Chapter 5: The Infiltration
May 26th, 2008, 6:47 AM. Stark Industries Tower gleamed in the dawn light, imposing and impossible. Ben crouched on a nearby rooftop, his Enhanced Hearing picking up security radio chatter, his adult mind mapping guard rotations he vaguely remembered from MCU scenes.
"This is insane. I'm ten years old."
But Tony needed help—even if Ben couldn't say how he knew—and no one else was going to act. The knowledge burned in him like acid, demanding action that felt impossible but necessary.
His small fingers gripped the rooftop's edge as he calculated the approach. Enhanced Reflexes analyzed the building's exterior, identifying maintenance ladders, service entrances, blind spots in camera coverage. Parkour whispered possible routes through his nervous system—paths that should have been impossible for a child, but felt intuitive to his augmented abilities.
The security patrol passed beneath him, guards following patterns that seemed familiar from half-remembered movie scenes. Ben moved when their backs turned, his child body slipping through gaps designed to be human-proof. A ventilation grate that would stop an adult became an entrance for someone seventy pounds and limber.
Forty-seven floors below, in Stark Industries' executive security center, Pepper Potts arrived earlier than usual. The stress of Tony's return had her checking everything twice—security protocols, press arrangements, the hundred details that kept Tony's world functioning. She settled at her desk with coffee and pulled up the overnight security reports.
Motion on camera twelve caught her attention. A figure—impossibly small—moving along the building's exterior with fluid precision. She leaned forward, adjusting the feed.
"That's a child."
Her first instinct was to call security, but something made her hesitate. The boy moved like liquid shadow, timing his movements with the guard patrols, avoiding camera sweeps with precision that suggested training. Professional training.
"Who sends a child to infiltrate Stark Industries?"
She watched, fascinated despite herself, as he navigated obstacles that should have stopped someone three times his size.
Inside the building, Ben navigated corridors using fragmentary MCU knowledge, each turn bringing him closer to Tony's personal workshop. The building felt familiar despite being alien—like walking through a movie set made real. Corporate sterility surrounded him—polished floors, ambient lighting, the hum of expensive air filtration.
His Enhanced Hearing tracked footsteps through walls, mapped voices and movements with supernatural precision. Two guards on the fifteenth floor, maintenance crew on twelve, someone typing frantically on twenty-three.
"Pepper. She's already here, stressed about Tony's return."
He passed prototype displays, awards Tony would never look at, the trappings of genius wrapped in corporate presentation. But none of it mattered. Only the workshop mattered. Only being there when Tony returned.
The security camera in the northeast corridor swiveled on its programmed arc. Enhanced Reflexes calculated timing, and Ben slipped beneath its sweep with inches to spare. A soda can sat on a maintenance cart—perfect. Hawkeye's Aim guided his throw, sending it clattering down a side hallway.
The distraction worked. The guard investigating the noise moved exactly as predicted, opening the path Ben needed.
In the security center, Pepper watched the boy execute his distraction with military precision. "That's not luck. That's tactical thinking." She could have stopped him with a single call to security. Instead, she found herself curious about what a child would want badly enough to risk infiltrating one of the most secure buildings in the country.
The workshop door loomed ahead—reinforced steel with biometric locks that should have stopped anyone without authorization. But the ventilation system had been designed by people who assumed intruders were adult-sized. Ben's small frame squeezed through an access panel that wouldn't accommodate a full-grown person.
He dropped into Tony Stark's workshop, and memory collided with reality.
The space was exactly as Ben remembered from the movies—workbenches scattered with projects, the car collection gleaming under perfect lighting, prototype displays showcasing inventions that would change the world. But it was empty. Tony was still at the hospital for debriefing, still hours away from returning home.
"Focus. You're here for a reason."
Ben's Enhanced Hearing picked up the faint hum of electronics throughout the space, but one sound drew his attention—active circuits behind a locked cabinet labeled "Palladium Core Research." His adult mind filled in the gaps: this was the research that would poison Tony in Iron Man 2, years from now. The arc reactor technology that would save his life and slowly kill him.
What could a ten-year-old do about industrial chemistry and radioactive poisoning? Ben stared at the cabinet, feeling helpless despite his supernatural abilities. Then he remembered the marker in his pocket—stolen from the soup kitchen weeks ago.
He pulled out a sticky note from the same pocket and wrote in careful, childish letters: "Check for toxicity."
It felt pathetically inadequate. A child's scrawl against a problem that would nearly kill Tony Stark. But it was something. Some tiny intervention that might plant a seed, create a moment of awareness when it mattered.
Ben pressed the note onto the cabinet's surface and stepped back, his child heart hammering against his ribs.
In the security center, Pepper leaned closer to her monitor. The boy had made it to Tony's workshop—the most restricted area in the building. But instead of stealing technology or planting surveillance devices, he was... writing notes? She enhanced the feed, trying to read the message.
"Check for toxicity. On the palladium research."
Her breath caught. How could a child possibly know about Tony's palladium work? The research was classified, buried in technical files that even most Stark Industries employees couldn't access.
"That's an interesting note," she said, standing in the workshop doorway.
Ben spun, Enhanced Reflexes barely keeping him from yelping in surprise. Pepper Potts stood there, arms crossed, her expression not angry but intensely curious. She wore the professional attire he remembered from the movies, but her face held a sharpness that cameras couldn't capture—intelligence and determination that made her Tony's indispensable partner.
"She's been watching. The security feeds. She saw everything."
"Who are you, and why do you care about Tony's palladium research?"
Ben's mouth opened, his adult mind desperate to explain, but what came out was: "The glowy banana will hurt the metal man! He needs... uh... new fruit?"
Pepper's expression shifted from suspicion to concern. This child was clearly troubled, possibly mentally ill, but those movements on the security cameras had been too skilled to dismiss. The way he'd infiltrated the building—that wasn't random luck or accident. Someone had trained him, or something had enhanced him.
"And he knew about the palladium research. Impossible knowledge."
She made a decision that would change everything.
"Let's get you cleaned up and figure out what's really going on."
[QUEST COMPLETED: INFILTRATE STARK INDUSTRIES SUCCESSFULLY]
[REWARD: 5 STANDARD TICKETS EARNED]
[NEW QUEST: GAIN PEPPER POTTS' TRUST]
[REWARD: 3 PREMIUM TICKETS]
[PARKOUR GAINS 150 EXP - LEVEL 16 ACHIEVED]
[ENHANCED REFLEXES GAINS 200 EXP - LEVEL 18 ACHIEVED]
Ben followed Pepper through corridors that felt like walking through a dream. His abilities had gotten him this far, but now came the harder part—explaining himself to someone who could have him arrested or committed.
In the elevator, Pepper studied him with the same intensity she probably applied to quarterly reports. Her mind raced with possibilities—corporate spy, enhanced individual, mentally disturbed child with impossible luck. None of the options made complete sense.
"You're homeless," she said, not a question.
"Three weeks." His voice was small, honest.
"And you broke into one of the most secure facilities in the country because...?"
"Mr. Stark needs help," Ben said simply. "Bad things are coming, and I want to protect him."
Pepper's expression softened slightly. Whatever else this child was—spy, prodigy, mental patient—his concern for Tony seemed genuine. And that note about palladium toxicity... if he was right, if there was a problem with Tony's research...
The elevator doors opened onto a small conference room, and Ben's new life began. The child who had survived on the streets for weeks was about to become part of the Stark Industries family, though neither he nor Pepper yet understood how completely their lives would intertwine.
Behind them, in the workshop, the security cameras dutifully recorded everything. JARVIS's systems automatically flagged the palladium note as an anomaly, storing it in a file that Tony would discover years later, long after the boy who wrote it had become his son.
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