Malibu. The house stood unchanged, but Tony Stark felt like a stranger crossing its threshold. The ocean air smelled the same, the glass walls gleamed the same… and yet, after weeks in a cave, it was as though the world had moved on without him.
Then he saw who was waiting.
"Yinsen?" His voice cracked.
The doctor stood near the sofa, thinner, pale, a fresh set of bandages hidden beneath his clothes. Alive. Smiling faintly.
"Welcome back, Tony," Yinsen said gently.
Tony froze. His heart lurched. "I… saw you. I saw you die."
"There was confusion. I was wounded, but not beyond saving." Yinsen glanced toward Brendon King, who stood calmly beside him.
Tony's eyes followed. "And you. What were you doing anywhere near that desert?"
Brendon's expression was even. "Making sure someone was watching your back."
Tony's jaw tightened. "That sounds a lot like spying."
"Call it what you want," Brendon replied. "I call it security."
"Security?" Tony scoffed, but there was no humor in it — only exhaustion. "Who the hell even are you, King?"
Brendon didn't answer directly. Instead, he lifted his wrist and tapped a small device. A projection lit up across the glass wall. Not Jarvis, but a sharper, colder interface.
::Good evening, Mr. Stark.::
Tony stiffened. "And that is…?"
"Spectre," Brendon said evenly. "A system I built. Smarter than anything you've seen. It doesn't just run simulations. It uncovers truth."
The projection shifted. A live feed appeared — grainy at first, then sharpening into clarity. Obadiah Stane, alone in his office. He finished a call, gathered papers, then finally left, the lights dimming behind him.
The drone view glided inside moments later. A bypass of security locks. A quiet access of Stane's personal terminal. One by one, files copied themselves onto the relay.
Brendon's voice was low. "I wanted you to see for yourself."
The feed cut, replaced by recordings: arms shipments listed under false subsidiaries, deals with buyers flagged as terrorist cells, Obadiah's voice authorizing transactions that should never have existed.
Tony's face drained of color as the truth unfolded in front of him.
"That son of a—" He broke off, gripping the back of a chair until his knuckles went white. His chest heaved. "He was selling my weapons. Under my nose. For years."
Yinsen's eyes lowered. Brendon stayed still, silent as the storm built in Tony.
Finally, Tony turned, gaze sharp. "How did you pull this off? You weren't in that cave. You couldn't have been."
Brendon met his eyes. "I'm fast. Faster than most people can process. Sometimes speed is enough — to think ahead, to be in the right place, to make sure someone walks away when they shouldn't have."
Tony studied him for a long moment. His genius was already calculating, correlating, slotting this boy into a framework he didn't yet understand.
"So that's your secret," Tony muttered. "Speed. That's how you've gotten this far, this young."
Brendon only shrugged. "An advantage. Nothing more."
Tony's hands curled into fists. He exhaled slowly, trying to steady himself. The anger, the betrayal, the drive — all of it sharpened into a new focus.
"That cave… what I built there, it can't end in the sand. If Stane's been arming both sides, if my company has been complicit—" His voice darkened. "I have to fix it. I have to build something better."
His gaze lifted, hard but alive with purpose. "Mark II. Not a prototype in a cave. A weapon. A shield. Both. And I don't trust anyone else to be in that room but me… and you."
Brendon inclined his head. The faintest of smiles ghosted across his face, though his eyes stayed sharp. "Then let's make sure this time, the right man holds the power."