The Stark Tower sub-level had transformed overnight. The dusty R&D lab was now flanked by a reinforced combat simulator—a feature Tony hadn't even finished designing yet. Nick Fury's immediate command was clear: Alex was to be weaponized, stabilized, and ready for deployment.
Alex stood at the simulator's entrance, dressed in rough, thermal-weave gear. The Arc Core pulsed a deep, reliable amber against his chest, and beneath his skin, the nanites were a cold, constant tingling sensation—an unnerving reminder that he was no longer fully human.
[System Mission: Survive. Stabilize Nano-Tech. Initializing Combat Simulation: High-Velocity Drone Engagement.]
"Your goal is simple, Stark," Romanoff said, her voice amplified and echoing from the control booth above. She stood beside the console, her expression unreadable. "Avoid being tagged for three minutes. Use the gauntlet. Use the Nano-Tech. Prove you're worth the resources we just poured into you."
"Avoid being tagged?" Alex scoffed, flexing the sleek, black kinetic gauntlet on his right arm. "I thought I was supposed to be learning to fight."
"You're learning to survive," she corrected, the subtlety lost in the echoing space. "A true fight requires control. Your power is raw, unrefined, and prone to catastrophic overload. Right now, it's a coin flip. Don't flip the coin. Run."
The doors hissed shut. The lights dimmed, turning the space into a gritty, urban alleyway simulation.
The Price of Nanites
Three small, heavily armored drones dropped from the ceiling, their rotors humming with menace. They were fast, carrying non-lethal (but definitely painful) kinetic rounds.
Alex moved. He didn't run like a soldier; he ran like a panicked civilian, relying on sheer instinct. The nanites were supposed to make him stronger, but they made him feel alien. His senses were too sharp, his reflexes too quick. It was like driving a powerful, unfamiliar car.
The first drone tagged him on the left shoulder. The kinetic round felt like a sledgehammer, slamming him against a fake brick wall. A blinding shot of pain—real pain—flashed through him.
[Host Damage Sustained: Minor Tissue Trauma. Nano-Tech Repair Initiated. Estimated time: 1.5 seconds.]
The System promised instant healing, but the repair felt like a thousand tiny needles tearing through the bruised area and immediately sealing it. The pain didn't vanish; it was replaced by an intense, stinging heat, a searing reminder of the price of his upgrade.
He snarled, forcing the pain down. He aimed the gauntlet at the second drone. Displace it. Not destroy.
KTH-WOOMPH!
The silent kinetic blast hit the drone's rotor assembly. The drone spun violently out of control, slamming into the ceiling and sparking.
"Better," Romanoff commented dryly from above. "But you're telegraphing your moves. Focus, Alex! They know where your heart is."
She wasn't talking about his emotional heart. She was talking about the Arc Core.
The Emotional Overload
The third drone was relentless. It was faster, smarter, and focused entirely on his chest. Alex ducked under a market stall, trying to catch his breath, the metallic taste of adrenaline flooding his mouth.
He saw the drone dip low, preparing for a sweep. He couldn't risk another heavy kinetic blast; the core was already stabilizing too slowly.
I have to move.
He triggered the Nano-Tech's Subcutaneous Shielding, an invisible secondary layer of molecular armor beneath his skin. It wasn't full armor, just a temporary hardening.
The drone hit him low in the ribs—right where they were cracked a few chapters ago. The impact was still devastating, but the nanites absorbed the worst of it. The pain was duller, deeper.
Romanoff's voice cut through the comms, no longer professional. It was personal. "You think this is hard, Alex? This is easy. You haven't had to fight for anything real yet. You ran from Stane. You ran from your family. You're running now."
The words hit harder than the drone's kinetic round. They struck the raw, exposed nerve of his greatest insecurity: that he was merely a footnote, an unstable element, always running in Tony's shadow.
"I didn't run!" Alex yelled, pushing himself off the ground, anger overriding the pain. "I survived!"
He focused his rage into the gauntlet and fired a blast of kinetic force so raw and uncontrolled it felt like ripping a piece of his own soul out. The blast missed the drone entirely, striking the simulated alley wall and turning the brickwork into powder.
[System Warning: Kinetic Overload. Neural Pathways Stressed. Immediate risk of temporary paralysis.]
The drone, capitalizing on his failure, zipped forward and tagged the Arc Core dead center.
Alex cried out, a strangled sound of physical and emotional agony. The Nano-Tech tried frantically to repair the shock damage, but the Core flickered violently, dropping the Nano-Tech power flow to zero.
Cliffhanger: The Hidden Flaw
The lights in the simulator snapped back on. Romanoff stood over him, her expression a mix of assessment and something dangerously close to disappointment.
"Time," she said simply. Alex lay on the ground, sweat-soaked, breathing in ragged gasps. The nanites were offline. He was just a vulnerable boy with a fancy bracelet.
"You proved one thing, Alex," Romanoff concluded, pulling a piece of equipment out of the control booth. "You're durable. But the nanites failed under external shock. We need to find a way to make them self-sustainable, away from the Core."
She held up the piece of equipment: a portable, complex micro-scanner. "This little toy tells me everything about your system. Including a data anomaly buried deep in the Nano-Tech code."
She walked closer, her eyes locked on his. "The nanites aren't just healing you, Alex. They're making a subtle, unapproved adjustment to your biological structure. Someone coded these things with a secondary function—a backdoor. And that secondary function isn't about armor."
She tapped the screen, and the code was replaced by a familiar image: Maria Stark, Tony's mother, young and vibrant, standing beside Howard.
"This is coming from a partition in the old Stark R&D server that's been locked for forty years," Romanoff whispered, her voice low and tense. "I don't think Howard Stark was just building a shield, Alex. I think he was building something to fix his family. And I think you just brought his secrets to life."
She dropped the scanner next to him. "Figure out what your grandfather hid. Figure out what the Nano-Tech is really doing. Because tomorrow, we talk about your mother."
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