Book One - Part One: Dark Knight

Chapter Twelve

In Raza's control room guards pour over a map, discussing heatedly. Others clean and re-assemble weapons. Khalid keeps watch at the monitors. He sees Yinsen labouring furiously behind the jig. Raza enters, wiping his face and neck with a towel. He drifts to the monitors, observes. Troubled he leans in, staring intently.

"Khalid. Where is Stark?" Raza asks.

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Khalid arrives at the lab, he pulls the slat aside and peeks in. He glimpses a disembodied Yinsen working behind the jig.

"Yinsen! YINSEN!" Yinsen ignores him, keeps working. Below the door-slat on the inside of the door is an IED 44 cylinder (the propane tank Tony filled earlier), it's been rigged to the door-latch. Khalid turns to his men, who ratchet their guns. He unlocks the door. It won't open. He shoulders it and the door explodes in his face. Smoke. Debris.

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Elena looks up hearing the explosion, her eyes wide, mind working, there is only one reason, one person who could have done that, a week too early, it's not fully ready. She curls her arm around herself.

"Tony" she whispers clutching her side. If he thinks she's dead, if he thinks that gunshot did it's job, then he's not going to know where she is, he's not going to know she still needs saving. She pulls herself to her feet painfully, gritting her teeth in agony, placing her hand on the wall she pushes herself forward towards the door.

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Raza witnesses the explosion on the surveillance monitor.

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The program bars load incredibly slowly on the laptop in the lab as Tony and Yinsen watch.

"It's frozen, the systems aren't talking to each other. Reset!" Tony snaps.

"No, they're moving. Very slow" A bulky chest piece is being lowered over Tony, there is the whine of tools as Yinsen seals Tony in.

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Raza is at his monitors, orchestrating his men over the radio.

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Raza's men cautiously approach the blown lab door.

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Inside Yinsen eyes the laptop, the bars creeping ever so slowly. He turns, listening to the shouting men outside growing louder.

"Get to your cover" Tony tells him. "Remember the checkpoints -- make sure each one is clear before you follow me out" Yinsen thinks a moment and then makes his decision, Yinsen runs out of the lab. "YINSEN!" Tony shouts after him. Yinsen grabs dead Khalid's weapon and runs into the tunnel, firing in the air.

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Elena shifts by the door to her room listening to the gunfire, her heart in her mouth as she thinks of Yinsen involved in the fire fight, of Tony in the middle of it. She closes her eyes and places her hand to the door.

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Yinsen runs around a corner, encountering Raza's men. Yinsen opens fire -- the men are caught off guard, and retreat. Yinsen chases, firing madly, unleashing pent-up rage. He enters the outer cavern, and is confronted by Raza and his troops. Yinsen lowers his weapon to the ground.

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Tony is trapped in the suit, watches the loading bars on the laptop get close. Suddenly there is multiple bursts of gunfire. Tony throws a look to the door and then it falls to silence.

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The loading bars on the laptop finish their cycle and a surge of power to the suit dims the lights.

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The lights outside of the lab dim to darkness. Raza's Guards, scared, inch up on the lab. Two of them break off and move forward. The two Guards enter the dark, smoky lab cautiously. It appears empty. Then, a Guard stops, turns slowly in the dark, an eerie glow, twin-flames.

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Outside the lab the two Insurgents scream as they are flung back out. The other Guards fire wildly into the lab. As they re-load they listen to the thump and screech of metal. A glowing chest plate. The flicker of blue pilot lights, and finally, out of the smoke, the complete nightmare vision --Iron Man-- the Original Gray Armor. The Insurgents start to back away, firing, but Tony keeps coming, feet crunching on the cave floor.

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Raza is strapping on his flak vest, and grabs an RPG launcher.

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An Insurgent jumps from a side-corridor, firing his pistol point-blank at the back of Iron Man's head. PING! The bullet ricochets back, killing the man instantly.

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As Iron Man clumps towards the light of freedom, insurgents spill out of nooks, in front of him, behind him, firing Tony's arms swivel, knocking Guards down, absorbing countless rounds. The suit is shredding, smoking, pockmarked.

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Raza is heading down a tunnel with an RPG. A wounded Guard grabs onto him, jabbering. Raza shoves him aside.

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Elena slowly paces the floor of her cell, worry and panic as well as pain settle into her bones.

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Tony turns into the main chamber and sees Yinsen on the ground.

"Stop!" Yinsen warns. "Stop!" Tony stops and an RPG whizzes past his nose, exploding in the wall next to him.

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Elena screams as the wall of her cell explodes, sending her flying back against the wall with an agonising thunk. She groans as she hits the ground.

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Tony turns and sees Raza, in the intersecting tunnel, calmly loading another RPG. Tony primes his flame throwers, but they malfunction. Both men square off. Raza aims, but now Tony's flame throwers kick in and Raza flattens as twin-plumes of fire envelope him. He screams, grabbing a dead soldiers as a shield. Tony turns clearing Insurgents out of the tunnels with his flame throwers. Then he returns to Yinsen.

"We could've made it. Both of us. You could've seen your family again" Tony tells him.

"I am going to see them again. They're waiting for me" And now Tony understands -- Yinsen's family is dead. Yinsen grins, then sags into himself, dead. Tony hangs his head.

"Tony?" Elena stumbles catching herself on the wall as she enters the chamber, covered in her own blood, in dust, he whirls towards her, the suit grinding as he does.

"Elena" he whispers seeing her, she's pale, overly pale, looks exhausted and well, dying. She leans heavily against the wall and pulls her hand away from her side, she's managed to cause more damage by moving and is bleeding again. Blood seeps out of her gunshot wound and the littering of cuts and scrapes over her skin from the explosion. She hangs her head, her eyes finding Yinsen. "No" Tony tells her. "Look at me" he tells her, she lifts her eyes to his. "Just look at me" he begs of her.

"Is he?" she asks quietly, has not got the courage to finish her question and instead leaves it hanging in the air. Tony just stares at her. Her lip trembles slightly. "Is he dead?" she asks more determined now. Tony nods and steps closer to her.

"Come on, sweetheart" he reaches for her. "Time to get out of here" she nods and pushes herself off of the wall. "Stay behind me, okay?" she nods again and follows him as he turns and heads for the exit.