The work had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Tony was bent over a piece of kevlar, carefully bonding layers together with an improvised adhesive. Barry sat across from him, slowly vibrating his hand at different frequencies while Tony monitored the material's response. Yinsen tended the small fire they used for heat-treating metal, the orange glow casting dancing shadows on the cave walls.
It was during these quiet hours, when the guards were distant and the work was meditative, that they actually talked.
"So," Tony said, not looking up from his work, "what's waiting for you back home? Besides the job and the mysterious city that doesn't exist here."
Barry's hand stilled for a moment. "People. My dad—he's in prison for something he didn't do. My foster father, Joe, he's a detective. Raised me after my mom died. And his daughter, Iris."
"Girlfriend?" Tony asked casually.
"No. I mean—no." Barry's expression turned complicated. "I've known her since we were kids. Joe took me in after... after everything. Iris and I grew up together. Best friends."
"But?" Tony prompted, recognizing that tone.
"But I've been in love with her for years," Barry admitted quietly. "Never told her. Never had the courage. I kept thinking there'd be a right time, a right moment. Then the particle accelerator happened, and I got struck by lightning, and now I'm here." He laughed without humor. "Guess I waited too long."
Tony was quiet for a moment, his hands still working. "I get that. The waiting thing."
"Yeah?"
"There's this woman. Pepper. Virginia Potts, but everyone calls her Pepper." Tony's voice softened slightly. "She's my executive assistant. Runs my life, basically. Keeps me from self-destructing on a daily basis. Smart, beautiful, terrifyingly competent. Takes exactly zero of my nonsense."
"But you never told her," Barry guessed.
"I'm her boss. She works for me. There's a power dynamic there that makes it complicated." Tony set down his tools. "Plus, I'm Tony Stark. I'm not exactly known for healthy relationships. I do one-night stands and meaningless flings. Someone like Pepper deserves better than whatever emotional disaster I'd turn a relationship into."
"Maybe she should get to make that choice," Barry said quietly.
"Maybe." Tony picked up his work again. "Or maybe I'm doing her a favor by keeping my disaster of a personal life away from her."
"Or maybe you're just scared," Barry countered gently.
Tony glanced up, meeting Barry's eyes, then smiled slightly. "Look at you, speedster. Getting all insightful."
"I think fast, remember?"
Yinsen chuckled from his position by the fire. "You are both fools."
"Excuse me?" Tony raised an eyebrow.
"Fools," Yinsen repeated, but his tone was warm. "Young men with your whole lives ahead of you, and you waste time being afraid of the women you love. Life is too short for such cowardice."
"Easy for you to say," Tony started.
"Is it?" Yinsen's smile faded. "I had a wife. Beautiful, kind, patient with a stubborn man like me. We had children—a son and a daughter. They were everything to me."
Barry noticed Yinsen's use of past tense. "Had?"
"They were killed. Two years ago." Yinsen's voice was steady, but his eyes held old pain. "My village was caught between two fighting forces. Taliban on one side, warlords on the other. My family was in the wrong place when the shooting started."
The cave fell silent except for the crackle of the fire.
"I'm sorry," Barry said softly.
"I am too. Every day." Yinsen poked at the fire with a metal rod. "But I do not regret the time I had with them. I told my wife I loved her every morning. I played with my children every evening. When they died, I had nothing left unsaid, no regrets about words unspoken."
He looked at Tony, then at Barry. "You two—you have people waiting for you. People you love but have not told. If we escape this place, if we survive, what will you do? Wait longer? Find more excuses?"
Tony shifted uncomfortably. "It's not that simple—"
"It is exactly that simple," Yinsen interrupted. "You love someone, you tell them. They may not feel the same. They may say no. But at least you will have been honest. At least you will have tried." His voice roughened. "Because I promise you, if you die in this cave with those words unspoken, you will regret it. And if you survive and they die while you were busy being afraid, you will regret it even more."
Barry felt the weight of Yinsen's words settle over him. Iris. He'd spent years loving her in silence, convincing himself it wasn't the right time, that it would ruin their friendship, that he wasn't good enough for her. And now he was trapped in another world, possibly for months or forever, and she didn't even know how he felt.
"When I get back," Barry said quietly, "if I get back—I'm telling her. No more waiting."
"Good," Yinsen approved.
Tony was quiet for a long moment, his hands still on the kevlar. "Pepper probably already knows. She's scary perceptive. She probably figured it out years ago and has just been politely pretending not to notice while I make an idiot of myself."
"Then stop making an idiot of yourself," Yinsen suggested. "Tell her properly."
"If we get out of here," Tony said.
"*When* we get out of here," Yinsen corrected firmly. "We will escape. We will survive. And you both will go home and tell these women the truth. Yes?"
"Yes," Barry agreed.
Tony sighed dramatically. "Fine. Yes. I'll tell Pepper that I'm hopelessly in love with her and have been for years, and she'll probably laugh in my face or file a harassment complaint."
"Or she might feel the same way," Barry offered.
"Let's not get crazy with optimism here." But Tony smiled slightly. "Still. Point taken. Life's too short, especially when terrorists are trying to kill you. If we survive this insanity, I'll talk to Pepper."
"And I'll find a way back to my world and talk to Iris," Barry said.
"Good." Yinsen returned his attention to the fire. "Now we simply need to ensure you both survive to keep those promises."
They fell back into companionable silence, but something had shifted. The work continued—Tony bonding kevlar layers, Barry testing his vibration control, Yinsen monitoring their materials—but now there was an added weight to it. They weren't just escaping for survival anymore. They were escaping to get back to the people they loved.
"Your wife," Barry said after a while, "what was her name?"
Yinsen smiled, a genuine expression of remembered joy cutting through the grief. "Farah. It means 'happiness' in Arabic. And she was mine."
"Tell us about her," Tony said, surprising himself. "If you want to."
And Yinsen did. As they worked through the night, he told them about Farah's laugh, her terrible cooking that he'd pretended to love, the way she'd sing while doing household chores. He told them about his son's fascination with mechanical things, how the boy would take apart anything he could find just to see how it worked. His daughter's bright smile, her endless questions about everything.
Barry listened and thought of Iris—her smile, her intelligence, the way she'd always believed in him even when he didn't believe in himself.
Tony listened and thought of Pepper—her competence, her patience with him, the way she could cut through his nonsense with a single look.
And all three of them worked through the night, building armor and suits and plans, driven by the knowledge that somewhere beyond this cave, beyond these canyon walls, people were waiting for them. People who deserved to hear the truth.
"Forty days left," Tony said as dawn light began filtering through the cave entrance. "Forty days and we're out of here."
"Forty days," Barry agreed.
"And then," Yinsen added quietly, "you both go home and stop being fools."
They smiled—three prisoners in a cave in Afghanistan, building impossible escapes and making promises to themselves about the futures they'd claim.
If they survived.
*When* they survived.
Outside, guards changed shifts, unaware that in the cave, something was being built. Not just armor and suits, but resolve.
The countdown continued.
—
Week three, and the cave had transformed into something between a workshop and a stage set for an elaborate con.
The camera was the problem.
Raza had installed it two weeks into their captivity—a single security camera mounted near the cave entrance, its red LED blinking steadily like a malevolent eye. It couldn't see the entire cave, but it had a clear view of the main work area where Tony was supposedly building the Jericho.
Which meant every piece of the Mark I had to be carefully positioned to look like something else.
"Smile for the camera," Tony muttered, adjusting a large metal plate that was actually the Mark I's chest armor but currently arranged to look like a missile housing. "And remember, we're building a weapon of mass destruction, not a walking tank suit."
Barry sat in the corner, carefully hand-stitching pieces of kevlar together. His position was deliberately chosen—the camera's angle couldn't quite see him clearly, just enough to show someone working on "technical equipment." What looked like random fabric and wiring was actually his suit taking shape, piece by careful piece.
"How's the stitching?" Tony asked without turning around, keeping his voice low enough that the camera's microphone—if it had one—wouldn't pick up specifics.
"Getting better. This is my fourth attempt at the shoulder seam." Barry's hands moved with supernatural precision, each stitch perfect. "The speed helps. I can see the individual threads, place the needle exactly where it needs to go."
"Show-off." Tony was welding a piece that would become the Mark I's arm actuator but was currently disguised as part of a missile guidance fin. Sparks flew, providing convenient visual cover for what he was really doing. "Yinsen, status?"
Yinsen stood near the forge, ostensibly heat-treating metal components. In reality, he was working on the internal framework for Barry's suit—thin, flexible support rods that would help the fabric maintain its shape during high-speed movement.
"The chest piece is almost complete," Yinsen reported in Urdu, then switched to English. "The camera doesn't have audio from this distance. I can speak freely here."
"Good. Because we need to talk about the assembly timeline." Tony set down his welding torch and moved to block the camera's view while pretending to examine a blueprint. Barry and Yinsen casually repositioned to create a blind spot.
Tony spoke quickly, quietly. "The Mark I is about sixty percent complete. All the major plates are fabricated—I just need to assemble them and install the arc reactor interface. Maybe two more weeks."
"The suit is slower," Barry admitted. "The stitching is tedious even with superspeed. And we need to test each piece to make sure it can handle my vibrations without tearing. I'm maybe forty percent done."
"Can you finish in two weeks?" Tony asked.
"If I work longer hours, yes. But we need to be careful about the camera. If Raza sees me working too long on 'technical equipment' that doesn't look like Jericho components, he'll get suspicious."
Tony thought for a moment. "Then we change the narrative. Yinsen, next time Raza visits, tell him Barry is recovering but needs physical therapy. Show him Barry doing basic exercises—which will actually be you practicing combat moves and speed work. Make it look medical, not tactical."
"That could work," Yinsen agreed. "And it would explain why he's active instead of resting."
"Good. And Barry, from now on, you work on the suit only during guard shift changes when we know the camera isn't being actively monitored. Rest of the time, hide it in plain sight." Tony gestured to a pile of fabric scraps and wiring that looked like refuse. "Bundle it up with actual garbage. Make it look worthless."
Barry nodded, already moving to reposition his work. Within seconds, the partially completed suit was buried under layers of discarded materials, invisible unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.
"The boots are going to be the real challenge," Barry said, settling back into his "rest position" where the camera could see him. "I need something that can handle the friction of running at superspeed without melting or catching fire."
"I've been thinking about that." Tony returned to his welding, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the torch. "The missile casings use a heat-resistant ceramic coating. If I can salvage enough of it and bond it to a flexible base, we might be able to create soles that can handle the thermal load."
"Might?"
"I'm a genius, not a miracle worker. Well, I'm that too, but even I have limitations." Tony grinned behind his welding mask. "We'll test it. Worst case, you run barefoot and we hope for the best."
"That sounds like a terrible plan."
"You have a better one?"
Barry didn't.
The work continued, a careful ballet of deception. When guards walked by, they saw exactly what they expected: Stark working on missile components, the old man tending the forge, the young man resting and doing light physical therapy. What they didn't see was the armor taking shape, the suit being assembled stitch by stitch, the escape plan forming like a puzzle coming together.
"Incoming," Yinsen said quietly in Urdu, noticing movement at the cave entrance.
They shifted immediately. Tony adjusted his work to show off a impressive-looking component that was actually part of the Mark I's leg assembly. Barry lay back on his blanket, appearing tired. Yinsen stirred the coals, the picture of innocent labor.
Raza entered with two guards, his eyes immediately scanning the cave, lingering on the camera feed monitor he carried—a tablet showing the live view.
"Progress report," Raza demanded.
Tony straightened, wiping sweat from his forehead and leaving a dramatic streak of grease. "Right on schedule. The guidance system is nearly complete." He gestured to the disguised Mark I components. "As you can see, the primary housings are fabricated. Now I'm working on the internal circuitry and power distribution."
Raza examined the components with a critical eye that understood nothing. "This does not look like a missile."
"That's because it's the *inside* of a missile," Tony said with exaggerated patience. "You're looking at the brains of the operation. The explosive payload is the easy part—any idiot can strap some C4 to a rocket. What makes the Jericho special is the guidance system, the target acquisition, the synchronized detonation sequence. That's what I'm building."
He pointed to various pieces, spouting technical jargon that was simultaneously impressive and meaningless. Raza's eyes glazed over slightly, but he nodded as if he understood.
"And him?" Raza gestured to Barry, who was sitting up now, the arc reactor visible on his chest. "The weapon. When will he be functional?"
"He's recovering well," Yinsen interjected smoothly. "His vital signs are stable. The electromagnetic stabilizer is working as designed. I've started him on physical therapy to rebuild his strength."
"Show me," Raza ordered.
Barry stood slowly, deliberately making himself look weaker than he was. Yinsen guided him through some basic stretches and movements—things that looked like recovery exercises but were actually combat stance practice hidden in plain sight.
"His reflexes are improving," Yinsen said. "Another week or two and he should be at full capacity."
"Good." Raza turned back to Tony. "You have three weeks remaining, Stark. Three weeks to deliver the Jericho. After that..." He didn't finish the threat. He didn't need to.
"Three weeks," Tony agreed evenly. "Plenty of time."
Raza studied him for a long moment, then nodded and left, his guards following.
The moment they were out of earshot, Tony let out a breath. "Three weeks. That's cutting it closer than I'd like."
"Can you finish the Mark I in three weeks?" Barry asked.
"I can finish it in two if I don't sleep. Which, let's face it, I wasn't planning on sleeping anyway." Tony returned to his work, but his movements were more urgent now. "But that means you need to finish the suit faster too. We move together, or we don't move at all."
"I'll make it work," Barry promised.
"You'd better. Because in three weeks, we're either walking out of here, or we're dying here. And I really prefer the walking option."
Yinsen returned to the forge, his expression grim. "Three weeks. Allah willing, it will be enough."
"Allah, physics, and a lot of caffeine," Tony muttered. "The holy trinity of desperate engineering."
As night fell, they worked by firelight and the glow of arc reactors—two points of blue-white light in the darkness. Tony assembled components with practiced efficiency. Barry stitched with supernatural precision. Yinsen fabricated and formed, his steady hands guided by decades of experience.
And slowly, impossibly, the armor and the suit took shape.
The Mark I's chest plate fit together like a puzzle, the arc reactor socket at its heart ready to receive Tony's reactor. The arm assemblies were nearly complete, crude but functional. The leg actuators were being calibrated.
Barry's suit was coming together too—dark fabric reinforced with kevlar, the lines sleek and practical. The arc reactor harness was being built into the chest, making it integral to the design. Padding at the impact points. Reinforced seams. Heat-resistant boots that looked more like armored footwear than running shoes.
"It's actually happening," Barry said quietly one night, holding up the mostly-complete torso of his suit. "We're really doing this."
"Never doubted it for a second," Tony lied smoothly. "Well, maybe for a few seconds. But mostly I was confident."
"Mostly?"
"Seventy percent confident. Sixty at the low points. But confidence is like armor—you wear it even when you don't feel it."
"Is that Tony Stark wisdom?"
"That's survival wisdom. Fake it till you make it, then fake it some more because the universe is mostly chaos and we're all just improvising." Tony held up a piece of the Mark I's helmet, the eye slots dark and imposing. "But sometimes, if you're very lucky and very stubborn, the improvisation works."
"And if we're not lucky?"
Tony set down the helmet and met Barry's eyes. "Then we were unlucky in a cave in Afghanistan trying to build something impossible. But at least we tried. At least we didn't just sit here waiting to die."
"Fair enough."
They returned to their work, the deadline looming, the camera watching, the guards patrolling.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one days.
The countdown continued, and in the cave, two impossible things were being built.
A suit of armor that would turn a man into a weapon.
And a suit of speed that would turn a weapon into a hero.
If they survived long enough to wear them.
—
Week five. Day thirty-six.
Barry stood in the shadowed corner of the cave, fully suited for the first time.
The suit fit like a second skin—dark crimson and black, the colors Tony had managed to salvage from various materials. Kevlar-reinforced fabric covered his torso and legs, flexible but protective. The arc reactor sat in its integrated housing at the center of his chest, glowing steadily through a circular cutout, its light casting a soft blue-white glow on the surrounding red fabric. Padded armor plates protected his shoulders, elbows, and knees without restricting movement.
And the boots—the boots were Tony's masterpiece.
Heat-resistant ceramic bonded to flexible carbon fiber, with treads designed to channel friction away from the soles. They looked almost like tactical boots, but lighter, more streamlined. Barry could feel the difference immediately when he moved—no heat buildup, no melting rubber smell.
"How does it feel?" Tony asked, looking up from where he was making final adjustments to the Mark I.
Barry took a tentative step, then another. The suit moved with him perfectly, no binding, no restriction. He channeled a small amount of speed, just enough to blur across the cave.
"It feels... right," Barry said, stopping precisely where he'd intended. No overshoot, no skidding. "Like it's part of me."
"Good. Because we're testing it properly. Now." Tony gestured to the cave entrance. "Guards just changed shifts. We've got maybe twenty minutes before the next patrol check. I need to see what that suit can actually handle."
"What did you have in mind?"
Tony pointed to the wall. "Phase through that. Ten feet of solid rock. Can you do it?"
Barry looked at the cave wall, feeling a flutter of nervousness. He'd practiced phasing in small bursts—through thin barriers, through loose materials. But solid rock, ten feet thick?
"The Speed Force trained me for this," Barry said, more to convince himself than Tony. "I just need to vibrate at the right frequency, match the molecular density of the rock, and—"
"Less talking, more impossible physics," Tony interrupted. "Clock's ticking."
Barry took a breath, centered himself, and tapped into the Speed Force. He felt it surge through him, felt his molecules begin to vibrate. The suit vibrated with him—the fabric, the armor plates, even the boots. Everything held together, resonating at the same frequency as his body.
He stepped forward and into the wall.
The sensation was indescribable—like moving through water, but the water was solid and you were the liquid. Barry felt the rock pass through him, around him, his molecules slipping between the spaces in its atomic structure. The arc reactor's glow lit up the interior of the rock with eerie blue-white light.
One step. Two. Three.
Then he was through, emerging on the other side into a narrow passage he'd never seen before—part of the cave system beyond their prison.
Barry looked down at himself. The suit was intact. Not a tear, not a thread out of place. The arc reactor still glowed steadily.
"Holy shit," he breathed. "It worked."
He phased back through, returning to the main cave. Tony was grinning like he'd just won the lottery.
"That was incredible," Tony said. "Your entire molecular structure just noped out of existence and then came back. And the suit held together perfectly."
"The fabric vibrated with me," Barry explained, still marveling at the feeling. "The kevlar, the padding—everything synchronized to my frequency. It's like the suit became part of my speed."
"That's because I'm a genius," Tony said without false modesty. "But we're not done testing. Speed burst. Full sprint. Let's see how those boots handle real thermal load."
Barry nodded and took off running.
He pushed harder than he had since waking up, letting the Speed Force flow through him without restraint. The cave blurred around him. He ran in a tight circle, building speed, faster and faster until the world became streaks of color and Tony was a statue frozen in time.
His feet pounded the stone floor. Heat built in the soles of the boots, but the ceramic coating channeled it away, dispersing it through the specialized treads. No melting. No burning. Just solid, reliable traction even at speeds that should have ignited the material.
Barry ran for what felt like minutes but was probably only seconds, then decelerated smoothly, coming to a perfect stop in front of Tony.
"Boots?" Tony asked.
Barry looked down. The soles were warm but undamaged. "Perfect. No degradation, no heat damage. These will work."
"Damn right they'll work. I built them." Tony checked his improvised chronometer. "You were running for approximately fifteen seconds at what I estimate was close to 400 miles per hour. Distance covered in this cave..." He did quick mental math. "About a mile and a half. In a space that's maybe 50 feet long. You lapped yourself dozens of times."
"It felt smooth. Controlled. The suit didn't restrict me at all." Barry flexed his arms, tested his range of motion. "I can fight in this. Move in this. Do everything I need to do."
"Then we're good on your end." Tony turned to the Mark I, which now stood in the corner like a mechanical sentinel. "And as of about three hours ago, this beauty is complete."
Barry approached the armor, seeing it fully assembled for the first time. It was crude, brutal, impressive—plates of dull gray metal riveted and welded together, with the arc reactor socket glowing faintly at its heart. The arm assemblies had what looked like flamethrower nozzles. The chest plate was thick enough to stop heavy caliber rounds. The helmet was a slit-eyed mask that made it look less like armor and more like an iron demon.
"It's terrifying," Barry said honestly.
"It's beautiful," Tony corrected. "This is the Mark I. Proof that Tony Stark can build anything, anywhere, with whatever's lying around. This is going to walk through walls, shrug off bullets, and turn terrorists into very surprised ex-terrorists."
"Can you actually move in it?"
"Only one way to find out." Tony began stripping off his shirt, revealing the arc reactor glowing in his chest. "Yinsen, help me get into this thing."
The process of donning the Mark I took nearly twenty minutes. Each piece had to be carefully positioned and locked into place—leg assemblies first, then the torso, then the arms, and finally the helmet. Tony stood in the center of the cave, encased in metal, looking like something between a knight and a tank.
"How does it feel?" Yinsen asked.
Tony's voice came through the helmet, slightly muffled but clear. "Heavy. Really heavy. Like wearing a car. But the servos are responding..." He lifted an arm, and the metal limb moved smoothly despite its bulk. "Yes. Yes, this is working. The arc reactor is providing plenty of power. I can feel the feedback through the interface."
He took a step, then another. The armor moved with mechanical precision, each step accompanied by the whir of servos and the clank of metal on stone.
"It's slow," Tony admitted. "But that's not the point. Point is, I'm a walking tank now. Barry, throw something at me."
"What?"
"Something hard. A rock. I need to test the armor's resistance to impact."
Barry picked up a fist-sized stone and threw it—not at full speed, but hard enough to have force behind it. The rock bounced off Tony's chest plate with a metallic clang, leaving no mark.
"Barely felt it," Tony reported. "Again, but faster this time."
Barry threw another rock, this time with a burst of speed behind it. The impact was much harder, but the armor held. The rock shattered.
"Perfect," Tony said with satisfaction. "This plating will handle small arms fire no problem. Heavy weapons might be dicier, but that's what evasive maneuvers are for. Sort of. Very slow evasive maneuvers."
"Can you even run in that?" Barry asked.
"Run is a strong word. Power walk aggressively? Yes. Sprint? No. But again, not the point." Tony moved his arms, testing the range of motion. "The flamethrowers are functional—we've got fuel for maybe two minutes of sustained fire. Not ideal, but enough to clear a path. And if I need to, I can use the armor itself as a battering ram."
He demonstrated by taking a running start—slow and ponderous—and slamming shoulder-first into the cave wall. The impact echoed through the space, and small rocks rained down from the ceiling. Tony's armor had a new dent, but he was unharmed inside.
"Structural integrity holding," Tony reported, sounding pleased. "Yinsen, help me out of this thing. We need to run final diagnostics before the actual escape."
As they carefully removed the Mark I's components, Yinsen spoke quietly. "This is really happening. Tomorrow, we attempt the escape."
"Tomorrow night," Tony corrected. "Guard rotation is weakest between 2 and 4 AM. That's our window."
"One night," Barry said, the reality of it settling over him. "One chance to get this right."
"We'll get it right," Tony said with confidence he might not entirely feel. "We've planned for every contingency. You've got speed and phasing. I've got armor and firepower. Yinsen's got the exit route memorized and knows the language. We're as ready as we're going to be."
"And if something goes wrong?" Yinsen asked.
"Then we improvise. But nothing's going to go wrong." Tony pulled his shirt back on, covering his arc reactor. "Tomorrow night, we show Raza and his friends that they made a very big mistake kidnapping Tony Stark and friends."
"Friends," Barry repeated, a small smile forming. "I like that."
"Don't get sentimental on me, speedster. We've still got a full day of prep work." Tony started gathering tools. "We need to position the Mark I components for quick assembly, hide your suit where you can access it instantly, plot our exact route through the canyon, and memorize the contingency plans. Plus I want to run through the coordination signals one more time."
"The hand signals are simple enough," Yinsen said. "But in the chaos of combat, remembering them may be difficult."
"That's why we practice until they're automatic." Tony pulled out their hand-drawn map of the canyon complex. "Now, let's go through this one more time. Barry, you take point and scout ahead using your speed..."
They spent the rest of the night reviewing plans, testing equipment, making final adjustments. The Mark I stood disassembled but ready in the corner, each piece marked for rapid assembly. Barry's suit was hidden in a bundle of rags that he could grab in seconds. Their escape route was memorized, with three backup routes in case of complications.
As dawn approached, they sat together one last time, three men on the edge of either freedom or death.
"Tomorrow night," Tony said quietly. "One way or another, we're done being prisoners."
"Tomorrow night," Yinsen agreed.
Barry looked at his hands, at the faint crackle of electricity that danced across his fingers when he concentrated. The Speed Force hummed in his cells, ready, eager.
"Tomorrow night," he echoed. "Let's go home."
Outside, the guards changed shifts, unaware that in the cave, everything had changed.
The armor was complete. The suit was ready. The speedster was trained.
Tomorrow night, the world would learn that you don't trap Tony Stark and expect him to stay trapped.
And you definitely don't trap a speedster and expect him to stay still.
The countdown had reached its end.
Tomorrow, they ran.
---
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