After Tony returned, he still chose to forget what Lynn had told him.
He dragged the entry "father's belongings" into some deeply buried folder in his brain. There was still time. His palladium poisoning wasn't progressing fast enough to make it an emergency, and he could keep battling the periodic table in his lab. It wasn't time yet to dig through the old business left behind by a man who had been dead for twenty years.
But that did nothing to spare him the anxiety of palladium poisoning.
Preparations for the Stark Expo proceeded on schedule under Pepper's direction. The giant globe at Flushing Meadows Park lit up again, and Tony's schedule was packed.
The subpoena for the congressional hearing arrived right on schedule, too.
When Pepper placed the subpoena on his lab workbench, Tony was staring blankly at the seventeenth version of the reactor's power curve on a holographic screen.
"You have to go." Pepper's tone left no room for negotiation. "Stern has already made this a matter of national security. If you don't show up, he'll tell the media you're holding Congress in contempt."
"I already hold Congress in contempt." Tony flipped the subpoena over and glanced at the date. "Fine, I'll go. Not like I've got anything better to do."
After that, he called Lynn. When the call connected, Lynn was sitting in the courtyard at Kamar-Taj, having his morning tea and leafing through a book on elemental transmutation theory.
"Hello?"
"Tomorrow morning. Washington. Congressional hearing. Bring Yinsen. Come along."
Lynn set down his teacup and leaned back in his chair, his tone casual. "The big shots in Congress want you to hand over your prosthesis?"
"Yes. A senator named Stern wants me to hand over the Iron Man Armor. Says it's a weapon and belongs to the American people."
"So you're calling me in to help you argue?"
"No, no, no." Tony's voice came through the phone with a subtle hint of amusement that Lynn knew all too well-the kind that meant he was about to stir up trouble. "I'm inviting you to be in the audience. Front row. It's not every day I perform for free. Don't miss it."
Lynn closed the book, stood up, and brushed the dust off his robes. "Sure. I'll get Yinsen tomorrow morning."
The day of the hearing. Washington. The Senate Armed Services Committee.
The hearing room's wood-paneled walls gleamed with a subdued, dark luster under the lights. Reporters and military representatives filled the public gallery, while news crews carrying cameras crowded the aisles. Lynn and Yinsen sat beside the aisle in the second row, with a view that took in the entire committee dais. Yinsen wore a plain shirt, his hands clasped over his knees, his expression gentle but quiet. Occasionally, he asked Lynn softly, "Who's that sitting on the left?" Lynn lounged against the back of his chair, the glasses containing the JARVIS backup perched on his nose, wearing the standard smile of someone watching a show.
Senator Stern sat in the center of the committee dais, a nameplate and microphone in front of him. Stern was a man in his fifties with meticulously combed hair and nasolabial folds so deep they looked carved with a knife. His expression combined bureaucratic arrogance with a professional, camera-ready smile. To his right sat Justin Hammer-in a dark suit, with a tie that was too bright, a posture that was too confident, and a smile that was trying too hard. Everything about him radiated an eagerness that said, "I finally get to stand beside Tony Stark on camera."
When Tony Stark walked in, he wasn't wearing a suit jacket, just a dark gray vest over a white shirt, his sunglasses pushed up above his forehead. In his hand was a bag of dried blueberries bought from a vending machine outside the hearing room. He sat down at the witness table, set down the blueberries, and lifted his chin toward the committee dais.
Senator Stern cleared his throat.
"Mr. Stark, the last time we met, you had yet to publicly admit that you were Iron Man. Now, after the events of the past few months-including the large-scale destruction at the Stark Industries facility and your conflict with Obadiah Stane-this committee has only one central concern." Stern folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward slightly, speaking in a solemn tone honed by thirty years in front of cameras. "Our first priority is to have you turn over the Iron Man weapon to the American people."
Tony popped a dried blueberry into his mouth, chewed twice, and gestured toward Stern to continue.
"Are you done?" he asked.
"I-"
"You can forget it. We're safe. The United States is safe. You want my property-you can't have it." Talking around his dried blueberries, Tony looked less like he was at a congressional hearing than discussing the price of lawn mowing with a neighbor. "But I did do you people a huge favor."
He stood, turned around to face the entire hearing room, and raised two fingers in a peace sign.
"I have successfully privatized world peace."
Laughter erupted through the hearing room. Camera shutters rattled from the press seats like a hailstorm. Stern's expression bounced several times between his professional smile and the verge of cracking before finally settling into a teeth-gritted smile.
"All right, all right, order." Stern struck his gavel, waited for the laughter to subside, then turned to Justin Hammer beside him. "I now invite Mr. Justin Hammer-the CEO of Hammer Industries-to offer his opinion as this committee's weapons expert."
Hammer stood and straightened his collar, flashed the cameras a smile he had practiced eight hundred times, then turned to Tony. He spread his hands, his tone feigning helplessness. "There's no doubt that Mr. Stark has made contributions to this country, but what we need is responsible technology transfer, not one man monopolizing global security. Hammer Industries' research and development team has already, in several fields-"
Tony took off his sunglasses, breathed on the lenses, wiped them with the hem of his shirt, and put them back on.
Hammer's smile froze for three-tenths of a second before he continued.
"In fact, I can show this committee some of the progress various countries have made in developing Iron Man Armor technology." Hammer turned and pointed at the large screen behind the committee. The remote in his hand flashed. "Please play the video."
The large screen lit up. Grainy surveillance footage showed a bulky mech, clearly an imitation of the Iron Man Armor, trying to take off at a testing ground somewhere in North Korea. It tipped sideways in midair and crashed into the nearby spectator stands. Footage from Iran followed-something that looked more like a welder's protective suit took two steps through the desert before black smoke poured from its chest. The operator crawled out, beating at his burning sleeves.
Just then, Tony swiped a finger across his phone beneath the table. JARVIS's voice came through his earpiece. "Connected to the venue's display system. Ready to switch the feed at any time, sir."
Hammer was still trying to steer the discussion toward "technology transfer" when the footage on the large screen abruptly switched to a series of high-definition videos-shot from exceptionally tricky angles, with the clarity cranked all the way up. The North Korean mech's hydraulic arm snapped during takeoff, and the entire machine fell apart on the spot; the Iranian pilot tumbled out of the hatch and rolled several times. The footage kept changing, all of it documenting disastrous attempts by various countries to copy the Iron Man Armor, each frame more absurd than the last. Even louder laughter erupted throughout the room. Stern hammered his gavel again and again. Hammer's face went from pink to red to purple, his lips opening and closing like a fish tossed onto a deck.
In the public gallery, Lynn turned his head and said quietly to Yinsen, "He's having quite a good time right now."
Yinsen didn't answer. He merely smiled and shook his head.
"Mr. Stark!" Stern practically shouted. "Could you-could you please stop this!"
Tony stood, straightened his collar, picked up the unfinished bag of dried blueberries, and made a farewell gesture toward the committee dais.
"I saved you a chunk of the defense budget. You're welcome."
He turned and headed for the hearing room doors. Passing the public gallery, he paused and tipped his chin at Lynn. "Let's go. I made a reservation."
By the time Tony brought Lynn and Yinsen back to his Malibu mansion, the evening glow over the Pacific Ocean was spreading a gradient of orange to purple across the water. He tossed his car keys into the tray in the entryway, turned to his two guests, and spread his arms, wearing a relaxed smile entirely different from the one he had worn while causing trouble at the hearing.
"Neither of you is leaving tonight. Let's have a drink for the first time in a while. Just the three of us."
Lynn had already settled onto the couch and was inspecting a few new decorations in the living room. "You're not this excited tonight just because you humiliated Hammer at the hearing, are you?"
Tony went behind the bar, took out three glasses and a bottle of whiskey, and spoke without looking up as he poured. "I'm planning to take you both to Monaco tomorrow. Formula racing. I'm going to get behind the wheel myself and go a little wild while I can still step on the gas. Want in? If not, you two can drink in the private box, watch me win the championship, and cheer me on!" He handed Yinsen and Lynn a glass each and called out, "Cheers!"
Lynn raised his glass and clinked it against Yinsen's. Tony tipped his head back and took a large gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing twice, then set his glass down on the coffee table.
"Tomorrow, I'll show you what real speed looks like."