The HUD is telling me everything I already know and nothing I want to hear.
I'm hovering at two thousand feet, armor systems running calculations faster than thought, layering the battlefield with data streams that would give most people an instant migraine. Damage reports scroll in the left periphery—structural failures, power grid strain, civilian casualties (projected). Probability trees branch and collapse in real-time as FRIDAY models every possible intervention strategy.
Every single model ends the same way:
**HULK WINS.**
The words don't flash dramatically. They just sit there in clinical white text, updated every three seconds as new variables feed into the equation. Duration varies. Collateral damage varies. But the outcome? That's a constant.
In the corner of my vision, a locked weapons subroutine pulses red.
I've been ignoring it for sixteen minutes.
It's getting harder.
"Boss," FRIDAY says, voice deliberately neutral, "I'm detecting elevated stress indicators. Heart rate 142. Respiration irregular. Recommend—"
"I know what you're going to recommend. Mute it."
"That's not what I was—"
"Mute the stress warnings, FRIDAY."
She does.
The silence is worse.
Below me, Hulk picks up what used to be a forklift and throws it through a warehouse wall with the casual ease of someone tossing a baseball. The building doesn't collapse immediately—just sags inward, groaning, structural integrity compromised beyond recovery.
And Bruce's voice echoes in my memory, unbidden and unwanted:
"If I lose myself… don't hesitate."
I shake off the memory—or try to. It clings like oil.
Below, Hulk lands with an impact that fractures the ground in geometric patterns, spiderweb cracks spreading outward from the point of contact. The shockwave ripples through the industrial district in slow-motion waves, distorting air, bending light.
His eyes glow—not the usual gamma-green rage, but something darker. Deeper. Like looking into a furnace built from pain.
I don't want to do this.
I have to do this.
Target lock engages automatically, tracking Hulk's center mass. Firing solutions populate my HUD—angles, velocities, energy requirements. All optimal. All calculated for maximum stopping power.
I fire.
Full repulsor barrage. Both gauntlets. Maximum output.
The beams hit dead-center, explosive force that would level a building concentrated on a single point.
Hulk doesn't stop.
Doesn't even slow.
He walks through it like it's rain.
"FRIDAY, damage assessment."
"Negligible surface impact. Target appears unaffected by standard repulsor output."
"Yeah. I noticed."
The weapons subroutine pulses again.
This time, it's accompanied by a soft chime—FRIDAY's way of saying *you know what you have to do*.
I bring up the authorization menu with a thought-command. The locked compartment in my left arm assembly highlights in red, biometric sensors waiting for confirmation.
**LETHAL COUNTERMEASURES — AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED**
My hands tremble inside the suit.
The servos compensate automatically, stabilizing my aim, but I can feel the shake in my bones. In my chest. In the place where Tony Stark ends and Iron Man begins.
I've killed before.
Not often. Not lightly. But I've made the call, pulled the trigger, watched threats end because I decided they had to.
But never my friend.
Never someone I've shared lab space with, argued with over coffee, trusted with secrets I don't even tell Pepper.
Never Bruce.
I hover there, finger metaphorically on the trigger, and I can't do it.
I abort the firing solution.
The compartment stays locked.
"Boss," FRIDAY says carefully, "if you don't engage now—"
"I know."
"Civilian casualties are projected to—"
"I *know*, FRIDAY."
I redirect, firing unibeam bursts at the infrastructure around Hulk instead—controlled demolitions to create barriers, buy time, force him to change trajectory.
It works for maybe thirty seconds.
The battlefield turns against us faster than FRIDAY can model.
Hulk adapts mid-fight with the kind of tactical intelligence that should be impossible for someone running on pure emotion. He catches me mid-air during a strafing run, hand closing around my leg with enough force to crack the armor plating.
He swings.
I slam through three shipping containers like they're made of cardboard, momentum carrying me into a crane's support structure. The impact rattles my teeth, overloads shock absorbers, and sends every damage indicator on my HUD into the red.
"Damage report," I gasp.
"Left leg servo compromised. Power distribution unstable. Recommend immediate—"
Hulk is already moving.
I reroute everything to thrusters, barely stabilize, rocket upward at maximum acceleration. My vision grays at the edges from the g-forces, but I make it to altitude.
Barely.
I'm losing control of the airspace.
And if I lose the air, I lose the only advantage I have.
---
My sensors flag movement below—thermal signature I recognize instantly.
Shadow.
She's phasing through rubble, darkness coalescing around her like living smoke, trying to bind Hulk's legs from below. It's a smart play—use intangibility to get close, manifest physically only at the moment of contact to create restraints he can't just smash through.
It should work.
It doesn't.
Hulk roars—first time this entire fight—and the sound is a physical force that cracks windows half a mile away.
He reaches down and *grabs the shadow itself*.
Not Shadow the person. The actual darkness she's made of.
He shouldn't be able to do that. Physics shouldn't allow it. But Hulk has never cared about physics, and grief apparently gives him the ability to weaponize impossibility.
He slams her into the ground.
Once.
Twice.
My HUD screams alerts—vitals spiking, then plummeting, biometric readings that suggest internal injuries, possible concussion, systems shutting down in emergency preservation mode.
Time stretches.
I see Bruce's face.
See the bullets.
See Shadow dying because I hesitated.
**LETHAL FORCE REQUIRED** flashes across my vision in angry red letters.
My hand moves toward the authorization override.
And I still can't do it.
"Boss, if you don't—"
"I know!"
But knowing doesn't make it easier.
It just makes it inevitable.
Peter saves her.
Spider-Man rockets in at the last possible second—pure instinct, no calculation, just that ridiculous spider-sense and teenage fearlessness that passes for heroism.
Webs snap out, twenty lines anchoring to rubble and infrastructure, creating a safety net that yanks Shadow free just as Hulk's fist craters the ground where she was.
The shockwave from the impact hits me even at altitude—concussive force that sends my armor tumbling backward, stabilizers screaming to compensate.
When I regain control, Shadow is in Peter's arms, unconscious but breathing.
Alive.
Barely.
The guilt hits like a physical blow.
My hesitation almost got her killed.
Would have gotten her killed if Peter hadn't been faster, braver, more willing to risk himself than I was willing to risk Bruce.
The bullets feel heavier than ever.
Not a weapon.
A sentence.
Not for Bruce—he already sentenced himself when he handed them to me.
For me.
Because using them means living with what comes after. Means being the man who killed his friend. Means carrying that weight in every circuit, every servo, every piece of armor that makes me Iron Man instead of just Tony Stark.
"FRIDAY," I say quietly. "Open weapons bay."
"Boss—"
"Do it."
The compartment unlocks.
The bullets slide into firing position with a soft mechanical click that sounds like a coffin closing.
My HUD updates: **LETHAL COUNTERMEASURES ARMED**
Target lock reacquires.
Bruce's face in my memory, steady and resolved: *"Don't hesitate."*
I whisper, "I'm sorry."
My finger hovers over the firing command.
Hulk stands taller.
The pain in his eyes is transforming—crystallizing into something sharper, hotter, more dangerous.
He pounds his chest.
The sound is a sonic boom that shatters windows for six blocks. Buildings crack. Infrastructure fractures. The ground itself seems to flinch.
This is no longer containment.
This is extinction-level violence.
And I'm the only one with a solution.
I don't fire.
Not yet.
Not at him.
Instead, I redirect—firing the lethal rounds into the structural supports of the buildings around Hulk, controlled demolitions that bring them down in cascading collapses, creating barriers of rubble that might buy us seconds.
The bullets punch through reinforced steel like it's tissue paper.
I watch them disappear into concrete and metal and wonder if I just wasted our only chance.
Hulk charges deeper into the city.
Not walking now. Not methodical.
Just pure, unbridled movement—leaping, smashing, destroying everything in his path.
The Avengers scramble to regroup.
I hear Cap's voice over comms, giving orders, trying to coordinate a response that we all know is futile.
I hover alone above the destruction, empty weapons bay open like a wound, watching my friend disappear into smoke and fire.
The weight in the armor hasn't lessened.
It's gotten heavier.
Because now I know the truth:
I had the shot.
I had the solution.
And I chose mercy.
The city's going to pay for that choice.
People are going to die.
And I'm going to have to live with knowing I could have stopped it.
*"Don't hesitate,"* Bruce said.
But hesitation is all I have left.
Below me, the city burns.
And I watch.
Just... watch.