He felt like a god hovering above these unimportant ants. He longed to unleash the flamethrowers concealed in his gauntlets and watch the ants curl and squirm.

  I am the god of fire, he thought, and the notion pleased him. How can Stark want to serve these people when he could rule them?

  The Mandarin had rigged the suit so it would seem perfectly safe to anyone scanning it. No weapons would show up, naturally. Who would bring concealed weapons to an eco summit? The suit displayed Tony Stark’s bio readings, and a vocoder would transform Vanger’s voice so it was indistinguishable from Stark’s. Vanger had even studied Stark’s glib speech patterns so the content of any communications would not raise flags.

  Vanger could see them now through his helmet’s most excellent lenses: the snipers, the tight bunches of various police units, the world’s press eagerly awaiting the arrival of the great Tony Stark.

  Get ready, fools, thought Vanger. The world is about to be changed forever, and you are about to bear witness. Those of you who survive.

  The call he had been waiting for finally came through from Irish security.

  “Dublin calling, Mr. Stark. Inspector Conroy’s the name. Is that you in there, Tony?”

  Vanger accepted the call with a blink.

  “It sure is, buddy. Who were you expecting, Santa Claus?”

  The security officer laughed. “Well, sure. You’re a bit of a rogue and all that. Maybe you lent the rig out to one of your showbiz friends. It could be yer man Bruce Springsteen in there for all I know.”

  Vanger vowed that he would make sure to burn this man. “Check your scans, pal. One hundred percent Tony Stark.”

  “Hey, listen, while I have you on the line: you couldn’t let me have Taylor Swift’s number, could you? I’m a bit of a fan. Can’t get enough of the shaking it off. And I don’t even know what I’m shaking off, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, friend. Now, I think we have some environmental ministers waiting?”

  “Right you are, Tony boy. Let’s blow the roof off this old greenhouse. Come in at your own pace. You’re cleared for landing, as the fella said.”

  Vanger scowled behind the faceplate. This did not seem like regulation security jargon from Inspector Conroy, but then again he was about to go a little off book himself and unleash a tsunami of napalm and fire inside the atrium. The glass would melt like plates of ice on a barbeque grill.

  Vanger knew the names they called him behind his back: Firestarter. Matches boy. Fire bug. All to belittle his pyromania, to make it seem weak and unimportant.

  After today I will be taken seriously. Because I will have made my hellish mark.

  Vanger smiled fiercely and throttled back on the repulsors, gently lowering the Iron Man suit toward the pane in the atrium’s roof that was sliding open to grant him access.

  They will all burn for the Mandarin’s glory, he thought. And Iron Man will rise from the pyre of their charred bones, forever branded as a terrorist. Branded by Pyro.

  Tony was just in time to realize he was too late.

  He cursed and then said to himself, “Vanger is inside the convention center.”

  The situation was even worse than Stark had anticipated. Normally when Iron Man showed up at a shindig, the public also showed up in droves, which usually stoked Tony’s ego to what Rhodey called Diva Level Four. That day he had been hoping for a smaller turnout, given the potential for carnage, but it seemed that Iron Man was just as popular on this side of the Atlantic as he was in sunny California. If anything, he seemed more popular. The entire dockland was swamped with cheering crowds, and the famous Samuel Beckett Bridge, with its harp-shaped cabling, seemed too fragile to support the thousands of civilians teeming across it.

  My god, thought Tony. The human collateral damage would be unthinkable. Vanger could take down half the city.

  Prototony butted in on his thoughts. “I think he’s unsheathing.”

  It was true. Through the glass panes, Tony could see the armor peeling back on Vanger’s gauntlets, revealing the nozzles of his beloved fire breathers underneath. Twin blue pilot lights appeared at the tips.

  “Put me through to him,” commanded Tony.

  “I don’t see what for,” said Prototony. “This guy isn’t for talking down.”

  “I’m not trying to talk him down,” said Tony. “I’m trying to distract him.”

  “Putting you through now, T-Star.”

  “And how about a little combat music?”

  “Any particular request?”

  Tony didn’t have to think about it for long. It was time to bring out his fight song of choice.

  “Oh, I think we need something Canadian.”

  Cole Vanger was feeling all-powerful, as though the fuel in his pipes was his own life’s blood. In a metaphorical way it was, because Vanger had spent years tweaking his very own flamethrower cocktail, which included oil, napalm, and a smidge of jet fuel. It came out of the nozzle clean and would burn a hole through sheet steel. And inside this structure, which was basically an oven, his unholy flames would scour these people down to the very bone. But not Vanger; he would be safe in the suit, and he thought that those moments, inside his beloved fire, would be the happiest of his life.

  Vanger activated his pilot lights and was literally one inch from unleashing fiery hell when an anthemic guitar riff burst from his earpieces.

  Cole Vanger knew the classic rock piece—“Tom Sawyer” by Rush.

  “What is this?” he shouted.

  The volume in his ears was deafening. Who could hijack this helmet?

  Cole Vanger’s sudden suspicion was confirmed by the voice in his ears.

  “I bet you’re putting it together right about now, Vanger,” said Tony Stark, who had somehow escaped his fate.

  “Stark!” roared Vanger, furious that his moment was being delayed. “Where are you?”

  “Why don’t you look up and find out, sparky?”

  Vanger obligingly did as he was told, which was when the Iron Man Medi-suit crashed through the atrium at ground level and blindsided Vanger from below.

  Classic Stark misdirection.

  Tony was all, “I bet you’re putting it together” and “Why don’t you look up and find out, sparky?” The usual patter, in other words. But inside the ambulance suit he was sweating mightily and feeling very uncertain about his imminent future and that of the thousands of spectators.

  All Vanger needs to do is get off one burst from his flamethrowers and there’ll be a wide swath of casualties.

  And even though he wouldn’t be pulling the trigger, so to speak, Tony knew he would be indirectly responsible.

  Indirectly? I think you’re being a bit easy on yourself.

  It was true. The suit was his; ergo, the responsibility was his.

  With great power…and so on and so forth.

  And if there was one thing Tony had always hated, it was responsibility.

  So better make sure no one dies here today.

  It was science for dummies that fire hated water, so Tony’s plan was to submerge Vanger until his flames went out, and this worked fine initially.

  They collided in the air above the environmental ministers, who did not react as quickly as Tony had hoped. In fact, they smiled and clapped as though this was another part of the show, until their security teams hustled them toward various bulletproof limos parked at various strategic exits.

  Tony’s momentum bore both suits up and out, through a side pane and over the river. Already Tony could feel how mismatched the contest was. His own suit was lightweight in comparison with the augmented Party Pack. He felt like a monkey wrestling an elephant. All he had going for him was surprise and guile.

  They tumbled through the air, Tony punching Vanger as they went. Having a lot more flight hours under his belt than the other man, Tony’s reactions were better attuned to in-air combat, and he got in a good dozen strikes before Vanger even realized what was happening. Tony would have liked to have done a little more damage, but he only managed to crack his enemy’s chest plate.

  “This is great!” enthused Prototony. “I am loving this. Let that sucker have it, T-Star. Put that bad boy down.”

  “Shut up and manipulate my legs,” grunted Tony. “Put those knee pads to work. And find me a weak spot.”

  “Legs and weak spot,” said Prototony, ignoring the fact that he had just been ordered to shut up. The AI set Tony’s knees pistoning into Vanger’s midsection at a speed that would have utterly pulverized both men’s bones had they not been wearing armor.

  “Are we fighting?” asked Vanger, once he had control of his wits. “’Cause I can’t feel a thing.”

  Tony battled on. He knew that the relatively puny force mustered by his engines couldn’t do much damage to the souped-up Party Pack, but he didn’t see how he had any choice. It was either fight or sit back and watch his creation wipe out some of the most important people in the world.

  Keep talking, he thought as he punched. Let me find that weak spot.

  And there would be a weak spot. Tony Stark knew engineering, and there was no way to attach that many add-ons without overloading a stress point somewhere. The Iron Man suits were marvels of precision construction, arrived at after dozens of prototypes, many of the earlier ones having simply shaken themselves to pieces. The hip bone was connected to the thigh bone, as everybody knew, except with the Iron Man suits there were a thousand hip bones, so to speak, so even the slightest change in repulsor calibration could have catastrophic effects on the suit’s system.

  They tumbled through the morning sky and into the dark waters of the Liffey, where the pair clunked along the riverbed. Prototony carried out his orders with gusto, and Tony was glad that he couldn’t feel anything from the waist down or his life would have been one long scream.

  “Is that it?” said Vanger, and he seemed to be enjoying the battle now that he was pretty sure Tony Stark had nothing much in the tank. “You wanna play tiddledywinks, Stark? Maybe knit a few sweaters for some little dogs?”

  This was good material, but Tony did not rejoin. He was too busy worrying about all the alerts suddenly flashing up on his screen.

  PRESSURE. OXYGEN. BATTERY. IMMINENT ENGINE FAILURE.

  Come on, P-Tone, he thought, find me a hole.

  “What would happen if I actually hit you?” wondered Vanger, except he wasn’t actually wondering, he was foreshadowing. Without waiting for Tony to respond, he delivered a massive blow to the ambulance suit’s solar plexus, sending Tony skidding backward through the mud, the suit’s fingers and toes scraping deep furrows.

  “Oooh,” said Prototony, “that’s gotta hurt, T-Star. I am so glad not to be human right now. Even my terabytes are wincing.”

  Tony’s legs were beginning to ache, and he was more than likely concussed and probably in shock, so he was not capable of making responsible decisions. Which became immediately obvious when he coughed and said:

  “Find me a way to take this nut job down.”

  Prototony actually laughed. “Take him down? It was going good for a few seconds there, but we are done, baby. Lie down and breathe slow till the boat gets here.”

  Through the murky water, Tony saw Vanger point a finger.

  “Stay there, Stark,” he said, his voice buzzing in Tony’s busted earpieces. “I got a few people to fry, and I’ll be right back.”

  Without another word, he blasted out of the river into the air above.

  It’s usually me doing that, thought Tony. Then he asked Prototony, “Did you find me a hole?”

  “Yes and no. I mean, I don’t even wanna mention it, because there’s nothing you can do.”

  “Mention it,” said Tony, routing power to the boots. “Mention it fast.”

  “Okay, take it easy. I found a hole. In fact, I found a hundred, which is what makes it so impossible. The flamethrower’s pipework is woven through the suit. Those pipes get super hot super quick, unless they’re vented, which they are. Whoever modified the suit hacked vents right out of the armor.”

  Stark was miles ahead of him. “So if I could cover some of the vents, then the suit would be compromised.”

  “Compromised to hell and back,” said Prototony. “But you would have to cover all the vents, and the flamethrowers themselves. And I can’t see any way to do that.”

  “Yes, you can,” said Tony, and he blasted off in Vanger’s wake.

  The dunking had not affected Vanger’s flamethrowers whatsoever. After all, what kind of idiot would fly a mission over water to a rain-sodden country like Ireland without waterproof equipment? A total idiot was the answer to that one. Cole Vanger was many things, but a total idiot was not one of them—not when it came to his equipment. Sure, he could fly off the handle at times, had a fiery disposition, ha-ha. But when he was inside the storm of action, Vanger was the calmest person in the field. Tussling with Tony Stark underwater might be too much for some people’s nerves but not Cole Vanger’s. He had a job to do and the equipment to do it. Vanger had confidence, too, in truckloads. He wasn’t smug in his abilities. Smug button men didn’t tend to last very long in his world. But Vanger was assured and could adapt to changing situations.

  Like now, for example. Plan A was obviously a total bust. The environmental ministers had scattered to their cars. But unfortunately for them, the crowd congestion was so severe that there was only one way out of the area: across the Samuel Beckett Bridge. Even as Vanger had been rupturing Stark’s innards with a punch, he had been plotting his upward arc so he would emerge from the river level with the bridge. One sweep of his flamethrowers and he could blow a hole in that bridge bigger than the one in the ozone layer those guys were trying to plug.

  Inside the helmet, Vanger smiled. That’s how relaxed he was, making jokes and stuff.

  Vanger shucked his forearms and the armored panels peeled back, revealing the pilot lights underneath.

  “Time to fry,” he said, which he was considering adopting as his catchphrase, and he sent twin jets of burning liquid and flame surging into the cables over the bridge, enjoying the groans and piano-string twangs as they stretched and snapped. He could have simply melted the cars themselves—and he would do that momentarily, just to be sure—but he could not help enjoying one extra blast of beautiful liquid fire.

  For a moment he was mesmerized by the dancing flames. He could see little demons writhing inside every blob of melting metal before he blinked and unleashed his flaming jets once more.

  Tony surged out of the water in time to see the first jet cut through the cabling. Luckily, Vanger seemed to drift off for a moment; he just hung there rather than finish the job right away, giving Tony’s battered suit the second it needed to use the last of its power to draw level with him.

  Just as Vanger cut loose with his deadly fuel, Tony closed the fingers of his gloves over Pyro’s nozzles and released the Medi-suit’s payload of fire extinguisher, which was housed in twin pressure units in the gauntlets and funneled through the fingertips. The air propellant drove the foam firefighting agent from Tony’s fingertips, coating Vanger’s flamethrowers and temporarily extinguishing the flames. Furthermore, the foam hardened on contact with the air, forming a seal over the nozzles.

  The cars on the bridge were safe—for the moment. And it would be a very short moment, like maybe one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, tops.

  Unless Tony Stark had another trick up his sleeve. Which he did. Literally.

  “You haven’t saved anybody, Stark,” said Vanger. “I will burn away your pathetic gunk and burn you to a crisp.”

  And Tony Stark said, “Transfer protocol twenty-nine. Personal security override.”

  “Twenty-nine?” said Vanger. “What the hell does that mean?” and even as he asked, the self-proclaimed Pyro was turning up the heat, burning through the shell covering his flamethrowers.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” said Tony.

  “Transfer protocol twenty-nine?” said Prototony. “Come on, T-Star. Don’t make me do it. I don’t wanna be known as the AI who lost the boss.”

  “Do it,” said Tony with barely a shake in his voice. “Do it now.”

  So Prototony did as he was told.

  Actually, there was only one transfer protocol, not twenty-nine. Tony had named the operation after the length of the longest snake ever verifiably measured, a South American anaconda that tipped the ruler at over twenty-nine feet. The point being nothing to do with the length of the thing per se but the fact that the measurement was taken from an intact shed snakeskin. The point being that in times of necessity, the anaconda could shed its skin. The Medi-suit had a similar protocol in that it could be transferred from one patient to another with extreme rapidity if circumstances dictated. For example, in a multiple-victim scenario where one patient had been stabilized and a second was in critical condition, the Medi-suit was configured to eject patient A and cocoon patient B if it deemed that patient A was in less need of medical treatment than patient B. That was most definitely not the case now, but Tony Stark had overridden the suit’s autonomy with his own voice, so Prototony had no option but to obey.

  The Medi-suit made a noise that could only be described as a whang as every plate in the suit reversed itself and crawled up Vanger’s frame, completely encasing his own suit, seals stretching to cover the extra bulk. Cole Vanger did not even have time to realize what was happening before his weight increased drastically and his every vent was blocked.

  Tony’s plan was simple. Vanger was now too heavy to fly and his nozzles were permanently closed off, so the double-plated suit would simply send him sinking like a stone to the bottom of the river until harbor police could get some divers down there.

  “Give it up, Vanger,” Tony shouted into Pyro’s faceplate. “You’re done here.” And then he could hold on no longer and fell back toward the freezing water, satisfied—as much as he could feel satisfaction in his bashed-up state—that he had saved many lives and not taken a single one.

  But what Tony didn’t know and couldn’t know was that Vanger had made some modifications to the suit that seemed like a good idea at the time but were about to make him rather hot under the collar.