Interlude- 2 -7- After Credits Scene

Unknown Location- (Date Unknown) (Unknown)

Anthony ‘Tony’ Stark-

Tony coughed. His body was weak and sore. He tried to look around him. He knew he wasn't home. Even the worst bed in his home wasn’t as bad or as stiff as what he was lying on. Yet as he tried to turn his head, a hose stuck into his nose kept him from moving his head too much.

So he reached for it and began to pull it out. It took him a couple of tries to get the grip strength he needed to move the blasted thing, but once he did he pulled and pulled. Over a foot of tube had been shoved into him. He gasped in pain as he pulled the last of it out.

With the tube out, Tony was able to look around better. Beside his shoddy bed is a rickety chair. On the chair was a trio of mismatched cups, filled with water. Seeing the water he craved for some, so he reached for one, but instead of picking it up his fingers failed him and the cup spilled over and fell onto the floor.

The second he couldn’t even reach, something kept him from rolling over too much. So that one too, fell off out of his grip and off the chair. Its precious resources too wasted on the dirt-covered floor.

'Dirt-covered floor?' He wondered.

Then Tony saw a man. He was across the room, standing under the only seemingly working light in, well wherever he was. The man was using a disposable razor and a broken mirror fragment to shave.

‘My captor?’ Tony wondered.

The man glanced in the mirror fragment at Tony but didn't say anything. He instead just went back to shaving. He was old, most of his hair had left him, he didn't look strong enough to carry himself let alone me and his clothes were filthy. ‘No, way this man is my captor.’

‘What happened to me?’ He tried to recall. 'I went to Afghanistan and demonstrated the new missal like Obi asked me to do. I remember that… then the convoy was attacked. And those soldiers. Those oh, so young, soldiers died, protecting me…'

'I made a break for it when the shooting stopped… I took cover, and one of my own missiles landed near me. Who has my weapons besides our allies?’

Thinking about it seemed to make him thirstier. So he tried to roll towards the last cup. The tug was stronger than when he first tried to roll.

The man finally reacted to Tony. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." The man said to him in a warning.

Frustrated and thirsty, Tony dug at the bandages on his chest. Something there was keeping him from moving. After a few layers, he saw something. Something metal mounted in the center of his chest.

The man ran over and urged him. "Wait, don't. You need those."

"What did you do to me?!" Tony screamed. As he stared horrified at the ram-shackled metal thing stuck to his chest. He followed the wires attached to him to a car battery on the other side of him. That was what was keeping him from rolling over.

“I saved you… Wait stop, stop I will show you.” The man walked over to another shoddy cot. He picked up a glass tube. “I’ve seen wounds like yours before. The walking dead we call them.” the man offered the tube to Tony. “I pulled as much of the shrapnel out as I could, but some of it was too small. So small it got into your veins and is headed for your atria septum.”

Tony took the tube and looked at it.

He was shocked at what he saw because he had seen fragments like these before. From failed weapons from his manufacturing plants, the shift manager hadn't followed the designs right, so when the weapons detonated, the casing would break apart smaller than intended. They had worried that they could be sued for them because of the inhumane damage the fragments could cause. So they labeled them failed, and were supposedly destroyed.

"You said, you’ve have seen injuries like mine before?" Tony hesitantly asked. Worried about what the answer would be.

"Oh, yes. You are not the first I have seen with injuries like this." The man seemed excited for the exchange of dialog. Making Tony worry about how long had the two of them been in here. He only half heard the man add. "Like I said, we called them the walking dead. A day or a week. Doesn't matter eventually the little pieces will get to your heart and tear it up. I have thought about it a bit and came up with the idea of using a magnet to push the fragments away. And thus the electromagnet I have implanted on your chest… Like I said, I saved you. It's keeping the barbs from reaching your heart.”

As the man talked, Tony sat up and looked around. They were in a cave, a spacious one. Probably one of the camps terrorists and insurgents used to hide from their drones and planes. A blinking light caught his attention. He saw a camera mounted in the corner of the room. It panned the room ever so slightly.

"That's right, smile. They are watching." The man says as he notices Tony looking at the camera.

“Who is ‘they’?” He asked.

The man looked at the camera before turning back to answer him. "Men, very well armed men. They came to my village. They aim their weapons at me and my family. They say if I save you. I save them. So please help me save them, Mr. Stark"

‘No, wonder why he is happy. My continued survival will affect his.’ Tony thought.

"You know we met once. It was a while ago. It was a technical conference in Burma.” The man stated.

“I don’t remember meeting you.” Tony admitted.

The man chuckles before saying. "Oh, that does not shock me. If I had been as drunk as you were that day, I wouldn't have been able to stand, let alone give…"

The sound of metal sliding made him stop talking. A large metal door stood as the only apparent way out. A small view port was now open in the door and a man was yelling at them in a language Tony didn’t understand.

The doctor quickly moved towards Tony, he whispered at him. “Do as I do. Do as I do if you want to live.” Then the man urged Tony to stand. Then the man touched his hands to his ears. This wouldn’t be the first time Tony would have been instructed to put his hands behind his head. Not that he even really got arrested. So copying the doctor wasn’t too difficult for him.

A few seconds later the shouting stopped and the viewport closed. Then the door opened away from them. Half a dozen men in dirty robes and desert clothes walked in. Tony stared in utter shock at seeing these men holding or pointing some of his latest models of assault rifles at them.

“Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?” Tony asked.

The doctor shushed him. Some of the men moved their fingers to the triggers of his weapons. Knowing how effective they could be, Tony very quickly shut up. Then the guards parted and a leader stepped forward.

This leader raised his arms and began speaking in an Arabic language and smiling at Tony. This went on for a bit before the leader nodded at the doctor.

Then his cellmate translated. "He says, welcome Tony Stark. The most famous mass murderer in the history of America… he is honored to meet you… He wants you to build him the missile, your new Jericho missile. The one you just demonstrated before your capture."

Then the leader hands Tony a paper. It was a folded promotional pamphlet that his company had printed off for the various generals and princes at the weapons demonstration. The leader smiled his bearded face at him.

Tony thought about the demonstration and the soldiers who died trying to protect him. About how these men were using weapons even though he had refused to let the world possess them.

So he looked the man in the eye and said. “I refuse.”

The doctor eventually translates for the leader. Then the leader snaps and his men rush Tony, punching and kicking him, before dragging him into the next chamber. The men were smart enough to have one of them carry the battery that was currently keeping him alive.

In the next chamber, they had set up what looked like a metal bathtub. They dragged him to the tub and dunk his head in. The electromagnet sparked and burnt his flesh as they dunked him. The men left him under for a short time before pulling him out. They yell at him in Arabic, before dunking him again. On and on they do this.

While they do, Tony plots and plans. He needed mobility, he needed power. As the magnet surges him again, he recalls the concept he had back in the day. His dad had tried to build the next power source. Not nuclear, but a new clean power. An arc reactor his dad called it. A part of Tony had always wanted to improve upon the design.

But instead of improving. He thought. Why not reduce its size… yeah… It's all coming together now.