quigonejinn

2.

Trust Tony Stark to produce a clone even smarter than him. Obadiah remembers Howard bragging about five year old Tony's IQ. Just this side of measurable. The IQ of this clone was wildly in excess of anything measurable; it gained control of its vocal chords an hour out of the incubation chamber, speaking in sentences by the time the afternoon was out, and when the scientist on duty came around for the evening lockup, he found a schematic of the locking mechanism to the room traced on the fogged-up surface of the secondary incubation chamber. The oddest thing was that it had stopped responding to the quick-aging process halfway through -- the intelligence, though. The intelligence. There might be a use for it notwithstanding.

"Good morning, Tony."

"Good morning, Carol. I hope your husband doesn't mind that you're cheating on him with a security guard."

Obadiah sees the researcher flinch, and Tony leans forward, showing far too many teeth. There's a reason the scientists have put three inches of Plexiglass between them and the other side of the room.

"Good morning, Obadiah," Tony says.

"Good morning, Tony," Obadiah says and opens the folder. He uncaps his pen. The system is recording. "What are you going to invent to earn being alive at the end of today?"

*

Unsurprisingly, it escapes, killing two security guards, blowing out half the building, and gutting Carol the researcher. Obadiah orders the helicopters out, and they overtake Tony a little more than half mile from the Interstate, next to a field of corn: a helicopter takes Obadiah to the site after the fact, and it sets him down. It's late July, so the corn is to Obadiah's head. If Tony had reached the cornfield, they would never been able to find him. He would have gotten to the Interstate, so no, not half a mile from freedom: twenty feet. Probably closer to fifteen. Obadiah puts his shoe underneath the shoulder and turns the body over.

It's the spitting image of Tony at fifteen, except this one had spent its entire six weeks of existence in a cell carefully decorated to look like a bedroom, but with a three inch Plexiglass wall on one side. The side of the face was blown to hell from a high-powered sniper rifle, but looking at the body, Obadiah had the disappointing feeling that this one got exactly what it wanted.