When the Iron Man Armor swept into the air above the industrial warehouse district in southern Brooklyn, the first thing Tony saw was not fire.
It was the cleared-out rescue radius.
Police cars and fire engines had already blocked off the perimeter of the warehouse district. Red and blue lights pressed beneath the thick smoke, flashing along the entire street.
Firefighters stretched out cordons, hoses ran across the road, and paramedics set up a temporary triage area by the curb. As the police pushed the screaming crowd back, their hands stayed on their holsters.
A man raised his phone to film the warehouses. A cop shoved him behind the barricade, and another immediately roared, "One more step and you're obstructing a federal operation."
No one entered the core area.
It was too bright, too hot, too chaotic.
A row of warehouses had blown apart from the middle. Sheet-metal walls had been hurled across the street, a container truck lay overturned in the middle of the road, and burning debris fell onto rooftops, the parking lot, temporary filming sets, and the exterior walls of the old apartment building next door.
The explosions were still going.
Small, intermittent blasts sounded from different warehouses. Each one made the crowd on the perimeter shrink back. With every blast, the police cars beyond the cordon retreated another half block.
Tony's armor skimmed over the thick smoke.
Inside the faceplate, JARVIS layered heat sources, vital signs, structural damage, and hazardous-material reactions into his field of vision.
There was too much red.
Too many blinking red dots.
Some of the red dots were moving.
Some quickly went dark.
Tony's fingers tightened on the remote console.
"JARVIS, life scan."
"Scanning. Severe interference in the central blast zone. Survivors detected in the eastern warehouse, southern parking area, temporary filming