Chapter 8: The Cave Infiltration
POV: Clark
Forty-eight hours of watching the Ten Rings compound had taught Clark the rhythm of violence made routine. Guards changed shifts every six hours with the precision of soldiers, not the chaos of fanatics. Patrols followed predetermined routes that suggested professional training. Weapon maintenance occurred at scheduled intervals. Even the prisoner feeding schedule—one meal per day, delivered to the cave complex at 1300 hours—reflected disciplined organization.
Clark lay prone behind a cluster of rocks that provided concealment and thermal relief, the Hawk Eye Monocle pressed against his eye like a mechanical extension of his will. The artifact had become as familiar as breathing during his vigil, its enhanced vision revealing details that would have remained invisible to normal surveillance.
"Forty-seven active personnel, rotating in shifts of twelve. Command structure centered around a tall, bearded man the others defer to—probably Raza from the intelligence files. Cave system extends deeper than surface observation suggests. And there—ventilation shafts barely visible but definitely artificial."
The system had been feeding him tactical data with mechanical precision:
[SURVEILLANCE COMPLETE: DETAILED COMPOUND ANALYSIS]
[GUARD PATTERNS MAPPED]
[STRUCTURAL VULNERABILITIES IDENTIFIED]
[PRISONER LOCATION CONFIRMED: DEEPEST CAVE CHAMBER]
[B-TIER MISSION ACTIVATED]
[OBJECTIVE: CROSS DESERT WITHOUT WATER FOR 24 HOURS]
[MISSION START: IMMEDIATE]
[FAILURE CONSEQUENCE: STARK DIES]
Clark checked his water supply: two bottles, barely enough for twelve hours in this heat. The mission was asking him to survive twice that long with nothing, while maintaining surveillance on a terrorist compound and preparing for an infiltration that might require perfect physical condition.
"The system doesn't give impossible missions. It gives necessary ones. If Tony needs the Desert Walker Cloak to survive what's coming, then I need to earn it."
Clark carefully cached his water bottles under a rock cairn he could find again, then settled in for what would either be a trial by dehydration or the stupidest way anyone had ever died in Afghanistan. The sun climbed toward its zenith with the relentless determination of desert justice, and Clark felt the first edges of what would become a very intimate relationship with thirst.
By noon, his mouth felt like he'd been chewing sand. By 1400 hours, when the Ten Rings delivered their daily meal to the prisoners, Clark's lips had begun to crack. But the enhanced vision revealed something that made the suffering worthwhile: through a ventilation grate barely visible in the cave mouth, he caught a glimpse of two figures moving in the depths.
Tony Stark, alive and apparently unharmed, working alongside an older man at what looked like a forge setup. The brief glimpse was enough to confirm what Clark had hoped and feared: Tony was building something. Not weapons for his captors, but something else. Something that would change everything.
"The Mark I. He's building the Mark I armor with Yinsen's help. Which means the timeline is still intact, but also means Yinsen is going to die unless I find a way to change that."
The afternoon stretched into evening with the slow torture of desert endurance. Clark's artifacts provided some assistance—the Swift Step Boots regulated his body temperature slightly, the Ever-Full Canteen taunted him with the memory of infinite water—but ultimately, this was a test of will against the fundamental physics of human biology.
As the sun set and the temperature began its nightly plunge toward merely brutal, Clark's surveillance was rewarded with intelligence that confirmed his worst fears. Raza, the Ten Rings leader, stood outside the cave entrance speaking with subordinates in Arabic that the system helpfully translated:
"The American works too slowly. If he does not complete the missile by tomorrow, we execute the old man."
"And if he still refuses?"
"Then we execute the American and find another weapons designer. Stark Industries has many engineers."
"Tomorrow. They're planning to execute Yinsen tomorrow if Tony doesn't build them a Jericho missile. Which means the escape has to happen tonight, or the timeline changes in ways that could doom everyone."
Clark forced himself to remain motionless as his body began the serious work of dehydration. Cramping in his legs. Headaches that felt like someone driving nails through his skull. The peculiar mental fog that came when the brain started operating on emergency reserves.
But the artifacts began to respond to his extremity in ways he hadn't expected. The Desert Compass grew warmer, as if drawing energy from his desperation. The Echo Stone hummed with harmonics that seemed to resonate with the cave system below. Even his E-tier pieces showed signs of enhanced activity, as if proximity to death was awakening capabilities he hadn't known they possessed.
Midnight came and went. Clark's vision began to blur around the edges, making surveillance more difficult but somehow more intense. The Hawk Eye Monocle compensated for his biological limitations, maintaining perfect clarity even as his body entered the early stages of shutdown.
1 AM: Clark's hands began to shake with fine tremors that had nothing to do with cold.
2 AM: He started seeing movement in his peripheral vision that wasn't there when he turned to look.
3 AM: The system chimed with an update that felt like salvation:
[DESERT SURVIVAL: 15 HOURS COMPLETE]
[STAMINA ENHANCEMENT DETECTED]
[ARTIFACT RESONANCE INCREASING]
[WARNING: BIOLOGICAL STRESS APPROACHING CRITICAL LEVELS]
4 AM brought the darkest hour before dawn and the first signs that Clark's endurance test was approaching success or catastrophe. His mouth had stopped producing saliva entirely. His urine had become the color of tea. His pulse hammered against his eardrums with the rhythm of a body fighting for survival.
But the artifacts... the artifacts were singing.
Not audibly, but with a harmonic resonance that bypassed his ears and spoke directly to whatever part of him interfaced with the system. They were responding to his extremity, drawing power from his willingness to risk everything for someone he barely knew.
Dawn broke over the Hindu Kush with the subtle beauty of light finding stone, and Clark realized he was still alive. Barely functional, certainly dehydrated, probably hallucinating slightly, but alive and still capable of mission execution.
The system agreed:
[MISSION COMPLETE: 24-HOUR DESERT SURVIVAL]
[B-TIER ARTIFACT UNLOCKED]
[DESERT WALKER CLOAK MATERIALIZED]
[LOCATION: BENEATH YOUR CURRENT POSITION]
Clark looked down and saw it—a cloak that seemed to be woven from shadow and sunlight, lying among the rocks as if it had always been there. He reached for it with hands that shook from dehydration and effort, feeling the fabric respond to his touch like liquid metal made from darkness.
The moment the cloak settled around his shoulders, Clark felt his body's desperate thirst disappear. Not satisfied—disappeared. As if the artifact had stepped between him and the basic biological requirements of desert survival. His cracked lips healed. His pulse steadied. His vision cleared to superhuman sharpness.
More importantly, he began to fade from view.
The Desert Walker Cloak granted invisibility in bright light—not perfect invisibility, but the kind of visual distortion that made observers' eyes slide past without registering details. In the harsh morning sun of Afghanistan, Clark became a suggestion of movement, a heat shimmer that belonged to the landscape.
"Perfect. Now for the fun part."
Clark approached the Ten Rings compound with the confidence that came from supernatural concealment and twenty-four hours of surveillance data. Guards looked through him rather than at him. Patrol routes that had seemed impregnable yesterday now showed gaps large enough for a nearly invisible infiltrator.
The cave entrance was protected by two guards who were more interested in discussing their breakfast than watching for threats they couldn't see. Clark slipped past them like morning shadow, following ventilation shafts and natural fissures deeper into the mountain.
The cave system was larger and more complex than surface observation had suggested. Natural stone chambers had been modified with concrete and steel, creating a facility that could house fifty people comfortably and withstand significant bombardment. But it was also a maze, and Clark spent precious minutes navigating toward the sounds of metalwork and conversation.
He found them in the deepest chamber: Tony Stark and an older man Clark recognized as Ho Yinsen from intelligence files, working by forge light on what was unmistakably a suit of armor. Not the sleek red and gold of later Iron Man suits, but crude, functional, made from whatever materials desperate genius could acquire.
Tony looked terrible—bearded, grimy, thinner than his public photos—but his eyes held the focused intensity of someone who had found purpose in impossible circumstances. Yinsen worked beside him with the careful precision of someone who understood that their lives depended on the quality of their craftsmanship.
"The targeting system needs recalibration," Yinsen was saying in accented English. "If the response time is delayed by even—"
Clark found a ventilation grate that provided both acoustic access and concealment. He activated the Echo Stone, feeling the familiar drain on his stamina as he prepared to make first contact across dimensional barriers that had never been crossed before.
"Stark," he whispered, his voice emerging from the grate like the whisper of djinn. "In exactly three days, be ready to run."
Both men froze. Tony looked around the chamber with the paranoid alertness of someone who had learned that walls had ears.
"Who's there?" Tony called softly.
"A friend. Someone who knows about Obadiah Stane's involvement with your kidnapping."
Tony's face went white. "That's impossible. Nobody knows—"
"Stane arranged for your convoy route to be leaked to the Ten Rings. He's planning to take control of Stark Industries while you're presumed dead."
"The truth, but not the whole truth. Enough to motivate him without revealing the system."
Yinsen had picked up a wrench, holding it like a weapon while scanning the chamber for threats. "Tony, this could be a trap. A way to make us suspicious of each other."
"No," Tony said slowly, and Clark could see the gears turning behind his eyes. "No, it explains things. The convoy route change at the last minute. The specific targeting of our vehicle. Someone had to give them intelligence."
Clark continued his disembodied briefing: "In three days, they're going to demand a demonstration of your weapons work. When they do, activate whatever you're building and run. Run toward the mountains, not the valley. There will be extraction waiting."
"Who are you?" Tony demanded.
"Someone who needs you to become everything you're supposed to become."
Before either man could respond, Clark heard footsteps approaching the chamber—multiple people, moving with purpose. He activated the cloak's sand control abilities, sending a small cascade of dust from the ceiling to cover any evidence of his presence.
The Ten Rings guards entered led by Raza himself, a tall man with the kind of presence that suggested violence was always an option.
"Stark," Raza said in English accented by authority. "Tomorrow you will demonstrate the Jericho missile. If it does not function perfectly, your friend dies."
Clark watched Tony's face cycle through fear, anger, and determination. "I need more time. The targeting system—"
"No more time. Tomorrow at dawn, or the old man pays for your perfectionism."
Raza left with his guards, and Clark saw Tony and Yinsen exchange a look that confirmed what he'd hoped: they weren't building weapons for their captors. They were building an escape plan that would either liberate them or get them both killed.
Clark remained in position for another hour, using the enhanced vision to map every detail of the cave system and guard rotations. The Desert Walker Cloak's abilities extended beyond invisibility—he could feel the movement of sand through stone, sense the thermal signatures of human activity, even manipulate small amounts of debris to create distractions.
When he finally withdrew from the compound, Clark carried intelligence that could save two lives and change the course of history. But first, he had to survive the next seventy-two hours and figure out how to extract two men from a fortified position while preventing a future that nobody else could see coming.
The cloak rippled around him like liquid shadow as he disappeared into the Afghan mountains, carrying the weight of tomorrow's choices and the hope that desperate plans sometimes worked when they mattered most.
Behind him, in the depths of the cave, Tony Stark continued building armor that would either kill him or make him immortal.
Clark intended to make sure it was the latter.
+1 CHAPTER AFTER EVERY 3 REVIEWS
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
To supporting Me in Pateron .
Love [ In Marvel With Artifact System ]? Unlock More Chapters and Support the Story!
Dive deeper into the world of [ In Marvel With Artifact System ] with exclusive access to 25+ chapters on my Patreon, you get more chapters if you ask for more (in few days), plus new fanfic every week! Your support starting at just $5/month helps me keep crafting the stories you love across epic universes like [ Game Of Throne ,MCU and Arrowverse, Breaking Bad , The Walking dead ,The Hobbit,Wednesday].
By joining, you're not just getting more chapters—you're helping me bring new worlds, twists, and adventures to life. Every pledge makes a huge difference!
👉 Join now at patreon.com/TheFinex5 and start reading today!