I reached for the door of the stairwell, my mind already shifting gears. I was drafting the press release in my head- tragic accident, CEO survives, stock dip, buy the dip.

  My hand touched the handle.

  Then, the hair on my arms stood up.

  It wasn't the wind. It was static. The air behind me, which had gone silent, suddenly changed. The pressure in the atmosphere dropped so sharply my ears popped.

  I stopped. I didn't turn around immediately. I listened.

  Beneath the concrete roof, deep in the bowels of the factory, the large Arc Reactor wasn't powering down. It was overloading. The "silence" I had heard wasn't the end; it was the intake of breath before the disaster. Stane's fall hadn't just destroyed the containment field, it had shattered the regulator core.

  Thump-thump.

  I felt Tony's heartbeat through the blood-link. It faltered. Then it skipped.

  "Damn it," I whispered.

  I spun around.

  The smoking hole in the roof where Stane had fallen was glowing. Not the normal blue of clean energy, but a blinding, erratic white. The reactor was going critical. It was preparing to vent the remaining terajoules of pure fusion energy directly up the shaft right where Tony was lying unconscious.

  He wouldn't survive the thermal wash. The suit was dead. He was just a man in a metal coffin cooking on a griddle.

  I dropped my suit jacket on the gravel.

  I moved.

  I didn't run; I blurred. I crossed the fifty yards of rooftop in a fraction of a second, the gravel turning to dust under my heels.

  I reached the edge of the breach just as the second wave erupted.

  CRACK-BOOM.

  The sound was physical. A pillar of white fire shot up from the darkness, wider and hotter than the first. It wasn't just light; it was plasma. It rose toward the sky, consuming everything in its path.

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  Tony was inches from the edge. The heat was already curling the paint on his armor.

  I didn't try to pull him away. There was no time. The wave was here.

  I stepped over him.

  I planted my feet on either side of his prone form, placing myself directly in the path of the beam. I looked down at him through the shattered faceplate. His eyes were closed, face bloody and ash-covered.

  I looked up into the white death coming towards us.

  "Void," I commanded.

  I didn't use a barrier. A barrier would deflect the heat sideways and incinerate the rest of the factory. I had to eat it.

  I opened the Void.

  The air around my body turned pitch black, a sharp, violent contrast to the blinding white light. The plasma wave hit me.

  It felt like being crushed by a whole building.

  The energy slammed into my back, curling around my shoulders, trying to bypass me to get to the ground. I grabbed the energy with my will, forcing it into my own body. My skin burned. My blood boiled. The sheer caloric density of the reactor was enough to power a city for fifty years, and I was drinking it all in three seconds.

  I gritted my teeth, a low growl escaping my throat. The concrete beneath my dress shoes turned to glass.

  Hold it.

  The beam began to thin. I was draining the core faster than it could vent. The white fire turned blue, then faded to a sputter.

  I gasped, falling to one knee. Smoke rose from my shirt. My skin was glowing with a faint, translucent crimson light as my body processed the massive intake of power.

  The roof was silent again. For real this time.

  I looked down. Tony was safe. The heat hadn't touched him. The shadow of my body had perfectly shielded him from the blast.

  I heard the clang of the stairwell door opening again.

  "Tony!"

  Pepper. She was running across the roof, barefoot, holding her shoes in her hands, her face shown her terror.

  I stood up, swaying slightly. I checked the blood-link. Tony's heart was steady. Stronger now.

  I looked at Pepper. She was fifty feet away, squinting through the smoke and the tears. She saw a figure standing over Tony. She slowed down, confused.

  I didn't stay to explain. The Good Shareholder couldn't be seen glowing like a nuclear battery.

  I took a step back, stepping off the edge of the hole, into the darkness of the ruined reactor shaft.

  As I fell, I dissolved into mist, drifting out through the shattered windows of the lower levels just as Pepper reached Tony's side.

  "Tony? Oh god, Tony!"

  I coalesced in the alleyway three blocks down, next to the dumpster where I had parked the Rolls.

  I leaned against the brick wall, coughing. I looked at my hands. They were trembling. My expensive dress shirt was ruined, the back burned away entirely.

  "Expensive night," I muttered, unbuttoning the charred cuffs.

  I opened the car door and slid into the back seat. Happy was snoring in the front.

  I closed my eyes. The board meeting tomorrow was going to be interesting. But at least I wouldn't have to explain a dead CEO.

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