Chapter 2
The California sun bled over the horizon, painting the Pacific in hues of bruised purple and gold. High atop the cliffs of Malibu, the Stark residence stood as a monument to modern glass and steel, looking very much like it had for the last fifteen years—on the surface.
Inside the sprawling garage, the air was a cocktail of high-octane fuel, ozone, and the rhythmic clinking of tools. Tony Stark, now in his late thirties and possessing a goatee that was as sharp as his wit, was hunched over the engine of a 1932 Ford Flathead. Sweat beaded on his brow, his fingers dancing through wires with a practiced, frantic energy.
Standing a few feet away, clad in a crisp, charcoal-gray suit that looked suspiciously bulletproof, was a man whose presence felt like a still lake over a volcano. Bucky Barnes—known to the world as "James," the loyal second butler to the Stark estate—held a silver tray with a single glass of green chlorophyll juice. His left hand, encased in a leather glove that hid the intricate repairs Aron had made to the titanium underneath, didn't tremble an inch.
"You're avoiding the board meeting, Tony," Bucky said. His voice was sandpaper and gravel, matured by decades he barely remembered. "Howard's already been on the phone three times. Obadiah is starting to smell blood in the water."
"Obie always smells blood, James. It's his natural cologne," Tony muttered, not looking up. "Besides, I'm in the middle of a breakthrough. Or a breakdown. It's a 50/50 split today. Where's the kid?"
"The 'kid' is currently three hundred miles off the coast of Japan," a calm, resonant voice echoed from the far corner of the garage.
Tony jumped, nearly dropping his wrench. He turned to see Aron Stark stepping out of the shadows. At thirty-one, Aron was the physical antithesis of his brother. Where Tony was lean and high-strung, Aron was a mountain of quiet power. He wore a simple black t-shirt that strained against shoulders that looked capable of holding up the sky. His eyes, usually a deep, soulful brown, had a lingering trace of cosmic blue that faded as he blinked.
"Three hundred miles?" Tony asked, wiping his hands on a rag. "What was it this time? A sinking tanker? A rogue wave? Or were you just seeing how fast you could go before you ignited the atmosphere?"
"A whale was tangled in an illegal drift net," Aron said simply. He walked over and took the green juice from Bucky's tray, nodding his thanks. "And for the record, I hit Mach 5 today. No friction burns. The Gene has developed a localized bio-electric field to displace the air. Raphael calls it 'Aerodynamic Sovereignty'."
"Show off," Tony grumbled, though his eyes shone with pride. "So, while you were playing Aquaman, the rest of us were dealing with the boring stuff. The Jericho missile is ready for the demo in Afghanistan. Howard wants me to lead the presentation, but Obie is pushing for a 'consultant' role. He's getting twitchy, Aron. He knows there's tech in this house he hasn't seen. He knows about the 'ghost' we keep in the butler's pantry."
Tony glanced at Bucky. The secret of the Winter Soldier was the foundation upon which their current peace was built. After 1991, Aron had used Raphael to surgically dismantle the Hydra programming in Bucky's mind—a process that had taken years of agonizing mental reconstruction. Now, Bucky was a man with a past he regretted and a future he owed to the brothers who had saved him.
"Let him push," Aron said, his voice dropping an octave. "Obadiah is a businessman. He understands profit, but he doesn't understand evolution. He thinks power is something you buy or build. He doesn't realize it's something you are."
"He's looking for the 'Stark Secret', Aron," Bucky intervened, his gaze shifting to the floor-to-ceiling windows. "I caught him in the private archives last week. He wasn't looking for weapons designs. He was looking for your medical records. The ones Howard 'lost' back in '92."
Aron felt a ripple of irritation. Since the "accident" in '91, Howard had become a ghost in his own company, retreating into his lab to work on clean energy, leaving the day-to-day operations to Obadiah Stane while Tony handled the engineering. But the peace was fragile. The world was changing. The Ten Rings were rising in the East, and whispers of "super-powered individuals" were starting to leak out of S.H.I.E.L.D. archives.
"I'll handle Obadiah," Aron said. "Tony, go to Afghanistan. Do the demo. Keep the eyes of the world on the 'Merchant of Death' persona. It keeps them from looking at what we're actually building in the basement."
"The Arc Reactor?" Tony asked, gesturing to the massive, glowing core that powered the entire mansion.
"The future," Aron corrected.
The Stark Industries private jet was a palace at thirty thousand feet. Tony was passed out in the back, a half-empty bottle of scotch on the table. In the front, Aron sat with Obadiah Stane.
Obadiah was a large man, radiating a faux-grandfatherly warmth that never quite reached his eyes. He puffed on a cigar, looking out at the clouds with a satisfied smirk.
"You're a quiet one, Aron," Obadiah said, his voice a rich baritone. "Always have been. Tony gets the genius, Howard gets the legacy, and you... you just stay in the gym, don't you? You're the healthiest man I've ever seen. I don't think I've seen you sneeze in twenty years."
"I have a good immune system, Obie," Aron replied, his tone neutral.
"Good? It's miraculous. I saw the footage from the Atlantic 'cargo ship' incident back in '91. S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to bury it, but I have friends in low places." Obadiah leaned in, the smell of tobacco cloying. "A boy standing in a hail of bullets? A boy who moves faster than a radar? You're the most valuable asset Stark Industries has, and Howard is wasting you as a 'family assistant'."
Aron didn't blink. He could hear Obadiah's heart—it was beating with the steady, thumping rhythm of a predator who thought he had his prey cornered.
"I'm not an asset, Obadiah. I'm a Stark."
"Same thing, kid. Same thing." Obadiah patted Aron's knee with a hand that felt like lead. "Just remember, the world is a dangerous place. Iron is strong, but even iron can be melted down and forged into something new. Something better."
Aron felt the Doomsday Gene pulse. It wanted him to reach out, to crush Obadiah's skull right there in the velvet seat. It wanted to end the threat before it manifested. But Aron wasn't a monster. Not yet.
Wait, Aron thought. Let the play unfold. Tony needs the forge. If he doesn't become the man he's meant to be, he'll never be ready for what's coming from the stars.
I'll be there, Aron promised. Nothing kills a Stark on my watch.
The heat in Kunar Province was like a physical weight, but to Aron, it felt like a warm bath. As Tony stood in front of the military brass, showing off the Jericho missile—a weapon that could turn a mountain range into a gravel pit—Aron stood in the background, his senses pushed to their limit.
He could hear the clicking of AK-47 safeties five miles away. He could smell the cheap diesel of the insurgent trucks hidden in the canyons.
"To peace!" Tony shouted, the shockwave of the Jericho explosion tossing his hair back.
The military convoy began its trek back to the base. Tony was in a Humvee, joking with the soldiers, feeling invincible. Aron was in the vehicle behind him, sitting with his eyes closed.
"James," Aron whispered into a hidden comms unit in his collar. "The wolves are at the door."
"I see them," Bucky's voice crackled back from Malibu. He was monitoring the satellite feed Aron had hijacked for him. "Three technicals at the eleven o'clock. Explosives buried under the road at the three-hundred-meter mark. Aron, if you move now, you can stop the IED."
"No," Aron said, his heart heavy. "If I stop it, Obadiah just tries again. Tony needs to see the face of the enemy. He needs to see his own name on the side of the rockets."
BOOM.
The lead Humvee was tossed into the air by a massive explosion. The world dissolved into fire and dust. Shrapnel hissed through the air like angry hornets. Aron watched as the soldiers in Tony's car were cut down in seconds. He watched Tony stumble out of the wreckage, his ears ringing, his face covered in blood.
Tony scrambled behind a rock, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He pulled out a cell phone, trying to find a signal. Then, a missile landed a few feet away.
It didn't explode instantly. It hissed, the dust clearing to reveal the logo: STARK INDUSTRIES.
"Aron!" Tony screamed, the sound lost in the chaos.
Aron was already moving. He didn't use his speed—not fully. He had to look like a survivor, not a god. He sprinted through the gunfire, the bullets pinging off his skin with the sound of hail on a tin roof. He reached Tony just as the missile detonated.
Aron didn't move away. He threw his body over Tony, his back acting as a shield. The explosion was immense, a white-hot bloom of agony that would have vaporized a normal man. Aron felt the shrapnel bite into his back—the Doomsday Gene hadn't expected a point-blank blast of this magnitude.
Aron groaned, the heat searing his shirt away. He looked down at Tony. His brother was unconscious, his chest riddled with small, glowing pieces of shrapnel that had bypassed Aron's shield.
The insurgents were closing in, their shouts filling the air.
Aron stood up. His back was a mess of raw, red tissue that was already knitting itself back together in a grotesque display of rapid cellular regeneration. He looked at the men approaching with their rifles raised.
"You should have stayed in the caves," Aron whispered.
One of the insurgents, a man with a scarred face, stepped forward and pointed his rifle at Aron's head. He barked an order in Urdu, demanding they surrender.
Aron didn't surrender. He moved.
To the insurgents, he simply vanished. To Aron, the world became a gallery of statues. He walked through them, his hands moving with surgical precision. He didn't use a gun. He used the kinetic energy stored in his cells. Each strike was like a thunderclap. Ribs shattered, weapons snapped, and the very air around his fists ignited.
In ten seconds, twenty men were incapacitated.
Aron knelt back down beside Tony. He could see the shrapnel moving toward Tony's heart.
Raphael, stabilize him, Aron commanded. Use my bio-energy to jumpstart his pulse.
Aron looked at his brother's pale face. He could feel the eyes of the world—the satellites Obadiah had diverted, the drones Hydra had launched.
"Fine," Aron said. He picked Tony up, cradling him like a child. "We do this the hard way."
Aron didn't run toward the base. He ran toward the caves.
To the satellites orbiting five hundred miles above, the heat signature of the explosion had been followed by a strange, flickering anomaly—a blur of kinetic energy that moved too erratically to be a vehicle. Obadiah Stane, sitting in his darkened office in Los Angeles, leaned closer to his screen, his jaw tightening.
"Where did he go?" Obadiah whispered to the empty room. "He should be dead. They both should be dead."
Inside the dark, damp recesses of the mountain, Aron laid Tony down on a flat stone slab. The cave smelled of ancient dust and stagnant water. Tony's breathing was shallow, a wet, rattling sound that signaled his lungs were filling with fluid. The shrapnel from the Stark-made missile was vibrating with every heartbeat, inching closer to the pericardium.
"I don't have surgical tools, Raphael," Aron said, his voice echoing in the gloom. He looked at his hands—hands that could crush diamonds. "I can't reach in there without tearing him apart."
"Do both," Aron commanded.
He didn't wait for the insurgents to find them. He knew they were coming—he could hear their boots on the gravel outside, the clanking of their rusted gear. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic sphere—a prototype "Smart-Core" Tony had been tinkering with back in the garage.
With a surge of bio-electricity from his fingertips, Aron jumpstarted the core. "Raphael, take control of the local electrical grid—whatever these cave-dwellers are using for lights. Create a localized EMP to mask our signatures."
The lights in the cave flickered and died, plunged into a deep, oppressive blackness. But Aron could see perfectly. His vision shifted into the infrared, then the ultraviolet. He saw the heat of Tony's blood, the cold steel of the shrapnel.
Aron leaned over his brother. A faint, glowing red light began to emanate from his eyes. It wasn't the destructive blast he used against the ship; it was a needle-thin laser, precise down to the micron.
ZZZT.
Tony's body lurched as the heat hit the metal. Aron worked with the speed of a supercomputer, fusing the fragments into a single, stationary mass.
"Stay with me, Tony," Aron whispered. "You're supposed to build the suit. You're supposed to save the world. Don't make me do it all myself. I'm too bored for politics."
Aron didn't even look up from his work. "James, you still there?"
Through the encrypted link in his ear, Bucky's voice came through, distorted by the mountain's interference. "...ron... I'm... seeing... movement... I've... alerted... Howard..."
"Tell Howard to stay put," Aron said, finishing the last weld on Tony's internal shrapnel. "I'm going to be a little loud."
Aron stood up. He walked toward the mouth of the cave just as the first insurgent rounded the corner. The man didn't even have time to scream. Aron moved like a ghost, his hand blurring out of existence as he struck the man's chest. The kinetic transfer was so absolute that the insurgent was launched back out of the cave, taking three of his comrades with him.
Aron stepped out into the blinding Afghan sun.
The Ten Rings soldiers froze. They saw a man whose clothes were burnt away, showing skin that shimmered like polished obsidian in the light. Aron didn't look human anymore. The "Perfected Doomsday Gene" was reacting to the hostility of the environment, to the intent of the men before him. Small, bony protrusions were beginning to crest along his knuckles—not the monstrous spikes of the original Doomsday, but subtle, lethal ridges of reinforced calcium.
"My brother is a genius," Aron said, his voice sounding like two tectonic plates grinding together. "He believes in the better nature of man. He thinks he can build a world where people like you don't exist."
Aron took a step forward. The ground beneath his foot disintegrated into powder.
"I'm not a genius," Aron continued. "I'm an apex predator. And you're in my territory."
One of the insurgents fired an RPG.
Aron didn't dodge. He reached out and caught the rocket mid-air. The propellant flared against his palm, but he simply squeezed. The rocket crumpled like a soda can, the warhead detonating in a shower of useless sparks and chemical fire.
Aron didn't wait for them to reload. He moved.
It wasn't a fight; it was a harvest. To the observers on the satellite, the canyon suddenly looked like it was being hit by a series of localized earthquakes. Dust clouds erupted in rapid succession. Men were tossed into the air as if by an invisible hand, their weapons bent into pretzels.
Aron was a whirlwind of gray and black. He wasn't killing them—not all of them—but he was breaking them. He was leaving a message. Every strike was calculated to be the maximum amount of pain a human could endure without immediate death.
Within ninety seconds, the canyon was silent.
Aron stood in the center of the carnage, his chest rising and falling slowly. He felt the sun on his skin, the energy pouring into his cells. He felt... hungry. Not for food, but for the next evolution. The Gene was demanding more. It wanted him to fly into the sun. It wanted him to challenge the gods.
The mention of Tony acted like a bucket of ice water. The bony ridges on Aron's knuckles receded, absorbed back into his skin. The glow in his eyes faded. He turned and ran back into the cave, his movements returning to a more "human" speed.
Inside, Tony was groaning, his eyes fluttering open. He looked at the ceiling of the cave, then at the glowing blue sphere Aron had left beside him.
"A... Aron?" Tony rasped.
"I'm here, Tony." Aron knelt by his side, helping him sit up.
Tony looked down at his chest. He saw the cauterized holes in his shirt, the faint, geometric patterns of the fused shrapnel beneath his skin. He looked at the carnage at the mouth of the cave, then back at his brother.
"Did you... did you do all that?" Tony asked, his voice trembling.
"The air support arrived," Aron lied, though he knew Tony was too smart to believe it. "They moved on. We need to get you out of here."
Tony grabbed Aron's arm. His grip was weak, but his eyes were sharper than they had been in years. The playboy was gone. The man who made weapons for a living had died in that Humvee.
"They used my guns, Ronnie," Tony whispered. "They used my own missiles to try and kill us. Howard was right. Everything I built... it's all poison."
"Then build something else, Tony," Aron said, hoisting his brother onto his back. "Build something that protects. Because I can't be everywhere at once."
Aron walked out of the cave, carrying the future of the Avengers on his shoulders. He didn't run this time. He walked toward the horizon, where the distant thump of American rescue helicopters was finally audible.
Let him call, Aron thought. He's already a dead man. He just doesn't know it yet.
Three days later, Malibu.
The return of the Stark brothers was the biggest news story of the decade. The "Miracle in the Desert," the headlines called it. Tony Stark had returned, not with a drink in his hand, but with a grim determination that terrified the board of directors.
Aron sat in the kitchen of the mansion, watching Bucky Barnes methodically polish a silver teapot. Bucky looked at him, his cybernetic eye—hidden behind a realistic contact lens—flickering.
"You've changed, Aron," Bucky said. "The way you walk. You're heavier. Not in weight, but in... presence."
"I had to adapt, James," Aron replied. "The world is getting louder. I can hear things now. I can hear the satellites. I can hear the whispers in the Kremlin. I can hear the heartbeat of a man in a cave in Siberia who's building a suit of armor out of scrap metal."
Bucky paused. "You're talking about Vanko?"
"I'm talking about everyone. The lid is off the jar, James. Tony is in the basement right now building the Mark I. He thinks he's doing it to make up for his sins. But he's actually doing it because the world needs a symbol."
"And what are you?" Bucky asked.
Aron looked at his hand. He focused, and for a second, a small spark of pure, white energy danced between his fingers—a fragment of the power of a thousand Supermen, filtered through the rage of Doomsday.
"I'm the insurance policy," Aron said.
The door to the basement opened, and Tony stepped out. He looked exhausted, covered in grease and soot, but there was a light in his eyes that hadn't been there since they were children. He held up a circular device, glowing with a steady, brilliant white light.
"The Arc Reactor," Tony said, his voice brimming with excitement. "Aron, look at the energy output. It's off the charts. It can power the whole city, or..."
"Or a suit of armor," Aron finished.
"Or a suit of armor," Tony agreed. He looked at Bucky, then at Aron. "We're going to need a bigger workshop. And Aron? I need you to punch me."
Aron blinked. "Excuse me?"
"The alloy for the flight stabilizers," Tony said, tapping his chin. "I need to know if it can withstand a high-impact kinetic strike. And since you're the strongest thing in this zip code, you're my new crash-test dummy."
Aron laughed—a genuine, human sound. "Careful what you wish for, Tony. I might break your toys."
"Try me," Tony grinned.
As the two brothers headed toward the basement, Bucky watched them go. He felt a shiver of something he hadn't felt since the 1940s. It wasn't fear. It was hope.
But far away, in a secret bunker beneath the streets of Washington D.C., Alexander Pierce looked at a grainy satellite photo of a young man standing in an Afghan canyon, holding a crumpled rocket.
"Find out everything," Pierce ordered the man standing in the shadows. "If he's a Stark, we control him. If he's something else... we kill him."
The basement of the Malibu mansion transformed into a high-tech forge. While Tony obsessed over the gold-titanium alloy for the Mark III, Aron focused on his internal calibration.
"Good," Aron muttered. He watched Tony struggle with the boot thrusters. "Tony, the left actuator is misaligned by three millimeters. It'll cause a yaw drift during supersonic flight."
Tony paused, suspended by a robotic arm. "Three millimeters? Are you seeing in pixels now?"
"Something like that."
Aron's phone buzzed. It was an encrypted text from Howard, who was currently "vacationing" in a secure S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in New York.
Obadiah is moving on the Arc Reactor blueprints. He's desperate.
"Tony, Obie is coming over," Aron said, pocketing the phone. "Hide the suit."
"He has clearance, Ronnie. He's the CEO," Tony argued, though he signaled JARVIS to retract the floor panels.
"He won't have clearance for what I'm about to do to him," Aron replied.
The elevator chimed. Obadiah Stane stepped out, his face a mask of false concern. He carried a box of pizza—a peace offering that smelled of betrayal.
"Tony! Aron! The miracle boys," Obadiah boomed. He looked around the workshop, his eyes lingering on the central Arc Reactor. "I heard you shut down the weapons division, Tony. The board is in a frenzy. They think you've lost your mind."
"I haven't lost it, Obie. I found it," Tony said, wiping grease onto his shirt. "We're pivoting to clean energy."
Obadiah laughed, but it was hollow. He turned to Aron. "And you? Still the silent bodyguard? You know, the army is very interested in how you survived that blast without a scratch. They're calling it a 'biological miracle'."
Aron stepped into Obadiah's personal space. He didn't use his power, but the sheer density of his presence made the air feel heavy. "The only miracle, Obie, is that you're still standing in this house."
Obadiah's smile faltered. "Careful, Aron. I've built this company. I've kept your father's secrets for decades."
"You sold Tony to the Ten Rings," Aron said. The room went silent. Tony froze, a circuit board in his hand.
"That's a heavy accusation, son," Obadiah whispered, his hand drifting toward his coat pocket.
"I don't make accusations. I state facts," Aron said. He reached out and grabbed Obadiah's wrist. He didn't squeeze hard, but the sound of Obadiah's expensive watch shattering under the pressure was deafening. "I heard the call you made to the Atlantic ship in '91. I heard your conversation with the insurgents. My ears are better than your encryption, Obie."
Obadiah tried to pull away, but he was pinned. "You... you're a freak. Howard's little monster."
"I'm the one who's letting you walk out of here," Aron said, his eyes glowing a faint, dangerous red. "You have twenty-four hours to resign. Tell the board you're retiring. If you're still in the building by Monday, I'll show you exactly what kind of 'monster' Howard raised."
Aron let go. Obadiah stumbled back, gasping, his wrist bruised purple. He looked at Tony, then at Aron, and saw no mercy. He turned and fled toward the elevator.
Tony looked at his brother. "You knew? The whole time?"
"I needed proof, Tony. And I needed you to see who he really was."
"I could have died," Tony said, his voice quiet.
"I wouldn't have let that happen," Aron replied. "But now the board is going to be a problem. And Hydra is going to be an even bigger one."
"Looks like the secret's out," Aron said. He looked at the ceiling. "JARVIS, tell Bucky to put on a pot of coffee. We're about to have company."
The front doors of the mansion were bypassed. A man in a long black leather trench coat stepped into the living room, followed by a woman with short red hair. Nick Fury looked at the sprawling luxury of the Stark home and then at Aron, who was waiting for him on the sofa.
"Aron Stark," Fury said, his one eye scanning the room. "The boy who doesn't exist in any medical database."
"And you're the man who thinks he runs the world from a flying boat," Aron countered. "Sit down, Director. We have a lot to discuss."
Fury sat. Natasha Romanoff remained standing, her hand near her belt.
"We've been watching you since the '91 incident," Fury said. "We thought you were just a lucky kid. Then Afghanistan happened. My analysts say you hit those insurgents with the force of a tectonic shift. What are you? A mutant? An alien?"
"I'm a Stark," Aron said. "And I'm the reason your organization hasn't been completely eaten by Hydra yet."
Fury's expression didn't change, but his heart rate skipped. "Hydra is gone."
"Hydra is the guy sitting in the office next to yours," Aron said. "But we can talk about that later. Right now, you're here because you want to talk about the Avengers Initiative."
"How do you know about that?"
"I know everything, Nick. I have the Wisdom Lord on my side."
Tony walked into the room, still in his grease-stained undershirt. He looked at Fury, then at the redhead. "Who's the pirate? And can we get some better security? People just keep walking in."
"This is Director Fury," Aron said. "He's here to tell us that we've become part of a bigger universe."
"You just don't know it yet," Fury added.
Aron stood up, stretching. His bones popped with the sound of small gunshots. "Oh, we know, Nick. We're just deciding if we want to invite you to the party."