June 18, 2009 – Moscow, Russia
The warehouse had descended into chaos.
Monitors flickered with static and fragmented data. Men shouted over each other in rapid Russian, their voices bouncing off corrugated metal walls. Someone had knocked over a stack of crates in their haste, spilling tools and components across the oil-stained concrete.
The feed from Stane's suit had cut out minutes ago. The Iron Monger was down. Obadiah Stane was dead.
Their employer was gone, and with him, their paycheck.
Now it was every man for himself. Mercenaries grabbed whatever they could carry - laptops, blueprints, bundles of cash - before disappearing into the Russian night.
"Move it!" the lead engineer shouted, sweeping files into a duffel bag. "If the Americans trace the flight path, they'll be here within hours!"
In the chaos, no one noticed the subtle shift in air pressure.
A wave of red light, visible only for a split second, rippled outward from the center of the warehouse. It passed through steel, concrete, and flesh without resistance.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
One by one, the mercenaries collapsed. There were no screams, no struggles. They simply dropped where they stood, slumping over tables or curling onto the floor as if their strings had been cut.
Within seconds, the frantic noise of the evacuation was replaced by silence.
They weren't dead. Chests rose and fell with shallow breaths. But they lay crumpled where they'd stood, unconscious before they could even register what had happened.
From the high rafters, a voice echoed through the speaker system—calm, synthetic, and polite.
"Master, the cameras have been disabled."
Arthur Hayes stepped into view, his footsteps echoing in the sudden stillness.
"Thank you, Eve. Copy anything of importance from their systems, then wipe the disks completely."
"On it."
Arthur moved through the warehouse with unhurried purpose, stepping over unconscious mercenaries, cataloging the space with a practiced eye.
This should have been Tony's responsibility. Track down Stane's base of operations, secure the technology, ensure no one could replicate the Iron Monger.
The clean-up was very important. If this tech spread into the world, the consequences would be catastrophic.
But Tony was lying in a hospital bed with cracked ribs and a concussion. He was in no condition to go hunting across continents.
So Arthur had decided to handle it himself.
It would hardly take any effort. And Arthur would also satisfy his curiosity about how Stane had managed to create a working suit of armor with a miniature Arc Reactor.
It should have been impossible. But when Eve traced the suit's origin to this warehouse in Moscow, Arthur had formed a suspicion about how it might have been accomplished.
He walked deeper into the facility, past workbenches covered in half-assembled components, past the empty cradle where the Iron Monger had once stood. His eyes swept over the space until they settled on something out of place.
A bed.
It sat against the far wall, absurdly out of place in the industrial space. A simple hospital cot surrounded by medical equipment - oxygen tanks, IV stands, monitors displaying flat lines.
An old man lay on the cot. Eyes closed. Face peaceful in death.
Arthur approached and looked down at the weathered face.
"Eve," he asked quietly. "Is this Anton Vanko?"
"Yes, Master. Facial recognition confirms a match against S.H.I.E.L.D. database records. This is Anton Vanko."
Arthur nodded slowly.
So his suspicion was correct. Stane had found the one other person on Earth who truly understood Arc Reactor technology - Howard Stark's original partner, the co-creator of the reactor itself.
Only Anton Vanko could have made the Iron Monger possible.
Arthur looked at the lifeless face. Anton had passed away mere minutes before his arrival. Perhaps the news of Tony's victory against Stane had been too much for his failing heart. Losing to a Stark again, this time the son.
Looking at him now, anyone would feel a measure of pity. A man of comparable intelligence to Howard Stark, yet with such a starkly different fate. Howard had become a legend. Anton had died forgotten in a Russian warehouse.
Arthur had always been curious about the falling out between them.
The official story claimed Anton had tried to sell the Arc Reactor technology to the USSR—that he was a spy, and Howard had been justified in having him deported.
But one could never know if that was true.
A technology like the Arc Reactor was something governments would never let go of easily. Maybe Anton really was a spy. Or maybe there were other political reasons buried in the shadows of history.
Now, no one would ever know. The truth had died with the old man.
Arthur could summon Anton's soul using the Resurrection Stone's power. The thought crossed his mind briefly. But what would be the point? He couldn't read the memories of spirits, only converse with them. And interrogating a ghost about decades-old grievances seemed pointless.
Maybe some secrets deserved to stay buried.
Taking his eyes off the body, Arthur surveyed the warehouse.
"Time to work."
—
He started with the people.
They were mostly hired guns - men who had signed on for Stane's money without caring much about his vendetta. They didn't deserve death for that.
Arthur moved through the warehouse methodically, kneeling beside each unconscious figure. His hand rested briefly on their foreheads, and a whispered word did the rest.
Obliviate.
Memories of the suit dissolved. Knowledge of the Arc Reactor vanished. Everything they had learned in this warehouse simply ceased to exist.
They would wake confused and disoriented, nursing headaches they couldn't explain and gaps in their memories they would never fill. But they would be alive. And they would be harmless.
After that came the equipment.
With a wave of his hand, hard drives crumbled to dust. Blueprints incinerated into ash that vanished before touching the floor. The massive gantry that had held the Iron Monger twisted and compressed into a ball of scrap metal the size of a fist, then disappeared into a pocket dimension.
Within ten minutes, the warehouse was sterile. No data. No prototypes. No evidence that Iron Man technology had ever existed here.
"Data wipe complete," Eve reported. "The servers are blank."
"Good."
Arthur turned to leave. His work was done.
"Master," Eve warned. "Approaching signature. Ivan Vanko. Two minutes out."
Arthur glanced toward the door, then back at Anton's body on the cot.
Ivan Vanko. In another timeline, this man would become Whiplash. He would attack Tony at the Monaco Grand Prix with homemade Arc Reactor-powered whips. He would ally with Justin Hammer. He would nearly kill Tony with an army of weaponized drones.
But that was another timeline.
In this world, Ivan Vanko had done none of those things. He hadn't become a villain yet. He hadn't done anything wrong.
Arthur had no reason to do anything to him. He couldn't take someone down for what they might do in the future. He refused to.
As for turning Ivan toward a better path - redirecting him, sending him to Ariadne, finding some use for his talents - Arthur considered it briefly and dismissed the idea.
Ivan was eccentric. Volatile. The kind of personality that could turn on you without warning. Even if Arthur sent him to Ariadne, there was no guarantee he wouldn't cause problems. He could do anything. He could betray her.
And since Arthur refused to force or control people, there was nothing he could do about Ivan Vanko.
The man would have to find his own path.
Footsteps approached outside. A key scraped in a lock.
Arthur had no desire to witness what came next.
He apparated away without a sound.
—
The door creaked open.
Ivan Vanko stepped into the silent warehouse, a bottle of cheap vodka in his hand. He paused, frowning at the scene before him—unconscious men scattered across the floor, empty tables, equipment that seemed somehow wrong.
Then his eyes found the cot against the far wall.
The bottle slipped from his fingers and shattered on the concrete.