Steve Rogers, the SOLDIER who always put others before himself, had a complicated look flash through his eyes—disappointment in Rumlow's true nature, concern for his comrades, but above all, trust in Tony and responsibility for the remaining team members.
He hesitated no longer. Drawing a deep breath of cold air laced with the salty stench of seawater and metallic rust, he leaped into the murky water below the platform at the passage entrance and swam with all his strength toward the last intact, relatively exposed Seahorse escape pod. His heavy body struck the water, throwing up an even larger splash.
Just as Steve's heavy body fell into the pod and its hatch sealed with a hiss, locking shut, he saw through the spreading water stains and floating debris on the composite viewing window that Tony's Mark L armor had not entered any escape pod. Instead, it hovered above the collapsed passage entrance like an immovable rock!
"Tony! What are you going to do?!"
Steve's voice came through the escape pod's emergency communications line, carrying the distinctive echo of the metal chamber and undisguised anxiety.
The murky seawater had almost completely submerged the lower half of the escape pod's viewing window.
"Don't worry, old man. I've got my own ride!"
Tony forced a trace of his trademark ease into his voice, tinged with the scrape of metal. Yet against the noise of the Deep and the groans of the armor's structure under pressure, that ease sounded so fragile and tragic.
"A Seahorse can't fit my luxury gear!"
The moment he finished speaking, the Deep Sea thruster arrays on Mark L's back, legs, and feet erupted with unprecedented, blazing blue-white flames! In the pitch-black Deep, the light was as dazzling as a supernova explosion!
"J.A.R.V.I.S.! Initiate the Deep Sea Leap protocol! Target: