FBI Headquarters, Houston, TX - Monday Afternoon

[imafuturist]

When Tony had arrived in Texas, he'd been certain he could handle this on his own. That had been before he saw the damage one person had managed to do to the building and the people who had been inside it.

He was also very, very glad that his helmet covered his face so no one could see his queasy and horrified expression as another burned body was pulled out of the rubble. The suit filtered out the smell, but Tony's memory provided it despite that. What little security footage that had been taken before they were burned up, showed a man who could rip people apart with his bare hands and breathe fire. So. That was a new thing to worry about.

Maybe a little back up wouldn't be undue after all.

"Incoming call on your personal line. Caller identified as Dr. Maya Hansen," JARVIS said, giving him both a welcome distraction and a little normal confusion as to why she'd be reaching out to him now after all this time.

"Put her through."

[NFB, duh. Spamming you guuuuys like I do]

Comments

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

"Tony." Okay, so maybe she hadn't really figured out how she was going to begin this conversation. Sue her.

[imafuturist]

"Maya," Tony replied, mimicking her tone. "Kind of a bad time to catch up."

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

Understatement, Tony. Such an understatement. "You don't know the half of it," she muttered. "I saw you on the news. About Houston. We need to talk about what happened there."

[imafuturist]

"We do?" Tony asked, silencing the call on his end for a moment as he worked at tracing her cell signal to find her... incredibly close.

He turned towards the jam of people behind the police barriers to let the suit filter through all the people until he spotted her. A lot more tired looking, more lines around her eyes, but still as beautiful as he remembered her.

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

"We do," she confirmed, holding up a hand to wave at him once she noticed Iron Man's attention in her direction. "It's important."

[imafuturist]

Smart woman. Always was.

Tony took a breath, really wishing he could rub the bridge of his nose without having to take the faceplate off right now. "Alright," he said, ending the call and walking over to extricate her from the crowd of reporters, gawkers, and concerned parties.

Once they were far enough away, he turned to face her. "What's so important and why are you in Houston?"

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

Maya pursed her lips before looking away from him. "My boss at FuturePharm shot himself this morning. He left a suicide note about giving out a sample of one of my projects."

[imafuturist]

"Which project?" Tony asked, already sending JARVIS on a fishing expedition into the company's servers and history. Because he really liked being prepared.

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

"Extremis."

[imafuturist]

Tony stared for a moment. "I'm going to need you to explain that one." Otherwise he was going to assume it was a 90's throw back.

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

"It's a super-soldier solution." Which was way better than a 90's throw back. It was a 40's throw back!

[imafuturist]

"Jesus, Maya," Tony said, sighing and forcing himself to deal with things by retracting the faceplate to really look at her. "What does it do?"

He sort of already had a guess and it was not good.

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

"Bio-electronic nanotubes, billions of them to be injected into a subject like the original serum was." Only way more fancy. "It's designed to rewrite the human body like a faulty code. We loaded everything we could think of on there. Hypothetically, a three man team dosed with the serum would be able to take a city on their own."

Okay, not quite as hypothetical considering.

[imafuturist]

"And your boss just gave this to someone?" Tony asked.

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

Maya nodded, not meeting his eyes. "It takes approximately twenty-four hours for the change to occur in a subject. It's been twice as long as that. Houston is another day's drive from FuturePharm."

[imafuturist]

Well shit. He just could not have a calm week, could he?

"Okay," Tony said. "Okay. Thank you, Maya. We're going to stop this guy, alright?"

[totheextremis.livejournal.com]

She certainly hoped so. For everyone's sake. "Be careful."