Summary:Pepper pulls Tony out of his workshop to talk about something important. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's been several days since Pepper went out to that honest to goodness real house of horrors with Mr. Gleason, Isis, Jimmy, and Dr. McCoy. No, not the Star Trek doctor. What they found there truly concerned her, and she immediately tasked JARVIS with tracking down what he could find out about the supposedly stolen medical robot from California and whether or not other similar medical machines ended up not where they belonged.
This could have been taking up a noticeable amount of the AI's processing cycles.
Other, more concerning findings Pepper felt she needed to being to Tony's attention directly. Hence, she's invading his workshop. At least she thought to bring a peace offering of pizza and cans of soda.
Tony was listening to 'Unsainted' by Slipknot as he seemed to be giving one of his Iron Man suits a new paintjob with JARVIS's assistance. "JARVIS, adjust the hue by about 20 percentile towards the crimson pigment."
"Of course, sir." Tony was wearing a black T-shirt with blue jeans and some glvoes on his hands to not get paint all over them. He had no idea as to Pepper's presence because he's jamming heavy metal in his workshop like he almost always does.
She might have to thwack him in the ear or ask JARVIS to turn down the bloody music.
But then?
"Sir, Miss Potts is here to see you."
"WHAT?" Tony shouts ove rthe music.
As it is every time, stepping into that wall of sound borders on painful to Pepper. Thankfully, she's established a bit of non-verbal communication with JARVIS, and her visible wince at the music is enough for the AI to immediately turn the volume down to NORMAL person sociable levels.
"Tony, we need to talk." That's likely words that could send the man running, but hopefully the smell of the pizza will catch him first and give him a reason to not flee. "I've discovered something that you probably want to know about."
Tony looks at Pepper and he seems to immediately curse under his breath. "If this is about jerry-rigging the car to go mach 3, I had no idea the ignition could be supercharged that far." Tony apparently tries to distract his rather strict and basically-keeper assistant from scolding him too harshly.
"But uh…well, guess I'll put this on hold. What exactly do we need to talk about? Its not the cake disaster I tried this morning, is it?" Tony asks her. Yep, one more try. Give him an A for effort at least.
Pepper takes a deep breath, which immediately doesn't bode well. "No, it's not about the car or the cake this morning." She finds a clear spot on a worktable to set the pizza and sodas down. "JARVIS, could you please pull up what you've found about those medical robots I asked you to track down?"
Multiple displays open at her request, including legal documents about a hospital administrator in southern California prosecuted for embezzlement and illegally selling hospital equipment, specifically the robotic setup pictured on another holoscreen. "About two weeks ago, it was brought to my attention that one of these medical devices was here in New York, nowhere near where it should have been. I asked JARVIS to find out more, and this is what he dug up."
Tony whews. "Good, because those were disasters." Tony says as he wipes some sweat off of hisbrow. He was concentrating a great deal, after all. But then she's calling upon JARVIS to pull up displays, the holographic screens showing exactly what was asked of the Virtual Intelligence.
"Okay, hospitals selling stuff they really shouldn't be selling." Tony seems to at least be trying to follow along, but then he falls silent, waiting for Pepper to speak more before he starts drawing any conclusions in advance.
Pepper highlights bits of information on each display. Four medical bots decommissioned, the first sold by the dirty hospital administrator, one having been recorded as arriving at the scrapyard it was intended to go to, two others missing without explanation from their designated scrapyards.
Pepper then goes back to the first machine's particulars, and highlights more. The money trail from the administrator leads to New York, and a Ukranian family suspected to be involved with organized crime. "These were the points that concerned me the most about these robots, especially considering that I was with Mr. Gleason and Ms. Marik in an abandoned lab suspected of conducting illegal experiments on anthropomorphic humans when we found the first one."
Tony seems to keep his arms crossed as he leans against one of the tables, keeping his full attention on the display. Hospital administrator sold it, sure, but thats not surprising. Many people in positions of 'power' are corrupt and will make just about any grab for power that they can find. But what is probably interesting is that the trail leads to a Ukranian family.
"Anthropomorphic as in…trying to intermix human and animal DNA? For medical purposes or just to see if they can create a new life form?" Tony asks Pepper, who seems to have a grim knowledge of this situation. Given, on a SHIELD mission, he encountered AIM-based experiments, but he suspects this might be the cause of the symptom, as it were.
"As in trying to exaggerate already existing animal-like traits in people as well as mentally control or condition them to act as soldiers. Or possibly splice their DNA with actual animals to get something stronger, faster, and more easily controlled than humans." Pepper shakes her head. "I'm not as versed in biology type sciences. But I do know that being in that place upset Ms. Marik very badly."
She leafs through the information JARVIS supplied, then pauses on something. "Oh. Did you know that the suspected Ukrainians here in New York seem to be dabbling in the energy sector?" She expands one portion of the data to focus on what she just found.
Tony looks at Pepper as she talks about exaggerating animal traits in humans like a genome sequence: controllable and modifiable. Its crazy to belief, almost. Truly, it was shocking. But he had experienced this before. Tony was pondering this for a moment as he leaned away from the table and started to move around it so he could sit down as Pepper tried to get his own thoughts out of him.
"Yeah. I knew that. That one was new to me, but I decided to keep a watchful eye on it. I need proof before I can act, otherwise I'd just be blowing shit up in the eyes of the government thats already watching us like hawks." He takes a breath. "Do you know how they're shipping samples or…people?"
Pepper blinks and looks at Tony. "I don't. I only know that these medical robots have not ended up where they're supposed to be, and it started with finding that first one in a lab that send Isis into a complete panic attack."
Then, she remembers something else. "We also found a bomb in that lab. A biological warfare set up," at this point she hesitates, knowing that she's likely about to upset Tony. A lot. She looks at him sadly and worriedly when she finishes her statement. "Housed in a Jericho casing."
Tony keeps his attention on Pepper, but his eyes seem to widen just a little bit when she tells him that she found the bomb housed in a Jericho Missile casing. "We didn't mass produce the Jericho. Unless -" Stane.
Tony shakes his head. "Okay, I'll look into it. How do you know all of this again? Have you been doing exactly what you shouldn't be doing?" Tony seems genuinely upset with Pepper for a hard minute before he exhales deeply.
"Okay, I'll look into this. Coordinate with SHIELD and we'll follow the rabbit trail."
Pepper nods to Tony when he says he'll look into it. "I'm not sure who on SHIELD side is working on this, but I know that Nick Gleason has for sure. JARVIS has his contact information. I'll get in touch with him first thing tomorrow. For now, though, you should probably eat something." She indicates the pizza sitting and waiting. She /might/ snag a slice herself, but she has a salad waiting upstairs in her office as well.