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The hostile forces targeting Rockwell Industries kept Jill and Alice running nonstop for weeks.
Fortunately, Jill had been a senior police officer back in Raccoon City. She knew how bureaucracy worked, understood the games people played with regulations and legal pressure. Between her experience and the enhanced cognition from her super-brain, she'd become terrifyingly effective at corporate warfare.
After burning through a few million dollars to assemble a top-tier legal team, the constant harassment dropped significantly.
And with Skynet providing support—digging up evidence, tracking financial connections, identifying vulnerabilities—it wasn't hard to turn the tables on their attackers. Some competitors found themselves facing fraud investigations. Others discovered that their own questionable business practices had mysteriously ended up in the hands of regulators.
Between Jill's tactical thinking, Alice's ruthless efficiency, and Ada's intelligence-gathering skills—all three of them operating with super-brain enhancements—the counterattacks were devastating.
After a few major players got absolutely demolished, the open hostility stopped.
Not that the threats went away entirely. The attacks just went underground, became more subtle. Corporate espionage instead of regulatory harassment. Quiet sabotage instead of loud investigations.
And everyone was intensely curious about where the hell Marcus had found three women this competent.
Background checks on Alice, Jill, and Ada turned up surprisingly little. According to the fabricated records Skynet had created, they'd come from small countries around the world—different backgrounds, different skillsets, all of them somehow ending up in America through various circumstances and getting recruited by Rockwell.
The story was believable enough. Barely.
What drove competitors crazy was that all three women were brilliant in completely different ways. Alice was a natural leader with incredible strategic instincts. Jill was a security specialist who could have run the FBI if she'd wanted to. Ada had a gift for reading people and situations that bordered on precognition.
No weaknesses. No obvious vulnerabilities.
Under their combined management, Rockwell Industries was growing at a rate that should've been impossible.
Tony had complained about it more than once—jealous that Marcus had found three assistants who were just as capable as Pepper, except Marcus had three of them and they were all gorgeous.
And Tony had definitely noticed the way Marcus interacted with them. The casual intimacy. The inside jokes. The fact that they all seemed to live together at Marcus's compound in the Hamptons.
Yeah, Tony was definitely jealous.
After Marcus had eaten his fill of expensive hors d'oeuvres and locked down a few promising business deals, he decided it was time to leave.
He found Ada deep in conversation with Pepper, both of them discussing quarterly projections or regulatory compliance or whatever it was that kept billion-dollar companies from accidentally destroying each other.
"We're heading out," Marcus said, interrupting politely.
Pepper smiled. "Already? The night's still young."
"Yeah, but I'm old and tired," Marcus deadpanned.
Ada gave him a look that clearly said you're twenty-three, stop being dramatic, but she wrapped up her conversation with Pepper and gathered her things.
The Umbrella exhibition booth would be staffed by company representatives for the duration of the Expo. Marcus didn't need to babysit it personally.
As they headed toward the parking area, they ran into Tony and Happy who were also leaving.
"Well, well," Marcus called out. "Isn't that our favorite playboy? Leaving already? The party not exciting enough for you?"
Tony raised his chin with exaggerated arrogance. "The ladies were too enthusiastic. I didn't want to steal everyone else's spotlight."
Marcus laughed. "Since when do you care about stealing the spotlight?"
"Fair point." Tony grinned. "But what about you? Atmosphere not to your liking?"
"It's fine," Marcus said, adopting a melodramatic pose and staring up at the night sky. "But if it weren't for business, who would want to socialize like this? The stress, Tony. The pressure of it all."
Everyone stared at him.
"Dude," Tony said flatly. "You're a billionaire. You don't get to complain about stress."
"My stress is very real and valid."
"Your stress is nothing compared to—"
A woman appeared in front of Tony's car, cutting off the conversation. She'd clearly been waiting for them—or specifically, for Tony.
"Excuse me," she said, stepping forward. "Mr. Stark?"
Tony sized her up warily. "That's me. And you are...?"
"I'm a process server." She pulled an envelope from her bag. "This is a summons. You're required to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow morning at nine a.m."
The playful atmosphere evaporated instantly.
Marcus knew this was coming—the Senate hearing was a major plot point in Iron Man 2—but seeing it play out in person was different. Tony's expression shifted from casual amusement to carefully controlled irritation.
"A summons," Tony repeated. "How exciting."
He made no move to take the envelope.
The process server held it out expectantly. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Happy stepped forward.
"He doesn't like to take things from strangers," Happy explained, accepting the envelope himself. "It's a quirk."
"Sorry," Tony added, not sounding sorry at all. "Personal preference."
Marcus knew the real reason, actually. Tony had received the notification of his parents' deaths from a stranger who'd handed him an envelope just like that one. Ever since then, he'd had a thing about accepting documents from people he didn't know.
Except from friends. Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, Marcus—Tony would take things from them without hesitation.
The process server didn't push the issue. She just nodded professionally and clarified: "The hearing is at nine a.m. sharp. Senate Armed Services Committee. Don't be late."
"Can I see your credentials?" Tony asked.
She pulled out a badge. Tony examined it briefly, then nodded.
"Fine. I'll be there."
The woman left without further comment.
Marcus stepped closer, grinning. "Looks like you're in trouble, Stark."
"It's nothing I can't handle." Tony's voice was confident, but there was tension in his shoulders. "Just the government being predictable. They want the armor. They're not getting it."
"Obviously." Marcus's smile turned knowing. "Should be entertaining to watch, though."
"Oh, it'll be a show." Tony's grin came back, sharp and dangerous. "I guarantee it."
They said their goodbyes and headed to their respective cars.
Marcus watched Tony drive off, already planning his next move.
The Senate hearing happened exactly as Marcus remembered from the movies.
He didn't attend in person—too much attention—but he watched the live broadcast from his office in Queens with Ada standing beside him.
On screen, Tony walked into the Senate chamber like he owned the place, which in a spiritual sense, he probably did. The senators looked stern and serious. Tony looked amused.
Senator Stern—who Marcus knew was secretly Hydra, though nobody else did—opened with the usual political grandstanding about national security and dangerous weapons.
Tony responded by being, well, Tony. Sarcastic. Dismissive. Absolutely refusing to take any of it seriously.
Then they brought out Justin Hammer.
Marcus had to suppress a laugh when Hammer walked in. The guy was trying so hard to look competent and professional, but he had this desperate energy that screamed "second place forever."
Hammer Industries had grown significantly since Tony shut down Stark Industries' weapons division. With all those military contracts up for grabs, Hammer had swooped in and grabbed everything he could. The company's value had skyrocketed—over five hundred billion in market cap now.
But Justin Hammer still wasn't Tony Stark, and everyone in that room knew it.
The military had brought Hammer in as an "expert witness" to testify that Iron Man technology was dangerous, destabilizing, and needed to be controlled by the government for the safety of the nation.
It was all political theater.
And Tony demolished it beautifully.
First, he embarrassed Hammer by pointing out the numerous failures in Hammer's attempts to reverse-engineer the Iron Man armor. Then he hacked into the Senate's own video feed and played footage of those failed tests—armored suits twisting pilots into pretzels, weapons malfunctioning catastrophically, prototypes exploding on the test range.
The chamber erupted in chaos.
Senator Stern looked like he wanted to crawl under his desk. Justin Hammer's face turned an impressive shade of red.
Even Colonel Rhodes—who was supposed to be on the military's side—was clearly trying not to laugh.
Tony wrapped up with a classic Stark one-liner about how he'd successfully privatized world peace, dropped a peace sign, and walked out while the senators were still shouting.
It was perfect.
And more importantly for Marcus, it was profitable.
"Now," Marcus said, turning to Ada.
She was already pulling up trading screens on her tablet. "Hammer Industries stock is dropping. Down four percent in the last ten minutes."
"Buy," Marcus ordered. "Everything we can without triggering SEC alarms. Spread it across multiple accounts."
Ada's fingers flew across the screen. "Done. We're in for three hundred million."
"Good."
The stock would keep falling as news of the hearing spread. Hammer's reputation had just taken a massive hit on national television. Investors would panic, and the sell-off would accelerate.
Marcus would let it drop another few percentage points, then start selling in stages as it recovered over the next few weeks.
Easy money.
By the time the dust settled, Rockwell's finance division would be a few hundred million dollars richer, and nobody would be able to prove Marcus had done anything illegal.
Just good timing and smart trading.
Somewhere else entirely, Ivan Vanko sat in a cramped apartment, staring at a television screen.
Tony Stark's face filled the display—smug, arrogant, untouchable.
Ivan's hands clenched into fists.
He'd spent months building his own arc reactor using nothing but scrap materials and determination. Months proving that he was just as brilliant as Tony Stark, that his father Anton Vanko had been right about the technology, that the Stark family had stolen everything from them.
And now Tony was on TV, joking and smiling, acting like he was invincible.
Ivan wanted to rip that smile off his face.
The arc reactor on the table beside him hummed with power—crude compared to Stark's version, but functional. Deadly.
He'd already built the rest of his equipment. Electrified whips made from high-tensile cable, powered by the reactor. A harness to distribute the energy. Protective gear that would let him survive the discharge.
It had taken two days of nonstop work, but he'd done it.
Now he just needed the opportunity.
That's where his other benefactors came in.
The Ten Rings—the same terrorist organization that had kidnapped Tony Stark in Afghanistan, the same group that Marcus and Tony had dismantled when they destroyed the base there—had reached out to Ivan months ago.
They wanted revenge on Tony Stark.
Ivan wanted revenge on Tony Stark.
Their goals aligned perfectly.
The Ten Rings had provided money, resources, fake documentation. Everything Ivan needed to get into the United States without triggering any alarms. They'd even arranged his travel and provided him with a support team.
All they asked in return was that Ivan make Tony Stark suffer.
Ivan intended to deliver.
He stared at the whips coiled on his workbench, imagining them wrapped around Tony's throat.
Soon, Stark would understand what it felt like to lose everything.
Soon, Anton Vanko's son would have his revenge