Extremis, Part Four of Six

Iron Man (Tony Stark) has gone after Mallen — a home grown terrorist enhanced to superhuman levels by a new process called Extermis — only to have the shit beat out of him. His armor trashed and his body broken, Iron Man is about to be smashed with a car that still has passengers inside. Iron Man quickly activates the uni-beam in his chest. This knocks Mallen off his face and Tony manages to grab the car before it hits the ground. However this uses up the last of Iron Man’s power supplies and he soon becomes pinned under the car.

When Mallen recovers he spots law enforcement helicopters approaching. Figuring Iron Man is done for, Mallen then runs off at super speed.

The danger isn’t over as spilled gasoline from the fight has caught fire and is slowly spreading toward him. This threatens to kill Stark and the trapped passengers of the car on top of him. Quick thinking, Tony activates the thermal couplers that converts heat into energy to recharge some of his armor. This also dissipates the flames and gives Tony enough strength to at least get the car off him.

When emergency crews arrive on the scene, Iron Man has them airlift him back to PharmaTech where Maya Hansen — the creator of Extremis — takes control of the situation. She has Iron Man wheeled into an operating theater where he asks to be alone with Maya. Once everyone else leaves the room, Tony flips up his face plate, revealing that he’s Iron Man.[1] As she starts taking off Tony’s wrecked armor so she can assess the damage done to his body, he tells her how Extremis enhanced Mallen’s body. No matter what Tony threw at him, Mallen was able to shrug it off. He was also faster and stronger than Iron Man, all of his Tony’s injuries have been done by Mallon’s bare hands. He tells her that the only way he will be able to defeat Mallen is by being injected with a modified version of Extremis. He believes that it can be altered so that it can allow Tony to directly interface with his armor so he can hold his own.

Maya thinks Tony is insane for even thinking it, but decides to go through with this plan. When they get to the room where she stores Extremis, they both have to use keycards at the same time in order to get into the secure room. That’s when Maya gets a call from upstairs telling her that Stark Industries has sent another package and goes up to get it. While she is gone, Tony goes over the footage of his fight with Mallen. He pauses at the moment just after he cleaved the van in half and zooms in on a map that fluttered free in the crash. Magnifying the image, he sees that Washington, DC has been circled on it and knows where Mallen is going next.

Meanwhile, Mallen is running north east and stops in a small town when he comes upon a teen girl smoking a joint on the side of the road. Hearing her complain about how she hates everyone in her small town, Mallen thinks he has found a kindred spirit. She shows off her shirt — which features an American flag with a swastika instead of 52 stars — and complains about how the entire country is full of facists. When he confir,s that she doesn’t share his visions of a white ethnostate, he murders the girl and continues on his path to Washington.

Back at FuturePharm, Maya returns to the lab with a briefcase containing a brand new suit of Iron Man armor. This suit is collapsible enough to fit in a briefcase. He explains how he uses a body sheath to control all the systems. Tony wants to reconfigure Extremis to replace the body sheath and allow total interface with his armor, making it an extension of his own body. Maya gets out the final live sample of Extremis she has left and warns Tony that it is very possible that it’ll kill him instead of augment his body.

Tony, who is blacking out from blood loss, points out that he’s going to die from his injuries anyway so he’s willing to take the risk. Despite her reservations, Maya injects Tony with a modified version of Extremis. Tony suddenly begins to convulse and cough up blood before becoming completely unresponsive.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Maya Hansen, Mallen

Continuity Notes

1. Although Tony revealed his identity to the world in Iron Man (vol. 3) #55, Stark put that genie back in the bottle in issue #89. This will remain the status quo until he publicly reveals his identity again in Civil War #1.