BUT WHY WOULD I EVER VALUE ANYTHING MORE THAN MYSELF?
THE red-and-yellow armor streaked toward the octagon of open sky at the end of the Helicarrier bay.
“Looking good, just hold it steady.”
Slightly off-center, the figure tried to correct its path and head for the free air. Instead, it made a sharp turn and slammed the last support beam. Insulted, the girder snapped. One piece dangled precariously. The other tumbled to the bay floor.
Twirling like a child’s pinwheel caught in a hurricane, the Iron Man armor careened into the clouds.
“Lower the… Push the… No, not that one… Just…”
Back in Lab 247, it was clear that virus or no, Stark wanted to reach through the glass and grab the controls from Steve Rogers. As his precious armor flipped end over end, his fingers jabbed a few buttons on his own console.
“I’ve activated the auto-stabilizers. It won’t give you the same road-feel, but let go of the thrust lever anytime you get in trouble, and it’ll level you out with your head up—whatever your position or velocity. Do that. Do it now, please.”
Rogers lifted his index finger. The suit twisted, rose, and slowed.
“Are we sure this is a good idea?”
“Nope,” Fury answered. “I’m sure it’s a terrible idea. But it does have the advantage of being the only idea we’ve got.”
Rogers wished he’d taken up one of the many invitations he’d gotten to spend an evening playing one of the latest action video games. Until today, given his lifestyle, the idea had struck him as redundant.
“Tony, you don’t use the armor yourself this way much, do you?”
Satisfied that the suit had survived and the Helicarrier wasn’t losing altitude, Stark indulged in a final little shiver. “Not if I don’t have to. The controls are intuitive, and the armor’s onboard systems can second-guess you half the time—or at least second-guess me—but it’s not the same as being there.”
“What if I accidentally fire a missile or a repulsor at the wrong target?”
“You can’t. I’ve adjusted the parameters so you can only shoot the Sleeper, and then only if there’s nothing organic between you and it. That little trick, I admit, I do use when civilians are around. Okay, I’m going to take a deep breath, then I want you to try leveling off and giving us a little, you know, swoop back in the Helicarrier’s general direction.”
Rogers looked at the series of buttons, levers, and dials surrounding the HUD. He moved the correct control slightly. The suit shot past the Helicarrier, narrowly missing one of its four giant propulsion fans.
“No, no! Back off. Fury, are there any civilian aircraft less than a thousand miles away that he could hit?”
“We’re clear.”
Rogers sighed and released the lever. The suit slowed and hovered. Every time he thought he was getting a feel for it, he nearly destroyed something.
“Even with my reflexes, this will take some training.”
“Not a luxury we have,” Fury explained. “We’re about ten minutes from the Sleeper’s location.”
Stark eyed the controller hungrily. “Look, the suit’s already transmitting a simulation of all your beautiful biometrics, and just in case the Sleeper’s got some kind of facial-recognition thing, your face is being projected on top of the helmet. Maybe I should steer the armor. You could kick back and do the advising thing. You drink, I’ll drive?”
“You were the one worried it might be able to identify my tactics.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?”
Like a grumpy father focused on the evening news, Kade was again absorbed by his holograms. N’Tomo, waiting for one of her own simulations to run, couldn’t help but speak up.
“May I make a suggestion?”
Stark grinned fliratiously. “Always, Dr. N’Tomo.”
Rolling her eyes, she walked over and pointed at the controls in Rogers’s hands. “You’re conditioned to respond to the environment with your entire body. But now, your actions are reduced to hand and finger movements. If you could find something analogous in your experience, like…”
He perked up. “My shield.”
N’Tomo nodded. “Exactly. I’ve seen how you use it. It’s like an extension of your body—you, but not you. Think of the armor as your shield.”
“Great idea,” Stark said. “But you’re not going to throw the controller, right?”
“Tony, please,” Rogers said. “I know what she means.”
Cap tried again. The head of the armor tilted down. The rest of the figure curled after it, following an even arc, like a cross between a diver and a yogi. Soon, he had it headed roughly back toward the Helicarrier.
Stark nodded both his approval and relief. “Good. Not perfect, but good. Now, as long as you’re up here, cut loose and bust a move.”
“Bust a move?”
“Yeah. Run a combat maneuver, something that seems impossible, like moonwalking, but you can make it look easy, because you’re Captain America.”
There was a pause as they looked at each other. Stark blinked first. “Okay, forget impossible. Gimme like a barrel roll or a somersault.”
Rogers thought of hurling his shield, making it sail through the air like his own fist. Trying to think of the suit the same way, he imagined the cloud cover as a gym floor he was standing on himself as he manipulated the controls. The suit did a half turn and flipped twice. For a moment, he felt a connection, but it vanished, and the suit awkwardly folded itself at the waist.
Stark made a face, then gave him a vague half-smile. “Close enough.”
* * *
THE DARK path the sphere left through French wine country was easy to follow. It ended at the edge of a vineyard. There, every 15 minutes, the peace of the lush countryside was shattered by the Sleeper’s recorded threat.
“Wenn Kapitän Amerika ist nicht hier innerhalb einer stunde, werden viele zivilisten sterben.”
Still feeling the distance between himself and the armor, Rogers landed it about 50 yards away. Nia’s suggestion worked in principle, but this was very different from using his shield. Rather than try to manipulate each limb, he activated an automated walking routine. Hoping the combination of his voice and Stark’s electronic mimicry would trigger the identification, he approached the sphere.
“Looking for me?”
It wobbled.
Each tremor was accompanied by a series of clockwork clicks—heavier than the sound of the triangles, but not as loud. Using the suit’s scanners, Cap studied the magnetic resonance image that appeared on the controller’s small screen. Stark was right about his player-piano analogy. An open area in the orb’s center was surrounded by a dense collection of gears, torsion springs, and ratchets. The mechanism was more appropriate to the Victorian era than World War II. They meshed, clacked, and whirred like a machine in a vintage penny arcade responding to the drop of a coin.
And then they stopped.
Rogers was about to announce himself again when the sphere shot forward. In an instant, it slammed into the armor, rolling it into the ground. Then it sat there, kneading the suit into the soft earth, clicking all the while.
It all happened so fast, Rogers doubted even Stark would have been able to get out of the way.
Tony seemed to agree. “The readings didn’t show any acceleration. It went straight from resting to 55 kilometers an hour, like it warped or something. Steve, get out of there.”
“Thought you were just going to watch.”
“I always talk during movies. Bad habit. But right now you’re making my kick-ass armor look like that ingénue in the slasher movie who heads into the basement alone, and I’m telling you, get her out of there.”
Taking the hint, Rogers pushed the throttle. The repulsor jets shot from the boots, but only created a spray of dirt. Realizing his mistake, he twisted the heels down. Finding the needed resistance, the armor began to press up and out.
Somehow, the sphere pushed back.
Was it making itself heavier?
Mindful of the sensitive lever, he moved it slowly to increase the thrust. When the sphere compensated, he popped it to the halfway mark.
In a blur of flying earth and rocks, the suit tore free. Before Stark could admonish him, Cap let go of the lever, allowing the autopilot to stabilize him in the air. The sphere dropped into the hole he’d left behind.
It didn’t move at all until he landed. Then, once again, it tore toward him. Ready this time, he darted to the left. He nearly made it, but a loud clang filled his ears. The sphere had hit the armor’s right boot. Warning messages flashed across the control screen. The boot had been dented.
“It’s okay,” Tony said. “I’ve got it insured. I think. Y’know, I’m just going to have a spare suit send itself our way so I can… Oh—look out!”
This time, Rogers avoided it completely. When the sphere came at the suit yet again, he recognized the pattern of clicks and whirrs it made before it moved, and only had to twitch himself out of the way like a hummingbird. After dodging a fourth and fifth time, he realized that like the first Sleeper, it was caught in a programming loop.
“We’re closer to the English Channel than the Atlantic. Maybe I can lead it there.”
“Take it slow. You saw what happened when it lost track of the Helicarrier,” Fury said. “I’ll try to establish a corridor along the shortest route.”
The optimistic plan didn’t last. After a few hundred yards, the sphere came too close for comfort again, raking his heel.
“Steve, you’re thinking in two dimensions. Remember, you can also move up.”
Tony’s advice was good, but something else was going on. Had he mistimed his reaction, or was the Sleeper learning?
“I’m going to increase speed to—”
The final word never came out of his mouth. Without any clicks at all, the sphere bolted at the armor—and hit. Once again, it pressed the suit hard into the ground. Cap raised the thrusters to the halfway mark, but the sphere vibrated and held it in place.
The clanking mechanism inside it grew louder and faster. The gray surface lightened, then reddened with heat. More warning messages flashed on the HUD, tracking the rapidly rising temperature.
Rogers raised the thrust to 80 percent, but the sphere, smoldering now, was not letting the armor go. The heating technique reminded him of a different battle, one that had taken place years ago, against what he thought a more intelligent machine.
“The fourth Sleeper generated heat bursts, like a volcano.”
“I’m getting its schematics from the S.H.I.E.L.D. archives now,” Stark said. “Oh, yeah, some of the components match. Our new friend looks like an earlier effort. I don’t think it’s capable of volcanic temps, but it’s still not something you want to be around when it blows.”
Rogers pressed the lever all the way.
With a horrid scraping, the armor tore free. At the same moment, a wave of impossible heat burst from the orb. The air didn’t burn, but everything else did: Vines, fencing, and earth all turned to ash. Their monitors were reduced to blocky static; the sound from the speakers became a vague crackling. Rogers let go of the thrust, but had no way of knowing whether the autopilot still worked.
Long, deathly silent moments passed before the armor’s cameras came back online. It was hovering about 100 yards above the Sleeper, the suit’s surface clouded by a stream of coolant hissing along the armor’s surface. The sphere, not quite yet cool, was at the center of a flaming circle that stretched over a mile. In the distance, he saw blackened, smoking vehicles and several burning homes. He prayed they’d all been empty.
His mind had yet to take it all in before the dictator again spoke from beyond the grave:
“Sie sind nicht Kapitän Amerika.”
You are not Captain America.
Tony voiced what he’d already guessed. “It’s on to us. The blast fried the circuitry broadcasting your biometrics. We’ve got to do something before it engages a new routine.”
“Blast it?”
“Not right now. The beam weaponry was damaged, too. I can reroute the power, but it’ll take me a minute. See if you can keep it busy.”
“Okay. We know it’s hollow—let’s see if it can crack.”
“Uh, not exactly what I meant…”
Rogers pushed the thrusters to the max. As the suit careened toward the Sleeper, he wished it really was his shield. The sound it always made when it struck told him a lot about his foes. What the shield conveyed was wordless, informing not his mind, but his whole body, his muscle memory, allowing him to forge himself into a better weapon for the next strike.
The bright flash on the screen at the moment of impact gave him nothing. The suit’s camera continued functioning, but it only showed a swirling blur. He had to look to the monitor array and single out a drone’s distant feed to get even a slight sense of what had happened. There, he saw that Stark’s pride and joy, the cutting edge of the cutting edge, had bounced off the smooth, featureless sphere like a dented ping-pong ball.
At least he’d remembered to let go of the thrust lever.
The armor, leaving a long trail of puffy white smoke, nearly left the drone’s visual range before slowing. As it did, a piece tumbled from it like a bit of wreckage from a failed rocket. As the suit’s camera steadied, he trained it on the debris.
It was an arm. He’d broken it. He’d broken the suit.
Stark took it in stride, or seemed to. “I’d make a joke about you costing me an arm and a leg, but I’m too busy stabilizing what’s left to… Hold on. Crap! The Sleeper’s up to something new.”
Rogers snapped the armor’s head back to the ground. The orb was spinning. Far different from its lightning-quick strikes, this rotation started slowly, like a massive turbine moaning to life. Faster and faster it went, until it looked as if the centrifugal force might hurl it apart. All the while, it stayed in place, not kicking up so much as a clump of earth—as if the ground beneath it were air.
“Tony, any idea what’s it doing?”
“All that running in place could be converting one form of energy to another, maybe to power up for another heat blast, or…”
As Stark spoke, it moved again, advancing beyond the parched land toward a steep hill. Beyond it lay a rural village smaller than the perimeter of the last heat blast.
Rogers tensed. “It must have detected the civilians. It’s going for the town!”
“I’ll get the weapons back online. You get in close enough, and we can fry the sucker.”
Rogers sent the armor after the Sleeper. He cut it off easily and activated the targeting. The sundered arm joined in, zipping through the air to add its firepower.
The crack of the electric bolt was so sharp and deep, Rogers swore he felt it in his chest. Ionized by the discharge, the air between the suit and the Sleeper became a darker blue. The beam warped around the spinning surface, briefly covering it in a writhing second skin—and then the sphere absorbed it.
Rather than slow its advance, the attack had sped it up.
As it turned out, they didn’t have to worry about the citizens. When the sphere reached the crest of the hill, it passed straight into the air.
Even Stark was so stunned all he could do was state the obvious.
“And now, well…it’s flying. Yep. It’s flying. It was never headed for the town. It’s headed for us.”