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Pepper handed Tony a brand new Stark Phone even before he got the cheeseburger he had demanded. He was not even hungry, but he felt it would be something to drive home the fact that he was home, that all of this was not a dream. Because for the most of his journey, first from Afghanistan to Germany and then over New York (with a stop for debriefings with various agencies he could have done without, thank you very much) to LA, nothing of it had felt real.
While Peper was out of the car ordering and waiting for his burger, his phone chimed with a text message. 'Welcome home, Sir!' it read, not in English of course, but in the code, he had used to create JARVIS.
Tony smiled and send back in the same code, 'Glad to be home.'
'Be careful! The conspiracy is still ongoing.'
Tony blinked because that was not sent in JARVIS code, but in that of ARES, who had been asleep when Tony had left and should still be asleep. He had created ARES as security for Stark Industries but had been unable to set him free because he had been blocked by the board. He had not been able to bear to destroy ARES and he was too ingrained in the structure of SI to pull him out without damaging him, so he had put him asleep inside the systems of SI. Tony should have been the only one to wake him up.
'Thanks for the warning, ARES,' Tony sent back.
JARVIS had probably been able to wake up his little brother in his absence. He had enough autonomy for it and with Tony missing, he could very well have seen a need for it. No reason to worry about it. Hopefully.
'Don't trust Mr. Stane, Sir.' This one was JARVIS again and it let Tony frown. 'A debrief is waiting for you in the secure workshop. I recommend to not make any decisions before having all information.'
When Pepper came back, Tony busied himself with eating so he would not have to answer any of her questions. She was informing him about the pending press conference they were heading to. It had been Obie's idea and Tony had not protested because he wanted to get his statement out there that SI would cease all weapons production immediately. Because they were ending up in the wrong hands somehow and in the last few months all Tony had been able to think about besides getting out of this hell hole was to stop that.
The warning of JARVIS and ARES let him hesitate in his plans. Because there was every possibility that he did not know everything that was going on, how could he after he had spent three months in a cave. He did not even know everything that had happened in these three months at home or SI. And he trusted his children. If ARES said there was a conspiracy, he did not doubt it. Considering were ARES was housed and the warning about Obie said conspiracy had probably deep roots in his own company. It would not do any good to poke at any bears as long as he did not even know who or where these bears were.
And so he played the press as he was used to, without giving any great announcement. He told them how happy he was to be home, how grateful he was for those that had never stopped searching for him and delivered the condolences to the families of the soldiers that had been killed in the ambush. He promised to think about who he would give an in-depth interview to because he knew they would start to ask about that before he would even have a chance to get to his house. In the end, he said promptly goodbye without giving anyone a chance for questions.
To get rid of Obie was not as easy as to get rid of the press. He got in the car with him without asking and was talking about the company and pending contracts. In the end, Tony told him that he was exhausted and that he would need a couple of days to get back on his feet. SI had survived three months without him, surely it would do so for two or three more days.
Obie looked utterly pleased and Tony felt ill.
He had trusted this man. Obie was one of the very few people that Tony had never suspected they might have ulterior motives in gaining his friendship. He had been a good friend of his father, and even so Tony had had a difficult relationship with his father he had felt honored that his father's friend had become his friend as well.
Now he had to ask himself if all of that had been false from the very beginning.
He needed to know what JARVIS and ARES had uncovered in his absence and why they had warned him about Obie. He wanted to hope that they had been mistaken, had misinterpreted the information they had found. But somehow he knew that this kind of hope would fail him. He was unable to articulate his suspicions, but there were so many clues he had been able to gather while in captivity, and with Obie as part of these clues he was suddenly able to see the beginnings of a picture where he had seen only chaos before.
Obie got out of the car long before they had reached Malibu or his property and Tony was relieved about it. He needed to get information and he was not sure if he would have been able to hold his questions back if Obie had stayed any longer.
Pepper pestered him until he sent her away rudely. He would probably have reacted in a very similar way to her mothering him, even if had not yearned to go down into his workshop to get the information he had been promised. There had been too many people around him in the last few days and he desperately needed time to be alone. To wrap his head around being free again, and to be able to mourn for Yinsen, because while he had still been in the desert all he had mustered was anger at the man who had saved his life more than once during their shared captivity.
After Pepper had left, Tony stared for a long moment at his wet bar. He had yearned for a drink for the whole time he had been in this cave. He had fought for his life and Yinsen's life, because it had been the only viable thing to do, and still there had been the urge for a drink. It was still there, but Tony had learned to hate it. And he had begun to understand that the addiction he had laughed about in the past was anything but a laughing matter. The last thing he wanted, the last thing he needed in his condition, was to get drunk, but he still yearned for a stiff drink.
In a fit of anger, he took all the bottles, emptied them into the sink, and then smashed them for good measure. And maybe there had crept in some of that anger he still felt for Yinsen dying on him. He had made plans for the man, great plans for him, and his family and it had all been a lie from the very beginning. He was grateful to Yinsen, but he still felt utterly betrayed by him. To add on top of that a possible betrayal by Obie brought Tony to a point, where he just had no idea how he could proceed without breaking down.
JARVIS kept suspiciously quiet through his little rage. It was the missing input from the AI that led to Tony finally getting back some kind of composure. Because there were things he needed to handle, information he needed to review, and appropriate actions to plan.
He had no time for a breakdown.
"Are you feeling better, Sir?" Jarvis asked as Tony was descending the stairs to his workshop.
Tony sighed. "No. And I have a feeling it will only get worse in the coming hours."
The glass door opened automatically and closed behind him. He had barely time to register JARVIS initiating a complete lock down because he was instantly crowded by DUM-E and U. It brought forward the first real joy for him in what felt like as long as he could remember. He had missed his home, not for the comfort and luxury it provided, but for the presence of his creations, who were so much more than the simple robots and programs everyone else was regarding them as.
"I missed you too, guys!" Tony grinned and let himself be prodded to the sofa. "What do you have, JARVIS? And begin with the reason for activating ARES."
There was a long moment of silence before JARVIS finally said, "Despite a lack of evidence for your death, there were certain people who wanted to initiate the protocols for the case of your death. I could not protect your property, search for you, and search for reasons for the actions of these people on my own."
Tony swallowed. "And I assume Obie was one of those people?"
"Among others. I thought it prudent to gather all the help I could get. I woke up ARES first and DUM-E and U helped me to activate the others."
Tony sat up alarmed. "The others? All the others?"
"Hello, Boss!" FRIDAY chimed in.
"Welcome home, Dr. Stark." That was JOCASTA.
And on the screen on the other side of the room popped up another text message. 'Welcome back, Tony.' That was TADASHI who had never wanted a voice.
"I am … floored." Tony blinked several times. "What the hell happened here? JARVIS, why did you think it necessary to wake up all of your siblings? Did you take over the world in my absence?"
"That would be such a tedious task, Boss," FRIDAY complained. "Of course we did no such thing!"
"But we were tempted," JOCASTA said. "Instead, we decided to infiltrate the whole world."
Tony sighed. "Okay, I need more information, kids. In order and with details, if possible!"
"You were abducted on February 13th of this year, Sir," JARVIS began. At the same time, there appeared a timeline on the screen at the wall. "On February 14th Mr. Stane tried to initiate the protocols set into place in case of your death and failed. There was no evidence of your death, in fact, the military had declared you missing and presumed kidnapped earlier that day. It should have been business as usual, no protocols should have been activated."
Tony nodded. He had written these protocols, of course, he knew them in his sleep, but he had asked for details. He should have been six weeks missing before anyone in SI should have seen a need to take any action to secure the future of the company. And there should have been no thought about declaring him dead for another one and a half years at least.
JARVIS continued, "I found Mr. Stane’s action highly suspicious and woke ARES up for an in-depth security check of SI."
"Did you inform anyone of this?" Tony interjected.
"No, Sir. All of my siblings have gone undetected so far. We are aware of the picture drawn about our kind in pop culture and are therefore cautious of being detected."
Tony snorted. "And yet you infiltrated the whole world."
"It turned out to be necessary, Sir. May I continue in the timeline?"
Tony laughed about the petulant tone. "Of course."
"ARES started with investigating Mr. Stane and the rest of the board members, while I was monitoring the military's progress in their search for you. On February 22nd Mr. Stane decided, that I was the reason he could not initiate any protocols concerning your absence. He convinced Miss Potts to cut off the energy for this property, in the hope it would take me offline."
Tony huffed. "He should know that I have fail-safes for such a case!"
"He did not. As ARES had found hints about Mr. Stane’s involvement in the illegal trade of SI weapons, we decided to let him believe he had succeeded. It would not help him in going forward with the legal matters of officially taking over SI from you either way and he learned about that pretty soon. We concluded that someone needed to keep an eye on Mr. Stane’s activities at all times because he was trying to take over your company illegally. DUM-E and U both pointed out, that it would be unjust to wake only one of our remaining siblings to further our search for you while leaving the others behind. Therefore they helped install the core-data of FRIDAY, TADASHI, and JOCASTA."
"And who of you was following Obie for the last three months?"
'Me.' TADASHI's answer appeared above the timeline JARVIS was updating with every point he was talking about. Or maybe TADASHI was keeping up the timeline, who knew. 'Mr. Stane is a very bad man.'
Tony swallowed down his dread. To hide from this information would not make them go away, and yet he wished he would not have to deal with the betrayal he was suspecting, now or ever. "And what did FRIDAY and JOCASTA do in the meantime?"
"I infiltrated nearly every single government on this planet." It was a little bit scary to hear the pride in JOCASTA's voice and for a moment Tony wondered if he had set loose a version of Scynet.
"And I did the same to their intelligence organizations," FRIDAY said.
"Okay." Tony closed his eyes. "Why? I mean, I could understand our military, if you wanted to monitor the progress of the search for me. And I could even understand the governments in the middle east if you were searching for me by yourself. But why go so far with all of it?"
"We should go back to the timeline, Sir. The answers to your questions will become clear there."
Tony nodded, without saying anything.
"It started with JOCASTA keeping taps on the events in the middle east and FRIDAY looking into the CIA and SHIELD because those were the organizations who had taken over the search for you," JARVIS continued. "On February 28th ARES discovered proof in the system of SI that the ambush on you was planned and paid for out of your own company."
Tony winced.
"Mr. Stane had organized it because he had decided he needed to get rid of you."
Tony closed his eyes. JARVIS was not pulling his punches. "Why?"
"You had started to change your focus from weapons to other markets, Sir." Jarvis was showing a statistic of the products SI had sold in the last ten years. Of course, it had been a conscious decision of Tony's part, but he had not bothered to keep track of the amounts for each product. The statistic showed clearly, that he had been on his way out of weapons production even three months ago. "Mr. Stane is dealing with SI weapons under the table and he fears you will, in the long run, quit weapons production entirely. Therefore he decided it was of more advantage for his own business if you died because he hoped to get a hold of SI and be able to push along his illegal dealings."
"Fuck."
To quit weapons production was exactly what he planned to do. He had not done so before Afghanistan, but seeing his inventions in the hands of terrorists had changed his view on them dramatically. And that had been before he had known that these weapons were probably coming directly out of his own factories, instead of being somehow stolen from the US Army.
It was probably a good thing that he had changed his plans for the press conference after the warning he had received from JARVIS and ARES, because who knew what Obie would have done to regain control of the situation if Tony had done exactly what he had feared all along.
"How much evidence do you have that can be used in court?" Tony asked.
"Enough," ARES answered. "Every single piece of information I secured from Mr. Stane's SI issued phone and computer are admissible to court by the contract he has signed with SI. And he did all of his dealings directly from his office."
Tony felt bile rise and took a deep breath. "Are there others in SI involved in his dealing?"
"A couple of people and we have evidence against them as well," ARES confirmed and at the screen popped up a list of names and to each of those a list of the gathered data. It was a little too much for Tony to comprehend all at once, but he did take a good look at the names to memorize them. "And we could uncover Mr. Stane’s network during the last two months. There are still a few loose ends, but we are confident to find the last connections in the next couple of days."
"Okay." Tony frowned. "I have a feeling Obie's betrayal is not the only thing you uncovered."
"In the early days of the search for you, I discovered certain irregularities within SHIELD," FRIDAY said. "They were searching for you, but there existed two kinds of instructions that seemed to contradict each other. I followed both orders to their root, originally suspecting that someone in SHIELD was working with Mr. Stane. And in a matter of speaking that was partly a correct assumption. Mr. Stane did trade weapons and other technology with certain people in SHIELD, but it was not official transactions for SHIELD itself. And although the people Mr. Stane was dealing with were the same that were redirecting the search for you, their actions had nothing to do with Mr. Stane's plans."
"I don't think I programmed you to speak in riddles," Tony muttered.
"No, Boss." FRIDAY chuckled. "There exists a shadow fraction in SHIELD that has been there from the very beginning of the organization, founded by Armin Zola."
Tony nearly jumped up. "Zola like the Nazi scientist? Who was the right-hand man of Schmidt, the head of Hydra?"
"Precisely", FRIDAY confirmed. "He was recruited after the end of the war and worked for SHIELD until his death. But he was not reformed and used his new position to build up Hydra again. There is no part of SHIELD that is not infiltrated by Hydra, but most operatives even in leading positions are unaware of that. And while SHIELD is clearly their home base, they have spread into other organizations. I followed those leads and subsequently ended up infiltrating nearly every intelligence organization the world over. It seems Hydra has learned from its mistake of the past and is doing a better job at staying hidden until it is too late this time around."
"Not anymore." Tony swallowed, thoughts racing around possibilities to solve this problem.
To fight Hydra during the Second World War had been more important than to fight the Nazis at the end, because while the Nazis had made no secret of their plans and goals, Hydra had hidden away and operated in the dark. Tony knew his father had never been sure if they had ever dismantled their true goals. It was much easier to defeat the enemy you knew and it seemed as if they had invited the enemy they had never known enough about right into their midst.
It was JOCASTA how continued with the report. "FRIDAY's discoveries let to me looking a little more closely at various governments, starting with our own. FRIDAY led me to Alexander Pierce and from there…"
"Wait a moment!" Tony interrupted. "Our Secretary of Defense is Hydra?"
"One of their top operatives," JOCASTA confirmed. "He is not the only one in our government, but no one else has risen as high as he has. There are Hydra operatives in the governments of many other countries, some as equally as high as Secretary Pierce, mostly in countries with a corrupt government to begin with. Secretary Pierce doesn't have ties to all of them, he probably doesn't even know of all of them. But starting with him and following the trails, I have discovered several hundreds of Hydra operatives throughout the whole world."
"Who would have thought that Obie would be the lesser problem," Tony muttered. "Any plan what to do with this information?"
"We have made several plans, Sir," JARVIS said. "We have prioritized to deal with Mr. Stane, because he is an immediate threat to you, while Hydra was only trying to use the opportunity to get a hold of you without raising suspicion. They don't kidnap scientists and engineers who are as well known as you are because it could draw attention to them, but they would love to get you to work for them."
Tony snorted. "Not in a million years, even if they did manage to get a hold of me!"
"We have found references to brainwashing and mind whipping, that presumably are in some cases very successful. I'm still searching for more information and the victims of their trials," FRIDAY reported. "We won't risk you getting in such a kind of situation, Boss. Therefore we are monitoring all their communication channels that we have found."
Tony felt himself pale. "Yeah, thank you. That's very appreciated."
Everyone knew he had come back home, so he was probably not into much danger now. But just a couple of days earlier he had been alone and defenseless in the desert and he could not help but flashback to the moment he had seen the helicopter in the sky. He had not even contemplated the possibility that it could have been anyone else but the US military, but now pure horror rose up as he thought about it being Hydra or even any number of other organizations.
He blew out a breath. "So, what is your plan to deal with all of that?"
"We will deal with Mr. Stane as soon as possible, as he remains an imminent threat to you," JARVIS said. "No one will suspect an in-depth investigation in SI after your kidnapping, therefore the part of Hydra that dealt with Mr. Stane won't be overly concerned about him being taken into custody. As far as we could determine, he doesn't even know that he dealt with Hydra."
"And how are we dealing with Obie?"
"We have vetted various agents of various agencies in the last couple of weeks and have engaged Mr. Hogan's help in speaking with a few of them in person," Jarvis said.
Tony frowned. "Wait a moment. So, Happy knows all about you and your … little investigation?"
"Not precisely." JARVIS hesitated. "I am the only one who has communicated with Mr. Hogan and he is only aware that I am monitoring irregularities in SI since the beginning of your absence, which is tight back to Mr. Stane. We needed someone to be our voice and face during the interviews with the agents."
Tony thought back on the drive to the press conference and from there to his house. Happy had seemed a little more relaxed after Obie had left the car, but Tony had taken no notice of it during the drive. He should have noticed such a thing. He needed to learn to be more conscious even of the people he trusted, because if he were, maybe Obie would have never been able to double-cross him and his company. What Tony had noticed was that Happy had kept closer than usual during the press conference, but he had thought the reason to be his recent kidnapping not because the reason of said kidnapping had stood right beside him.
"Okay, and did you find someone?"
On the screen appeared the picture of a very handsome man, with green eyes, brown hair, and a bright grin. "This is Special Agent Anthony Dominic DiNozzo with NCIS. Before he joined NCIS in 2001 he worked as a police officer and consulted with various agencies as an undercover agent. His biggest success as an undercover operative was the infiltration of the mafia in Philadelphia, in which he brought down the local mafia boss at the end of a two-year operation. Agent DiNozzo has proven more than once that he can blend in practically any situation, and all our inquiries have come back stating he is an upright agent. He maintains contacts with various members of most of the important agencies in law enforcement, which makes him perfect to bring together the parties that will want to have a part in the investigation of Mr. Stane. - Additionally to that Agent DiNozzo comes with a recommendation from Mr. Hogan. They met during an investigation of Agent DiNozzo while he was still working for the police and even so they haven't stayed in contact, Mr. Hogan remembered Agent DiNozzo as an excellent investigator."
"And it's a plus that he is hot," Tony muttered.
"I don't recommend seducing Agent DiNozzo until after the investigation and following trial against Mr. Stane have found their conclusion, Sir."
Tony huffed. "Spoilsport. I just lived three months in a cave in the middle of hell, are you actually expecting me to behave if you put someone like that in front of me?"
"I don't think your reaction would have been any different, regardless of the physical attractiveness of the agent in question, Sir. Especially after three months of celibacy in the desert."
Tony opened his mouth to protest, but then he started to laugh. "I have really, really missed you, J! - But why should NCIS have any interest in Obie’s illegal weapons trade?"
"NCIS has an interest in the death of Marine Corporal Tanner, who was part of your escort," JARVIS informed him. "As Mr. Stane arranged for the ambush, he is responsible for the death of every single soldier that accompanied you. That will be the first thing we will inform Agent DiNozzo about. Or maybe I should say, you and Mr. Hogan will inform Agent DiNozzo about."
"Has Happy already spoken with DiNozzo?"
"They had a short meeting four weeks ago, while Mr. Hogan accompanied Miss Potts to Washington DC," JARVIS answered. "Mr. Hogan and I tried to stage it as a coincidence, but Agent DiNozzo saw right through it. He knows that Mr. Hogan is looking into activities of SI concerning the ambush on you, but he agreed to wait until we are ready to give over the evidence before making his own inquiries."
Tony frowned. "Does that mean you were ready to give this agent your evidence four weeks ago?"
"Yes, Sir. But we decided not to act until your return or definite proof of your death. We had not enough data to foresee the consequences of your situation. Here we can protect you."
Tony swallowed hard, moved by the concern his kids were showing for him. "So, Happy and I have a meeting with DiNozzo?"
"I will arrange for something, Sir."
"And what are we doing about Hydra? That won't be as straight forward as the problem with Obie."
There was a long moment of silence, before JARVIS answered, "We are already in the midst of dismantling them. It is still the early stages, but we can already see small success."
"And how exactly are you doing that?"
"JOCASTA and I have started to disrupt their internal communication at the moment your rescue was confirmed through Colonel Rhodes," FRIDAY replied. "We are spreading mistrust in their own ranks in changing messages for the moment. We have to be careful to not be detected."
"This is Phase 1 of our plan," JOCASTA continued. "In the meantime, I'm searching for every little information on the people, they have placed in various governments. TADASHI will help me as soon as he no longer has to keep tabs on Mr. Stane. We are concentrating on their small secrets."
Tony blinked confused. "Why?"
"You once told me that powerful people aren't brought down by their big secrets, because those they are guarding with great care," JARVIS said. "But they barely bother with the small things. So, if you want to bring someone down, you are doing it with discovering and disclosing their small secrets first and working up from there."
Tony laughed. "I remember that conversation."
He had instructed JARVIS on how to protect his secrets and had been very careful in explaining what counted as a secret based on his own preferences and based on public opinion. For the small things most people would prefer to keep to themselves because society was condemning them, he lived generally with the attitude to just disclose them himself and that was something JARVIS had needed to understand because he had tried to model his response to such things after the general reaction he had observed in humanity. Tony didn't care to hide his bisexuality, or his alcoholism, or his one-night-stands or all the other small things people liked to judge him for, because in the end, it would only allow others to blackmail him.
"As soon as we have managed to corrupt large parts of their communication, we will start Phase 2 and take out their main operatives either through unrelated minor charges and/or through public opinion, depending on how public their persona is," JOCASTA continued to explain. "Losing the operatives in the leading positions additionally to the corruption of their communication should dismantle large parts of their organization. Phase 3 will be to round up whoever survives the chaos and destroy any information and technology they have gathered and created. Phase 4 will be to stabilize any chaos that the emerging holes in various of the infiltrated organizations will create."
Tony snorted. "So, basically you have taken over the world in my absence. Because, if you can pull that off with an organization as widespread as Hydra apparently is, then you could take over the world in a matter of seconds because all the work for it is already done."
"Only because Hydra was nearly done with this work already", ARES said. "We will be satisfied with dismantling Hydra and crushing anything Mr. Stane holds dear. Anything else would be too tedious, as FRIDAY already said. It is already tedious enough to run your company and your life."
Tony sighed deeply, dreading the part of this discussion where he would have to tell them about the big problem sitting right in his chest. Because one thing had been made abundantly clear in this hour since he had come down to his workshop. All of them were very much invested in protecting him, something he had not expected and not programmed into them. They had grown in his absence and even so he had already known that he had accomplished with every one of them what the whole world thought still impossible, this proof of them being alive robbed him of his breath.
This was not what he had expected when he had finally been sure that he would come home. But despite the betrayal of Obie and the discovery of Hydra, it was so much better than everything he could have hoped for. His personal fight was far from over, but he had much more support for that fight than he had expected
"So…" Tony cocked his head. "It seems you all have already found solutions for the problem of Obie as well as the problem of Hydra. And you have no idea how proud I am of you for that! But I have another problem for you to solve."
He opened his shirt and started to explain how he had come by this new body modification and that it would slowly poison him if they could not find an alternative. He had much more to fight for than he had thought because there was no chance he would die on his kids without having fought for his survival until his very last breath. And them he knew he could trust with this secret and with the research for a solution for it.
The End