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Bonus chapter
The echo of gunfire still rang in Marcus's ears as Yinsen's voice cut through the smoke-filled tunnel.
"Marcus, you're a damn good shot!"
Yinsen was pressed against the rough cave wall, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and admiration. The bodies of six terrorists lay sprawled across the tunnel floor—each one taken down with surgical precision. The remaining fighters had scattered back into the shadows, suddenly very aware that rushing forward meant certain death.
Marcus's marksmanship might be impressive," Tony's voice crackled through the Mark I's external speakers, distorted by the crude armor but unmistakably smug, "but compared to my baby here? Not even close."
Marcus couldn't see Tony's face through the helmet's narrow eye slits, but he could practically hear the self-satisfied grin.
"Just make sure you save some of that ego for later," Marcus called back, ejecting the spent magazine and smoothly sliding in a fresh one. Twenty-eight rounds left from before, now a full thirty. He'd grabbed extras from the fallen guards—old habits from training sessions with NZT, always count your ammunition, always plan your reloads. "You're gonna need it to get us out of here."
"Oh, you just wait," Tony shot back. "Start thinking up your best superlatives now. I'm about to blow your minds."
The computer terminal mounted on the cave wall suddenly emitted a sharp, triumphant beep.
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE
The sound cut through their banter like a starting gun.
CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.
The mechanical symphony began—hydraulics hissing, servo motors whining to life, pneumatic systems pressurizing with sharp pfft sounds. The Mark I suit, which had been standing rigid as a statue, suddenly moved. Tony took his first powered step, and the entire cave floor trembled.
A wave of disturbed dust billowed outward from the armor's feet, pushed by the force of compressed air venting from the leg actuators. The arc reactor's blue glow intensified, visible through gaps in the chest plating, casting everything in an otherworldly light.
Then Tony Stark—genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, now wearing two hundred pounds of handcrafted steel armor—stepped forward and planted himself directly in front of Marcus and Yinsen.
The cave lights gleamed off the angular, brutal lines of the Mark I. It looked exactly like what it was: war gear forged in desperation, every plate and rivet serving a single purpose. Survival.
"He's still such a show-off," Marcus muttered.
"Absolutely is," Yinsen agreed, already moving toward cover.
Because while Tony was posing dramatically, the Ten Rings hadn't stopped attacking.
The sharp crack-crack-crack of AK-47s erupted from deeper in the tunnel. Muzzle flashes strobed in the darkness. Bullets whined through the air, some punching into stone walls with sharp pings, others ricocheting wildly off into the shadows.
The firepower was intense—at least four or five rifles opening up simultaneously in a sustained barrage.
Marcus and Yinsen both dove for cover. Marcus dropped behind a stack of supply crates while Yinsen wedged himself into a natural alcove in the cave wall. The air filled with the distinctive snap of supersonic rounds passing overhead and the deeper thunk of impacts against stone.
Tony?
Tony didn't move an inch.
He stood there in the Mark I like a tank on two legs, bullets sparking off his armor like aggressive fireflies. Each impact left nothing more than a small scorch mark on the steel plating. The rounds that hit dead-on simply flattened against the metal and fell away, completely unable to penetrate.
It was like watching someone try to hurt a battleship with a BB gun.
"Yeah, that tickles a bit," Tony announced, his voice booming through the suit's speakers. "You guys done warming up?"
The terrorists' response was to shoot even more frantically.
Tony's helmet swiveled slightly, the crude eye holes somehow managing to convey deep satisfaction despite being emotionless metal slits. Then he started walking forward, each step a thunderous boom that reverberated through the cave system.
"I'll take point," Tony called back over his shoulder. "Can't exactly throw hands in here without risking you two catching shrapnel. Better if I clear the way outside first."
It was the right tactical call. The tunnel was narrow, filled with equipment and debris. If Tony started using the Mark I's flamethrowers or really started fighting in here, the confined space would turn into a death trap for everyone.
"Go make some noise!" Marcus shouted. "We'll follow once you've got them focused on you!"
"That's the plan!" Tony's servos whined as the armor picked up speed. "Try to keep up, kids!"
Then Tony Stark, wearing a walking tank of his own design, charged into the tunnel like an avalanche given sentience.
The terrorists saw him coming and absolutely lost their minds.
These were hardened fighters—men who'd survived wars, lived in the harshest conditions, killed without hesitation. But seeing a seven-foot-tall metal giant lumbering toward them in the flickering cave lights? That bypassed every bit of combat training and hit something primal.
They fired everything they had. The tunnel became a constant roar of gunfire, spent brass casings raining onto stone, the acrid smell of cordite smoke filling the air.
None of it mattered.
The Mark I's armor had been forged specifically to withstand small arms fire. Every plate had been crafted by Tony's own hands with meticulous attention to thickness, angle, and material composition. Crude it might look, but it was effective.
Bullets sparked. Ricocheted. Flattened. Fell away.
Tony just kept walking.
When he got close enough to the nearest terrorist—a younger man, maybe twenty-five, frozen in place with his rifle still clicking empty—Tony's right arm drew back. The servo motors screamed. Then he punched.
The impact sounded like a car crash in miniature. The terrorist went flying backward a good twelve feet before slamming into the cave wall with a sickening crack. He slid down and didn't move again. If the punch hadn't killed him, the landing certainly had.
"Holy shit," Marcus breathed, watching from cover. He'd known intellectually what the Mark I could do—he'd seen the movie, after all—but seeing it in person was something else entirely.
Another terrorist tried to rush Tony from the side, firing his AK-47 on full auto from less than ten feet away. Brave, but stupid. Tony didn't even flinch. He just twisted at the waist—hydraulics whining—and backhanded the man almost casually.
The terrorist's head snapped to the side with such force that Marcus heard vertebrae crack from thirty feet away. The body crumpled like a puppet with cut strings.
"Okay," Yinsen said shakily, still pressed against the alcove. "I take it back. The armor is definitely scarier than Marcus's shooting."
"Don't sell me short," Marcus replied, checking his rifle. "I'm still pretty scary."
Up ahead, several terrorists were trying to retreat, stumbling over each other in their panic to get away from the metal monster. Tony pursued them with relentless, mechanical efficiency—each footstep boom, boom, boom like a countdown to doom.
When the first group reached the heavy iron gate that separated the work cave from the main complex, they slammed it shut and threw the bolt. Marcus heard them shouting in Arabic on the other side, something about getting more weapons, bringing RPGs, anything to stop the monster.
Tony didn't even slow down.
The Mark I's right fist drew back again, pneumatics pressurizing, and then slammed forward with the entire weight of the armor behind it. The iron gate—three inches of solid steel, mounted in rock—held for approximately two seconds. Then the frame cracked. The hinges shrieked. The bolt sheared completely off.
The gate exploded outward in a shower of metal fragments and rock dust, nearly taking out two terrorists who'd been standing too close on the other side.
"Holy—" one of them started to scream.
Tony grabbed him by the front of his vest and threw him. Not pushed. Threw. The man flew a good eight feet through the air before crashing into a stack of ammunition crates hard enough to make them explode in a shower of splinters.
Beyond the ruined gate, the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber—some kind of staging area the Ten Rings had been using as a weapons depot. More terrorists were scrambling for guns, shouting orders, trying to organize a defense.
"Da-da-da-da-da!"
They opened fire the moment Tony's silhouette appeared in the doorway. The cacophony was incredible—at least a dozen rifles firing simultaneously, plus someone had found an RPG and was desperately trying to load it.
"Boom!"
The RPG fired. The rocket-propelled grenade streaked across the thirty-foot distance in less than a second and detonated directly against Tony's chest plate in a massive orange fireball.
The explosion lit up the entire chamber like a camera flash. Smoke and flame washed over the Mark I. Debris scattered everywhere.
Marcus's heart jumped into his throat. "Tony!"
Then the smoke cleared.
Tony was still standing. The chest plate had a blackened scorch mark and a small dent, but the armor had held. The arc reactor glowed bright blue through the smoke, defiant and steady.
"Okay, now I'm annoyed," Tony's voice growled through the speakers.
He raised both arms. The crude flamethrower assemblies mounted on the gauntlets activated with a whoosh. Twin streams of burning fuel erupted from the nozzles, filling the chamber with liquid fire.
The screaming started immediately.
Marcus turned away. He'd seen enough. Whatever those men had done, whatever crimes they'd committed, watching them burn alive wasn't something he needed to witness. Not when he had his own work to finish.
"Let's go," he said to Yinsen, voice flat. "Tony's got them occupied. Time to move."
They advanced through the tunnel, stepping carefully around the bodies Marcus had dropped earlier. The guard with the destroyed eye socket. The one missing half his skull. Evidence of violence, rendered in blood and brain matter on stone walls.
Yinsen stopped to check one of them—his doctor's instincts apparently impossible to suppress even now—but there was nothing to be done. Marcus's shooting had been too precise, too final.
"I should probably ask where you learned to do this," Yinsen said quietly, looking at the perfect headshots, "but I'm not sure I want to know the answer."
"Probably best," Marcus agreed. He wasn't about to explain eighteen months of NZT-enhanced training, the hundreds of hours practicing on virtual ranges with perfect recall and superhuman reaction times. The endless repetition until shooting became as natural as breathing.
They'd barely made it twenty feet when Marcus spotted a familiar figure slumped against the cave wall.
He stopped cold.
It was one of the terrorists he'd poisoned back in Chapter 12—not one of the ones he'd shot earlier, but another from the same batch. This one must have been caught in Tony's rampage, taken out by shrapnel or concussive force from one of the explosions.
The man was still breathing. Barely. Blood covered the right side of his face from a nasty head wound, and his leg bent at an unnatural angle. His eyes were glassy with shock and pain, but they tracked Marcus's approach with fading awareness.
Perfect.
"Keep watch," Marcus told Yinsen, moving toward the dying terrorist. "Make sure nobody comes up behind us."
Yinsen hesitated, clearly wanting to ask what Marcus was doing, but the distant sounds of combat—Tony's flamethrowers roaring, more explosions, more screaming—convinced him to just nod and turn to cover their rear.
Marcus knelt down next to the wounded man. Close enough to see the moment recognition flickered across the terrorist's pain-wracked face. Close enough to see the fear spike in his eyes.
"Remember me?" Marcus asked conversationally. "I'm the guy you beat unconscious a couple months back. The 'yellow-skinned monkey,' I think you called me."
The man tried to move, to crawl away or reach for a weapon or something, but his shattered leg made him cry out in agony. He collapsed back against the wall, gasping.
"Yeah, that looks painful," Marcus observed. "But you know what? I actually don't feel that bad about it. Funny how that works."
He pulled out his pistol—one of the many weapons he'd grabbed from the dead guards, a beat-up but functional Makarov PM. He checked the magazine. Full. Excellent.
"I made you guys a promise," Marcus continued, his voice gone cold and clinical. "Remember? I said I'd let you see your own brains before you died."
The terrorist's eyes went wide. He tried to say something—maybe a plea, maybe a curse—but all that came out was a wet, gurgling sound.
"Let's do the math together," Marcus said. "You kicked me, what, thirteen times with each leg before Stark stopped you? So that's thirteen bullets per leg. Sound fair?"
He didn't wait for an answer. Just aimed at the man's left thigh and started firing.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Each shot was precise, spaced evenly apart on the thigh muscle, avoiding the femoral artery because he wanted this to take time. The terrorist screamed—a raw, animalistic sound of pure agony that echoed through the tunnel.
Marcus kept his face perfectly neutral. His hand didn't shake. His heart rate stayed steady. He was just... executing a plan. Following through on a promise. There was no satisfaction in it, no pleasure, no emotional response at all. Just the cold calculation of actions and consequences.
The right leg received the same treatment. Thirteen careful shots, placed to maximize pain while avoiding immediately fatal injuries.
The terrorist's screams had dissolved into broken, sobbing gasps. His face had gone gray, lips turning blue from shock and blood loss.
"And then there were your hands," Marcus continued, his tone never changing from that flat, clinical detachment. "Three punches each, I think? Let's keep this proportional."
He shot each hand three times—palm, back of hand, wrist. The bones shattered with wet crack sounds that made even the hardened cave walls seem to wince.
The man wasn't screaming anymore. He'd gone beyond that into some place where screams no longer existed. His mouth hung open in a silent rictus of agony, eyes rolled back, body twitching involuntarily with each new wave of pain.
Yinsen, standing guard at the tunnel entrance, glanced back at the sound of the methodical shooting. His face went pale when he saw what Marcus was doing—the careful, calculated torture being inflicted with almost surgical precision.
"Marcus—" he started.
"Keep watching the tunnel," Marcus said without looking up. Not harsh, just... matter-of-fact. Like he was asking Yinsen to pass the salt.
Yinsen opened his mouth. Closed it. His face twisted with conflicting emotions—horror, understanding, revulsion, the knowledge that these men had done worse to countless others. Finally, he just turned away and kept watch, his jaw clenched tight.
The terrorist was fading fast now. Between the bullet wounds and the previous injuries, he'd lost too much blood. His breathing came in shallow, rapid gasps. His eyes had lost focus, staring at nothing.
Marcus stood up, looking down at the broken, bleeding wreck of a human being. Still alive, but not for long. Minutes at most.
"I said I'd let you see your own brains," Marcus said quietly. "Time to keep that promise."
He raised the pistol, aiming carefully at the man's forehead. The terrorist's eyes focused one last time, meeting Marcus's gaze. There was pain there, yes. Terror. But also... understanding. The knowledge that this was the end. That he'd earned this death through his own actions, his own cruelty.
Marcus pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The bullet entered just above the right eyebrow, traveling upward through the frontal lobe before blowing out the back of the skull in a spray of red and gray matter. Fragments of brain tissue—white and pink and gray—splattered across the cave wall behind the body.
For just a fraction of a second, as the terrorist's consciousness flickered out like a candle in the wind, his dying eyes would have registered the sight. His own brain matter. His own mortality rendered visible in chunks of tissue and shattered bone.
Just like Marcus had promised.
The body slumped sideways, one final breath rattling out of ruined lungs. Then stillness. Just another corpse in a cave full of corpses.
Marcus stood there for a moment, pistol still raised, and felt... nothing.
No triumph. No satisfaction. No sense of justice being served. Not even the grim pleasure of revenge fulfilled.
Just an empty coldness in his chest where emotions should have been. Just the clinical awareness of ammunition expended: nine rounds from the Makarov, twenty-one left in the magazine.
This is what I've become, a distant part of his mind observed. Someone who can torture and kill with the same emotional investment as doing laundry.
He should probably be concerned about that. A normal person would be horrified at themselves right now. Would be shaking, vomiting, breaking down at the realization of what they'd just done.
Marcus just... wasn't.
Eighteen months on NZT had rewired his brain in ways both obvious and subtle. It had given him perfect memory, lightning-fast processing, the ability to learn any skill with frightening speed. But it had also done something else. Something harder to define.
It had made him efficient. Made him capable of compartmentalizing emotion away from action. Made him able to do whatever was necessary without hesitation or doubt or the messy interference of human feeling.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? he wondered distantly.
He still didn't know.
"Marcus?" Yinsen's voice was tight. "Are you... finished?"
Marcus lowered the pistol, sliding it back into his belt. "Yeah. I'm done."
He walked back to where Yinsen stood, deliberately not looking at the doctor's face. He didn't want to see the judgment there. Or worse, the understanding. The knowledge that Yinsen had seen something dark and broken in Marcus that couldn't be unseen.
"He deserved it," Yinsen said quietly. Not a question. A statement.
"They all did," Marcus replied. "Every single one of them has blood on their hands. Innocent blood. Women, children, people who never hurt anyone."
"I know." Yinsen was silent for a moment. "But that doesn't explain you. Who you are. What you're capable of."
"I'm someone who survived two months in hell," Marcus said, which was true even if it wasn't the whole truth. "And I'm someone who doesn't forgive easily. That's all you need to know."
Before Yinsen could press further, a massive explosion rocked the tunnel. The cave floor shook. Dust and small rocks rained down from the ceiling. In the distance, they could hear Tony's flamethrowers still roaring, punctuated by screams and more gunfire.
"We need to keep moving," Marcus said. "Tony's clearing the way, but this whole place is going to collapse if they start using heavier explosives."
Yinsen nodded slowly, still watching Marcus with those too-perceptive eyes, but he didn't argue. They had bigger problems than moral philosophy right now.
They made their way toward the tunnel entrance that led to the surface. More bodies littered the path—some killed by Tony, others by the chaos of the battle. Marcus checked each one out of habit, confirming they were dead, occasionally grabbing extra magazines.
The battle sounds were getting closer. Louder. They were approaching the main cave entrance now, where the Ten Rings had set up their primary defensive position.
Through the smoke and flickering emergency lights, Marcus could see the entrance chamber. It was a large natural cavern that the terrorists had fortified with sandbag positions, heavy weapons, and multiple exit routes. Fifty, maybe sixty feet across, with a high ceiling that made echoes bounce in confusing ways.
And in the middle of it all, backlit by flames and strobe-lit by muzzle flashes, stood Tony Stark in the Mark I.
He was surrounded by at least fifteen terrorists, all firing at once. The cave was a storm of bullets and explosions. But Tony just kept moving forward, unstoppable, using his flamethrowers to turn cover positions into infernos, his armored fists to smash through barriers and bodies alike.
It was like watching a medieval siege engine somehow transported to the modern age. Brutal. Relentless. Terrifying.
"Jesus," Yinsen breathed. "He's actually going to do it. He's actually going to get us out."
"Never doubted him for a second," Marcus lied.
They were about to move forward, to follow Tony through the chaos, when Marcus spotted one more familiar face among the wounded.
Lying near the entrance, half-hidden behind a collapsed barrier of sandbags, was the bald leader himself.
Raza.
The man who'd given the orders. Who'd orchestrated their capture, their imprisonment, the torture and beatings. The man who'd spent two months trying to force Tony Stark to build weapons for terrorists. Who'd authorized every bit of suffering Marcus had endured.
He was alive. Barely.
The right side of Raza's face was a mess of blood and burned flesh—probably caught too close to one of Tony's flamethrower blasts. His expensive tactical vest was torn and scorched. One leg bent at an unnatural angle. He was gasping for air, eyes glazed with pain and shock.
But still breathing.
Tony had probably assumed he was dead. It was an easy mistake to make in the chaos—just another body among dozens.
But Marcus knew better.
"Stay here," he told Yinsen. "Cover the entrance. Make sure nobody comes up behind us."
"What are you—" Yinsen started, but he followed Marcus's gaze and understood. His expression flickered with something complicated. "Marcus, we should just go. He's dying anyway."
"I know," Marcus said. "But this one's personal."
He walked over to Raza, boots crunching on broken glass and spent brass casings. The terrorist leader's eyes tracked the movement, and even through the pain and shock, recognition flared. Then fear.
"No," Raza gasped out in accented English. His voice was barely a whisper, damaged by smoke inhalation. "No, please—"
"Please?" Marcus knelt down, making sure Raza could see his face clearly. "That's interesting. Did you listen when Tony asked you to please stop beating him? When the other prisoners you've tortured begged you to please let them go?"
Raza tried to move, to crawl away, but his broken leg made him cry out in agony. He collapsed back, breathing hard.
"I'll make you a deal," Marcus said conversationally. He pulled out his rifle, checking the magazine. Still plenty of ammo. "I'm going to do to you exactly what you did to me. Seems fair, right?"
"You crazy—" Raza coughed, blood flecking his lips. "Crazy yellow monkey, I should have killed you—"
"Yeah, you really should have," Marcus agreed. "But you didn't. Your mistake."
He remembered every kick. Every punch. The way Raza had laughed while his men beat Marcus unconscious. The casual cruelty in his eyes as he'd ordered more violence, more pain, all to break Tony Stark's spirit.
Thirteen kicks with each leg. Three punches with each hand.
Marcus was nothing if not methodical about keeping promises.
He aimed at Raza's left leg and started firing. Controlled bursts. Three rounds to the thigh. Three to the knee. Three to the shin.
Raza's scream echoed through the cave, a raw, primal sound of agony that cut through even the battle noise. It was the kind of scream that came from a place beyond thought, beyond control—pure animal pain.
Marcus felt nothing. Just counted rounds. Adjusted aim. Moved to the right leg.
Three. Three. Three.
By the time he moved to the hands, Raza had stopped screaming. He'd gone into shock, his body shutting down non-essential functions to deal with the trauma. His breathing came in shallow gasps. His skin had gone gray and clammy.
Marcus shot each hand three times. Methodical. Precise. Keeping score.
Behind him, he was vaguely aware of Yinsen watching. The doctor's face was twisted with horror and something else—maybe pity, though Marcus wasn't sure if it was for Raza or for him.
Raza was dying now. Really dying. His eyes had lost focus, staring at nothing. His breathing rattled wetly in his chest. He had maybe a minute left, two at most.
Marcus stood up, looking down at the broken, bleeding man who'd caused so much suffering.
"You probably don't remember," Marcus said quietly, "but I made you a promise. Back when your men were beating me. I said I'd let you see your own brains before you died."
Raza's eyes focused slightly, just enough to show he'd heard. Just enough to show he understood what was coming.
"I keep my promises," Marcus said.
He raised the rifle and aimed carefully at Raza's forehead. The terrorist leader stared up at him, and in that moment—that last moment before everything ended—there was no anger in his eyes. No defiance. Just... awareness. The understanding that this was justice, in its own brutal way. That he'd earned this death through years of cruelty and violence.
Marcus pulled the trigger.
The bullet entered just above the bridge of Raza's nose, punching through the frontal bone and tearing through brain tissue before blowing out the back of the skull. Gray matter—that distinctive mixture of pink and white and gray that made up the physical substrate of consciousness—sprayed across the sand-covered floor.
For a fraction of a second, as the bullet tore through Raza's brain, his dying neurons would have fired one last time. His optic nerves would have sent one final signal. His last conscious thought would have been the sight of his own brain matter, scattered across the floor in front of him.
Is this my brain? would have been his last thought.
Then nothing. Just empty meat, rapidly cooling.
Marcus stood there, rifle still raised, and waited for the feeling to come. The satisfaction. The sense of justice served. Something.
Nothing came.
He was empty. Cold. Clinical. He'd just tortured and killed a man in the most brutal way imaginable, fulfilling a promise of revenge, and he felt... nothing.
Should I be worried about that? he wondered distantly.
Probably. Normal people didn't torture their enemies to death and then feel nothing afterward. Normal people had emotional responses to violence, to death, to the act of taking a human life.
But then, Marcus hadn't been normal for a long time now. Eighteen months on NZT had changed him in fundamental ways. Made him smarter, faster, more capable—but also colder. More willing to do whatever was necessary without the messy interference of human emotion.
Did I do the villain's job? he thought, looking at Raza's corpse. Raza was supposed to die later, probably at Obadiah Stane's hands. I just took that kill away from the "real" villain.
But no, that didn't make him a villain. Villains killed innocent people. They hurt people who didn't deserve it. Raza had been a monster who'd tortured and murdered countless innocents. Killing him wasn't villainy—it was extermination. Pest control.
I'm a good person, Marcus told himself firmly. I received education. I have morals. I'm punishing evil and promoting good.
He believed it. Or at least, he wanted to believe it.
"I'm just making sure terrorists can't keep being arrogant," he muttered to himself. "Can't let them think they can do whatever they want without consequences."
"Marcus?" Yinsen's voice was quiet, tinged with something that might have been concern or might have been fear. "Are you... alright?"
Marcus turned to face the doctor. Yinsen was staring at him with an expression that was hard to read—horror mixed with understanding mixed with something that looked disturbingly like pity.
"I'm fine," Marcus said, which was probably a lie. "Just... taking care of business."
"That was more than taking care of business," Yinsen said carefully. "That was... You tortured him, Marcus. Methodically. Coldly. Like it meant nothing to you."
"It didn't," Marcus admitted, because there was no point lying now. Yinsen had seen everything. "He deserved worse than what I gave him. They all did."
"Maybe," Yinsen said slowly. "But the fact that you can do that without feeling anything... Marcus, that should concern you."
Should it? Marcus wasn't sure anymore. The line between justice and vengeance felt very blurred right now. The line between necessary violence and cruelty even more so.
But they didn't have time for philosophy.
"We need to move," Marcus said, deliberately changing the subject. "Tony's almost through to the exit. If we don't follow soon, we'll be trapped when they bring reinforcements."
Yinsen looked like he wanted to argue, to push the issue, but another explosion rocked the cave. Dust rained from the ceiling. In the distance, they could hear Tony's flamethrowers roaring and men screaming.
"Alright," Yinsen said finally. "But Marcus? After this is over? We're having a very long conversation about who you really are."
"If we survive," Marcus replied, "I'll tell you anything you want to know."
It was a lie. He'd tell Yinsen enough to satisfy the doctor's curiosity, but the truth—the whole truth about NZT, about coming from another world, about knowledge of future events—that would never come out. Some secrets were too dangerous to share.
They moved toward the main entrance, stepping carefully around bodies and debris. The battle was winding down now—most of the Ten Rings fighters were dead or had fled deeper into the cave complex. Tony was at the entrance, using his flamethrowers to clear the last defensive position.
Marcus could see daylight beyond Tony's armored form. Real, genuine sunlight. The first he'd seen in months.
Freedom was just ahead.
But as Marcus looked at the bodies scattered around them—some killed by Tony, some by him—he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd left something important behind in this cave. Something that had nothing to do with captivity or torture.
Maybe it was his humanity. Maybe it was his soul. Maybe it was just the last remnants of the person he used to be before NZT, before knowledge of the future, before he'd become this cold, efficient killing machine.
Or maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe this was just what survival looked like in a world that didn't care about the rules.
Either way, it was too late to go back now.
The only way out was forward.
Into the light.
[End of Chapter 17]
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