The shift in Obadiah Stane's fortune was swift, but for a man who had spent decades weaving a web of corruption through the very fabric of the American government, a prison cell was merely a temporary office with worse lighting.
Inside the high security holding cell of a federal lockup, Obadiah Stane sat upright, his expensive suit rumpled but his posture unbowed. Across from him, shielded from the surveillance cameras by a "legal consultation" blackout, sat General Thaddues Ross and a high ranking official from the Department of Defense.
"You're facing treason, Obadiah," the General growled, sliding a folder thick with evidence across the cold steel table. "The evidence Stark leaked is airtight. You're done."
Stane leaned forward, a predator's smile touching his lips. "The evidence is a distraction. You're worried about shipping manifests while a god is flying over Afghanistan."
He pulled a contraband mobile device from his pocket, one his military contacts had smuggled in, and played the grainy footage from the Ten Rings base. The screen showed the Mark III armor tearing through reinforced steel as if it were paper.
"This is what Stark is hiding," Stane hissed, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "An unidentified armored platform that bypasses your radar, ignores your ballistics and answers to no one. You can lock me up and watch your global air superiority vanish, or you can give me my freedom and the resources to build the countermeasure."
The officials looked at the screen, then at each other. The fear of a technological gap, of a world where America was no longer the apex predator, outweighed their duty to the law.
"What do you need?" the General asked, his voice tight.
"Exoneration under a national security waiver. A 'Black Site' facility. And a team of your best ballistic engineers. I have the blueprints... I just need the forge."
Twenty four hours later, the FBI was officially told that Obadiah Stane had been "transferred to an undisclosed federal facility for further questioning." In reality, he was standing in a massive underground bunker beneath a decommissioned military base, a place that had been wiped from all official maps.
Stane's strategy was rooted in Brute Force Engineering. The Iron Monger was being forged into a sledgehammer of terrifying mass built to crush a rapier.
The foundation was Howard Stark's forgotten legacy, the 1970s "Power Suit" Exoskeleton Prototype. It was a prehistoric beast of iron and hydraulics, looking more like a deep sea diving suit from a Jules Verne novel than a modern combat chassis. Howard had abandoned it because the hydraulic fluids of the era couldn't handle the pressure and the power requirements were impossible for a mobile unit.
By utilizing this 1970s chassis, Stane's team bypassed the most difficult stage of robotics. Howard Stark had already solved the complex joint stress ratios and load bearing calculus decades ago. They simply took that indestructible "bone" structure and reinforced it with high tensile steel.
"Howard was a dreamer, but he was limited by the physics of his time," Stane told the group of gathered scientists and military engineers as he paced around the iron giant, a dark silhouette against the welding sparks.
He plugged a high capacity drive into the main console, the drive containing decades of stolen Stark Industry "Bleeding Edge" sensor data and flight stabilization algorithms he had siphoned from the main servers. This allowed his engineers to skip years of R&D, leapfrogging directly to weapon integration.
Under the table, his military co-conspirators delivered the "forbidden" goods. They stripped the Depleted Uranium plating from a decommissioned M1 Abrams tank to give the Monger its skin and installed an experimental 20mm Gatling system usually reserved for the A 10 Warthog. It was becoming a sentient tank.
Stane pointed to the massive back plating. "For flight, integrate the thrust vectoring nozzles from the F 22 Raptor. It will fly like a rocket."
The lead scientist stepped forward, sweat beading on his forehead as he looked at the empty chest cavity of the Iron Monger. "Sir, the integration is ninety percent complete. We've slaved the targeting systems to the satellite network and reinforced the joints with titanium steel alloy. But the power requirement is astronomical. Even a high output nuclear battery wouldn't sustain a combat cycle for more than ten seconds before the motors seized."
Stane leaned into the flickering light of the monitors, his eyes fixed on a grainy sensor reading of the "Ghost" armor from Afghanistan. He looked at the impossible energy spikes. It was a miniaturized version of the massive Arc Reactor at Stark HQ.
"The engine exists," Stane murmured, a covetous light in his eyes. "Tony has found a way to put the power of the sun into a bottle. He's keeping it in his workshop in Malibu, treating it like a science project while the world changes around him. He's forgotten that I was the one who helped him build the fireplace in that house and I know exactly where the logs are kept."
Tony had seen the glimpse of the future during his second Tarot Club meeting. He knew Obadiah wouldn't hesitate to target Pepper to get to him. Because of this, he had permanently deployed Miller's elite "Shadow Team" to her side. Tier 1 operators who were invisible to the public but lethal enough to level a city block to keep her safe.
When Tony received word from his contacts that Stane had been "moved to a secured federal facility," he knew the military was lying. He tapped into the compromised military satellite network, tracking the transport's thermal signature to a decommissioned military bunker in the Nevada desert.
Using his private security force once more, Tony sent in the Micro Drone "Insects." These magnetically propelled recorders slipped through the bunker's ventilation shafts, providing him with a multi spectral live feed of everything happening inside.
Tony sat in his workshop, his face illuminated by the cool blue glow of the holograms as he watched Stane and the rogue Generals standing over the half finished Iron Monger. Seeing his father's 1970s prototype being weaponized by the very people who claimed to protect the country made his blood boil.
"JARVIS," Tony said, his voice cold. "He's going to come for the reactor. The suit he's building is a power hungry parasite."
"And what is our course of action, Sir? Shall we reinforce the perimeter?"
"No," Tony said, a predatory smile forming. "We're going to give him what he wants. But we're going to wrap it in a gift."
Tony walked to his workbench and began assembling a miniaturized Arc Reactor. To the naked eye, it looked identical to the Mark III's powerful core, but inside, Tony used his Alpha Level Magnetism to weave a microscopic thermite pulse bomb into the casing.
The reactor was designed with a "Dead Man's Switch." It would power a suit for exactly thirty minutes, just enough to make the wearer feel invincible, before the magnetic containment field would intentionally fail, causing a high temperature explosion.
If Stane tried to dismantle it or integrate it into the Monger, the resulting explosion would leave behind unique forensic evidence.
"I want the legal trail to be perfect," Tony muttered, his eyes glowing with a predatory light. "The moment Stane chooses to raid my house for this reactor, it becomes a federal crime. I'll sue the Department of Defense into the dirt for possessing my stolen research and for letting a high profile prisoner walk into my living room."
Tony sat back in his chair, intentionally leaving the workshop's side door unlocked and the security protocols on a relaxed setting.