Lynn leaned a little closer again. This time, he was closer than he had ever been before, his shoulder almost touching Natasha's, his head tilted slightly toward her ear, his voice lowered so that only the two of them could hear.
"But you're not acting like yourself right now, Miss Natasha."
Natasha's fingers paused on the tablet. She looked up, her gaze passing over Lynn's shoulder to sweep over Tony, Pepper, and Yinsen at the front of the cabin. Tony was gesturing at Pepper, while Yinsen dozed by the window. No one noticed what was happening over here.
She leaned a little closer to Lynn in turn, keeping just enough distance to avoid any misunderstanding, the standard smile of a professional assistant still on her lips. From a distance, they looked as though they were merely making polite conversation.
"What do you know?"
Her voice was very low, her tone cautious rather than panicked.
Lynn leaned back against his seat, his expression a little more serious than before, though he had not entirely lost his casual air. "I know quite a lot. I'm not sure which things you're asking about."
Natasha stared into his eyes but did not press him further. Outside the window, the clouds were thinning, and the outline of the French Riviera had emerged through the gaps. Beyond the end of the runway, sunlight glittered on the Mediterranean Sea. The plane was about to land.
"This isn't a good time to talk."
She looked away and tapped her tablet's screen back to life, her tone returning to that of a capable legal assistant. "We'll find somewhere else to talk later."
Lynn shrugged and chuckled.
The plane landed at Nice Airport. Beyond the end of the runway, the Mediterranean Sea was dazzlingly blue.
The cabin door opened, and hot air rushed in, carrying the scents of sea salt and aviation fuel. The group split between two cars and headed for the Monte Carlo circuit.
Before closing his car door, Tony poked his head out through the window, adjusted his sunglasses, and called toward Lynn, "Our Mr. Magician certainly is enthusiastic today."
Lynn pretended not to hear.
The streets of Monte Carlo had been converted into a temporary circuit, the asphalt gleaming oilily in the midday sun. The metal grandstands were packed, and sponsors' flags lined the barriers, snapping in the sea breeze. The smells of racing fuel, hot dogs, and sunscreen mingled in the air.
Lynn followed Pepper and Natasha through the crowd into a VIP box directly facing the center of the circuit. The box was small, with a few leather seats facing floor-to-ceiling windows. Yinsen was already standing by the window, watching the vintage race cars warming their tires on the track below, quiet anticipation in his eyes.
"Which lap will he overtake on?" Yinsen asked.
"The first." Lynn sat down by the window and pushed his glasses up his nose. "He'll feel uncomfortable all over if he doesn't overtake."
Natasha sat diagonally behind him, holding a glass of ice water, her posture still relaxed. But Lynn could feel that she was still watching him out of the corner of her eye.
On the track, Tony Stark, dressed in a dark gray racing suit, was walking toward his blue-and-white vintage race car. Holding his helmet under one arm, he said something to a team engineer, then looked up toward the box and lifted his chin, that signature Stark smile on his lips.
Then he put on his helmet and climbed into the car. The roar of the engine firing up reverberated all the way from the end of the track to the glass of the box.
Tony started third on the grid. The tires rubbed against the asphalt, trailing streaks of bluish smoke. At the very first corner, Tony cut to the inside, the nose of his car narrowly brushing past the rear wheel of the car ahead, and completed the overtake at the exit. In the box, Pepper gasped, and Yinsen forgot to drink from the coffee cup in his hand. Lynn leaned back in his seat, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.
"Is that how he drives?" Yinsen finally took a sip of coffee, sounding as though he was asking Lynn and talking to himself at the same time.
"Wasn't he just like that when he was building the armor in the cave?"
The blue-and-white vintage race car kept accelerating through Monte Carlo's narrow streets, its engine noise bouncing between the buildings on either side, creating echoes like sonic booms. Spectators began rising in the grandstands, some waving Stark Industries sponsorship banners wildly.
Then Lynn saw the man.
At the far end of the track, in the passage at the pit exit, a figure in orange coveralls was crossing the barrier and walking toward the middle of the circuit. He walked slowly, each step of his welding boots landing on the asphalt with a dull thud. He dragged two thick, heavy cables in his hands, blue electrical arcs still sparking from their ends. His hair was a tangled mess, his face covered in grease and burn scars, but his eyes were fixed on the approaching blue-and-white race car at the far end of the track.
Ivan Vanko. Whiplash.
Lynn sat up straight in his chair. Instinctively, he looked at Pepper. She was still absorbed in the race, smiling with relief at Tony's lead. Natasha had already stood up. Her gaze was not on the track, but on the hands of that orange-clad figure.
"Tony," Lynn said. Tony's radio was switched off during the race, but JARVIS's channel was always open. He pressed the communication button on the arm of his glasses. "Someone's on the track. Pit exit. Now."
Tony's car was approaching the hairpin at full speed. He heard Lynn's voice as JARVIS patched the message straight into his helmet's earpiece. He looked up through the race car's windshield and saw the man standing in the middle of the track. A man he had never seen before, wearing orange coveralls and dragging two cables, smiling in his direction.
Whiplash raised both arms. The two cables lashed out, electrical arcs bursting in midair, so bright it was as though someone had torn lightning from the sky and grasped it in his hands. He swung the first lash at Tony's car. The arc struck the asphalt, instantly melting a charred trench into it, sending gravel and asphalt splattering against the car's underbody. Tony wrenched the steering wheel around, the nose of the car barely avoiding the second lash. The entire car slid sideways through the apex of the hairpin, its tires screaming as it scraped past the barrier.
In the box, Pepper had already rushed to the glass, her fingers pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window, her knuckles white. Yinsen set his coffee cup on the windowsill, but it was unsteady, and coffee spilled down over the edge. Lynn stood beside Natasha, and the two exchanged a brief glance. He opened his mouth, but said nothing.
"You've been watching your surroundings this whole time. Did you know he was coming?" Natasha asked quietly.
"I knew he existed, but I didn't know when he would come."
Natasha quickly scanned the direction in which the crowd was fleeing. Whiplash was striding toward Tony's car, his cables dragging two charred trails behind him. Tony clambered out of the race car. Suddenly, a black Rolls-Royce burst out of the VIP access lane and braked hard at the edge of the track. The door sprang open, and Happy Hogan twisted around in the driver's seat and shoved a red-and-gold suitcase out from the passenger seat.
The suitcase hit the asphalt and slid all the way to Tony's feet. Tony planted one foot on it and reached straight into the handles that sprang out from either side. Gripping them, he pulled upward hard, lifting the armor's entire core assembly to his chest in one motion. Within seconds, the armor was fully in place.
When Whiplash's attack came slashing down again, Tony raised a hand and took the electrical arc head-on with the armor on the back of it. The impact shoved him half a meter backward, his heels plowing two shallow furrows through the asphalt.
The faceplate closed. Iron Man stood in the middle of the track.
At the sight, Lynn smiled and muttered under his breath, "Though I don't agree that change is always good, change isn't necessarily all bad, either."
The smile never left Whiplash's face. He tilted his head as though admiring an exhibit, then raised both arms again, the glow of electrical arcs spreading from his back along the full length of the cables.