BOSTON SKIES

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Settle in. The workshop is awake. ⚙️

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The second shot hit the workbench where Morgan had been a moment earlier.

The pulse carved a glowing streak through the metal, melted two reagent flasks, and filled the lab with the acrid smell of burning plastic. Morgan slid sideways with help from the left actuator, but the suit still reacted like an animal that had just woken up: too fast with one movement, too slow with the next.

"Neural mapping at fifty-eight percent," T.O.N.Y. reported. "You've lost twelve percent of the protective material on your right shoulder."

"Will it come back?"

"Only what's still responding and within reach. Anything that burned away is gone."

The nearest agent advanced with his weapon raised. Morgan tried to form the shield again. The nanomaterial gathered on her forearm but left the side of her torso exposed. She understood the first limitation: she couldn't create metal out of thin air. She could only redistribute what she had.

The shot struck the plate, punched through the outer layer, and threw her against a cabinet.

Leo's alloy absorbed part of the impact. Her lungs took the rest.

"Morgan!" Maya shouted.

"Stay down!"

She got up before the pain could decide for her. The agent moved in to restrain her, relying on the weight of his own armor. Morgan couldn't fight like Natasha Romanoff, and she didn't have Tony's decades of improvisation behind her. But she knew how to study systems.

The man's armor had rigid joints behind the knees.

She fired her left wrist thruster at the floor. The thrust spun her farther than she'd intended, but her heel struck the joint. The agent's leg buckled. Morgan took advantage of his loss of balance, grabbed the rifle, and swung the barrel toward the ceiling before it fired.

The recoil drove them apart.

"Six for technique," T.O.N.Y. said. "Eight for creativity. Zero for risking a broken neck."

"You can fill out the report later."

The second agent aimed at Maya. Morgan reached out on instinct. Metal extended from her palm in a thin cable, latched onto the rifle, and hardened.

She was just as surprised as the man.

"Project Chrysalis's anchoring function," T.O.N.Y. explained. "Originally designed for rescues in unstable structures."

"That works."

Morgan pulled. The weapon flew out of the agent's hands and across the lab. Maya struck it with an adjustable wrench before it hit the floor, destroying the power module.

"I knew that feature would come in handy," Maya said.

"You didn't know it existed."

"Mechanical intuition."

The third intruder threw a pulse grenade. Leo spotted it first.

"Get down!"

Morgan formed a dome over all three of them. The metal turned translucent at the edges and dark at the center. The blast produced no fire, only a wave of electrical pressure that shattered every lightbulb. The shield absorbed most of it, but Morgan's mask malfunctioned. For a second, all she saw was static.

When her vision returned, the three agents were retreating into the hallway.

"Are they running away?" Leo asked.

T.O.N.Y. brought up an alert.

"No. They're making room."

The ventilation system began pouring a gray mist into the lab.

"Some kind of containment gas," Morgan said. "Filters?"

"None. The suit wasn't designed for combat."

Maya covered her mouth with her sleeve.

"The service exit is still locked."

Leo rushed to the side terminal and typed, his eyes watering.

"I can open the exhaust duct, but it's a forty-meter climb to the roof."

"Then open it."

"Morgan, did you hear the part about forty meters?"

"I heard the part where we've got seconds of air left."

The actuators in her boots weren't flight engines. Maya had said so. The warning weighed on Morgan as the access hatch opened above them, revealing a narrow vertical shaft crisscrossed with cables and grates.

A transmission cut into her visor display.

Elias Voss's face appeared through patches of gray interference. He was in a dark room, lit by the O.B.I.S. octagon.

"The integration was faster than I predicted," he said. "Tony left a rescue system, and you turned it into armor in less than an hour. The family pattern is almost touching."

"You attacked students to test a hypothesis."

"I attacked an institution that sells its discoveries to its biggest backer. The only difference is scale."

"Where are you?"

"You're asking the wrong question. Ask what your father hid."

An orbital map appeared behind him. Twenty-four dark points ringed the planet. One of them blinked.

PROJECT ICARUS: PARTIAL AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE.

T.O.N.Y.'s voice dropped.

"He used the suit's defensive pulse. Every Stark function we've activated has supplied another piece of the key."

Morgan stared at Voss.

"You planned all of this."

"I planned on you behaving like him. Under pressure, a Stark always believes the right technology will solve the immediate problem. Thank you for confirming the model."

"Your model forgot about people."

Voss looked at Maya and Leo in the background of the suit's video feed.

"No. They're the variables that make you predictable."

The transmission cut out.

The gas was already waist-high. Maya coughed.

"Villain philosophy later," she said. "Survival now."

Leo opened the duct panel.

"The maintenance ladder ends twelve meters below the roof. Beyond that, there's nothing to hold on to."

Morgan checked the remaining power. The actuators had enough charge for short bursts, maybe three. Not enough to carry three people.

"You two get out through the service tunnels once I draw security upstairs," she said. "There's a corridor behind the fluids lab that isn't on the digital floor plan."

"How do you know?"

"I hid there from a news crew during the summer program."

Maya grabbed her arm.

"What about you?"

"I'm going up."

"You've never flown."

"I'm not going to fly. I'm going to fall upward with some control."

T.O.N.Y. made a sound like a sigh.

"Phrasing it that way doesn't make the plan any better."

Morgan secured the anchoring cable to the first beam and launched herself into the shaft. She rose six meters, slammed her shoulder into the wall, and nearly lost the line. The incomplete seal didn't keep the gas out, and her vision darkened at the edges.

"Right thruster at fifteen percent," Maya instructed over the comm. "Not both at once. If you fire them together, you'll spin."

Morgan obeyed. The burst carried her up to the next grate. She secured the cable, pulled herself up, and climbed another ten meters.

Below, agents entered the lab.

"Target in the shaft!" someone shouted.

Shots flew up toward her. Morgan retracted the line and fired both actuators on pure instinct.

She spun.

She hit a wall.

Leo's alloy cushioned the impact, but her helmet sounded a continuous alarm.

"I warned you," Maya said.

"Make a note so you can use it against me later."

The last stretch of the shaft was open. Morgan extended the cable, anchored it to the exhaust fan's frame, and pulled with all her strength. The nanomaterial responded better now. Neural mapping had reached eighty-one percent.

She reached the top grate just as the agents began climbing.

"No lock," T.O.N.Y. reported. "Just industrial bolts."

"Then I'll make a door."

Morgan concentrated the metal over her shoulders and rammed the grate. It buckled but didn't break free. She hit it again. The third blow broke it open and sent her onto the roof of Building 3.

The cold wind hit her. Sirens sounded all around the campus. News helicopters hovered beyond the buildings, and cameras turned toward the black-and-gold silhouette that had just emerged from the ventilation system.

"We have an audience," T.O.N.Y. said.

"That's the least of our problems."

The rooftop door opened. The agents appeared.

Morgan ran to the edge.

Cambridge stretched out many stories below. Her legs stopped before her mind did.

"I can't," she admitted.

"You can choose between two bad options," T.O.N.Y. replied. "Stay or jump. Flying will be the next problem."

Maya came on the channel.

"Morgan, I've adjusted the thrust curve remotely. The boots will respond to the angle of your ankles. Don't lean forward until you've gained altitude."

Leo added:

"The alloy reduces the impact. It doesn't guarantee a safe landing."

"Great time to learn the difference," Morgan muttered.

The first shot hit the parapet.

Morgan jumped.

For half a second, there was only empty space.

Then she fired the actuators.

The force slammed her body upward. She lost her balance, spun once, and shot through the cloud of steam above the roof. The suit partially corrected her posture. Morgan spread her arms, found her balance, and realized she wasn't falling.

It still wasn't flight. It was a violent negotiation with gravity.

The helicopters closed in. Searchlights swept over her.

"Optical camouflage unavailable," T.O.N.Y. reported. "The rescue system doesn't have that function."

"Then they'll see me."

"Yes."

Morgan looked into the camera lenses. For years, she'd hidden from every shot that tried to turn her into an extension of her father. Now, in the skies over Boston, she wore technology that was no longer just the design Tony had left behind. Morgan, Maya, and Leo had built something unstable out of it.

"Let them see me once," she said. "Then we'll learn how to disappear."

She tilted her feet and shot out over the Charles River, too low, too fast, and without an ounce of grace. One helicopter lost track of her between the buildings. The other captured only a dark shape with golden veins.

The power indicator began flashing before she reached the other side of the river. Morgan lost altitude, anchored the line to a maintenance structure, and finished the crossing with her boots scraping across a rooftop. She'd have to cover the rest of the distance on the ground. She shut down the thrusters, her legs still shaking.

Two hours later, Morgan met Maya and Leo in an unused boat shed owned by the Stark family. The armor had retracted into the pendant. She had a burn on her shoulder, a cut on her forehead, and guilt no technology could cushion.

Leo brought up the orbital map above a rusty table.

"What is Icarus?"

T.O.N.Y. flickered into view. The attack had left gray patches in his projection.

"A defense system Tony built after the invasion of New York and shut down when he realized any system capable of protecting the planet would also be capable of controlling it. Voss has the index and some of the coordinates. He doesn't have the complete key yet."

Maya looked straight at Morgan.

"And we're going to make sure he doesn't get it."

It wasn't forgiveness. There were still questions between them. But she had stayed.

Morgan nodded.

On the screen, one of the dark satellites blinked again.

This time, in red.

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