The quinjet ride was less a journey and more a sensory deprivation chamber. Alex, still Alexei Rostova on paper, didn't feel the sleekness of the jet; he felt the cold, dry air scratching at his throat. His ribs ached—a constant, hot spike of pain he had to consciously breathe past. He stared at the guards, not calculating their trajectory, but simply counting their blinks, trying to distract his mind from the panicked, trapped animal thrashing inside his chest.
The only physical comfort was the slight, barely perceptible warmth of the Arc Core against his skin, a stolen, amber heart beating with artificial power. It was his greatest secret and his heaviest weight.
The Tower and the Cold
The landing on the Stark Tower helipad was rough—a deliberate jolt of reality. The wind howled, whipping his hair into his face. They shoved him twenty floors down into a sub-level R&D lab that smelled of stale chemicals and Tony's long-gone hubris. It was vast, echoing, and profoundly lonely.
When the two anonymous agents left, the redheaded woman finally turned to him. She was Agent Romanoff. She didn't move so much as flowed.
"We're here, Alex," she said. No emotion. Just efficiency. "And I don't like messes that draw attention."
Alex fought down a wave of nausea, forcing a weak, sarcastic grin. "Then maybe you should tell your boss to invest in better surveillance gear. That PDA was antique."
She didn't smile, didn't frown. She simply pulled a dented metal chair closer and sat. "The PDA worked. It told us who you are and what you found. It confirmed Project RUNE."
She reached out and tapped the thermal burn on his chest. It was a fleeting, clinical touch, but it made him flinch. "That little power cell you built—the lithium garbage—it gave off a signature your grandfather chased decades ago. Before he lost his mind."
The Price of Howard's Secret
"It's clean energy," Alex insisted, his voice sounding thin and desperate even to his own ears. He slumped against a workbench, the exhaustion suddenly overwhelming. "I was building security. You think I wanted... gods... showing up at my front door?"
Romanoff's eyes didn't leave his. "We think you built a weapon capable of generating power without limits. And that's unacceptable. This isn't about Tony's drama. This is about control. That initial surge you created was sloppy."
She let the silence hang, letting him absorb the accusation.
"When something is too powerful, SHIELD stabilizes it," she stated flatly. "You are now our black project. Your genetic lineage, your brain... you're the key to stabilizing this RUNE technology. So you're going to help us."
The offer was poison wrapped in silk. He was a resource, not a person. He felt the old, familiar weight of the Stark name—the chains of expectation—clamping back down.
"Help you do what?" Alex challenged, rubbing the burn on his chest.
"Contain the energy. Neutralize the threat it represents," Romanoff replied. "In exchange, you get this lab. You get protection. You get to live."
He looked around the dismal, resource-rich space. A lab or an asylum. He knew the choice wasn't a choice at all. He had to play the game until he was strong enough to smash the board.
"I need a name," he said, pushing off the workbench, meeting her eyes with a forced arrogance. "I'm not Alexei. I'm not Stark, not anymore. You just kidnapped me. I need a handle."
"You're a ghost," Romanoff said simply. "A black project. Your name disappears."
She turned to leave, but stopped at the exit, her hand on the cold steel doorframe.
"That first blast you fired—the lithium one," she said, her voice dropping. "It wasn't just heat. It was kinetic. A perfect push. Tell me what that energy is, Alex. Don't give me a formula. Give me the truth."
Alex felt the familiar warmth of the Arc Core. It was a fragment of something immense, something his grandfather had touched. It was his.
"That," Alex said, his voice finally regaining its strength, "is the Fragments of Howard's Legacy."
He was trapped, but he had a workspace. He had power. And he had a plan. Now, he just had to build his freedom.
End of chapter :>
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