The lights in the laboratory on the top floor of Stark Tower had been on for three days straight.
Tony Stark sat at the holographic console, with more than a dozen three-dimensional projection screens hovering before him at different angles. They were packed with armor schematics, energy transmission models, and the low-level code he had spent the past three days writing from scratch.
His stubble had nearly covered his chin, and dark circles ringed his eyes. Several half-peeled bandages still clung to the knuckles of his right hand, while faint red burns from soldering circuit boards marked his fingertips.
Pepper Potts stood in the glass partition off to the side of the laboratory, holding a cup of hot coffee she had already replaced three times. Her short, pale blond hair was tucked casually behind her ears as she stared expressionlessly at his back.
"Tony, you haven't left the laboratory in three days."
Her voice came through the partition's speaker, steady and restrained.
Tony did not turn around.
His fingers flew across the holographic keyboard. He dragged a set of energy distribution parameters into the simulator and ran it. Red warnings flooded the screen. He muttered, "Fuck," deleted the set, and wrote it all over again.
"That bitch Hela actually sent someone to bow to Yongye!"
"My plan to pit them against each other fell apart completely, and now I'm a worldwide laughingstock!"
"Thirty seconds! Everyone's using those thirty seconds to mock me! Even that plagiarizing bastard Hammer texted me to ask, 'How has your health been lately, Mr. Stark?' Fuck!"
He abruptly spun toward the glass partition, his blue eyes blazing with a stubbornness that seemed to burn up from his bones beneath his stubbled face.
"I, Tony Stark, have never been this humiliated in my life!"
"Ultron betrayed me.