“I won’t be doing any damage,” countered Friday. “I am simply going to drop into an orphanage, clean out the rats, and scoop up my sister.”

  Tony might have gotten through to Saoirse had two figures not trotted down the ramp into the dungeon area. One was Flamethrower Guy, and the other was a harmless-looking bespectacled gent with neat hair and beard. This, Tony presumed, was the philanthropist Chen.

  “Miss Tory, we are having some problems with the right gauntlet,” he said, his accent faintly Chinese. “It will not activate.”

  Saoirse frowned. “It should work fine; there was no systems damage.”

  Tony barked a laugh. “Uh-huh. No systems damage. Why would there be? All you did was cover me in magnets and drag me across an island.”

  “Can you fix it?” asked Chen calmly.

  “It isn’t broken,” Saoirse insisted. “Stark’s up to something.”

  Chen seemed unperturbed. “Can you fix it?”

  Saoirse talked really slow. “Mr. Chen, this is space-age engineering. We’re in a medieval castle. No one can fix it here, but like I said, it isn’t broken.”

  Vanger moved close to Chen and whispered in his ear, all the while staring murderously at Stark.

  “Nice nose job you got there, sparky,” said Tony. “Bet that stings a little, huh?”

  Cole Vanger balled his fists and stepped forward, but Chen halted him with the merest dip of his chin.

  “Can you do it without Stark’s gauntlet, Mr. Vanger?” asked Chen.

  Vanger nodded, the fury never leaving his eyes, and Tony predicted that when kill-Tony-time came, as he was certain it would, this guy would be at the front of the volunteer line, priming his flamethrowers.

  “Yeah, I can do it, chef,” he said to Chen. “You bet I can. I got my own helmet and my own gauntlet. My gauntlet’s better, as a matter of fact. All this does is save us time.”

  Saoirse was a little puzzled. “Do what? What are you talking about, Cole?”

  Chen was placating. “Nothing, dear child. Just small operational details.”

  But Saoirse had picked up on the mood change. “What’s going on, Mr. Chen? Cole doesn’t need a gauntlet. I’m the one who’ll be flying the suit.”

  Chen steepled his fingers. “As I said, child, small operational details.”

  Stark stuck his oar in. “Come on, guy, why don’t you fess up? Tell the kid how dumb she’s been.”

  Chen smiled. “Dumb? This child has been dumb? She cyberstalked you for months. She brought the Iron Man package halfway across the world and rendered it inoperable. She did with a laptop and headset what every hacker in the world has been attempting for years. And she is, as you say, dumb? If that is so, then you are dumb squared.”

  “Dumb squared,” said Tony. “Math jokes. Cute.”

  Chen’s smile grew a few white teeth wider. “Jokes, yes, I am most happy. You are about to make me a lot of money, Mr. Tony Stark.”

  Saoirse’s balloon was deflating and whistling as it fell. “Money? What are you talking about, Mr. Chen?”

  Chen’s smile was replaced with an irritated frown. “Be quiet, you buzzing bee of a child. The adults are talking now. Our little charade is over.”

  Most teens probably would have kept spouting questions, but Saoirse Tory knew enough to realize that more information would not lead to increased happiness. In fact, she suspected that the more she knew about how she had been duped, the more of a duped dope she would feel.

  So she ran, dodging Cole Vanger’s grabbing fingers but unfortunately heading straight into the arms of Spin Zhuk, who had just walked onto the ramp.

  Spin stashed Saoirse under one arm, ignoring the teenager’s struggles.

  “I am guessing that the jig is, as they say, up, no?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Chen.

  “Whatever you’re planning,” shouted Saoirse, “it won’t work without me, Chen.”

  Chen sighed and unbuttoned his shirt. Underneath he wore a vest of molded padding, which had lent him his portly aspect.

  “This is Chen,” he said, undoing the Velcro straps and stripping off the fat suit. “Helpful, comforting Chen. Chen, who is concerned for orphans in Port Verdé. Chen the philanthropist, who allowed himself to be located by clever Saoirse Tory. Chen, who will do anything to help poor Saoirse Tory recover her sister. Chen, who is prepared to bankroll a mercy mission. That is Chen.”

  Chen seemed to stand taller than he had before, and his muscular chest was adorned with an intricate dragon tattoo.

  “Do not refer to me as Chen from this moment on.” From his pockets, the man formerly known as Chen took ten rings and placed them on specific fingers.

  “Here it comes,” said Tony.

  The man who had been Chen glared at Saoirse with intense green eyes.

  “From this moment on,” he said, “you may call me the Mandarin.”

  “Crud,” swore Tony, sliding to the floor of his cell. “We are toast.”

  What’s the story, Saoirse Tory?

  This rhyming question had followed Saoirse around school since she was five years old. Thanks to her grandfather’s home tutoring on their private island, the precocious young Saoirse was already able to read by the time she landed in Kilmore school from Little Saltee, which earned her a reputation as a bit of a M.O.D.O.K. Her teacher took to asking her, “What’s the story, Saoirse Tory?” whenever her classmates from the mainland were unable to answer a question, which was often. If it had not been the young teacher’s first year out of college, she might have anticipated that the other students would turn her affectionate rhyme into a taunt.

  “What’s the story, Saoirse Tory?” became a stick to beat Saoirse with whenever she volunteered an answer or even corrected a teacher.

  Thus it was unfortunate that Tony Stark happened upon the rhyme as they sat side by side on the cell floor—both now prisoners.

  “So, kid. Saoirse Tory, right? Well, tell me: what’s the story, Saoirse Tory?”

  Saoirse groaned. “I never heard that one before.”

  “Hey, I’m a little off my game, okay? Some know-it-all teen got conned by the most notorious assassin-terrorist type on the planet, and here I am in a cell.”

  “You got conned first, boss,” Saoirse retorted.

  Tony disagreed. “Technically, you were conned first, if you think about it.”

  “Let’s say we both got conned. One of us has to be mature.”

  “Whatever, stupid face,” said Tony maturely.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, both turning their not inconsiderable brains to the problem of being incarcerated by a notorious murderer. When Saoirse couldn’t figure an immediate way out, she turned to Stark.

  “Go on, ask me,” she said.

  “Ask you what?”

  “You know what. You’re dying to.”

  Tony was dying to, so he did. “Okay, kid. Lay it out for me. How did you do it? People have been trying to jailbreak the Iron Man system for years. It’s a constant thing. I’ve had entire government sections devoted to just that, and some Irish teenager manages it from an ancient ruin on an island. I can’t believe you’re that smart, so how did you do it?”

  Saoirse had been dying to tell just as much as Tony had been dying to ask, so she said, “First, I am that smart, smart enough to build my own operations center on the island. And second, I used something called game theory. Did you ever hear of that, boss?”

  “Sure,” said Tony. “Game theory. The study of strategic decision making. John Nash. Won the Nobel Prize, right?”

  “That’s him. Well, I expanded on his theories.”

  “You expanded on John Nash?”

  “It wasn’t hard. Anyway, in simple terms—”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “To make it simple, to solve an equation or problem, sometimes you need to go after the elements that are not yet in play and wait.”

  Tony actually slapped his forehead. “Of course! You went directly after Friday.”

  “I had to intern for a month and do a hell of a lot of snooping, but eventually I found out that the artificial intelligences were stored in your own private lab.”

  “So you came by one evening.”

  “That night I came over with the Port Verdé proposal. Remember how upset I was when you turned me down?”

  “I do. Girls always cry around me; I don’t know what it is.”

  “Yeah, boohoo. I was so devastated I had to use your bathroom.”

  “By the lab,” said Tony.

  “Yeah, the specs to your house are online, you know. Your security system is pretty basic. So I froze the cameras, turned up the heat to fox the thermals, and spiked the Friday disk, which was, believe it or not, lying on top of your desk.”

  Tony winced. “Right on the desk, huh? That seems a little careless in hindsight.”

  He recalled the night now, some months previous—an unusually wet night for California, with low barreling clouds rumbling across the Pacific’s surface. Tony had been about to turn in when the high school intern from Stark showed up at his gate begging for ten minutes of his time. So he let her in and she laid out this plan she had for Iron Man to fly down to Fourni’s Port Verdé and eject a pirate gang from a girls orphanage on the city limits. And while he was there, perhaps he could also rescue her sister.

  It was a heartbreaking situation but one in which Tony Stark couldn’t interfere right then; the new president was making real strides in Fourni, and it would not do for Iron Man to upset the apple cart before the leader could carry out his own plan. So he had gently turned the intern down and called an Uber to take her home. The poor thing had been utterly distraught and sobbed her little heart out in the basement restroom.

  Yeah, fake sobbed while spiking my disk.

  “You were convincing, I’ll give you that, kid,” he said now. “Crying your eyes out.”

  “That wasn’t all fake,” said Saoirse. “My sister was a prisoner. She still is.”

  “So you came back home and waited for me to plug Friday into the suit.”

  “Exactly. But you were really plugging me in. And you never suspected a thing. Tony Stark actually thought the Friday program was evolving, which is pretty ridiculous, considering how crude it is. I actually made quite a few improvements.”

  “Don’t give yourself too much credit, kid,” said Tony, wounded a little by the crude jab. “You were still taken in by the Mandarin and his merry men.”

  “Yeah,” admitted Friday. “I guess I feel just about as stupid as you must. I let Liz down, I let Granddad down, and I suppose I delivered Iron Man into the wrong hands.”

  Tony chuckled. “You’re being too easy on yourself, Saoirse. You definitely delivered Iron Man into the wrong hands, no supposing about it. You’ve heard of the Mandarin, right? The most infamous terrorist operating today. He’s had his finger in almost every explosive pie of the last twenty years. He doesn’t care about collateral damage. In fact, the more bodies the merrier. I’ve been on his trail for a decade. I came close a couple of times, but he gave me the slip.”

  “I just wanted to save my sister,” said Saoirse. “My intentions were good.”

  “Said every misguided sap ever.”

  “That’s rich coming from you, sap.”

  The conversation petered out at this point as both occupants of the cell realized the futility of continuing to insult each other. The real issue was the pickle they were in, and thinking of it as a pickle seemed a little optimistic. It was more like a crucible of terror and deadly danger, and it seemed unlikely that either prisoner would escape unscathed. And not only that, but it seemed pretty obvious that others would die.

  The mood was made literally darker as the lights in their basement prison went out, leaving only the eerie glow of security monitors flickering on the walls. Tony must have nodded off for a while, so when Saoirse began speaking softly, it seemed almost as though she was communicating directly into his dreams.

  “Granddad raised us both. Me and Liz. Everyone else left the island but we three. My granddad was special. You would have liked him I think, boss. A show-off, just like you. The Ancient Mariner, we called him. But Francis was his real name. Francis Tory. He had plans for this island; it was going to be an ecological utopia. Wind and wave power. Totally self-sustaining. Such grand plans. We grew up believing in those plans. After a few years the school couldn’t keep up, so Granddad homeschooled us. He showed us how privileged we were to live here, and how it was our duty to help those less fortunate. I raised money for the Port Verdé Girls Home, but that wasn’t enough for Liz. She’s a real hero, boss, if you ever want to meet one. No metal suit, no magic hammer. Just a degree in nursing and a bag of inoculations. She went down to Fourni with the Red Cross and looked after those girls. I raised the money, and she made sure every cent was spent wisely.”

  Tony kept his eyes closed. “But then?” he asked. There would have to be a “but then.” In these stories there always was.

  Saoirse did not answer for a long moment, but Tony thought he heard a snuffle and it reminded him that behind the bluster and smarts, Saoirse Tory was still a child.

  “But then…” she said. “But then everything went wrong. A local gang took over the orphanage and kept Liz as their private nurse. Granddad and I tried every official channel to get her out, but he was old and the strain was too much for his poor heart. He died a year ago, and I knew that if I was put in the foster system I would never be able to help Liz. So I buried Francis Tory in his beloved vegetable patch and built a digital avatar of him to convince the mainland he was still alive.”

  “And that’s what gave you the idea to hijack my AI.”

  “Yes. I thought I would appeal to your humanity first, but you turned me down. I was desperate.”

  Tony was finding it difficult to stay annoyed at Saoirse Tory, even though she had most likely doomed them both. The kid was whip smart and had initiative coming out her ears. Also she could sling a good insult, which was something he had always appreciated.

  He sat up and looked Saoirse squarely in the eyes. “Okay, kid. We’ve all got family problems. What I need for you to do is bury that stuff deep down inside and let it fester for the time being. That’s gotta be healthy, right?”

  “How’s that working for you, daddy’s boy?”

  “Pretty good. I’m a billionaire playboy philanthropist and so on. But listen, soon this Mandarin guy is gonna realize that it’s not a great idea to incarcerate two brains like ourselves in the same room, so he’s gonna wander in here, do a little gloating, then probably drag me out. You, they’re going to keep alive until the mission is over.” Tony shifted, taking Saoirse by the shoulders. “Whatever happens, don’t break. They will tell you I’m dead, but don’t believe it. Tony Stark has a few tricks up his sleeve. My daddy, who I have all the issues with, once told me to play my cards close to my chest. ‘Never tell them your secrets,’ he said. So I’ve got some stuff going on that not even Friday knows about, understand?”

  Saoirse nodded. “You’re not dead,” she said.

  “That’s right, and neither are you. We fight till the end. We use our massive brains. This is your island, remember, so if you get loose, they will never find you.”

  “That’s right, they won’t.”

  “Find a way to contact me so I can come and rescue you.”

  “Or I can come and rescue you.”

  Tony almost said, “Yeah, sure, because you’ve been such a great rescuer so far,” but he thought that was a bit close to the bone, so he pulled it back to, “Yeah, sure. In your dreams.”

  Saoirse must have read the thought on his face, because she flinched as though struck and pulled away, then retreated into the corner of the cell and curled up like a wounded animal.

  The Mandarin made his appearance at first light with Leveque in tow, and as Tony had predicted, the chef was in a mood to gloat.

  “Good morning to you both. The day has come when I, the Mandarin, shall secure my reputation as the greatest agent of chaos the world has ever seen.”

  Tony rubbed his eyes. “No eggs this morning, young man. Just a pot of black coffee. It’s been a rough night.”

  The Mandarin paced in front of the cell like a general addressing his troops. “No, Stark. You cannot trump reality with your puerile American banter. In fact, if you interrupt again, I will have Freddie tase the child.”

  Leveque bristled with barely restrained sadism. Here was a guy who would step on a puppy, and Tony noticed that he wore the Iron Man gauntlet.

  “Per’aps I shock ze kid anyway,” he said.

  The Mandarin affected a pained expression. “Please, Monsieur Leveque. We do not shock children unless it is necessary.”

  Tony positioned himself between Leveque and Saoirse, as if that would save the girl.

  “You’re going after the environmental ministers, right, Mandarin? That’s the play?”

  The Mandarin clapped his hands. “Yes, of course that is the play. Mr. Vanger will fly right into that convention center and burn the place to the ground with his precious flamethrowers. We have replaced your gauntlet with one of his own, and the helmet is of our design, given the extraordinary size of Mr. Vanger’s skull. But we anticipated that.”

  “You’ll never make it past the security sweeps,” said Tony. “They’ll shoot him out of the sky.”

  “I think not,” said the Mandarin smugly. “All the protocols are stored on board and, fortunately, Miss Tory unlocked your securities.”

  Tony wished he had some way to puncture the Mandarin’s smug bubble, but for now it looked as though the terrorist held all the cards. The Convention Centre Dublin would run a few scans on a suit that was a couple of decades ahead of its equipment and then welcome Iron Man with open barricades and safeties on.

  “The real genius of this plan is the payment I receive,” continued the Mandarin. “Which is not financial. No, my reward will be far more reaching than mere money.”

  “Power,” guessed Tony.

  “Exactly,” said the Mandarin. “I have assembled evidence on each and every individual who has ever engaged my services. When this mission is complete, I will virtually own the new environmental ministers of several countries. I, the Mandarin, will control the fate of the world’s environment and which companies are contracted to clean it up.”