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 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.
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 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 on 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.”