Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Evan, Junior Technician – R&D Division, Level 32

Evan adjusted the pressure sleeve on his wrist for the third time that hour, pretending it was a comfort thing and not because it was too big for him. He hadn’t wanted to request a smaller size and look like a total rookie on his first week in the Stark R&D wing. Not that anyone was paying attention. Everyone was too absorbed in the subdermal mesh integration prototype laid out on the main table like a gutted robot.

He was supposed to be compiling data from yesterday’s tensile stress tests, but the software was stuttering again. So instead, he was pacing behind a monitor, trying to mentally talk himself into asking his supervisor for clearance to reboot the system. Again.

The lab was sleek in that cold, glass and chrome way Stark Industries loved. Transparent partitions sectioned off each testing area, so if you glanced up you could see clear through to the next room, all the way to the hallway beyond. Outside, in the polished corridor that ran along the entire east wing of R&D, people sometimes passed by, usually execs, sometimes engineers from other floors, rarely anyone interesting.

So when someone actually interesting walked by, Evan noticed.

He caught it first in the reflection of his screen. A flash of dark suit, a fast stride, an unmistakable kind of swagger. He looked up fully and blinked.

There he was.

“Uh,” Evan said, one hand half-raised in a vague, startled wave, “is that—?”

His voice didn’t carry far, but it was enough for his supervisor, Amanda, to lift her head from across the lab bench. “What?”

Evan gestured toward the hallway. “Mr. Stark,” he clarified, low enough not to sound shrill about it. “He’s—he’s right there.”

Amanda moved toward the glass wall and glanced out with the casual indifference of someone who’d worked under the Stark Industries umbrella for a decade and still managed to look unimpressed.

She stopped. Tilted her head. Frowned, just a bit.

Sure enough, Tony Stark was paused just outside their lab window. He wore a charcoal suit, no tie, sleeves pushed up in the casual, couldn’t care less way that somehow made him look more intimidating. Next to him—no, just behind him—was a kid. A teenager, maybe sixteen, definitely not older than eighteen. Lean, messy brown hair, oversized hoodie under a half-zipped Stark Industries windbreaker. He was holding a StarkPad against his arm, stylus scribbling furiously across the screen. He wasn’t even looking up.

Evan squinted. The kid’s posture shifted subtly, mirroring Stark’s own stance. Tony pointed to something—an air vent? A circuit line in the wall?—and the kid nodded quickly, jotting more notes, lips pressed in concentration.

Evan edged closer to the glass. “Is that, like, a new intern or something?”

Tony gestured toward one of the ceiling panels, talking quickly and pointedly, the way he always seemed to talk. The kid asked something—Evan couldn’t hear it through the soundproof glass—but Mr. Stark’s response was brief and direct. Then the kid scribbled again. His brows knit. He frowned.

Tony frowned, too. Not at the kid, just generally. Like he was thinking.

He glanced up for a split second, and spotted Amanda through the glass. He gave a half-nod. Not exactly a greeting, just an acknowledgment. Amanda nodded back, neutral. She might as well have been nodding at a cloud.

The kid noticed the interaction, then looked toward the lab. Hesitated for a second. Then, with a small, awkward movement, he gave a short wave. Kind of shy. Almost bashful. Like he didn’t know if he was supposed to wave or not.

Evan waved back before thinking better of it.

Tony turned on his heel, clearly done with whatever micro-inspection they’d been doing. The kid followed, quick to catch up, glancing once more at the StarkPad and muttering something under his breath.

They reached the elevator at the end of the hall.

As the doors began to close, Tony leaned over the kid’s shoulder, pointing at something on the screen. The kid angled the tablet toward him so he could see better. Mr. Stark made a small correction—Evan could see the gesture—and the kid nodded, fingers moving quickly to edit whatever he’d shown.

The doors slid shut. Gone.

Evan stayed still for a second, eyes on the glass, waiting for Amanda to say something. She didn’t. Just shifted her weight slightly, like she was about to turn back to her screen.

“So…” Evan started, careful. “Do we know anything about that kid?”

Amanda didn’t look at him. “Not our department.”

“Okay,” Evan said. A pause. “But Stark Industries only takes college students as interns, right? That kid looks way too young for that.”

She finally glanced over, deadpan. “Evan, don’t start.”

“I’m just saying,” he added quickly, hands up in defense. “If someone told me that was Stark’s nephew or I-don’t-know-what, I’d believe them.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re definitely reading into it.”

“Am I?” Evan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Amanda said nothing, her silence saying more than words could.

Evan pulled out his phone and typed a quick message (“you hear about this high school kid following stark around? ”) to Cam in Materials Research. He’d gotten her number during orientation, and figured if anyone knew the office gossip, it was Cam.

But later, when Cam sent back, “oh yeah, someone in chem saw him yesterday too,” Evan felt the first prickle of something not unlike conspiracy theory-level curiosity.

He looked back at the hallway.

There was no trace of them now.

Just glass.

Alisa, Boardroom Secretary – Executive Floor

Alisa had long since mastered the art of looking engaged while mentally planning lunch.

She sat straight-backed in one of the too-firm, too-expensive boardroom chairs, stylus in hand, pretending to annotate something on her tablet. In reality, her screen hadn’t refreshed in at least ten minutes. Her focus had fully migrated to debating the merits of the grilled chicken wrap versus the slightly suspicious sushi sitting in the break room fridge.

On the giant display at the front of the room, slide twenty-seven of seventy-four droned on, an exhaustive quarterly breakdown of clean energy R&D spending, delivered by a VP whose enthusiasm was inversely proportional to the number of bullet points on screen. The lighting overhead was bright enough to keep people awake but soft enough to lull them into a shared, buzzing stupor. Half the room was blinking too slowly. The other half was pretending not to look at their watches.

Alisa’s stomach gave a polite but pointed gurgle. She sent it a silent apology and prayed for mercy.

And then, salvation.

“Shall we take five?” Director Keller said, lightly tapping a fingernail against his water glass.

The atmosphere in the room shifted, not with any fanfare, but like a collective exhale held too long. Tension slipped from shoulders. Chairs scraped back a beat too quickly. Executives stood, murmuring pleasantries as they stretched just enough to look casual. No one wanted to be the first to bolt, but everyone had been halfway out the door already.

Alisa was up fast, scooping up her tablet with more urgency than necessary. As she passed the refreshments table, María—on beverage duty today, poor thing—gave her a look of exaggerated martyrdom and raised both brows.

“Go,” María said. “I’ll cover for you.”

Alisa mouthed angel and made for the doors without looking back. Her heels clicked softly on the glossy flooring as she exited, the sound swallowed before it could carry. She made a beeline for the executive lounge, and more importantly, the vending machine that had, over the past six months, achieved something close to spiritual significance.

That’s when she saw him.

Halfway between the boardroom doors and the lounge, seated casually on the polished floor—legs crossed, backpack resting nearby, StarkPad perched on his lap—was a kid.

Teenager, clearly. Messy hair in every direction like he’d been running his hands through it. His eyes were glued to the tablet resting on his knees, stylus moving across the screen in fast, confident strokes, sketching something mechanical that meant nothing to Alisa but clearly everything to him.

She stopped short. Definitely too young to be in here.

“Uh... hi?” she ventured. “Are you... lost?”

The kid looked up. Quick, like a jackrabbit, but not startled. His eyes were wide, brown, and alert. His ears went pink, just barely.

“Oh—no,” he said quickly. “I’m supposed to be waiting here.”

There was no badge around his neck. No company lanyard. His clothes looked like they came from a bodega clearance rack, not corporate issue. But the StarkPad in his lap was the real deal. Unreleased, and judging by the hushed-door meetings Alisa had been dragged into, way above intern clearance.

Alisa’s brain flipped through its mental backlog of office gossip, half-formed stories and secondhand whispers that had circulated near the espresso machine. Teenager. StarkPad. No badge. Brown eyes. No name, because none of the rumors had one, just the kid.

She took a cautious step forward. “Are you... waiting for someone in the meeting?”

The kid nodded. Polite, but vague. No name offered.

Interesting.

Before she could say more, the boardroom doors hissed open again.

“Oh, fantastic,” came a voice, biting and annoyed, from just inside the threshold. “Just—perfect. You’re not where I left you. Because why would you be? That’d make my life too easy.”

The teenager winced slightly before even turning his head.

From inside the boardroom, Tony Stark stepped into view, pristine white sleeves rolled up, navy blazer draped over one shoulder, glasses in hand, and his expression the universal look of a man whose day had just been personally derailed.

“Lab,” he said, pointing sharply behind him as if he might’ve forgotten the way. “Ring any bells? Because I distinctly remember telling you to stay in the lab.”

The kid turned around from where he was still sitting. “You said to wait outside—”

“Outside the lab,” Mr. Stark cut in, voice climbing. “Not outside the boardroom. This isn’t ‘outside the lab,’ this is—what, a quarter-mile detour? Seriously, kid, do I need to start child-proofing the Tower with those little baby gates?”

“It’s close,” the kid said, gesturing down the hall. “This floor connects to the north elevator, so you’d have to walk past me on your way out, and I didn’t wanna miss you if you—”

“I swear,” Mr. Stark interrupted, pressing his fingers to his temple like he could physically ward off the impending headache, “if you bring up architectural schematics one more time—”

“You told me to think ahead!”

“I told you to stay put!” Stark shot back.

“You didn’t say where!”

Alisa’s brain short-circuited for a second, and she instinctively took a step back, putting distance between herself and the surreal spectacle unfolding in front of her. She was struggling to reconcile the myth of Tony Stark with the reality of this deeply exasperated man in socks that probably cost more than her rent, arguing with a teenager in a hoodie about hallway geography.

“Did you even read the message I sent you?”

“I did!” The kid’s voice cracked slightly under the weight of his own earnestness. “That’s how I knew this meeting was on the 46th floor, which is why I—”

“—Why you decided to stage a hallway stakeout instead of staying in the lab, where you were explicitly told to be?”

The kid raised his hands in surrender, but his grin—smooth, performative, the kind that usually preceded a spectacularly bad idea—made Alisa pause. It was a smile she’d seen a hundred times before, flickering across TV screens and press conferences. Her gaze cut sideways, almost reflexively, toward Mr. Stark. His expression, though, was steel.

“Okay, in my defense?” the kid said, tapping the tablet absently against his knee. “I could’ve crashed your meeting. But I didn’t! I waited. Sort of. So, really, it could’ve been way worse.”

The man pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezing shut as if counting to ten, or maybe twenty. When he finally looked up, his exhale was less frustration than weary surrender.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Alright. New plan. You—” He pointed at the kid. “—are sitting next to me. No talking. No waving. No weird faces. You blink funny, you’re out.”

The kid scrambled up, limbs knocking into furniture like a baby deer, hastily shoving his StarkPad into his backpack. “I thought I wasn’t allowed in high-level meetings?”

“You’re not allowed to participate.” Mr. Stark corrected, herding him toward the boardroom. “You are allowed to sit quietly and absorb knowledge like a sponge. A silent sponge.”

“You’re super grumpy when you skip lunch,” the kid observed, unfazed.

“I’m grumpy because your one job was ‘stay in the lab’ and somehow, somehow, that still got reinterpreted.”

“I’m not even on payroll.”

“Keep pushing me and I’ll draft the contract myself.”

The kid grinned. “Do I get dental?”

They walked back toward the boardroom together. Mr. Stark muttered something low, and the kid laughed under his breath. Then he murmured something back, just out of range, and the man shot him a look that would’ve vaporized most adults, but the kid only smiled.

Alisa suddenly realized she’d been standing there like a glitching robot.

She blinked, rebooted, and turned on autopilot, crossing the floor toward the lounge with her heart pounding like she’d just watched a car crash in slow motion. She grabbed a protein bar and a sad little iced tea from the vending machine, then backtracked through the corridor like nothing had happened. Her face was carefully neutral by the time she re-entered the boardroom.

The moment she stepped inside, María caught her elbow and tilted her head almost imperceptibly toward the conference table.

“Did you see that?”

Alisa followed her gaze.

The kid was already seated, like he’d always been there. His backpack was tucked under the table, StarkPad back out. Mr. Stark was leaning toward him, one arm over the back of his chair, muttering something. The kid didn’t look up, just tilted the tablet to show him something on the screen. The man clicked his tongue, tapped the edge of the tablet with two fingers, and leaned back.

Alisa leaned in, whispering. “He was just sitting outside. On the floor.”

María’s eyebrows shot up. “Out there? Seriously?”

“Yeah. I asked if he was lost. He said he was waiting for someone. Didn’t say who. Then Mr. Stark came out and—” She mimed an explosion with her hands. “They argued. Stark said he told him to stay in the lab.”

María’s eyes darted back to the kid. “Lab? Since when do interns get unsupervised lab access?”

Alisa shook her head. “No way he’s an intern. Too young, and...” she hesitated. “Just doesn’t fit.”

“Then who the hell is he?”

They finally settled back in their seats.

Alisa shook her head. “I think he was waiting for Mr. Stark. Like, on purpose.”

María took a slow sip of her coffee, eyes narrowing. “Did Mr. Stark call him by name?”

Alisa frowned, thinking. “Nope. Just ‘kid.’”

María glanced toward the front again, her lips twitching. “Well, that’s suspicious enough.”

At the front of the room, the man was now typing something directly onto the StarkPad while the kid watched, chewing absently on a fingernail. The kid reached out, swiped the screen, and edited something. Mr. Stark made a face. The kid raised a single, unimpressed eyebrow.

The rest of the boardroom was pretending not to notice. A few were staring fixedly at their tablets. Others were glancing just long enough to confirm that yes, this was definitely happening, and no, they were not going to be the one to ask.

Alisa leaned toward María again, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Am I the only one who sees it?”

María’s gaze flicked to the kid, then back to Alisa. Her smile curled at the edges, slow, knowing, the kind that promised trouble. “Oh, you’re definitely not.”

Then, with deliberate lightness, she added, “But who’d believe us?”

Carl, Front-desk Security Guard – Lobby

Carl was halfway through logging a maintenance drone report for the east atrium’s HVAC panel when he caught the reflection of movement in the side monitor.

He didn’t look up immediately. The early afternoon lull was sacred. Two hours of peace between morning hustle and the mid-afternoon rush. Building traffic dipped to a whisper. Scientists were tucked away in labs, execs in meetings, interns pretending to reorganize databases. Muted heels on polished floors, muffled greetings, the soft chime of elevator doors. The kind of silence you didn’t dare jinx by asking how the day was going.

“Donuts,” Mateo muttered beside him, chewing thoughtfully on the end of a pen like it owed him money. “You thinking Boston cream?”

Carl grunted. “I’m thinking anything that doesn’t have six types of seeds stuck to it. That thing you brought yesterday was half bird food.”

“It was artisanal,” Mateo said, mock offended. “You’re uncultured.”

Carl rolled his eyes. Onscreen, a delivery drone logged an automatic check-in. No breaches, no blown fuses, no rogue bots. God bless quiet shifts. He took a sip of lukewarm coffee.

Then something in the corner of his vision tugged again.

He glanced up.

A kid stood just past the first security gate. Hoodie, worn sneakers, a backpack hanging off one shoulder. Fourteen, maybe. Fifteen if you gave him credit for the height and the way he was trying not to look nervous. He wasn’t running or trying to make a break for it, but neither was he walking in like he belonged.

Carl frowned.

Teenagers didn’t usually wander in off the street, not into this building, this entrance. If they did, they were usually shadowing a parent, tucked in behind a glossy-suited guardian with a conference pass and a reason. And interns—if there were ever interns this young—would at least know where the security checkpoint was, not wander around like they’d never seen a turnstile before.

He stood, slid his chair back, and stepped out from the booth, nodding slightly at Mateo.

“Everything okay, bud?” Carl asked, keeping his voice easy.

The kid looked up, startled. “Oh—uh, yeah! Sorry. I’ve just… never come in through this entrance before.”

That was… not the answer Carl had expected.

He paused, studying the boy more closely now. Clean face, big brown eyes, shoes that looked like they’d survived a few bike crashes. Some kind of science-themed patch on his backpack.

Carl raised an eyebrow. “This is the main entrance.”

The kid winced, like he realized how weird that sounded. “Yeah, I know. It’s just—Happy usually picks me up from school and takes me in through the garage. But today he just—” He waved at the front entrance. “—dropped me here.”

He blinked.

This scrawny, scuffed-up high schooler was casually name-dropping Happy.

Happy Hogan. Carl’s boss. The Head of Security. The guy who yelled at you for a coffee spill and then bought you lunch ten minutes later. The idea of Mr. Hogan driving a high schooler around made something in Carl’s brain short-circuit slightly.

He took a half-step closer. “You work here?”

“I’m an intern,” the kid said. Then quickly added, “Sort of. I mean, I help out sometimes. Mostly in the lab.”

Carl nodded slowly. Not in agreement, just as a way to buy time for his brain to catch up. “Got a badge?”

“Nope,” the kid said, blinking like the question hadn’t even occurred to him before. “Is that… a problem?”

He didn’t sound defiant, just genuinely unsure, as if he couldn’t understand why it mattered.

“No badge?”

“FRIDAY usually just lets me in,” the kid said, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

He turned his head, just slightly, toward Mateo, who had clearly abandoned all pretense of working and was now laser-focused on the interaction, arms folded, chewing that same sad pen like it was popcorn.

Carl shifted his gaze back to the kid. “FRIDAY lets you in?” he repeated, voice flat.

“Yeah,” the kid said, nodding. “She knows me. Sometimes she pretends not to. As a joke. It’s—it’s a whole thing.”

“Uh-huh,” Carl rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And you’ve never had a badge?”

“Nope.” The kid shrugged. “Not once.”

His mind was doing laps now. He had a gnawing sense of missing context, like the tip of an iceberg slicing just above the waterline.

“Okay,” Carl said finally, nodding again. “And what did you say your name was?”

“Peter,” the kid said brightly. Then, with the kind of earnest politeness that somehow made things more suspicious, he added, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Carl!” as if they were at a school orientation, not a security checkpoint.

“Well, Peter,” Carl said slowly, the syllables deliberate, “why don’t you toss your bag on the belt and step through the scanner for me? I’m gonna give your ride a quick call.”

The kid looked mildly nervous, like he hadn’t expected this part. But Peter nodded and slipped the backpack off his shoulder, handling it with exaggerated care, like it was full of eggs. Or maybe explosives. He placed it on the conveyor, one strap still dangling like he was reluctant to let go.

Carl slipped back into the booth, hand already reaching for the private line. Mateo didn’t say anything, but the look he shot Carl over the top of his monitor was deafening.

The phone rang once.

“What?” came the gruff, unmistakable voice on the other end.

Carl cleared his throat. “Uh, Mr. Hogan. Sir. I’ve got a kid here. Says he’s an intern—Peter something. No ID, no badge, just came in through the main entrance—”

“Brown eyes? Kinda twitchy?”

Carl glanced toward the reinforced security glass. The kid in question gave him a sheepish thumbs-up, as if he knew he was being talked about.

“...Yeah,” Carl said slowly. “That’s the one.”

“That’s the kid. Let him in.”

The kid. Not a kid. The. Like it was a title.

“Right. Sure,” Carl said, like any of this made sense. “Just—uh—what’s his clearance level?”

“All access.”

Carl blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“All. Access,” Happy repeated, with the tone of someone already halfway to hanging up. “Jot his name down if it makes you feel better. Doesn’t matter. I don’t have time for—”

Click.

Carl stared at the dead receiver for a full three seconds before hanging it up with unnecessary slowness, like the phone might explode if he moved too fast.

Behind him, Mateo was already swiveling toward his terminal, fingers flying across the keyboard.

“Check for a Peter,” Carl muttered. “Any Peter. Intern records. Guest passes. Payroll. I don’t care if he’s listed as a ficus, just find something.”

“Nada,” Mateo squinted at the screen. “Only Peter in the system is a janitor.”

Carl exhaled through his nose, long and low, like he was trying to push the stress out through sheer lung capacity. “Cool. Great. Love that for us.”

He turned toward the glass. Peter was still there, standing just past the scanner, hands clasped neatly behind his back, rocking on his heels like a school kid waiting for a field trip to start. He caught Carl’s eye and brightened instantly.

“Am I good to go?” he asked, hopeful.

Carl nodded slowly, as if the motion itself took effort. “Yeah, you’re good, Peter. Have a good one.”

“Thanks!” the kid chirped, slinging his backpack over one shoulder like it was full of marshmallows instead of whatever clunked ominously inside it. “And you too!”

He headed for the elevators with a kind of casual confidence that didn’t match the badge-less, no-clearance way he’d arrived. He turned as the doors closed and gave a small wave, like he already knew he’d be back at some point.

Carl stared at the metal doors, still half-expecting an alarm to go off, a protocol to fail, something in the world to protest. Nothing happened.

He sat down, slow and stiff, like his brain hadn't quite caught up with the rest of him.

“That kid,” he said, staring at the elevator, “has full access.”

Mateo looked over. “Come again?”

“I’m telling you. Mr. Hogan said it. ‘All access.’”

Mateo leaned back, whistled low. “So he could walk into Stark’s vault. Or like… the lab with the laser ceiling?”

“Or the executive bathroom,” Carl added, deadpan.

Mateo snorted. “That too.”

Carl scrubbed a hand over his mouth, then dropped it to the keyboard. “We should log him.”

Mateo raised a brow. “He doesn’t even have a badge.”

“Yeah, well…” He shrugged. “Let’s make him one anyway. No sense in the night shift stopping him again if he shows up.”

Mateo started typing. “Name?”

He hesitated. “Peter?”

Mateo glanced up. “Last name?”

Carl blinked. Then frowned. “...We didn’t ask.”

Silence stretched out between them, filled only by the soft hum of servers and the low buzz of fluorescent lights. A new email pinged somewhere in the background. Neither of them moved.

Mateo kept typing. “So who is he, then? Some VIP’s kid?”

Carl looked toward the elevator, still half-expecting it to open again and explain itself. “Mr. Hogan doesn’t chauffeur just anybody.” He paused, frowning as if trying to piece it together. “Wasn’t there… a rumor about some kid in the boardroom last week? And Materials has been gossiping about some ‘junior exec’ no one can find in the files.”

Mateo nodded slowly. “That was him? Alisa swore up and down the kid looked like Stark. And honestly, if you squint—”

Carl cut him off with an exhale. “I hate how much sense this makes.”

A beat.

Mateo glanced sideways. “You called him bud.”

Carl shut his eyes. “I’m never going to live that down.”

Chapter Text

Marisa, VP of Financial Operations – Finance Division, Level 44

There was a certain rhythm to the finance floors. 

The relentless click of keyboards. The occasional slap of a stapler. The ever-present aroma of slightly burnt espresso drifting from the break room. In Marisa’s opinion, it was the closest thing to a living organism an office could get: self-regulating, lightly caffeinated, and prone to muttering about budget overages like an old man with opinions.

Marisa, for her part, had just come from a glass-walled huddle room where the marketing team had nearly imploded over licensing allocations. She wasn’t particularly stressed about it. Jake had found his footing halfway through the meeting, and the retrofit issue would resolve itself once Legal pulled their heads out of the Oslo contracts. Besides, she’d already slotted the tax deferments where they needed to go. Unless something burst into flames before Friday, it wasn’t her problem anymore.

Now she was in a different room, smaller and blessedly free of raised voices. It was just her and Naomi, one of the junior analysts from the sustainability side, hunched over her laptop like she hoped the carpet would open up and swallow her. Marisa resisted the urge to sigh.

The projection graphs for the upcoming Q3 sustainability initiatives were still skewing too low on long-term ROI, and Naomi was struggling to articulate why. Not because Naomi wasn’t brilliant… she absolutely was. Just not brilliant at conflict, or confidence, or making eye contact when numbers went bad. 

“Naomi,” she said, setting her coffee down, “either we frontload eighteen million and we know why, or someone’s getting fired with a beautifully illustrated burn chart.”

Naomi gave a tight smile and pointed at the model again. “Okay, so the upfront cost spike is tied to that new carbon capture contract out of Oslo. Legal’s slow-walking the credit certs, but if we move the licensing to next quarter—”

“We lose green tax leverage,” Marisa said, not unkindly. “Cool. Push back the retrofit. Slide the costs. Anchor them to Q1.”

“I already did,” Naomi said, a bit quietly. “Slide 7.”

Marisa flicked to it. That was better. She allowed herself the smallest smile. “See? I’d rather you show me the fix than wait for permission.”

That earned her a real grin. Naomi relaxed by maybe three percent. A victory.

“Good work,” Marisa added, closing her notebook. “Update the notes in the deck and send it to ops before the end of the day. And seriously, eat something.”

Naomi laughed softly. “Yes, ma’am.”

Marisa gathered her things and gave a parting nod before slipping out of the room.

She moved on autopilot, weaving past cubicles and nodding at a few familiar faces. She slowed briefly near the strategy pod, where Jake was leaning over a shared monitor.

“Naomi’s looping in ops,” she said quietly as she passed. “Retrofit’s getting pushed, but it won’t block approvals.”

Jake gave a small nod, eyes still on the screen. “Got it.”

End of story.

She was halfway to the southeast break room when she caught it.

“He’s here again. That’s the third time this week.”

The words came from a group of associates clustered too casually by the copy machine, voices low in a way that only drew more attention to them.

Marisa didn’t turn.

She selected a granola bar from the wire rack beside the coffee station, tore the wrapper, and took a bite. Tough, too sweet. Way too many sunflower seeds.

She chewed slowly, listening.

“Is that him?” someone hissed, not even pretending to whisper.

“That’s the kid, right?”

A scoff. “I thought he was, like, an intern or something.”

“Jesus, Tammy—he’s not just an intern. That rumor died weeks ago. Do you even read the group chats?”

Marisa glanced up, and there he was, standing near Ms. Potts at the edge of the floor, just outside the conference room by Legal. The kid—because really, that’s what he’d been to her until security had grudgingly coughed up his name after weeks of speculation—was mid-conversation, talking fast, gesturing a little, clearly asking permission for something. Nothing loud or disruptive. Just there. 

The object of all office gossip lately.

Marisa wasn’t complaining. The idea that Tony Stark might have some kind of secret… whatever-he-was skulking around Finance was easily the most interesting thing to happen since Legal accidentally CC’d a senator.

Ms. Potts gave him that look she used when she was trying very hard not to smile, arms crossed, nodding slightly as he explained something that probably shouldn’t require that much enthusiasm. Marisa couldn’t hear what he said, but whatever it was, it earned a resigned sigh and a quick tap on Pepper’s StarkPad. The kind of resigned that looked an awful lot like fondness if you’d known Ms. Potts through more than one fiscal year.

A moment later, Peter stepped back, grinning. He gave Ms. Potts a quick, grateful wave, then turned and walked off. Marisa chewed on her granola bar, watching him weave past Legal, then Business Strategy, before disappearing into the southeast exit corridor.

“He has clearance on the R&D Floor, I swear—my cousin’s in Biotech and saw him walking around the AI department like he owns it.” A beat, then lower: “Which, I mean. Maybe he does?”

“Doesn’t he have, like, all access?”

“Uh, yeah.” A snort. “Carl from Security said he doesn’t even badge in.”

“Wait, what? He doesn’t badge at all?”

“Nope.” Leaning in, conspiratorial. “Doesn’t need to. Word is he doesn’t even use the main entrance.”

“Okay, but like… who is he then? Stark’s kid?”

“I mean, no one’s said that. No announcement, no press release. Not even one of those weird internal memos with the NDA footer.”

“So he’s not official?”

“Nope. But apparently Mr. Stark brought him into the boardroom a few weeks back.”

Someone exhaled through their teeth. “…That’s weird, right?”

“Everything about this is weird.”

Marisa raised one brow. “Okay,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

It wasn’t even the strangest part of her day.

Later that afternoon, during a quarterly planning sync, someone had the bright idea to include a slide titled Projected Stark Succession Plan, complete with org chart boxes and Peter’s face poorly photoshopped above Pepper’s. It got a laugh, even from the CFO.

Mostly a joke.

But no one deleted the slide.

Daniel, Systems Integration Engineer – R&D Division, Level 25

By ten-thirty, Daniel had already fixed two hardware routing conflicts, recompiled a module three times because someone upstream couldn’t label their ports properly, and fielded a first-year intern asking whether Mr. Stark used “a lot of math” when inventing things.

He told them no, Stark just vibes it out. Absolutely not true. But it got them to leave.

The floor reeked of deodorant and nerves. Someone was already yelling at the printer. One guy had worn a suit. No one said anything, but everyone knew why. First Showcase Day, probably. Missed the memo about casual wear still being the norm. 

Daniel’s desk, like most on Level 25, was part of a semi-open cluster of integration staff, people who made other people’s cutting-edge tech play nicely together, usually through sheer force of will and late nights with a debugger.

He was halfway through re-commenting a block of firmware when the overhead chime sounded. Not the general building-wide one, but the soft tone reserved for internal division alerts. Everyone nearby paused. A few heads lifted, like meerkats in shirts and jackets. Someone dropped a stylus.

Then the speakers clicked.

“Morning, everyone,” came the voice of Cassandra, Director of Engineering Ops for R&D. “As a reminder, Showcase presentations begin promptly at eleven. Please direct any last-minute tech issues to your assigned lead, and no, we will not be ‘just shifting things ten minutes’ to accommodate poor time management.”

A quiet snort came from someone behind Daniel’s partition. He didn’t blame them.

“One additional note,” Cassandra continued. “Mr. Stark will be in attendance and has elected to bring a guest. Please do not start a betting pool.”

The line cut off.

For a few beats, no one said anything. Then the entire aisle exhaled like a pressure valve.

“I’m starting a betting pool!” someone yelled from the northeast quad.

“Goddammit, Trent,” came a second voice, instantly. “She said not to.”

“She always says that.”

A few chairs scraped back. A whiteboard marker squeaked against plastic. Someone—Daniel thought it might be Luc from comms—made a dramatic ding! sound, like announcing the start of a game show.

Daniel leaned back in his chair and looked across the bullpen toward Mariana, who handled optics. She had her elbow propped on the desk divider and was watching the chaos unfold with resigned amusement.

“A guest,” Daniel said flatly.

She didn’t even look surprised. “We taking bets on whether it’s human?”

Daniel snorted. He minimized his terminal, then stood and stretched just enough to crack something in his lower back.

Somewhere across the floor, someone asked if anyone had odds on whether the guest would be a senator, a celebrity, or some startup guy trying to license an arc reactor for something ridiculous. If so, Mr. Stark would probably be humoring him, mostly for his own amusement. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Bet it’s that kid,” Mariana muttered.

Daniel made a face. Not this again. “Stark’s secret spawn?”

She gave a half-shrug, a small smile tugging at her lips. “That’s what people are saying.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why would he bring a middle-schooler into an engineering showcase?”

“Apparently, he’s sixteen,” Mariana said, lowering her voice a notch. “Heard he’s interning. Or whatever you call it when daddy hands you a security badge. Nobody’s really clear on the details.”

Daniel scoffed and leaned back in his chair. “Intern? Seriously? What’s the point of interning for your own dad?”

She smiled, shaking her head. “Gotta start grooming the heir young, right?”

“Fantastic,” Daniel muttered, rubbing his temples. “I was failing differential equations at sixteen.”

Mariana leaned back, taking a sip from a mug that probably hadn’t held coffee since Tuesday. “Word is, he coded some kind of failsafe patch for the Mark-whatever suit.”

Daniel snorted. The rumor mill had already spun wilder tales. Last week, someone swore the kid had single-handedly debugged FRIDAY. (Unlikely. Stark wouldn’t let a teenager near his precious AI, even if they shared DNA.) 

“Probably while waiting for brunch at Soho House,” he said. “You know, in between trust fund meetings.”

Mariana rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Dan, at least wait until you meet the kid before writing him off.”

“I feel like I already know him,” Daniel said, tapping his temple. “Peter this, Peter that. Whole damn building won’t shut up about him.”

“Relax. Your precious integration team isn’t even participating today. Stark Junior can’t upstage what isn’t in the game,” Mariana said, kicking her feet up on a nearby chair.

Daniel scanned the schedule on his tablet. “Optics got anything?”

“Nah. Just some intern’s pet project coming up.” She raised her mug in mock salute. “So go ahead, be your usual bitter self. Free pass today.”

By ten fifty-five, the usual migration had begun. Engineers were gathering in clumps near the hallway, clutching tablets and travel mugs and portable prototypes. Daniel trailed the crowd down to the R&D guest conference area, a wide, modular seminar room with collapsible walls, overhead projectors, and enough folding chairs to seat the better half of a TED Talk.

He and Mariana split off naturally, her veering toward the left bank of seats where the optics team had already started claiming their usual cluster. Daniel found his own people near the middle right, where integration tended to roost. They were within view of the screen, but not close enough to be volunteered as impromptu tech support.

“Yo,” said Jason, one of the saner integration engineers. He was already in the next seat, bumping Daniel’s elbow lightly as he dropped into place. “You bring something?”

“Nope,” Daniel said, sinking into the chair. “How’s the pool?”

“Trent’s already taking second bets. I went with Director Cho bringing another biometric patent guy from Singapore. Or a DJ.”

“Bold.”

“Not bold. Statistically overdue. You betting?”

Daniel shook his head. “Not into speculation. I like surprises to stay surprising.”

Jason snorted. “That’s what everyone who thinks they’re losing says.”

Behind them, someone was trying to sync a clicker with the projector. A little mechanical beep rang out, then a different beep, then a soft “shit” from whoever was managing the room AV this week. Cassandra stepped up to the front, armed with a tablet, a wireless mic, and her standard air of thinly veiled exhaustion.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said, and a few people reflexively reached for their styluses.

Daniel stifled a sigh. Cassandra’s opening monologues were part pep talk, part threat, and part polite scolding. Like being addressed by a school principal who ran teams instead of classrooms.

“We’ve got a packed schedule today,” she continued. “A mix of early-stage ideas, revisions on existing R&D concepts, and yes—before you ask—yes, some of the interns are presenting. Please be kind. Remember, you were all once that overcaffeinated and underpaid.”

Quiet chuckles rippled through the room.

Daniel leaned sideways to Jason. “God, this is giving me Oscorp flashbacks.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”

“Worse. We used to run daily scrums in full suits.”

Jason made a face of genuine horror. “Monsters.”

“Right?”

Behind them, a familiar voice whispered loudly, “I just hope Stark shows up soon. If we have to sit through a patent pitch without explosions, I’m going to flatline.”

Daniel didn’t need to turn around to know it was Trent.

Cassandra tapped her mic. “We’ll be starting shortly. Mr. Stark is—unsurprisingly—running a few minutes behind. He’s asked to make a brief opening statement before we begin, so presentations will start as soon as he arrives.”

That stirred the room. A few heads turned. Whisper volume increased.

Jason gave Daniel a pointed look. “Since when does Stark do opening statements? Half the time he no-shows, the other half he wanders in halfway through like he’s at a fucking coffee run.”

“Because he doesn’t give a shit,” Daniel said. “This is way below his radar.”

“Unless—” Trent piped up from behind, —he’s got someone to introduce. Formally.”

“Oh my God,” Daniel muttered. “Can you all shut up about the kid for one second?”

He glanced across the room and caught Mariana’s eye. She wiggled her eyebrows at him like she was watching a soap opera.

He looked away. This was getting absurd.

Daniel sat back, arms crossed.

The whole thing had spiraled out of proportion. So Stark had a kid. Great. The presence or absence of teenage progeny affected precisely zero percent of R&D output. But for months now, the office had turned it into a goddamn legend. Stories about the kid hacking FRIDAY, reprogramming Widow’s bites, reverse-engineering Iron Man suit protocols over breakfast.

Daniel didn’t buy it. None of it.

The kid was probably a decently smart high schooler, sure, but more likely to inherit a board seat than a soldering iron. Which was fine. Not everyone needed to be an engineer. Not everyone should be. But the way everyone kept talking about him like he was the second coming of von Neumann? Ridiculous.

This was just good old-fashioned nepotism, with a few sci-fi accessories slapped on.

Around them, a small crowd was starting to form. Trent was sitting just behind Daniel, arms crossed, his usual smile in place as a few of the other techs nervously eyed him, probably hoping to place bets on the latest developments. Trent refused to take any more wagers. 

“This new info is totally unfair to the early birds,” he muttered, shaking his head. Daniel resisted the urge to sigh.

Then, without any fanfare, the doors slid open with a soft sigh. Tony Stark walked in like he always did, like he’d just remembered he was supposed to be somewhere. He had his sunglasses on, because of course he did. Indoors, under full-spectrum LEDs, at eleven in the morning. Daniel never got used to that. It was objectively ridiculous, and somehow it still kind of worked.

Just behind him was the kid. Not quite tucked behind Stark’s shoulder, but hovering just slightly off to the side, the way someone might if they weren’t exactly hiding but also weren’t totally sure where to stand. He wasn’t much shorter than Stark, only by an inch or two, but he looked smaller somehow. Narrow-shouldered. A little hunched. Like he was holding in the urge to shove his hands into his pockets and disappear into the floor.

At least he hadn’t worn a suit. Daniel had been vaguely worried about that. Peter had shown up in a t-shirt and jeans, no lanyard, no badge. Just a kid trailing after the most famous man in the building.

Trent leaned forward and whispered, “Damn. Lotta people bet on the kid. Pool’s gonna tank. Gotta recalculate the spread.”

Daniel didn’t turn. “You’re the worst,” he said under his breath.

At the front of the room, Stark gave Cassandra a quick handshake, then nudged Peter forward to do the same. Everyone was trying very hard not to look like they were watching. Daniel couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed cordial enough.

Tony stepped up to the podium and tapped the mic with one finger, just enough to make it squeal. The room flinched.

“Morning, nerds,” Stark said.

A few polite chuckles floated up. Cassandra gave him a look, but not a real one.

“Sorry for the delay. Had to drag someone out of bed.” He clapped Peter on the shoulder like he’d just yanked him out of detention, not a multimillion-dollar lab. “This is Peter. He’s been shadowing me for—God, almost a year? Jesus. You people get older or is it just me?”

More awkward chuckles. Stark continued without waiting for a reply.

“He’s gonna be doing a little pitch at the end of the showcase, so if you feel like sticking around and pretending to care, you’ll get to see what he’s been up to. Shouldn’t conflict with your standing appointments to silently judge each other’s sprint progress.”

He turned to Peter. “Wanna say something, kid?”

Peter blinked at him, then stepped up to the mic. His hands didn’t shake, but Daniel noticed the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot like he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed to stand still.

“Uh—hi,” Peter said. “I’m Peter. It’s really great to be here. I’ve been working on some stuff I’m excited to share, so… thanks for letting me crash your demo day.”

Short and quiet. Totally normal.

Behind him, Trent muttered, “Oh. Huh.”

Jason leaned over. “He’s not exactly what I pictured.”

Daniel grunted. He wasn’t either.

Peter and Stark stepped down and took two of the only remaining seats in the first row, off to the side, the zone of exile no one ever willingly chose. Cassandra retook the mic, smiling just slightly tighter than before.

“Well, thank you, Mr. Stark,” she said, smoothing it over professionally. “And welcome, Peter. Let’s get started.”

The lights dimmed.

A few projectors blinked to life, and the first slide of the morning flickered on the massive screen at the front, some dusty title about near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy. Daniel didn’t even register the rest. Because while the room’s attention should have been shifting to the presentation, it absolutely wasn’t.

Everyone was trying, badly, to sneak glances at the two figures now seated in the dreaded front row, where the angle of the screen was awful and the audio was worse. You couldn’t really see much from where Daniel was, just vague silhouettes, but he could just make out the shape of Stark leaning toward the kid again, saying something quietly. He still had a hand on Peter’s shoulder, like he was giving him a pep talk before the spelling bee or something.

Daniel paused. Did Stark really say he got him out of bed?

He replayed it in his head. Yeah. Had to drag someone out of bed. That was what he’d said. Casually. Publicly. Which, if you thought about it, was basically an admission, wasn’t it?

He shifted in his seat.

The rumors hadn’t started until maybe two months ago, max. If he’d really been around for a year, then either Peter was incredibly good at staying invisible, or someone had gone to great lengths to keep it under wraps. And why exactly?

Was it just a retroactive internship timeline? A little narrative cover-up to make him seem more legit? Or was that an unintentional slip, some kind of weird acknowledgement that Stark had known him longer than anyone thought? Maybe even… Daniel didn’t know. He didn’t like speculating.

But he also couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He glanced at Trent.

Trent was already halfway down a rabbit hole on his phone. Calculator app open. Figures scrolling. Daniel rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. Of course he was doing the math on the betting pool.

And of course, because the day had decided to personally offend him, the optics intern gave an actually fantastic presentation. No shaky transitions, no overdesigned slides, just clean, simple data and a clear application. The room even clapped a little louder than usual when he finished.

So now Daniel couldn’t even be righteously pissy.

The last of the scheduled presentations wrapped up to polite applause. The presenter clicked out of their final slide. And then nothing. Nobody moved.

He glanced around, surprised. Not one person so much as shifted in their seat.

That was not normal.

In R&D, it was tradition—hell, it was gospel—that the moment the last presenter said “thank you,” everyone stood up like they’d been released from purgatory. Presentations usually ended around one, and Cassandra always had to basically beg to say closing remarks over the rustling of backpacks and the squeak of chairs.

But now? Silence. The entire room, dozens of people, still as statues.

They were all waiting.

Daniel stayed seated.

He could almost feel Mariana’s smirk stretch across the room like someone had drawn it on her face with a Sharpie. He didn’t look at her. He wanted to stand, purely out of spite, but, well. Curiosity was a hell of a thing.

He’d always been an engineer. Always needed to know how things worked. And maybe—maybe—he wanted to know how this worked too. Even if it meant enduring Mariana’s smugness for the next week.

Up front, Stark said something again, low enough that no one could hear. He patted Peter on the back. Twice. Peter stood, small and a little stiff, and pulled a flash drive from his pocket.

He crossed to the side computer and plugged it in. He moved fast, like someone used to the setup. His presentation hadn’t been queued with the rest but it popped up in seconds. Stark Industries template. Standard fonts. Standard colors. Respectable. Restraint, even. Damn it.

Peter stepped up to the mic, adjusting it a little too high before lowering it back down again. His hand hovered awkwardly near the clicker.

He cleared his throat once.

“Uh, hey,” he said. “Thanks for staying. I wasn’t expecting this many people, so… yeah. That’s cool.”

A ripple of chuckles and a few small smiles. It was awkward, but not painfully. Just enough to be endearing.

“So, uh—this isn’t exactly the most polished thing, but it’s something I’ve been working on for a while. The working title is: Optimized Tactile Feedback Loops in Soft Robotics for Medical Application.”

That got a few heads to turn. Including Daniel’s.

Okay. That wasn’t a science fair project. That wasn’t even an ambitious high school project.

Peter clicked to the next slide. And then the next. And then he started explaining.

Messily.

It was obvious from the first thirty seconds that the kid was a rambler. His slides weren’t messy, they were clean, almost suspiciously well-formatted, but his delivery kept jumping tracks. He’d wander into a tangent about a prototype he tried to 3D print in his school’s makerspace and then yank himself back mid-sentence to clarify a bit of coding logic that was only kind of relevant. He didn’t really pause between sections, and every so often he’d get too excited and toss in a “well, anyway, never mind that” like he was arguing with himself.

But it was clever.

It was so clever.

Daniel looked around, pretending to scan the room like a bored manager, but really he was trying to gauge if he was the only one feeling it.

He wasn’t.

Even Jason had gone quiet beside him.

Sure, it was messy. But underneath the chaotic delivery was a thesis that was actually… kind of brilliant. Real-time pressure mapping using low-cost materials. Dynamic reactivity in prosthetics. Application modeling for muscle-mimicking flexors. The kind of work that interns, college seniors, only sometimes scratched at.

Daniel exhaled slowly. He looked again toward the front.

From this angle, he couldn’t really see Peter’s face, not directly. But Stark? Stark was turned in his seat, fully engaged, one arm resting on the back of the chair beside him like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to clap early. That man was grinning. Not just smiling. Grinning, wide and proud like he’d just seen a prototype go airborne.

Daniel swallowed. This was Stark’s kid.

The presentation rolled to its end. Peter mumbled something about error margins, and then sort of half-laughed and said, “I know that was a lot. Um, thanks for listening.”

For half a beat, no one moved. Then Stark stood. He started clapping, no hesitation, like he’d been waiting to do it since slide three.

Applause followed quickly. Not polite. Not forced. Actual applause. Some people even whistled.

Peter beamed, just for a moment, then immediately looked down at his shoes like he didn’t know what to do with himself. He mouthed “thank you,” once, then again, but you couldn’t really hear it over the noise.

Stark was already climbing the steps to the stage, smooth as ever, and by the time the applause tapered off, he had an arm around Peter’s shoulder and one hand on the mic.

“Well,” Tony said, “that’s the kind of half-baked brilliance I would’ve come up with at sixteen. Must run in the blood—metaphorically speaking.”

Jason, Trent, and Daniel all shared a look. Jason blinked once. Trent’s eyebrows slowly rose. Daniel almost snorted. That was it. A live, completely unrehearsed, zero-subtlety confession.

Stark went on like nothing happened.

“Anyway,” he said, patting Peter on the shoulder again, “thanks for sticking around. If you’ve got ideas, questions, thoughts, death threats—keep those to yourself, but anything else, Peter’ll be sticking around for a bit.”

He glanced toward the screen.

“Kid,” he said, half-under his breath but still caught by the mic. “You forgot the email slide.”

“Oh, crap,” Peter muttered, also picked up just barely. “Sorry, I was so nervous, I—”

There was a soft scramble as Peter fumbled with the clicker, cheeks clearly flaming. The final slide blinked onto the screen behind them, a crisp white background, the Stark Industries logo stamped clean in the corner, and an email in bold blue text.

Jason made a quiet wheeze next to Daniel.

“Oh my god,” he said, voice barely audible. “So it was bring your son to work day. I thought that was in May.”

From the row behind, Trent chuckled.

“Shit,” Daniel said. “Okay. I’ll admit it. Kid’s… something.”

“Confirmed?” Jason asked, side-eyeing him.

Daniel nodded once. “Confirmed.”

Trent leaned forward, grinning. “The group chats are gonna go feral. Someone’s got a recording, right?”

Daniel didn’t even hesitate. “Please. Ask Mariana. She’s had her phone out since slide two.”

“Of course she has,” Trent muttered, already texting. “God bless Mariana.”

Evan, Junior Technician – R&D Division, Level 32

After two grueling months of wrestling with a pressure sleeve that was definitely designed for someone with bigger arms, Evan finally swallowed his pride and asked for a smaller size. No one blinked. Except Amanda. She’d laughed when he told her about it later.

He hadn’t realized just how much soldering he’d be doing here, and after nearly losing feeling in his hands more than once, he figured a little ribbing from his supervisor was a fair trade-off for keeping his limbs intact.

It had been a month since that whole episode, which also marked his first trimester at Stark Industries. The best part? Evan was no longer the rookie. At least, not officially.

The downside? He now had to deal with one.

And as much as he sympathized—truly, he did—because starting at Stark Industries felt like being thrown headfirst into an arc reactor, Evan had so much to do, and exactly zero caffeine in his system. Which is probably why, when the new guy stopped him for the fifth time that morning (it was 9:03 a.m.), Evan sighed into his thermos instead of replying like a normal person.

They were posted up in one of the lab hallways. Well, “posted” was generous. Evan was leaning against the wall sipping from a thermos that had once contained coffee and now contained something pretending to be coffee. The new guy—Caleb, maybe?—was hovering beside him, looking like he was either about to ask a question or a favor. Or both.

“Hey,” Caleb said, fidgeting with the corner of his badge. “Can I ask you something kind of dumb?”

Evan didn’t look at him. Just let out a long, suffering breath through his nose. “Yeah. Sure. Why not. Hit me.”

Caleb gave him a sheepish little smile. “Okay, so. Is it true that Tony Stark has a son?”

Evan blinked. Then turned his head, slowly.

“You’ve been here three days.”

“I know, I know,” Caleb said, hands raised in surrender. “I wasn’t gonna bring it up, but I heard this guy talking at the security checkpoint… real casual, like he just assumed everyone knew.”

Evan stared at him.

“So then I asked Amanda,” Caleb went on, clearly sensing the cliff edge and swan-diving over it anyway. “And she just kind of rolled her eyes and said, ‘You new guys are way too gossipy for my taste.’ But she didn’t deny it. So…”

He trailed off, expectant.

Evan pinched the bridge of his nose. “You asked Amanda.”

“She’s my supervisor?”

“I know,” Evan muttered. “She’s mine, too.”

Which meant she’d definitely been talking about him, the original gossip. He sighed into his cup.

Caleb hesitated. “So… is that kid Mr. Stark’s or not?”

Evan opened his mouth.

He was going to answer—really, he was—but then a voice cut through the hallway as clean as a laser line, coming from somewhere just behind them:

“He’s mine. Came with the building, unfortunately.”

Evan stiffened.

Tony Stark strode past without so much as a glance. No warning, no follow-up. Just dropped the line and kept walking.

They watched him disappear around the corner. Evan stared after him, blinking once. Then again.

The new hire looked like he’d just seen a ghost. Or a god. Or both.

Evan finally said, “...So that’s a yes?”

Caleb glanced at him, wide-eyed.

“I don’t know, man.”

And that was that.