Alternate Iron #300: The Legion of Iron Men

by Matthew Malek

Chapter Three: The Enemy Within

1:53 AM

Dr. Erica Sondheim wheeled Tony Stark out of the emergency room on a stretcher. He was still deep in a coma, and had been for over an hour. She was a top notch neurosurgeon, but nobody in the world had experience with an artificial nervous system like Tony's. Besides being his doctor, she was an old friend and, as such, she was quite concerned about Tony's chances of survival. Erica brought Tony into a special room in the medical wing. Tony had stocked it with the best life support equipment that money could buy. She began to hook the equipment up to his body.

Unknown to Erica, however, a fierce turmoil was raging in Tony's mind that was in stark contrast to the eerily quiet calm of Tony's body.

"Ultimo... destruction... remote unit... neural feedback... ripped through my mind... I remember... remember... lightning... pain... neuron's rebelling... screaming... TOO MUCH!!"

The severe neural feedback he experienced when Ultimo destroyed the remote Iron Man armor had caused a cerebral overload in Tony Stark's brain. It sent him into a coma as his mind turned entirely inwards upon itself. The agony was excruciating and Tony had been plunged deep into a surreal world: a landscape of his inner mind.

Memories flooded this world and drowned out his thoughts. "Time is running out! We must work faster!", "Beth, please. Help me.", "Somebody lost.", "That doesn't mean Iron Man has to sit around on his thumbs in the meantime.", "Kath -- oh, god.", "To the world at large, my alter ego -- Iron Man -- is in the grave.", "You can't blame me for this! It was the monster!"

Tony fought to keep from drowning in the memory dump. He tried desperately to focus, but felt himself slipping further from the external world and going ever deeper into his own consciousness. Somewhere in this world, he could feel something fighting him. Almost as if something inside of him wanted him to die. With great effort, he found that he could concentrate enough to block out most of the memories. In fact, he could silence all of them but one, and that one resonated over and over in his mind:

"You can't blame me for this! It was the monster!"

The mindscape Tony found himself in was characterized by technology gone obscenely wrong. Arrays of wires and circuits were everywhere, with huge flickering television screens all around. There were faces on the screens displaying strangers staring at him. Many of them looked oriental. "What are these strangers doing in my mind?" Tony thought. Upon closer inspection, he realized that he did know some of the faces staring out at him.

One television in particular caught his attention first. Its screen displayed Tony's father, grimacing angrily outwards. "You listen to me, boy!', Howard Stark shouted, "You'll never amount to anything!" Next he spotted his mother, who looked like she was about to scold him. Tony hadn't seen that look since he had been nine years old. Looking around more, he found a screen showing Janice Cord, his old lover. Then he saw Kevin O'Brien, his dear departed friend. Next, he found another old lover, Marianne Rogers. Marianne didn't look angry, as the others did. Instead, she drooled and babbled incoherently.

Once he began recognizing the faces on the screens, it was difficult to stop. Tony found a screen displaying the portly Carnelian ambassador, lumbering about with a gaping hole through the center of his chest. On another television screen was the mangled body of Morley Erwin, who Stane had killed simply to torment Tony. The following screen featured Morley's sister, Clytemnestra. Cly's face was contorted with vicious rage. She had never forgiven him for the death of her brother. Too many images overwhelmed Tony. He felt sorrow at the loss of so many that he had been close to. He felt defensive, and even guilty, upon seeing so much anger directed at him. He turned away... and came face-to-face with another television screen. This one displayed a drowned Whitney Frost, blue from lack of oxygen. Deep within the architecture of his own mind, Tony Stark screamed.

In unison with the mental scream, Tony's body began twitching. Back at the surface, Erica noticed these spasms. Although disturbing, it was certainly a change from Tony's completely comatose state. For the second time that evening, she reached for medical scanners, particularly the EKG, and began checking Tony out again. "Blasted cybernetic nervous system," she thought to herself.

Slowly and horribly, the people Tony had recognized started pushing their way out of the television screens. Tony stood transfixed as he watched his old friends, family, and lovers squeeze through the glass barriers. He did note, however, that the vast majority of people on the televisions were not undergoing this transformation. The enormous number of oriental faces (specifically Vietnamese, Tony now noted) stayed put and were "content" to simply glare fiercely at him.

This observation offered Tony very little consolation. Faced with the furious and mangled horde that now lumbered towards him, Tony Stark turned and ran through the hallways of his mind. He was much faster than these broken bodies, and he raced through one mess of circuitry after another. Yet every time he turned around, there they were. For some reason, he couldn't outrace his dead friends, despite his greater speed.

Each corridor looked the same, and Tony quickly lost track of his orientation within this mindscape. He kept running, yet he made no progress in eluding those dear souls who were chasing him. He didn't know what they would do if they caught him, but he wasn't going to find out willingly. Individually, the guilt he felt over each of their deaths was large; collectively, it was overwhelming. Yet Tony was beginning to tire. He could tell that that if he didn't find some way out of this featureless maze, they would eventually overtake him. He began looking for a way out, turning his head frantically in all directions as he ran, hoping for something other than the endless stretches of silent wires, broken televisions, and smashed circuit boards.

The silence was broken as Tony entered a hallway that emanated a soft humming sound. He looked behind himself, and saw that those following him were not yet in sight. Invigorated by this, Tony sped down the path. Perhaps he'd finally found a way out! The humming grew louder, until it was no longer a soft and subtle sound. Still, Tony followed it. It continued this gradual increase in volume until it was nearly deafening.

Tony stopped short. Now he recognized that infernal hum and this terrain. Now he knew what region of the mindscape he had moved into. Yes, he knew this place. This was the lair of the creature. This was the place where it lives and breeds. The creature wanted Tony here. Tony was afraid, but he took some courage from the knowledge that he had been here before and he knew how to defeat the creature. He pressed onwards, more slowly and carefully. There was a bend in the hallway, and upon turning it he encountered the beast.

The last time Tony Stark was in this realm, the beast looked like a huge and distorted version of the Silver Centurion Iron Man armor. This time it was no less huge, but it now bore a warped resemblance to the Neuromimetic Telepresence Unit (or NTU-150) that Tony had been using as a remotely controlled Iron Man.

Immediately upon seeing Stark, the beast leveled its arms, if they could be called that, and fired a double repulsor blast at Stark. Caught slightly off guard, Tony was slammed into the mess of wires behind him and grew entangled. In this mindscape, Tony had not been wearing any armor, yet the blast did not prove fatal. In the "real" world, such a burst would have ripped through his raw, unprotected flesh easily. The creature approached Stark, its hands outstretched. Tony remembered the way it had once used those hands to force electric bile into him. It was a bitter memory, and not one an action he was likely to allow the creature to repeat. There wasn't enough time to disentangle himself before the creature was upon him. Acting on instinct, he put out his own hands and fired back a repulsor blast of his own. The sound "SHRAK!" filled the air, and the creature was propelled out of sight, at least temporarily. Tony used this time to free himself from the wreckage, and when he gazed down at his own hands, he saw they were now encased in a golden armor.

"Of course!" he realized. "This is all happening in my mind. I'm in control here. I can make this what I choose it to be." With that thought, Tony assembled a mental armor of pure gold. This golden armor was not a clumsy one, like the golden Iron Man armor he had built years back. This was sleek, glimmering mental protection. It was willpower personified. Tony Stark was, once again, a knight in shining armor.

"Last time the creature could only challenge me because I was scared. I was looking for help. I was afraid to challenge it alone. All that searching for help didn't work. It just caused pain and suffering to those who were close to me, like Morley or Whitney or Cly. When I finally learned that I was alone, that no one could help me, I was able to defeat the beast... by taking it into myself! As Rhodey told me, 'The power's yours! You just gotta turn it around!' All I need to do now is repeat that."

Tony chased after the beast, eager to defeat it again and exit this nightmare world. He adjusted his repulsors, setting them to absorb energy instead of releasing it. He prepared to take the power back into himself, once again. Tracking the creature was easy enough; it just meant following that ungodly hum. Upon reaching his enemy, Tony leapt upon the behemoth armor, ripping its helmet off to better reach the head. Previously, a twisted version of Tony's own face had been beneath the creature's helmet. This time, there was nothing but a dark gray robotic head. Despite this difference, Stark proceeded undaunted and placed both of his hands upon this grotesque head, as the creature wrapped its arms around Stark in a perverse embrace. Tony activated his reversed repulsors and began to siphon off energy, assuring himself that this would all be over in a matter of seconds, same as before. Only this time, such was not the case.

This time the creature's essence did not flow into Tony, causing it to dissipate. In fact, the opposite seemed to be true: Tony felt weaker, as if his own soul was being stolen by this devil! Its mammoth arms clutched him tightly as it drained him from within. In a last, desperate effort to get away, Tony summoned all of his remaining will to trigger his boot jets and break free of the creature's grasp. He flew away, in an erratic and uncontrolled flight path, before landing in a crumpled pile amidst broken television screens.

The creature was now closing in for the kill. It moved slowly, knowing its prey had been defeated and could not escape. In the last moments remaining to him, Tony's thoughts, ever analytical, pondered why the creature had not fallen as it had before.

"I don't understand it. I thought I'd learned from past mistakes! I didn't allow myself to create any more victims! I accepted the guilt of the past, which the beast represented, when I took it into myself. And then I pushed people to a great enough distance so that nobody would get so close as to be harmed that way again! I learned that lesson last time I was here... I didn't even allow Rhodey, my best friend, to know when I was cryogenically frozen! I kept them all at arm's distance! I kept them all away! I didn't let them get hurt anymore! No more victims, I did it all alone!!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw something move. He turned his gaze away from the approaching beast and saw that his old friends, lovers, and family -- his other victims -- had caught up to him. With the products of his failure on one side of him, and a hulking manifestation of his guilt on the other, about to land the killing blow, Tony Stark thought that all was lost at last. He no longer tried to evade his old friends; they could do what they liked now.

A loud "SHRAK!" filled the air. Tony looked up, assuming that it had come from the creature. Instead, the beast staggered backwards. "But then where? Who?" thought a confused Tony Stark. He turned around and saw that blast had originated from the hand of Kevin O'Brien, who was now fully garbed in the green armor of the Guardsman.

"There ye go, boyo!" cried Kevin. "Get on up and fight, Tony m'lad!"

Incredulously, Tony took in the scene before him. It wasn't just Kevin wearing pieces of powered armor. All of his dear friends now had some version of Iron Man gauntlets, and they all began firing upon the beast relentlessly. Their blasts held the monster at bay, preventing him from reaching where Tony lay amongst the flotsam.

Half disbelieving what he saw, Tony got back on his feet. Smoke was accumulating in the air from the repeated repulsor blasts. The beast howled with rage, but could go no further. Yet, it was not forced to retreat, either, as Tony's friends remained locked in a stalemate with Tony's guilt. Tony gathered a length of the strange wire that permeated all the corridors in this nightmare. With it in hand, he began flying towards the creature. Apparently, the repulsors fired by his friends did not effect him. Tony had never been able to defeat the beast with brute strength, and now he had learned that accepting more guilt into himself wasn't the answer, either. With no known way to destroy the beast, perhaps confining it was the only solution. Or, perhaps it was simply the best remedy for right now. This was Tony's second trip to the creature's lair, and he had learned something different about himself each time. Perhaps he would find himself here again at some point in the future. That was a problem for another day, though. Tony made an iron lasso out of the thick metal cord and used it to catch the beast, as it focused on shielding itself from the repulsor barrage. Tony then flew in circles around the behemoth as he roped it up until it was paralyzed.

The wall of repulsor blasts was lowered, and an array of cheers emanated from below.

"Good job, son!" his father cried out. "I'm proud of you!"

"Nice work, Tony!" said Morley Erwin.

"I am always happy to helps my good friends, the Iron Mans!" called the Carnelian ambassador. Tony realized how silly the portly man looked wearing armored gauntlets.

Encouraged by his friends' support, Tony had a whimsical thought. He turned back to the immobilized beast and landed a single powerful punch on the center of its chest. The bound creature shattered, and its fragments were scattered to the wind. Tony didn't doubt that it would reform and return. This was a creature of the mind, ordinary rules didn't apply here. Still, shattering it had felt good!

"What a potent experience!" Tony thought, as he began rising up through the layers of consciousness. "I can see so many things more clearly. I was blinding myself, by refusing to allow people to become too close. I didn't want anyone else getting hurt by being involved with me. But that meant pushing myself beyond human tolerances, and hurting those around me in a different way: by refusing to trust them or accept their assistance! Trying to do it all alone only made the beast stronger, and made me push everyone away even harder. Once I stopped pushing them, once I allowed them to make their own choices, my friends didn't blame me for their deaths... they wanted to help me. It was when I didn't allow them to choose for themselves that they seemed so filled with rage!"

As he passed through the levels of consciousness which were nearer to the surface, Tony recognized a strange code he had seen once before. He had reached level of his artificial nervous system, the strange cybernetic network he'd helped to program upon being revived from cryogenic suspension. Tony was a genius with ordinary computers and electronics, but this cybernetic mesh of a nervous system was half organic. Being as much biological as it was mechanical, it fell somewhat outside his areas of expertise. That was why he had been unable to do a perfect job in the initial programming. The imperfect work was sufficient for his automatic functions (like breathing and heartbeat) to work well, but his ability to perform more strenuous physical activities was severely limited. In the aftermath of having removed some of his mental blinders, Tony found that he could comprehend even more of his own inner workings than previously. He opted to halt his ascent to the outside world temporarily in order to make some repairs to the programs.

"Aha! This was where the feedback from Ultimo damaged me." Tony proclaimed. "But that shouldn't be too hard to fix from in here." Stark felt positively jubilant at the way things made so much more sense now. "And here's the code relaying messages to my hands and arms. And here's the blockage that kept me from walking." Being confined to a wheelchair was especially galling to Stark, as it was an experience he'd had once before, when Kathy Dare had shot him and damaged his spinal cord.

In the end, Tony found that there was still much that he couldn't fix right now. He made the repairs that he could, which was work beyond the capabilities of all but the most skillful programmers on the planet, and he took some mental notes of code that might be further optimized later. Other segments of this organic software were complete mysteries, though, due to their biological nature. "Those parts," he thought, "I might need to let Hank Pym have a look at. Biosystems are much more up his alley than mine!"

"In any case, this is all I can do right now. Ultimo still needs to be stopped, and so I can't spend more time here." Pleased with the work he had accomplished, and certain he would return someday to this inner place, Tony resumed his rise and prepared to exit this mindscape and re-enter the physical world.

Erica was anxiously monitoring Tony's body, watching its vital signs fluctuate. A few minutes ago, there was a moment where his brain waves nearly flat-lined. Now, by some means she didn't understand, things looked better than ever. She couldn't truly comprehend what was going on, and she knew it. In fact, she wondered if anyone on Earth could.

Tony's eyes opened abruptly, much to Erica's astonishment. "Tony?" she asked.

"I'm back," he replied. "Back, and better than before!" He could feel new strength in his limbs. "What's the situation with Ultimo?" Despite his own elation at being alive and feeling more physically intact, Tony's concern was immediately centered on protecting the lives that Ultimo would otherwise snuff out.

"I really don't know. I've been in Stark Medical all night, taking care of you! Speaking of which, there are about a bazillion tests that I want to run. You nearly died just a few minutes ago and that has me worried."

"Not now, Erica. Soon, but not yet. I need to get help from Iron Man."

"Oh." Erica fell silent. He didn't know. Of course he didn't. She wasn't sure how to break the news to Tony, so she decided to be blunt. "I hate to tell you this, Tony, but around the same time as your seizure, your Iron Man robot was reported destroyed."

Tony was confused for a moment, before it occurred to him that if the NTU-150 had been ripped apart, it made sense for people to conclude Iron Man had been a robot. Well, perhaps this was the best way to convince Erica to release him from the tyrannical custody of the dreaded neurosurgeon.

"I have another Iron Man robot, Erica, and I think this one can stop Ultimo. But you've got to let me go and activate him!"

"Tony, you need to stay here. Your life is in danger."

"Erica, thousands of lives are in danger if I don't do this. Don't stop me, and I promise I'll return soon." He briefly considered threatening to fire her if she impeded his departure, but immediately disregarded the idea. She was more his friend than his employee and such a threat would hold no weight. As a world class surgeon, she could easily find work elsewhere, and the only thing he would accomplish would be the alienation of another friend. Given what he had just learned, Tony Stark was now making a conscious effort not to alienate any more friends.

Erica sighed. She didn't want to see Tony risk death, but he had a point. "Okay, then. Go. But come back soon."

Tony flashed a brilliant smile at her, calling on all of the legendary Stark charm. "You have my word on it, Doc!" He used his arms to gain some leverage on the bed, then lifted himself up, and into his waiting hoverchair. He was pleased to see that he could do this himself. Not too long ago, squeezing a ball in his hand had been difficult. Now he was even somewhat mobile. It took effort, to be sure, but no outside help.