It had occurred to Saoirse Tory about thirty minutes before Spin Zhuk came down the steps that she herself had been a little worried about the springs in the cell’s bedframe when Tony Stark had been a prisoner.

  You mean back when the man was alive? whispered her conscience, but Saoirse ignored it, electing to focus on the current opportunity: springs.

  Springs could absorb and store energy and had a certain amount of elasticity, so they were potential tools in the hands of a man like Stark. She had allayed her own fears by keeping eyes on Stark for the duration of his imprisonment. But now there were no eyes on her and she had the same potential tools in her hands. And was she not the girl who had outsmarted the smarty-pants?

  With industrious determination Saoirse had unclipped the springs and formed a rope, which she had secured at both ends to the bed frame after looping it around one of the cell bars. Then, using all her strength, Saoirse had hiked the bed backward inch by inch until the springs hummed in protest like banjo strings. When she could go no farther, Saoirse had anchored two legs of the bed in the flagstone grooving and kicked dust over the visible springs. The dust was not magic, so it didn’t make the spring rope invisible, but if you weren’t looking for it you might not see it.

  She’d stood back and surveyed her little trap.

  “This is ridiculous, Saoirse,” she had said aloud, unaware that just recently another genius type in the vicinity had been talking to himself and making traps. “When Tony Stark was in Afghanistan, he built the Iron Man prototype out of some aluminum foil and a triple A battery, and what are you building? A spring bed. You should be ashamed to call yourself an inventor. There’s a one-in-a-million chance that this will work. And even if it does, there might be more than one terrorist still on the island, and even if by some miracle there is only one, the springs might do nothing more than give them a pain in the neck. And I don’t mean literally, more’s the pity.”

  Then she’d heard Spin Zhuk’s footsteps tapping their way downstairs and so had dropped to the stone floor and wiggled her torso oh so carefully under the bed, all too aware that one stray knock would set off the springs.

  “Careful now, Saoirse girl,” she had whispered, and then stopped talking to herself altogether. After all, she was trying to give the impression that she wasn’t there.

  Spin Zhuk flipped the bed and saw Saoirse Tory lying underneath, just as she had suspected.

  “Aha!” Spin had planned to say. “You cannot be fooling me with the childish trickery.”

  That was the plan all right, but what she actually said was, “Ah…ooooooorgh,” with a little spit at the end of it, for the bedspring plan worked better than Saoirse could have hoped despite its inherent dopeyness. When the legs popped out of the slab grooving, the tension in the springs caused the metal to contract desperately, making the frame bunny-hop at a pretty miserable rate of acceleration that would have caused Spin Zhuk zero discomfort had it not been for one thing: the frame hit her square in the throat, almost crushing her trachea. And there is not a creature on the planet that can shake off a metal bar to the trachea, hence the “Ah…ooooooorgh.”

  “Sorry,” said Saoirse. Then she was up and out the door, taking full advantage of whatever head start the spring trap had earned her.

  I should have locked the cell door, she thought halfway up the ramp, with a square of daylight looming temptingly above her. But then a bullet knocked a chunk of rock from the arch over her head and all Saoirse’s thoughts were replaced with a single imperative: Run!

  Obviously, Spin Zhuk’s injury had not inconvenienced her as much as Saoirse had hoped.

  Saoirse raced up the ramp into the morning sunshine and was relieved to find that there were no more terrorists to dodge for the moment.

  If the courtyard had been stuffed with the Mandarin’s gang, then that would have been the end of my little escape attempt.

  Saoirse had been afraid of a terrorist welcome, but if she was honest with herself, her darkest fear was that she would find Tony Stark’s body strung from the battlements, dead eyes staring at her accusingly.

  “You did this, you eegit,” the raven on his shoulder would probably say. “You did this.”

  Saoirse banished these thoughts and concentrated on running. Spin Zhuk was mere steps behind, and the bullets in her pistol could travel at over a thousand meters per second, as opposed to her own running speed, which was probably a pathetic ten kilometers per hour or so.

  Yes, but bullets can only travel in straight lines, thought Saoirse, ducking through the collapsed arch and swinging a right, hugging the prison’s outer wall. Now Spin would have to get really close before she could get a clear shot.

  And this is my island, she thought. I know every headland and rock pool.

  More important for the plan she was developing on the hoof, Saoirse Tory knew the blowhole sequence.

  And what’s a blowhole?

  Hopefully, Spin Zhuk would not know.

  While Saoirse was running for her life around the Little Saltee prison’s perimeter wall, Tony Stark was flying in his airborne life jacket toward Dublin’s docklands, where no doubt Cole Vanger was closing in on the eco summit, laden with deadly cargo.

  “We could just ping the suit,” suggested Prototony. “Then I can plot a course right to her.”

  “My god, you are so dense,” snapped the real Tony. “That suit is loaded with sensors. If we ping the suit, the suit will know. If the suit knows, then Vanger knows I am on his tail and he will go operational.”

  “He’s pretty operational already,” said Prototony, a bit sulkily.

  “You can sulk now?” said Tony. “What kind of tone is that? I don’t sound like that.”

  “It’s one of my learned behaviors. For when Shoshona doesn’t like her omelet or something like that.”

  Tony rolled his eyes and flew onward, his altitude so low he almost skimmed the wave tops. Flying in the swell was slower and trickier, but it meant he was virtually indistinguishable from a dolphin or small craft even if Vanger was keeping watch, which he probably was not. And there was no AI on board to run a scan for Mr. Pyro.

  “Stay off-line,” Tony ordered his Medi-suit. “Plot a course from onboard maps. We’ll have to rely on direct line of sight.”

  “Human vision?” said Prototony, horrified. “What is this, the Stone Age? I have perfectly good prism lenses, installed for picking out survivors in rough seas. Why don’t we break out those bad boys?”

  “Two things,” said Tony. “First, never use the words bad boys again. You make me sound like a total jerk. And second, good idea. Go ahead and break out those bad boys.”

  “I’ve got a question for you, boss,” said Prototony. “You’re rocking this lightweight gear, and Vanger is packing serious firepower. How do you plan to stop him, even if we do get there in time?”

  “I won’t be kicking him with my broken legs, that’s for sure,” said Tony.

  “You’re avoiding the question, which does make you seem like a jerk. Don’t you have any ideas?”

  “I have a couple,” said Tony. “But they both end up with me being dead, which is not exactly an ideal scenario.”

  “Keep thinking then, T-Star.”

  “T-Star? What in god’s name is a T-Star?”

  “It’s your showbiz name. You take your first initial and add it to the first syllable of your second name. My showbiz name would be P-Tone, which is pretty cool. You can use that if you want.”

  “Gee, thanks, P-Tone. Are we, like, BFFs now?”

  “T-Star and P-Tone. It doesn’t get any tighter.”

  “I guess you don’t do sarcasm, Prototony?”

  “Nope. I’m sunny and current. I’m programmed to be permanently in Tony the Playboy mode. Just as the media might expect.”

  “Great. And whose genius idea was this? Mine, I suppose. Great move, wonder boy.”

  The Prototony upped the air-conditioning, wafting cool air across Tony’s damp brow. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re grumpy because your legs are shattered and you weren’t expecting to fly a mission in this suit. But I gotta tell you something, T-Star.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I am beyond excited. P-Tone and the big guy on an adventure together. This is going to be epic. Us fighting ourselves. A bit like when Brienne of Tarth fought the Hound.”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  “Game of Thrones. Hello? Brienne is like lady Dolph Lundgren, and the Hound is angry Everybody Loves Raymond’s brother.”

  Tony felt like crying. His legs were beginning to ache and this demented AI that he himself had programmed was force-feeding him entertainment trivia.

  “Okay. Whatever. A grand adventure.”

  “All for one, T-Star,” the Prototony enthused.

  “If we go down, we go down together, right?”

  “Not exactly. Your body will be crushed and burned beyond recognition. I’ve been backed up onto the Tanngrisnir’s system.”

  “So much for ‘all for one.’” With a swipe of his glove Tony pulled up coordinates on his visor. “This is roughly where we need to be. It was supposed to be my holding spot while security scanned me for weaponry. Vanger will have to hold in that position or they’ll blast him out of the sky. What’s our ETA?”

  “Entertainment awards? I don’t think we have any.”

  “ETA!” shouted Tony. “Estimated time of arrival. You better wake up, P-Tone, or I’m gonna melt you down if we survive this.”

  “Wow. Someone needs a latté. Okay, Mr. Short Fuse. ETA four minutes.”

  Four minutes, thought Tony. That’s pretty quick. That’s most definitely in the immediate future.

  “Okay, give me whatever anesthetic and painkiller we have in the tank, and pump up my casts to maximum pressure.”

  Prototony obeyed the command. “It sounds like someone has a plan.”

  “I wish,” said Tony miserably. “I think my subconscious is onto something, but it won’t let me in on it until the last minute. Probably because it’s so monumentally stupid.”

  “I thought that I was your subconscious,” said Prototony, sulking again.

  Tony felt the local anesthetic flowing like ice water through his legs and he knew that he would have to operate the suit entirely with hand gestures.

  “Well,” he said, “if that’s the case, then send out the funeral invites, because we’re dead.”

  “You can be cruel, Tony Stark. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  Tony chuckled. “Yeah. My dad’s secretary, about a million years ago.”

  Little Saltee

  Saoirse Tory had spent every free moment on Little Saltee with her grandfather, and it was he who had taught her how to splice ropes, how to bait a lobster pot, and how to run the blowholes.

  “Running the blowholes. That was our sport, back in the old days,” Francis Tory had told her. “The golden days, if you ask me, before television got all those stations and children stopped eating lard. No one ever died doing it, and broken bones heal, don’t they?”

  Most kids would have closed their ears as soon as television started getting disrespected, but Saoirse had loved her granddad so much she would have listened intently to him reading the ingredients for tinned soup.

  “There’s a line of blowholes along the rocks between the harbor and White Rock. The idea was for a group of us youngsters to pelt along at high tide and avoid the geysers. It’s all about timing.”

  “Did you ever win, Granddad?” Saoirse had often asked him, to which he would invariably pretend to be offended.

  “Did I ever win? Did this fella here ever win? I’m only the blooming record holder. Thirty seconds flat and still with dry britches. Olympics, my backside. I’d love to see that Quicksilver fella run the blowholes. That would sort him out.”

  So now Saoirse Tory would run the blowholes, but not just to beat her granddad’s record. This time her life was at stake, and possibly other lives as well.

  Saoirse balled her fists, bore down on her resolve, and swung away from the shelter of the prison’s outer wall and onto the wide flat shelf of granite. It rumbled with the passage of the Celtic Sea below and was pocked with a thousand treacherous rock pools.

  Thirty seconds, she thought. The longest half minute of my life. Or maybe the last one.

  Spin Zhuk had completely forgotten her earlier squeamishness.

  This child is causing such trouble with her ridiculous springs.

  Ridiculous but effective. The Mandarin’s disciples had spent so much time ensuring that Tony Stark did not escape that they had neglected to pay much attention to the child, and now she was gone.

  No. Not gone. Running.

  It seemed impossible that the Irish girl could escape. She had made a basic error in leaving cover. All Spin needed now was a clear shot. The only thing that prevented her taking the shot was the fine saltwater mist that fizzed over the rocks, recharged by the crashing waves.

  A little closer, thought Spin. This is all I need to be. Ten seconds and it is done.

  She followed Saoirse, running sure-footedly and without hesitation. As a child she had played on Kiev’s Zamkova Hora hill, so this flat stretch of rock presented little challenge.

  Strange, though, how the surface shook with the force of the ocean and how a low grumbling emanated from the rock chimneys like the mutterings of a dreaming ogre.

  Spin raised her weapon but did not fire. Not yet. On such a small island, the Mandarin would hear the shot, and if a second shot was needed, he would wonder why. Then she would be forced to admit she was in pursuit, and the entire embarrassing story would come out. And perhaps the Mandarin would be displeased. So one shot only, and she was not yet certain of her target, as now the infuriating girl was jinking from side to side in an unpredictable fashion—almost as if she did not wish to be killed.

  Or perhaps she is expecting something.

  At this moment, underneath the rock shelf, a low wave thundered in from the ocean and rolled through the cavity below—that one-in-ten perfect wave to fuel the blowholes. Then, as countless waves before it had, it punched the cave wall and its tremendous force was dispersed back along the shelf, sending columns of water shooting up through a dozen fissures to the surface.

  The sound is changing, thought Spin Zhuk. The ogre has awoken.

  Up ahead, Saoirse banked left a millisecond before a jet of hissing white water erupted where her feet had been. A moment later, another spout burst from a fissure, but Saoirse dodged that one, too, and Spin Zhuk could have sworn the girl was laughing.

  Crazy, thought Spin. The child is crazy.

  Then, with barely a hiss of warning, a waterspout erupted between Spin Zhuk’s feet and blasted along the length of her frame, cracking her jaw shut and knocking the gun from her hand. Spin staggered backward, which turned out to be a bad move, because she more or less sat on another waterspout, which lifted her bodily into the air. Fully ten feet up she went, flailing inside the translucent serpent until she managed to tumble herself out of its wet coils and flop breathless onto the slickened rocks.

  Two ribs cracked, she thought when the blowholes finally quieted and her breath returned. Two ribs at least.

  But there was nothing to be done for cracked ribs except to bind them, which she would do later and in secret.

  Spin rolled onto her side and looked to where the Irish girl had been.

  She winced in frustration and pain.

  Saoirse had disappeared. Of course. This was her island, and the resourceful girl would lose herself in it and never be found by a stranger.

  What now?

  How would Spin keep herself alive? First she had questioned the Mandarin, and now she had failed him. The Mandarin tested those who questioned him, but he did not tolerate failure. Legend had it that her boss had once strangled a lackey for serving him cardamom tea instead of hibiscus flower.

  Spin saw that her Sig Sauer had skittered no more than ten feet, so as quickly as her injuries and shakiness allowed, she hobbled across the rocks, snagged her weapon, and hurried away from the aquatic minefield before the blowholes could assault her once more.

  The girl was gone. And if she had sense, she would stay gone—hidden until her enemies had left.

  As far as anyone needed to know, the Irish child was dead. For if Saoirse Tory had died on these rocks, then Spin Zhuk would live.

  Spin Zhuk cocked her weapon and fired a single shot into the morning sky.

  Cole Vanger hovered over Dublin’s docklands convention center, with its distinctive glass-fronted atrium that bisected the building like a futuristic beer keg, crisscrossed with stairways and railings. The atrium had been specially modified to allow Iron Man access through the roof panels so he could descend slowly into the structure itself, down all eight floors, and land on a specially commissioned Ceadogán green earth rug, around which the environment ministers would be congregated, politely applauding. It would make for most excellent TV.

  “Idiots,” said Vanger under his breath, though he should not have said even that much. There were so many lasers scanning his suit now that barely a square inch was left unstrobed. Target lock had been acquired by two gunships in the harbor, and the Royal Air Force had been given special permission to hold a couple of Tornado jets two klicks out with missiles at the ready. Cole Vanger knew this was all pretty much standard security procedure, but he couldn’t help taking it a little personally, all the same.

  Each time a probe pinged the armor, the Iron Man sensors registered it, identified its source, and fed back the information that the scanning agency would expect to record. With all the computer alerts, he felt like he was hovering inside a xylophone.

  “Idiots,” said Vanger again; he couldn’t help it. How did these fools believe that their inferior technology could in any way outfox Stark’s mechanical marvel?