Ironman 3 (Charlotte Stark)

Ch. 9 We Need Gary

"Tony and Charlotte Stark are in my van."

"Shh. Keep it down." I shush him again.

"Tony and Charlotte Stark are in my van!" He repeats himself.

"No, we're not." Tony tells him.

"I knew you were both still alive!"

"Come on in. Close the door." I instruct him. He does what I say, and then his breath quickens.

"Oh, wow. Can I just say....."

"Yep." Tony interrupts him.

"I am your guys' biggest fan."

"Okay. First, is this your van? Is anyone else gonna come in?" I ask, hoping to get the answer I want to hear.

"No, no, no. Just us." I exhale a breath of relief at his response.

"Great. What's your name?" Tony asks him.

"Gary."

"It's nice to meet you Gary, but we need you to-" I trail off as he continues to stare at us in awe.

"We get a lot of this, it's okay." Tony says, shaking his hand.

"Oh, good. Yeah. I don't know if you can tell, but I have, like, patterned my whole look after you. My hair's a little..." Gary trails off a bit, still shaking my brothers hand.

"It's fine." Tony tried to kindly reassure him. I look at it closer.

"It's not right." I tell him.

"Cause there's no product in it."

"Right." I say and then he moves over to me and begins to shake my hand.

"I don't want to make things awkward for you, but I do have to show you... Boom!" Gary exclaims and lifts the sleeve of his flannel up, revealing a tattoo of me.

"I'm sorry. Is that me?" I ask him, stifling a laugh.

"Yeah. It's... I mean... I had them do it off a doll that I made, so it's not like it's off a picture. So it's a little bit..." he trails off.

"Gary. Listen to me, okay? I don't want to clip your wings, here. We're both a little over-excited. We got an issue. We're chasing bad guys. Trying to grab a little something from some hard-crypt data files. We don't have enough juice. I need you to jump on the roof..." I start to say.

"Right?" He interrupts me.

"Recalibrate the lSDNs. Pump it up by about 40%." Tony finishes for me.

"Got it." He tells us.

"All right? It's a mission." I tell him. "Tony and Charlie need Gary."

"And Gary needs Tony and Charlie."

"Be quiet about it. Go." Tony says.

"Yeah." He climbs up on the roof and recalibrated the ISDNs. We start to get a proper signal.

We scour the internet until we come across top-secret A.I.M. files, including a classified interview with Chad Davis.

"Okay, tell no one," Tony instructed Gary, who immediately nodded agreement as they watched the interview.

Continuing our search, Gary noticed that many of the other interviewees were famous sports stars, and all extreme sports stars at that.

"These names," Gary said. "I count one, two, three, all dead."

With mounting dread, Tony and I continue our search until we got to a locked file. Its security was too much for me to break, but not for my brother. He gives me a smirk as he hacks into it and I roll my eyes.

In a matter of seconds, we were in, though I almost wished we weren't. The footage in the last file showed six men and women marching in a line toward an operating theater. And standing just outside the theater, welcoming everyone in, was Killian Aldrich.

"Oh, great, you're here," Tony said, referring to Killian. Then, Tony turned up the volume.

"What would you regard as the defining moment of your life?" Killian speaks.

"Well, uh, I think that would be the day I decided not to let my injury beat me." The woman says. It's the same woman who attacked Tony and I back in Rose Hills.

"Will you please state your name for the camera?"

"Ellen Brandt."

"Okay. So, the injections are administered periodically. Addiction will not be tolerated. And those who cannot regulate will be out from the programme." He tells her. And the screen goes to six individuals strapped down to chairs. 

"Once misfits, cripples... You are the next iteration of human evolution. Everybody, before we start... I promise you, looking back at your life, there will be nothing as bitter as the memory of that glorious risk you prudently elected to forego. Today is your glory. Let's begin." Killian continues.

The six volunteers were then given a special serum that made them convulse with pain. Then there was silence. Then all six people exploded, leaving only vague, human-like shadows burned into the wall behind them. We recoil in horror. The screen switches to another room.

"A bomb is not a bomb when it's a misfire. The stuff doesn't always work." Killian says, speaking to another man. "Right, pal?"

"It's faulty, but you found a buyer, didn't you?"

"Sold it to the Mandarin." Tony then pauses the video file at the end of Killians words.

"Got you, pal." I say, then look to Tony.

"We were wrong," Tony said aloud. "He doesn't want them to explode. The ones that got hot are failures, and he's covering them up."

"We need to put a stop to this. Now." Tony nods and we leave the van, waving goodbye to our biggest fan, Gary, and getting back in our car.