto the dish’s synchronization module.
The impact split the housing.
The ruins vanished.
The building snapped back into view in a flash of light.
The transmission wavered at ninety-four percent.
“I need the rollback code!” Morgan shouted.
“Sending it,” Leo replied.
Morgan connected the backup sensor to the service port exposed by the impact.
T.O.N.Y.
remained isolated.
The local command briefly interrupted the dish’s sequence; the indicator froze at ninety-nine percent.
She pulled the dish’s manual power lever.
The dish stopped.
The satellite map went dark.
The silence lasted two seconds.
Heavy footsteps came from the back of the factory.
A wall of metal plates shifted, revealing an exosuit nearly three meters tall.
It wasn’t sleek like Stark armor.
It looked like an industrial machine repurposed for war: thick arms, exposed joints, and a red core in its chest.
Behind the open visor was Elias Voss.
“You learned faster than the model predicted,” he said.
Morgan kept her blades raised.
“O.B.I.S.
got it wrong because it doesn’t understand people.”
“On the contrary.
It understands patterns.
Your friend found a channel that wasn’t in the model.
Now we know it exists.”
The visor closed.
Compartments in the exosuit’s shoulders opened, revealing guided projectiles.
“And T.O.N.Y.?” Voss asked.
“How much of your father is left after my algorithm touched him?”
Morgan tried to call up the interface.
The gold dot didn’t respond.
In the van, Leo watched the data from the pendant disappear.
“Morgan, T.O.N.Y.’s matrix is corrupted.
We can’t wake it up.”
Voss locked on.
“Now we’ll see who you are when his voice falls silent.”
✦
✦
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