The storm of the Sokovia Accords had not yet settled when Alex Price made his next move. For weeks, Mechanicus Tech had dominated headlines, contracts, and black-ops chatter across the globe. Nations whispered his name in closed rooms; generals signed deals that made him untouchable. But Alex's mind had already shifted beyond Earth.
Steel was finite. Titanium dwindled. Rare earths were contested in blood-soaked jungles and deserts. The Machine God had shown him a vision: humanity's destiny was not bound to Earth, but to the stars. And to reach it, he needed more than mechs and lasers. He needed a heart. A sun trapped in steel. He needed the Arc Reactor.
So Alex did what few dared he walked into Stark's domain.
Tony met him in the glass-walled office overlooking the Avengers Compound's hangar. He wore the familiar mix of charm and suspicion, glass of scotch in hand. "Most people who knock on my door either want to sue me, kill me, or steal my toys. Which one are you?"
Alex smiled thinly. "None. I want to make a deal."
"Deals usually end with me regretting them."
"Not this one. I want a license to use the Arc Reactor."
Tony set his glass down, the humor draining from his eyes. "You don't just ask for the Arc Reactor. That's the crown jewel, my life's work. What could you possibly need it for?"
Alex leaned forward, his voice low and steady, the fire of the Forge burning behind every word. "Starship technology. Mining lasers. Processing facilities in orbit and on Mars. The resources of Earth won't sustain what's coming. Not the space age. Not the weapons we'll need when the sky itself turns hostile. I intend to build extraction colonies and orbital factories. The Arc Reactor is the only power source capable of sustaining that scale."
For a long moment, Tony just studied him, tapping the rim of his glass. He wanted to laugh it off, call it madness. But Alex wasn't Hammer, wasn't Vanko, wasn't some half-baked wannabe. The man radiated certainty, the same kind of dangerous certainty Tony himself once carried.
Finally, Tony smirked. "You're insane. Which is why I like it. Fine. But I don't come cheap."
"Sixty-forty," Alex replied without hesitation. "Sixty for me, forty for you."
Tony chuckled, shaking his head. "I usually don't let people walk into my house and rob me blind. But alright, Price you've got yourself a partner."
The next day, Alex invited him into the Mechanicus labs. It was not the sterile glass and white of Stark Industries, but a cathedral of steel and humming machinery. Red-lit cogitators processed endless streams of data. Giant assembly lines forged mech armor. And at the heart of it, a new weapon waited.
The Mining Laser.
It was monstrous, built on a chassis the size of a semi-truck, its emitter glowing with barely-contained energy. When Alex powered it, the beam tore through a reinforced asteroid fragment as if it were paper, vaporizing stone into nothing.
Tony whistled low, walking a slow circle around the machine. "That's not a laser. That's a goddamn lightsaber for planets." He reached out, scanning the calibration nodes, fingers dancing over Gear's holo-interfaces. "Your dispersion is sloppy. You're losing forty percent efficiency at high resonance. Tweak here, narrow the phasing by 0.4, and you'll get sharper readouts without burning the target to glass."
Alex nodded, watching Stark work. Two geniuses, two paths of invention one born of human brilliance, the other touched by the Machine God's whispers. For a moment, their visions aligned.
They spent hours drafting plans. A space processing base in lunar orbit. A mining colony on Mars's moons. And the boldest of all: a space elevator, tethered from Earth's surface into the heavens, a permanent artery between the planet and the stars.
When the deal was finalized, a public signing ceremony was held. The world watched in shock as Tony Stark and Alex Price stood side by side, hands clasped over the documents that sealed Mechanicus Tech and Stark Industries into an unholy alliance. Cameras flashed. Reporters shouted. Markets shook.
For governments, it was a nightmare. America's Pentagon scrambled emergency meetings. Russia denounced the deal as a violation of international arms treaties. China sent quiet delegations with veiled offers of "joint research." The United Nations debated sanctions, but the Arc Reactor was too tempting for anyone to oppose outright.
For rivals, it was war. Justin Hammer watched the broadcast from his office, a glass of bourbon shaking in his hand. His empire of cheap knockoffs was collapsing under Mechanicus innovation. Now Stark had joined Alex, legitimizing him on the world stage. Hammer's face twisted with rage as he ordered new cyberattacks, assassins-for-hire, and corporate spies. But Gear shut down every digital intrusion, and Alex's growing security forces dismantled every attempt before it reached him.
For hidden powers, it was revelation. In Wakanda, King T'Chaka watched the news with wary eyes, seeing the word "vibranium" unspoken yet written between every line. In the shadows of S.H.I.E.L.D's ruins, Nick Fury muttered to Maria Hill, "That boy's either humanity's best shot… or its worst nightmare."
And for the Avengers, it was division layered upon division. The Accords loomed, fracturing trust. Steve Rogers saw Alex's partnership with Stark as another dangerous consolidation of power. Natasha weighed the long game. Wanda felt the unease of a future built on weapons.
But Alex didn't care. The Forge had spoken. The path to survival lay in the stars, and Mechanicus Tech would lead humanity there.
The world could watch in awe, in fear, or in envy it didn't matter. The future had been claimed.