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Chapter 58: Dick Harbor Butcher
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Adam stepped into the holy of holies: Tony Stark's workshop. It was a cathedral of chaos and genius.
Half-built projects, holographic schematics, and tools worth more than cars littered every surface.
"So lovely," Adam said, his voice echoing slightly in the vast space.
He ran a hand along a workbench, feeling the cold touch of metal on his fingers. "Technology loves me. It's… reciprocal. One might say it's obsessed." He let out a short, humorless laugh.
The truth was the ascension of his power. Cyberpathy had been a dialogue. Technopathy was a merger.
He couldn't simply command them, but he existed in symbiotic harmony with them on a conceptual level.
He could read their history in their code, understand their purpose in their design.
To him, JARVIS was not just a voice; he was a stunning, luminous structure of logic and learning algorithms.
Bypassing him wasn't hacking; it was like knowing the secret language of a castle's stones and asking them to let you in.
He had effortlessly isolated JARVIS's active control from the door's local mechanism, a feat that should have been impossible.
He walked with purpose, drawn to a large, circular containment pod in the center of the room.
At his mental nudge, the pod hissed, its panels retracting to reveal the sleek, silver form of the Mark II armor.
It was beautiful.
[The Iron Man suit?! So soon??]
[Tony is gonna have an absolute meltdown.]
[JARVIS is having an existential crisis. Can AIs have those?]
Ignoring JARVIS's escalating, but now curiously observational warnings, Adam raised a hand and placed his palm on the armor's chest plate.
He released his Mechanical Force, letting it flow into the suit like a diagnostic current.
Augmented by his Technopathy, the force became a scanner of unimaginable fidelity.
He felt the repulsor tech's heart, the gyroscopic balance systems, the neural interface protocols, the primitive but effective arc reactor cavity. Unfortunately, empty.
Blueprints, material stress analyses, power flow charts; they all unfolded in his mind's eye as if Tony had handed him the complete schematics.
He saw its brilliance and, critically, its nascent weaknesses.
[He's downloading the Iron Man schematics! How?!]
[Tony's life's work, just... absorbed in seconds. That's terrifying.]
[Tf? Technopathy is the ultimate industrial espionage tool.]
[When did it get so strong!? Is it because he envies Tony?]
[Is Envy even the source of his random power-ups? What if the source is hidden?]
[If it's Envy, then it's such a fucking broken ability.]
He withdrew his hand just as heavy footsteps sounded at the workshop entrance.
Obadiah Stane walked in, his broad frame filling the doorway. He looked confused, then shrewdly assessing.
"Who are you? And why are you in Tony's private workshop?" His eyes, however, had already darted past Adam to the gleaming silver armor.
A flicker of naked, avaricious hunger shone in them before being buried under a layer of paternalistic charm.
[Stane's here! The greed is so visible! Adam set this up perfectly!]
[He's like a kid seeing a new toy he wants to break.]
"Tony invited me here to talk," Adam said smoothly, not turning around. "I assumed the same for you." He kept his tone light, conversational.
Obadiah nodded slowly, the lie fitting a narrative he could understand. "I see."
He walked further in, his gaze irresistibly pulled back to the Mark II. He approached it, his hand reaching out to trace the cold metal.
"My boy… he never ceases to amaze. What is this? Some new… Military suit?" The greed was poorly masked by feigned ignorance.
Adam had already moved on. He was a kid in the world's most advanced candy store.
He moved from station to station, his fingers lightly brushing a holographic interface here, a new alloy sample there.
His Technopathy drank it in; concepts for improved repulsors, early sketches for something called a laser lattice.
He was absorbing the bleeding edge of Stark's genius through his very pores, all with but a simple touch.
[Okay, he's data-mining Tony's entire brain!]
[That's Ocean Eleven]
[This is the greatest heist in history, and the victim isn't even aware.]
The atmosphere in the room changed again. Tony Stark stood in the doorway, drink in hand, but the party's gleam was gone from his eyes, replaced by a cold intensity.
He looked at Obadiah coveting his creation, and at Adam walking all over his life's work. A vein throbbed at his temple.
[AND HERE COMES THE MAIN EVENT!]
[The look on his face… he's about three seconds from calling a suit to him.]
"So," Tony said, his voice deceptively casual as he stepped inside. "Let's play a game. You're in my house, touching my things. What do you think happens next? You think trespassing in Tony Stark's workshop is something you just… walk away from?"
The question was aimed like a repulsor blast at Adam. Obadiah startled, finally realizing the situation.
He looked at Adam with new wariness. If it were this easy to get in here… He would've done so long ago; that's why he didn't think Adam trespassed.
Now it seems he did. How?
Adam finally turned, offering a small, apologetic smile. "Why don't we all have a seat? Talk this through like civilized, uniquely gifted people."
Tony barked a laugh. "Sure! Absolutely. Let me just get my… harmless, bullet-proof vest. For comfort."
He began moving with deliberate slowness towards the Mark II armor, his eyes locked on Adam, watching for a reaction.
Adam didn't move. He simply watched.
Tony's hand closed on the armor's shoulder. In that moment, a chilling realization cut through his face.
This man had bypassed JARVIS, a feat he considered impossible, and he did so through unknown means, almost supernatural.
Is he a mutant? He wondered.
If he could do that, what was stopping him from taking control of the suit the moment Tony sealed himself inside?
The suit could become a high-tech coffin. It was a vulnerability he'd never considered; a systemic vulnerability to a specific, terrifying type of attack.
Mental note: prepare a counter to similar means.
[OH! Tony just realized the vulnerability! Adam's Technopathy is a hard counter to his suit!]
[Tony is like Batman in some ways. Give him time to prepare, and you've fucked.]
[You think he can counter Technopathy? How?]
[It's a mental power, so maybe something similar to Magneto's helmet, but for the entire suit? Dunno.]
He released the armor and turned, his sarcasm now layered with genuine, focused caution. "Never mind. I'm comfortable."
He pulled up a rolling chair and sat, gesturing for Adam to proceed.
"Explain. And it better be the most fascinating story I've heard since the Big Bang."
"Right now, the only thing stopping me from having you thrown from the balcony is the fact that you haven't tried to kill me, you invited my possibly-treacherous mentor here for a reason, and you look like you've just seen a ghost. Or something worse."
It doesn't matter if he actually couldn't throw him from the balcony, Tony still felt like he had to show force and stress his seriousness.
Tony's eyes flicked to Obadiah, who was now looking very uncomfortable. Tony knew.
Fury's warning had been vague but pointed.
He'd been gathering evidence, waiting for the right moment to spring the trap on Stane. Now Adam had thrown them both into the cage together prematurely.
Adam let out a low, sarcastic laugh that held no humor, only a bone-deep annoyance.
"Honestly, Tony? I expected our meeting to go differently too. A cocktail, some verbal sparring, mutual appraisal. But what can I do?"
He spread his hands, his cybernetic eye gleaming under the workshop lights.
"A hellish, demonic being has decided I'm his new favorite toy. An immortal Nazi cult wants me dead or back in a cage. The clock is ticking in ways I don't fully understand."
He looked from Tony's intrigued scowl to Obadiah's increasingly pale face. "So now, I have to go to extremes. To do things I had planned years in the future. Fate is a bitch."
[HE JUST DROPPED THE BOMB! "Demonic being" and "Nazi cult" in the same sentence!]
[Obadiah's face! He's realizing he's not the biggest predator in the room anymore.]
[No no, he's realizing he's fucked, not anal, but in the fucking dickhole.]
[Aghh, tf is that description? That gave me chills.]
[Goddamn, why do I always have to imagine cock and ball issues happening to me when I see or hear about them? It fucking sucks.]
[Natural human psych. When you see someone's balls experiencing destruction, you kinda feel it.]
[Dunno about dickhole though, that's giving me nightmares.]
[Men, can you fucking stop? That's disgusting.]
[It's disgusting to hear, but you can only imagine how painful it is to experience.]
[??????????] [You've been fucked in the dickhole?????!]
[Tf?] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1] [+1]
[No no no, guys, it's just exaggeration, figure of speech!! Please believe me!]
[Sergeant Doakes sees you.] [Doakes is watching!]
[Guys, we've found the dick harbor butcher!]
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