Haunted, Part 1

When an alarm goes off at the Millard Wellfield in Nebraska, Initiative rookies Paragon and Gadget are sent out to investigate. The security guard doesn’t see what the big deal is but takes them around to look anyway. They decide to go into an abandoned pump house to look for intruders and ask the guard to wait outside. Inside, they discover Graviton, who had recently broken out of prison. Before they can call for much needed back-up there is an explosion and screams.

At that same moment, in New York City, Tony Stark wakes up for what he believes is no reason. That’s when he notices that someone dressed as Captain America is standing in his room.[1] Tony demands to know who the intruder is, but he tells Stark he knows exactly who he is. Tony armors up and tries to blast this apparent impostor with repulsor rays, but the intruder is too fast. He is quickly knocked to the ground, and the “impostor” unmasks revealing that he is Steve Rogers. Cap says that he is just a figment of Tony’s imagination and that the writing in Malukian. That’s when Tony wakes up and realizing he was dreaming. On his computer screen is some familiar but indecipherable writing he found while investigating a Chinese mental health facility.[2]

Tony connects the dots, the only person who knows Malukian was the Mandarin. He takes the to Jack Kooning, the Secretary of Defense. However Kooning doesn’t buy it, reminding him that the Mandarin is believed to be dead.[3] Tony corrects him by reminding Kooning that the Mandarin’s body was never found. More over, Karim Najeeb went to that insane asylem to meet with a patient the asylum with no hands. Before that, he was searching for ancient tribal artifacts that were described as being ten rings.[4] Tony suggests that Najeeb was killed by the Mandarin, then his man Darius Faraz began working with the Mandarin to arm terrorist organizations with new bio-weapons that SHIELD has been dealing with for months. Tony believes that the Mandarin dd all that to kidnap Maya Hansen to get access to Extremis.[5]

Kooning pokes holes in this theory: He still believes the Mandarin is dead. On top of that, they recently caught Darius Faraz and he has took all the credit for the bio-weapon sales. In fact, all the names and details he gave appear to confirm this. Lastly, Maya Hansen was just found five hours ago. She had checked into a hotel in Paris, then committed suicide in the bathtub. The suicide note has been analysed by Interpol and they confirm it is her handwriting. Kooning tells Tony to stop chasing ghosts when their meeting is interrupted by a priority call from Maria Hill.

By the time Tony returns to the SHIELD helicarrier to be briefed by Maria Hill and Dum Dum Dugan, the media is already on the story.[6] He learns that Paragon was seriously injured bringing Graviton in. His partner, Gadget, has gone missing. The media focuses on Gadget’s death, how she was mentored into becoming a superhero by Tony Stark himself, and that her death is raising questions about the the fledgling Initiative. Hill details who Paragon and Gadget are. They were recent graduates from the Initiative and were assigned to the team out in Nebraska. They were under the command of Captain Ultra. Paragon has the standard superhuman abilities — super-human strength, speed, and durability — while Gadget — as her name suggests — has been building a techo-suit since she was six-years-old.

Tony suits up as Iron Man meets with Captain Ultra (Griffin Gogol), who tells him that they are still searching for Gadget, but now it’s no longer a rescue, but body retrieval. When Griffin brings up how Gadget refers to them as being “tight” with Tony Stark. Tony admits that he never met her. She was one of a million kids out that that wrote him a letter saying that he inspired them to become a gadget based heroes themselves. Gadget was one of the very few that actually followed through on their promise. Outside of Paragon’s hospital room, Iron Man asks why he wasn’t present. Gogol takes offense to this because he believes everyone thinks he is has been, otherwise they wouldn’t have shipped him off to Nebraska. He complains that all they get in Nebraska are false alarms. When the alarm went off at the watershed, he sent Paragon and Gadget to investigate thinking it was just that so he could catch up on all the paperwork they get bogged down with. Had he knew there was a threat like Graviton hiding out there, he wouldn’t have sent them.

That’s when a nurse comes out and tells the two heroes that Paragon is recovering well and they can have a few minutes alone with him. Once inside, Iron Man asks Paragon (Cooper Roth), what happened. Unfortunately, he remembers how Graviton used his powers to incapacitate Gadget, then there was an explosion that knocked him out. When asked if Graviton said anything before he attacked, Paragon remembers he said something to the effect of “the machine is behind you child.” When they leave the hospital, Iron Man orders Captain Ultra to call Dugan and have him send a team to analyze ground zero.

They eventually find Gadget’s body, which had been constricted by a great deal of gravity, a horrible but painless way to go. That’s when Tony is suddenly haunted by the image of Gadget as she was when she was a young girl. When Maria sees that Tony is distracted by something, she asks what’s wrong. Iron Man says nothing about what he saw and demands to see Graviton. He is currently in Federal custody at a supermax prison medical unit waiting to be transported to Prison 42. He orders her to take Gaviton into SHIELD custody, citing a section of the SHRA. When she what to do if they get resistance, Tony tells her to take Gravity by force if need be.

At nearby Prometheus Gentech, Inc. SHIELD’s helicarrier can be seen by Maya Hansen from her personal office. She faked her death in order to continue working on Extremis for the United States government. The presence of SHIELD in the state has her nervous and she expresses her concerns to Gentech’s CEO, Tem Borjigin. Little does she know that Tem is actually the Mandarin in disguise. He assures her that the spy agency has no idea that she is working for them. He encourages her to continue doing hypothetical models on Extremis, reminding her how her creation can cure countless sick people. Maya knows this, but she reminds him that human trials won’t happen for years. Tem agrees, not telling her that he’s actually testing her work on test subjects he has hidden in stasis in the basement of the facility.[8]

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Nebraska Initiative (Captain Ultra, Paragon, Gadget), SHIELD (Maria Hill, “Dum Dum Dugan”), Graviton, Mandarin, Jack Kooning, Maya Hansen

Continuity Notes

1. At the time of this story, Tony and Captain America were at odds over the Super-Human Registration Act in Civil War #1-7. When Cap discovered the majority of the country supported the new law he surrendered to law enforcement. He was later seemingly executed in Captain America (vol. 5) #25. In reality, he has been displaced from time, see Captain America: Reborn #1-5. We’ll discover in Iron Man: Director of SHIELD #27, these apparitions are all in Tony’s head. It’s Extremis’ way of helping him find patterns in complex situations.

2. Tony encountered this strange writing in Iron Man: Director of SHIELD #15-18. It was left behind for him by the Mandarin to find.

3. The Mandarin has been MIA since he was defeated in Iron Man (vol. 3) #9-10. Readers have known he is still alive since issue #16.

4. Tony Stark talks about the ten rings as though they are the original rings that the Mandarin has been using since Tales of Suspense #50. However, those rings ended up in the possession of the Mandarin’s son Temugin in Iron Man (vol. 3) #53. As clarified in Official Index of the Marvel Universe: Iron Man, the Mandarin was given new rings. However, at this time, Tony can’t have known this.

5. Extremis was an attempt to recreate the Super Soldier Serum. It would rebuild the company body beyond human peak performance and could also endow superhuman abilities. Tony was a recent recipient. However, after Maya allowed it to get into the hands of a home grown terrorist, Stark has made sure it is never used again, as seen in Iron Man (vol. 4) #1-7. Maya recently took up a secret offer from Kooning in issue #18 to work on Extremis in secret. Neither one aware that the CEO of the biolab she is working for is secretly the Mandarin.

6. The man who appears to be Dum Dum Dugan here is actually a Skrull spy who was sent to infiltrate SHIELD as part of a planned invasion of Earth, as will be revealed in Secret Invasion: Prologue #1 and Secret Invasion #1-8.

7. The Initiative is a government program to train superheroes to be effective crime fighters as part of the Super-Human Registration Act. See Civil War #7 and Avengers: The Initiative #1.

8. As we’ll learn over the course of the next seven issues, the Mandarin is trying to create an airborne version of Extremis to wipe out 90% of the human population.

Topical References

• Jack Kooning is depicted as having a CRT computer monitor on his desk. This should be considered topical as this is now an obsolete technology.

• Jack Kooning states that Faraz is now incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. At the time this story came out, terrorists that were captured by the US military were incarcerated at a prison complex at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At the time of this writing (April, 2023), this prison facility is still open but the number of remaining prisoners have been greatly reduced and they are in the process of being transferred out as the prison intends to be shut down eventually. As such, its reference here should be considered a topical reference.

• When asked what Graviton was doing in Nebraska, “Dum Dum” sarcastically suggests that he must be a Huskers fan. The Nebraska Cornhuskers is the name of sports teams belonging to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This should be considered a topical reference as this is a real world sports team.