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CHAPTER 13
🕑 Added 2025-04-11 20:12:13 +0000 UTCThe Tyrant moved with terrifying speed—a blur of mutated flesh and bone that the human eye could barely track. Bullets whizzed through empty air where it had been milliseconds before. The few lucky shots that managed to connect simply pushed back out of its body as the creature's accelerated healing rejected the foreign metal.
Matthew fired his last rounds in desperation, the empty click of his weapon echoing his sinking heart. His hands trembled as he fumbled for a spare magazine that wasn't there.
"Without heavy artillery, we can't even slow the damn thing down," he whispered, voice cracking. "It's not a fight—it's not even in the same league as us."
Against such a monstrosity, conventional weapons were children's toys. Humans weren't combatants against this creature—they were simply prey.
Tony Stark was their only hope—the gleaming red and gold armor their lone technological edge against biological horror. But the genius billionaire hadn't made a move yet.
His focus remained locked elsewhere—the suit's external speakers emitting occasional bursts of technical jargon as JARVIS battled the Red Queen in cyberspace. Without his AI companion's processing power, the Iron Man armor operated at a fraction of its capability. The suit's reactor glowed steadily, but the weapons systems remained dormant.
That was precisely why the Red Queen had unleashed the Tyrant—a desperate gambit to eliminate Stark while his technological advantage was neutralized. The AI had calculated the odds and determined this was her one window of opportunity.
Without JARVIS's assistance, the most advanced piece of technology on the planet might as well have been an elaborate paperweight. The Iron Man armor—a marvel of engineering that had taken down terrorist cells and stood toe-to-toe with military hardware—was reduced to little more than an expensive metal shell.
"Without those integrated weapons systems, there's no way to challenge a Tyrant," Matthew muttered, backing against the wall. "That's Umbrella's crown jewel bio-weapon—their ultimate failsafe!"
His heart plummeted as reality crashed down around him. His pistol magazine rattled emptily as it clattered to the floor. Useless.
It was over.
They were truly doomed.
If Tony recalled JARVIS to restore his suit's functionality, he might stand a chance against the Tyrant—but that would free the Red Queen. She would immediately reassert control over her zombie legion, transforming the scattered horde into a coordinated army once again. Black Widow, already surrounded, would be overrun in seconds.
Lose their assault specialist now, and their fragile mission would unravel entirely.
But if Tony continued to pit JARVIS against the Red Queen? The Tyrant would tear through his compromised armor like tissue paper.
Instant death or prolonged defeat.
A strategic checkmate.
"That cheating bastard with a sneak attack?!"
"Iron Man's in trouble! Someone do something!"
"Those monsters are disgusting! Attacking while he's distracted? If you had any guts, you'd wait until Iron Man finishes with the Red Queen and fight him straight up! He'd blast you to atoms!"
"Unforgivable!"
"Our hero can't die like this!"
"Cowards! Absolute cowards!"
The global audience erupted in outrage, their frantic comments flooding screens worldwide. To millions, Tony Stark—the man who had boldly declared "I am Iron Man" to the world—wasn't just a billionaire industrialist. He was a symbol, a hero who had stepped out from behind corporate doors to put his life on the line.
And now their champion faced ambush by this abomination? The injustice was unbearable.
Beyond their emotional investment in Tony's survival lurked a darker fear.
If Tony and his team failed...
"Is this really how the world ends?"
"If they can't shut down the program and the virus escapes containment, won't infection spread globally?"
One particularly haunting comment flashed across screens worldwide—and the chaotic online chatter abruptly ceased.
After witnessing the brutal reality of this crisis unfold...
Most skeptics had finally abandoned their disbelief. This couldn't be an elaborate hoax.
If it were just some big-budget production...
No filmmaker could capture such authentic horror. The mercenaries and agents who had died fighting—their faces contorted in genuine agony, their blood pooling across concrete floors—weren't acting. The high-tech facility with its proprietary systems and biological specimens displayed a functional logic no set designer could replicate.
Every minute detail was horrifyingly plausible. No hacker or special effects team could fabricate something this comprehensive.
This was, beyond reasonable doubt, a window into another reality.
Earlier, viewers had treated it as entertainment—a spectator sport they could comment on from the safety of their homes.
But now, as the phrase "end of the world" took on terrifying plausibility, collective dread silenced them.
Throats tightened. Words failed.
The global audience watched in horrified silence.
In the ancient sanctuary of Kamar-Taj, far from modern technology, a similar scene unfolded.
"That world..." Mordo's voice faltered as he watched the unfolding catastrophe. "Is it truly doomed?"
He glanced sideways at the Ancient One, unable to bear the images on the screen any longer. His eyes reflected both despair for that world and gratitude that their reality remained separate from such horrors.
Even he, with all his mystical training, couldn't envision a path to victory.
His question emerged not from hope but from the instinctive human need for reassurance in the face of darkness.
"It won't end so simply..." the Ancient One murmured, her voice calm against the backdrop of chaos.
Even with her vast understanding of mystical forces, this parallel world remained partially obscured from her vision. The Eye of Agamotto, which had revealed countless possible futures to her, could not penetrate fully into that reality's timeline.
However—
Across the vast canvas of potential futures she had witnessed...
She held unwavering faith in the "mortal who stood among gods"—Iron Man.
He would not fall here, not like this.
Moreover...
Studying Tony's expression through the dimensional window, she detected not a trace of fear in his eyes.
"Heh~"
"Don't count me out just yet."
Even with the Tyrant looming over him like a predator assessing its next meal, Tony's eyes darted methodically around the chamber. His fingers twitched inside the armor, mind racing through calculations and scenarios with machine-like efficiency.
The oppressive atmosphere didn't intimidate him—it energized him. His lips curled into the same cocky smirk that had infuriated board members and charmed socialites in equal measure.
Though his precious Iron Man suit operated at minimal capacity without JARVIS's guidance, Tony's face showed no trace of concern.
On the contrary...
The doubt radiating from his companions only ignited something primal within him—the same defiance that had kept him alive in an Afghan cave with a car battery wired to his chest.
With that trademark lopsided grin, Tony cocked his head at the monster. "So we're done with the appetizers and moving straight to the main course, huh?" He rotated his shoulders, the armor's joints whirring. "Gotta say, you're even uglier in person. Did your mommy not hug you enough, or is this just the look you were going for?"
His familiar bravado filled the chamber, echoing off blood-smeared walls.
Tony Stark—the man who had built his first circuit board at four—wasn't about to be intimidated by some lab experiment gone wrong.
Sneak attack during a system compromise?
Taking advantage while his technology was handicapped?
Perfect.
He was Tony fucking Stark. He'd built his first suit in a cave with scraps.
"Being hideously deformed isn't illegal," he quipped, shifting his weight forward, "but I'm pretty sure whatever they did to make you violates about fifty international treaties."
"ROAAARR!" The Tyrant's inhuman bellow rattled dust from the ceiling, its putrid breath washing over Tony in a wave.
Its sheer presence was overwhelming—seven feet of weaponized biology designed for one purpose: efficient killing.
"Aww, did I hurt your feelings?" Tony scoffed. He planted his feet firmly, the armor's boots digging into the concrete floor. With a twist of his torso that engaged every enhanced muscle in his body, he channeled his strength into a single devastating punch.
"Let me introduce you to good old-fashioned American engineering!"
His face contorted with exertion, teeth clenched—
But also with a fierce joy that only came alive in moments of purest challenge!
BOOM!
The impact created a localized shockwave, air compressing and then exploding outward from the point of contact.
With JARVIS still locked in cyber-warfare against the Red Queen, Tony couldn't access his repulsors, missiles, or targeting systems. The armor's artificial strength enhancement was running on basic parameters.
So Tony did what he did best—he improvised.
He abandoned all thoughts of using the suit as the sophisticated weapons platform it was designed to be—
And wielded it as what it fundamentally was: a mechanized extension of human capability.
The most advanced combat armor on Earth became, in his hands, the world's most expensive brass knuckles.
Each punch accelerated faster than the human eye could track, leaving phantom afterimages like strobing photographs.
Each impact resonated with bone-jarring force, creating miniature sonic booms as his armored fists broke the sound barrier.
No elaborate evasion, no tactical retreat.
This wasn't the refined combatant he would later become—this was Tony Stark as he was after Afghanistan: raw, aggressive, fueled by an absolute refusal to die on someone else's terms.
He waded straight into the monster's reach—closing to point-blank range!
In the lexicon of Tony Stark, before life had taught him hard lessons about mortality and consequence, concepts like 'strategic withdrawal' simply didn't exist!
...
What followed—
Under the astonished gaze of viewers worldwide—
Was a spectacle that defied all expectations.
Iron Man—Tony Stark—the playboy billionaire philanthropist—
Was systematically dismantling the Tyrant with nothing but mechanical fists and stubborn fury!
The battle was indeed one-sided as everyone had anticipated, but—
In precisely the opposite direction.
Tony's armored fists pummeled the creature with relentless precision, each impact tearing away chunks of mutated flesh that couldn't regenerate quickly enough to matter. The monster's head snapped back again and again, black ichor spraying across the facility walls.
His raw power and speed kept the biological weapon perpetually defensive, never allowing it to recover its balance or leverage its own considerable strength.
Umbrella Corporation's ultimate bioweapon—their apex predator—
Was being systematically disassembled by human ingenuity wrapped in gold-titanium alloy.
The world watched, breathless, as Tony Stark—without his AI, without his high-tech weaponry—proved that sometimes the man inside the suit was more dangerous than the technology that encased him.
