The news report on the television in my study was loud. Christine Everhart was doing her job well, showing the images that would break Tony Stark.

  Gulmira.

  I stared at the screen. Families displaced. Stark Industries weapons in the hands of the Ten Rings. The same men who had held him in the cave were now slaughtering the people who had saved him.

  I didn't need to look at the tracking data to know where Tony was. I could feel it.

  The blood-link, the microscopic traces of my vitality still in his system was vibrating. And I could feel his anger.

  I poured myself a glass of water. My hand were here, but my mind was seven thousand miles away.

  "He's going off-script," I muttered to the empty room. "About time."

  The Skies Over Afghanistan

  I closed my eyes and let the connection sharpen.

  The sensation was disorienting. I wasn't seeing through his eyes, but I was receiving a flood of sensory data. The cold of the upper atmosphere. The roar of the wind against the Gold-Titanium alloy. The whine of the repulsors pushing the Mark III past Mach 1.

  He wasn't flying like a test pilot today. He was flying like a missile.

  I sat down in my leather armchair, gripping the armrests. The distance was immense, California to Afghanistan, but the link held. It was draining, though. Every mile added weight to the connection.

  He's there.

  The sensation shifted. Deceleration. The sudden drop in altitude.

  Through the link, I felt the impacts. The repulsive blasts. The whine-thump of the stabilizers as he hovered.

  I knew this scene. I remembered it from the movie. The refugees being rounded up. The father trying to protect his son. The terrorists raising their rifles.

  Then, the arrival.

  Tony dropped out of the sky like a hammer. I felt the satisfying crunch of the landing. The terror of the insurgents. The precise, automated targeting of the shoulder-mounted guns.

  Target locked. Fire.

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  It was a massacre, but the right kind. Tony was efficient. He wasn't wasting movement. He was systematically dismantling the cell that had tortured him. I felt his pulse, it wasn't racing. It was terrifyingly calm. He was finally the Iron Man.

  He left the leader for the villagers. A grim justice.

  Okay, Tony, I thought, sweat beading on my forehead as I maintained the link. Time to go. You've made your point. Don't get cocky.

  But Tony was Tony.

  He launched into the air, banking hard to leave the village. He was high on the adrenaline, on the victory. He thought he was invincible.

  He wasn't.

  My eyes snapped open. I knew the movie. I knew what was waiting in the defilade of the ridge line.

  The tank.

  Through the link, I felt the shift in air pressure before Tony did. The turret of a Chieftain tank traversing. The barrel raising.

  Tony wasn't looking. He was focused on his flight path, looking at the HUD, probably thinking about a shawarma.

  "Look left!" I hissed, though he couldn't hear me.

  The tank fired.

  A 120mm High-Explosive Anti-Tank round. Muzzle velocity: 1,400 meters per second.

  Tony was too slow. The suit's sensors screeched a warning, but the shell was already in the air. It was going to be a direct hit. In the movie, the suit takes it. But this was reality. Physics was cruel. A direct hit from a tank shell at that range wouldn't just knock him down; the kinetic transfer alone would liquefy his organs inside the suit, shock absorbers or not.

  I didn't think. I reacted.

  I slammed my hand down on the armrest of my chair in Malibu.

  Hardening.

  I shoved a massive spike of Will through the blood-link. It traveled across the world in a microsecond.

  Around the Mark III, the air itself vibrated. I used my authority over the atmosphere, the same power I used to crush the assassins, to compress the nitrogen and oxygen around Tony's left flank.

  I created a localized, invisible cushion. A split-second barrier of density that was harder than concrete.

  BOOM.

  The shell hit the air-barrier six inches from the suit's plating.

  The explosion was deafening.

  In my study, I gasped, doubling over. It felt like someone had swung a baseball bat into my chest. The feedback from the impact traveled back up the link, slamming into my own nervous system. I coughed. My nose was bleeding.

  In Afghanistan, Tony was swatted out of the sky.

  He spiraled down, crashing into the desert sand, digging a trench fifty feet long. The suit groaned, systems flickering.

  System Alert: Critical Impact. Shell detonation detected. Armor Integrity: 78%. Pilot Status: Winded.

  Tony groaned, forcing himself up. He shook his head, the HUD re-orienting.

  "Jarvis?" Tony wheezed. "What the hell was that?"

  "Tank shell, sir," Jarvis replied, his voice cool and British. "Analysis indicates a direct hit. However... the impact force was significantly lower than calculated. We appear to have been... lucky. The shell seems to have detonated prematurely."

  "Lucky," Tony muttered, getting to his feet. "I'll take lucky."

  He looked at the tank on the ridge. He raised his gauntlet. The forearm missile locked on.

  Whoosh. Click. Boom.

  The tank exploded. Tony turned and walked away, the fireball rising behind him. Classic.

  In Malibu, I wiped the blood from my upper lip with a handkerchief. My hands were shaking slightly from the exertion. Blocking a tank shell from the other side of the planet was harder than it looked.

  "Luck," I whispered, leaning back in my chair and closing my eyes. "Sure, Tony. Let's call it luck."

  I checked the link one last time. He was flying home. Two F-22 Raptors were scrambling to intercept him.

  "Rhodey's turn," I said, exhaling a long, shaky breath. "I'm getting a drink."