Trigger Warning: Tony has a panic attack in this chapter.
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Still on the road, heading back in the other direction, Tony calls Harley, who picks up pretty quickly. "Hey, Harley, tell me what's happening. Give me a full report."

"Yeah, I'm still eating that candy," Harley replies. Tony had told him to eat it earlier so he would stay awake. "Do you want me to keep eating it?"

"How much have you had?"

"Two or three bowls."

"Can you still see straight?"

"Sort of."

"That means you're fine. Give me Jarvis." After a pause, he asks, "Jarvis, how are we?"

"It's totally fine, sir," Jarvis replies. "I seem to do quite well for a stretch, and then at the end of the sentence I say the wrong cranberry. And, sir, you were right. Once I factored in available AIM downlink facilities, I was able to pinpoint the Mandarin's broadcast signal."

"What are we talking? Far East, Europe, North Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Syria?" Tony asks.

"Actually, sir, it's in Miami," Jarvis replies.

Tony begins talking to Harley. "Okay, kid, I'm gonna have to walk you through rebooting Jarvis's speech drive, but not right now. Harley, where is he really? Just look on the screen, and tell me where it is."

There's a pause, then, "Um, it does say Miami, Florida."

Tony sighs. "Okay, first things first, I need the armor. Where are we at with it?"

"Uh, it's not charging," Harley says.

Tony breaks quickly, pulling over to the side of the road and parking. This one came more suddenly than the others. But, sure enough, his chest is tight, and it's getting harder to breathe. He's about to start shaking.

Jarvis says, "Actually, sir, it is charging, but the power source is questionable. It may not succeed in revitalising the Mark 42."

"What's questionable about electricity?" Tony asks quickly. "Alright, it's my suit, and I can't- I'm not gonna- I don't wanna-" He puts his head in his hands, rubbing his face. He can hardly breathe. "Not again, not again." He opens the car door and gets out, an overwhelming sense of I need to get out of here taking over him.

"Tony?" Harley asks, his voice full of concern. "Are you having another attack? I didn't even mention New York."

"Right, and then you just said it by name while denying having said it."

"Okay, um, uh..."

Tears are slipping out of Tony's eyes now as he sits down, leaning back against the car. "Wh-What am I gonna do?"

"Just breathe," Harley says. "Really, just breathe. You're a mechanic, right?"

"Right," Tony replies through deep breaths.

"You said so."

"Yes, I did."

"Why don't you just build something?"

Tony stops. His heart, while it's still beating a mile a minute, gradually starts to slow down. The pressure in his chest lessens. Breathing starts becoming easier as the notion slips into his head and makes itself comfortable there before slowly developing.

He can do this. He's Tony Stark. He can do this. He stands, using the car door as support.

"Okay," he says, getting back in the car. "Thanks, kid."

And with that, he heads to the hardware store.

~~~~

First, he spies on the guards outside. Then, he scales the wall, takes out about six guards, and makes his way inside. All without his suit.

After that, he takes out another guard and steals his gun. The woman sitting across from the guard is likely drunk and entirely unconcerned. She pretends to shoot Tony with a finger gun.

Tony makes his way back into a bedroom. The covers on the bed are pulled up, and it seems as though at least two people are in it, though he can't see their faces. He aims the gun at them, walking around the bed. Then, he jerks the covers back.

Two women.

They gasp. Tony shushes them, then hears a toilet flush and hides behind the large headboard.

"Well," a male British voice says, "I wouldn't go in there for twenty minutes." He laughs. "Now, which one of you is Vanessa?"

"That's me," one of the girls says.

Tony can't see much through the gap, but the man is clearly the Mandarin. He tosses something to the girls on the bed. "Did you know that fortune cookies aren't even Chinese? They're made by Americans, based on a Japanese recipe."

Tony steps out, aiming the gun at him. "Hey!"

The Mandarin turns, hands up in surrender, looking like a deer in headlights. "Oh, my- Okay. Um-"

"Don't move," Tony says.

"I'm not moving." He gestures to the rest of the room. "You want something, take it — even though the guns are all fake because they wouldn't trust me with the real ones."

Tony's brows furrow. With every second that passes, he becomes less and less certain that this guy is the Mandarin, despite the fact that he looks just like him. "What?"

"Hey, do you-"

"I've heard enough," Tony interrupts. "You're not him. The Mandarin, the real guy." Tony cocks the gun. "Where?! Where's the Mandarin?! Where is he?!"

The British guy freaks out. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." He moves away from Tony hastily, sitting down in a chair, though Tony just follows him. "He's here. He's here, but he's not here. He's here, but he's not here."

"What do you mean?"

"It's complicated-" He stops, deciding to be sterner with his answers. He points a finger at Tony. "Hey, it's complicated."

"It is-?"

"It's complicated."

"Uncomplicate it." Tony looks back at the woman. "Ladies, out. Get out of the bed. Into the bathroom."

They go, one exclaiming, "Gross!" when they enter.

While Tony is closing the door behind them, the man starts to crawl away, but Tony shoots the gun in front of him, causing him to jump and get back into the chair. He quickly starts talking. "My name is Trevor. Trevor Slattery."

"What are you, a decoy?" Tony asks. "You're a double, right?"

"What, you mean like an understudy? No, absolutely not." Tony comes toward him with the gun, imploring him to actually answer. "Don't hurt the face! I'm an actor."

"You got a minute to live. Fill it with words."

"It's just a role," Trevor says quickly. "'The Mandarin,' see, it's not real."

"Then how did you get here, Trevor?"

Trevor leans back in the chair, trying to avoid the gun. "Well, I, um, had a little problem with, um, substances... and I ended up doing things — no two ways about it — in the street... that a man shouldn't do..."

"Next?" Tony implores.

"Then, they approached me about the role, and they knew about the drugs."

"What did they say? They'd get you off them?"

Trevor shakes his head. "They said they'd give me more. They gave me things. They gave me this palace. They gave me plastic surgery. They gave me things..."

And then his eyes close and Tony hears snoring. "Did you just nod off? Hey."

Tony kicks his shoe, and Trevor wakes back up, continuing as if he hadn't just fallen asleep. "They gave me a lovely speedboat. And the thing was, he needed someone to take credit for some accidental explosions."

Tony's blood is boiling. "He?" He looks behind him, then turns back. He already knows the answer. "Killian?"

"Killian," Trevor repeats.

"He created you?"

"He created me."

"Custom-made terror threat."

"Yes, yes." Trevor jumps up, going to get something. "His think tank thinked it up." He starts talking with the Mandarin's accent. "The pathology of a serial killer. The manipulation of Western iconography. Ready for another lesson?" He turns, two cans of Diet Coke in his hands. He begins talking normally again, offering Tony a Diet Coke, which he declines. "Of course, it was my performance that brought the Mandarin to life."

"Your performance?" Tony asks angrily. "Where people died?"

"No, they didn't," Trevor replies. "Look around you. The costumes, green screen. Honestly, I wasn't on location for half this stuff. And when I was, it was movie magic, love."

Tony shakes his head. "I'm sorry, but I got a best friend who's in a coma, and he might not wake up. So you're gonna have to answer for that. You're still going down, pal. Get it?" He sees the look on Trevor's face, the way he's looking over Tony's shoulder.

Tony turns, going to fight the man — who he's sure is the man he thought he killed in Tennessee — but the man has the upper hand.

It doesn't take long for everything to go black.

~~~~

When he wakes, he's tied to the underside of a standing, metal bed frame by his wrists and ankles. In front of him is Maya Hansen.

"It wasn't my idea," she says. She sounds apologetic.

"Okay," Tony replies. "So you took Killian's card-"

"I took his money-" she corrects.

"-and here you are 13 years later, in a dungeon."

"No."

"Yeah."

"No, you're in a dungeon. I'm free to go."

"Yeah?" Tony asks. He wishes he were Banner right now because, with how angry he is, he could bust out of here easily.

Maya sighs. "A lot has happened, Tony. But I'm close. Extremis is practically stabilised."

"I'm telling you it isn't!" Tony shouts. "I'm on the street. People are going bang. They're painting the walls. Maya, you're kidding yourself."

"Then help me fix it," she replies, holding up an old, fraying card with writing on both sides. One side has a formula on it.

"Did I do that?" Tony asks, brows furrowing.

"Yes."

Tony sighs, shaking his head a little. "Is this what you've been chasing around?"

"You don't remember?"

"I can't help you," he replies, shrugging as best he can in his restraints. She looks at him, shock and disappointment written all over her face. He says, "You used to have a moral psychology. You used to have ideals. You wanted to help people. Now look at you...

"I get to wake up every morning with someone who still has their soul. I get to raise someone who has the brightest soul that there is. And I would really like to be with them right now. So, get me out of here."

Maya just looks at him, hurt. Then, she turns and walks away.

Before Tony can say anything else, a new voice joins the conversation. "You know what my old man used to say to me?" Killian, the owner of the voice, walks in slowly. "One of his favorite sayings: 'The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.'"

"You're not still ticked off about the Switzerland thing, are you?" Tony asks sarcastically.

"How can I be mad at you, Tony?" Killian replies sincerely, setting a small briefcase on the table behind him. "I'm here to thank you. You gave me the greatest gift that anybody's ever given me: desperation.

"If you think back to Switzerland, you said you'd meet me on the rooftop, right? Well, for the first twenty minutes, I actually thought you'd show up. And the next hour... I considered taking that one-step shortcut to the lobby, if you know what I mean."

Tony sighs. "Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out what happened to the first mouse."

Killian ignores him. "But as I looked out over that city — nobody knew I was there, nobody could see me, no one was even looking — I had a thought that would guide me for years to come. Anonymity, Tony. Thanks to you, it's been my mantra ever since. You simply rule from behind the scenes, where you keep everything else hidden away. Because the second you give evil a face — a bin Laden, a Gaddafi, a Mandarin — you hand the people a target."

Tony chuckles bitterly. "You're something else."

Killian goes over to the briefcase and begins opening it. "You've met him, I assume?"

"Yes. Sir Laurence Olivier."

Killian sighs. "I know he's a little over the top sometimes. It's not entirely my fault. He's a stage actor. They say his Lear was the toast of Croydon, wherever that is. Anyway, the point is, ever since that big dude with the hammer fell out of the sky, subtlety has kind of had its day."

"What's next for you in your world?"

"Well, I wanted to repay you the selfsame gift that you so graciously imparted to me." He takes three, golf-ball-sized, silver orbs and rolls them out on the floor. When they stop, he presses buttons on a remote, causing them to project a video into the air.

Pepper.

"Desperation," Killian says.

Tony's stomach drops as he begins to panic. She's hooked up to an Extremis machine. She's glowing orange. Tony's throat burns, his eyes prick with tears, and he anxiously waits for the image to change. To show Grace hooked up, too.

"Now, this is live," Killian continues. "I'm not sure if you can tell, but at this moment the body is trying to decide whether to accept Extremis or just give up. And if it gives up, I have to say, the detonation is quite spectacular. But until that point, it's really just a lot of pain." He sighs, walking up to Tony. "It's a shame I couldn't-"

He's interrupted by Maya. "Let him go."

Killian rolls his eyes. "Hold on, hold on-" He turns, seeing Maya holding a syringe to her neck. "Maya-"

"I said, let him go!"

"What are you doing?"

"1200 CCs," she says. "A dose half of this size, I'm dead."

Killian looks back at Tony. "It's times like this my temper is... tested somewhat." Then, he steps towards Maya. "Give me the injector, Maya."

"If I die, Killian, what happens to your soldiers?" she asks. "What happens to your product?"

"We're not doing this, okay?"

"What happens to you? What happens if you get too hot?"

He closes his eyes, breathing deeply, trying to calm himself down. He turns back to Tony, then takes a gun out of his pocket and raises it.

Maya, eyes wide, a split second before the gun goes off, shouts. "Grace-!"

The gunshot cuts her off. Killian's calm expression remains unchanged. "The good news is," he says, "a high-level position has just been vacated."

Tony shakes his head, disgusted and still panicked, even more so now. "You're a maniac."

"No, I'm a visionary," Killian replies, walking out of the room. "But I do own a maniac. And he takes the stage tonight."

With that, he leaves Tony alone, fearing for the love of his life and hopelessly wondering about his daughter.