Haunted, Part 2

When Graviton (Frank Hall) murdered a Initiate recruit, Iron Man (Tony Stark) has brought him into SHIELD custody to find out why. Unfortunately, when the villain arrives, he is in a medically induced coma. Stark only has a short amount of time before the CSA demands they return Graviton to their custody. Maria Hill warns Stark that if they wake Graviton up they only have a dampening field to ensure that his powers remain in check. Iron Man knows what the stakes are on orders him woken up.

Meanwhile, the Initiative field office in Omaha, Nebraska, has become a zoo as the media has come down to report on the recent death of Gadget. Inside, Dum Dum Dugan and a team of SHIELD agents are collecting all the records and hard drives from the office in the hopes they find clues regarding Gadget’s murder.[1]

Captain Ultra (Griffin Gogol) is very upset by all of this, as it reinforces his belief that they think he is a has-been loser. When he learns that Tony Stark ordered this directly, Griffin goes up to the SHIELD helicarrier for answers. Griffin is upset, and Tony tries to calm him by asking for more information about Gadget, specifically what she do with her downtime. Ultra remembers how Gadget used to use her Initiative level security clearance to open up cold cases and investigate them. Apparently she was a really good number cruncher. Before she was killed she was looking into a rash of missing persons all over the state after discovering that it was higher than the norm. Iron Man then contacts Dugan and asks him to find anything on the computers regarding missing persons. That’s when Maria Hill sends word that Graviton is awake.

Iron Man begins by asking Graviton how he escaped federal custody in the first place. Hall insists that he didn’t escape and says that he was taken. He rambles on about how he was taken to a place called “the pit”, but he doesn’t know where it was, only that he was there until he woke up in the pumping station.[2] When Tony asks if he killed Gadget, Frank denies killing her. He thought Gadget was pretty. He recounts how she was killed and while he admits that his powers killed her, it wasn’t by his hand. Iron Man thinks this is nothing but more crazy talk and starts getting rough, demanding answers. Hall causes Stark to stop in his tracks when Frank realizes that Iron Man is also haunted by the spirits of those he failed.[3] However, when Stark asks what he means, it seems like more non-sense.

This interview is being watched by Hill and Dugan and Maria points out that Tony is spending more and more of his time in his Iron Man armor. Stark comes in before they can talk about it further. After interviewing Hall, Tony wonders why Gadget was killed when Paragon (Cooper Roth), her partner, was the bigger threat. However, despite his insane ravings, he believes Graviton when he says he didn’t kill Gadget.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Tem Bejigin (who is secretly the Mandarin) is meeting with Secretary of State, Jack Kooning. He has come to demand that he get SHIELD out of Nebraska. This is because the spy agency’s presence is upsetting Maya Hansen, who they secreted her away from Tony Stark so she could continue her research into Extremis.[4] When Kooning says he doesn’t have the authority, Tem reminds him that they are trying to recreate Extremis in order to create a new super soldier to fill the void created when Captain America was killed.[5] In fact, Tem says that they are about to enter phase three — human trails — of the project. This comes as a shock to Kooning, who didn’t expect things to happen quite so quickly. He is horrified that they are moving at this kind of pace, since it could mean scandal if they are caught. Bejigin says that this is exactly why they need to get Stark and SHIELD as far away from the Prometheus Corporation when they are so close to achieving their goals. Tem has been keeping the human trials a secret from Maya Hansen, who he feels will turn on them given her past allegance to Stark. Kooning agrees and says he will do something about SHIELD.

Meanwhile, SHIELD has finished their investigation of the Nebraska Initiative’s hard drives and found no information on the missing persons that Gadget was investigating. When they ask if they should search the computers in her apartment, Iron Man tells them that he’ll do it personally. Tony feels that sending a forensics team would be like disrupting a tomb. When he accesses her computer and begins downloading the data he is suddenly has another vision, this time of Happy Hogan on his death bed.[6] Happy confirms he is not real, but tells Tony he doesn’t need to look at Gadget’s data if he thinks about what Graviton said to him earlier. Tony suddenly realizes what Frank Hall meant when he said “the machine is behind you.”

Iron Man races back to the hospital where he confronts Paragon about killing Gadget. Stark has figured out that Cooper Roth’s powers are accomplished by manipulating his density with gravity, just like Graviton. Roth denies this, but Stark can prove it by the fact that the doctors were able to put an IV needle in his arm. When Cooper start’s powering up, Iron Man is ready for him. However, what he is not ready for is Captain Ultra ambushing him. Griffin thinks that Stark is trying to pin things on Cooper to make him look bad. With no time to explain what’s going on, Iron Man knocks out Captain Ultra. When he races back up to the hospital room, Cooper has already fled.

Roth runs all the way to the Prometheus Corporation where his mother was going to be a test subject for Extremis. He smashes his way in and takes out everyone in the room. He finds his mother unresponsive in her medical chamber and pleads with her to wake up and talk to him. When Tem Bejigin enters the room and tells him that his mother has died.

Recurring Characters

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

Continuity Notes

1. The man who appears to be Dum Dum Dugan is actually a Skrull spy sent to infiltrate SHIELD as part of a coming invasion of Earth. See Secret Invasin: Prologue #1 and Secret Invasion #1-8.

2. Graviton mentions his last battle with Iron Man, which takes place in Iron Man (vol. 4) #8.

3. What Graviton is talking about is the fact that Tony has been haunted by the spirits of those who recently died. This is a product of Extremis on his mind, which is using these phantom images as part of a complex form of pattern recognition, as will be explained in Iron Man: Director of SHIELD #27.

4. 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.

5. Steve Roger was seemingly killed in Captain America (vol. 5) #25. However, he was actually unmoored from time, see Captain America: Reborn #1-5 for details.

6. Happy Hogan was left braindead during a fight with Spymaster. To ease his suffering, Tony used Extremis to shut down his life support system. See Iron Man (vol. 4) #13-14.

Topical References

• Iron Man states that he last clashed with Graviton over a year ago. Iron Man (vol. 4) #8 was published in July, 2006, while this story was published in November, 2007. This should be considered a topical reference as this is a measurement of time between publications. Per the Sliding Timescale this would have taken place a about 4 months earlier.

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

• Jack Kooning compares th Extremis trials to Tuskegee and MK Ultra. These wouldn’t be considered topical references because he is referring to historic cases of the government conducting unethical experiments. In case you’re curious….

  • “Tuskegee” refers to the Tuskeege syphilis study, where the CDC intentionally left 400 men to suffer with syphilis in order to see its effects on the human body. The study lasted from 1932 and ended in 1972.

  • MK-Ultra was a program run by the CIA from 1953 to 1973. There is a lot of wild conspiracy theories about this one. What is irrefutable is that the CIA had run tests on the human mind to try and manipulate and control it. Much of what they did was classified, but it is known that they dosed people with LSD without their knowledge.