Better Days | MCU IronDad AU

Chapter 6 ▬ To Trust a Sleeping Snake

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— CHAPTER SIX —
TO TRUST A SLEEPING SNAKE

May had hung up on Tony faster than a cobra could strike. He had only gotten six words out when the line went dead and the desolate beep droned on in Tony's ear. He pulled his phone back to dial May again, expecting and unexpecting the continuous trills of the phone as it tried to connect with May's.

Everyone had their own way of processing shock; maybe May's was to shut everything out and drown in the silence.

Tony did the same – he collapsed back onto the couch in the lounge at the Compound, burying his face in the pillows. The leathery smell of the couch tickled Tony's nose as dread and guilt boiled in his gut, the early winter darkness outside the windows only accentuating the coldness of the emotions inside him.

'F.R.I.D.A.Y. run scans on all surveillance footage in Midtown again,' he groaned from where he lay.

The lights winked nervously. 'But Boss,' F.R.I.D.A.Y. said timidly, 'all security footage and audio recordings of the past five hours are corrupted. All footage and recordings during the time of the school's vaccinations are completely destroyed.'

'Well, what could have caused that?' snapped Tony as he shifted his position on the couch. He flashed out a hand and a holoscreen shimmered into existence above the coffee table. Supporting F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s case were the theoretical files that had been wiped when whatever happened had happened.

'The people who were affected reported that all electronic devices within Midtown Manhattan had shut down at roughly the exact same time,' F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. 'An electromagnetic pulse is the most likely candidate for such effects.'

'An EMP would most likely wipe out all electrical signals in an entire state, not a neighbourhood.'

'A localised EMP centred at Midtown High School lasting at a duration of 0.0042 seconds would be able to mimic the effects experience today.'

Tony sighed, rubbing his eyes as he tried to simulate various EMP detonations on the holoscreen, but running the simulations did nothing to relax his conscious. He was antsy, his nerves having been set alight. He wanted to get up and run and tear the city's walls down with his bare hands, because the EMP was barely the problem. It was the kid who had disappeared with it.

It was the organisation that had the guts to snatch him right under his nose. It was the fact that Peter Parker was the one being targeted.

Tony raked his fingers through his hair, scratching his uneven nails across his scalp. 'It's got to be A.I.M.,' he muttered. 'It has to be them. We must have them tipped them off when we accessed their servers, it's still connected so they must have tracked us down.' That horrible rotten feeling welled up inside him again when he realised that it was him that had let Peter continue investigating the Rappacinni Lab, when he should have told him to stop. But he was so engrossed with the mystery to take a minute and think about safety.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. was quick to reply. 'Boss, it is highly unlikely for A.I.M. to be the ones to kidnap Peter. The company's former heads had disbanded in the light of A.I.M.'s bankruptcy, and all existing members were removed shortly after.'

'But it doesn't take simple bankruptcy to stop an organisation who deals with human experimentation,' Tony argued. 'That didn't stop HYDRA when they went down in the '40s. No, they continued to grow within S.H.I.E.L.D., of all places. They continued to grow, they created the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, they set the basis for Ultron.' Tony sighed. 'If HYDRA could do that, who's to say that there is another person out there, with enough money and ideas, attracting similar minded people.