If They Knew All About You

Even Newton Had Bad Days

His eyes wandered back and forth across the graphic. "Most of them do. There is a third signature that actually seems to match another receiver, but that one has not shown up in any of the readings you send along."

"We're thinking they use both locations to communicate with bases across the border. There could be a connection with a splinter group from Nigeria," Rogers explained.

Tony shook his head. "I can't pin down the destination from what I have here. If you get me an area limited to about 60 square miles I can run analysis and possibly find a match but even that could take up to a day or more. We're talking about multiple million data sets a day over the timeframe of a few weeks. You need to down the area first or the number of signals would just be too high. I might find something eventually, but not in a reasonable timeframe."

"It might be some time before we will have that information. I'll keep you posted. I gotta go. Nat's waiting."

"Alright, Cap. Don't get caught!"

Tony hung up and ran both hands over his face.

"Boss, you have a 5 pm deadline set for phase 2.2."

Tony sighed, "Alright then. Open up the documentation. What time is it now?"

"It's 3:28 pm, Sir."

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"While you were on the phone there were also two missed calls from Mr. Gordon's desk of the Research and Development LA division categorised as urgent, one call from Miss Potts' office confirming they received the update on phase 1.4 that was initialized successfully, an update from Ms. Hill on Vision's progress at the abandoned facility in Blacksburg, Virginia, and another call from Mrs. Turner on a problem with the two Arc Reactor installation sites in Orlando awaiting your response at your earliest convenience but before 7pm tonight as well as two text messages from Peter Parker still waiting for response."

Tony rubbed circles across both his temples simultaneously. Where was he even to start on this?

"Tell Gordon I'm wired in for the next 30 minutes. Tell him I'll call, 4 pm Eastern sharp, and he can have 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Also, remind me to call him at 4 pm sharp. Tell Orlando I'll call them at 6:50 pm unless it's about the groundwater runoff, then have them send the specs and have them call me at 5:15 pm."

"Will do, Boss. There is also a low-level alert about the amount of sleep you missed in the last 84 hours. I must strongly advise you to take a break, eat and sleep at the earliest possibility."

Tony waved her off. "Remind me about that again on Friday, girl."

"Sir, today is Saturday."

He groaned. "Just open up those documents on phase 2.2, FRI."

"What about Peter Parker, Sir?"

Tony shook his head.

"Just tell him I'll get back to him."

His eyes moved across the projection, looking for the line in the code he had FRIDAY mark before he had taken the incoming call from Rogers.

He cleared his throat before adding, "And tell him to stay low and not to fall out of the sky."

##

It had been more than a week since that rendezvous with the Black Widow. Longer than that since he had been at the Tower. He had gone home that day and like Mr. Stark had asked, he just stayed low to the ground for a couple of days, only went out at night so he was less likely to get caught by civilians' camera phones. Mr. Stark had canceled their meet up and hadn't set a new one, had hardly responded to Peter's texts at all. It had been 8 days since he'd been at the Tower and even though he rationed his supply, he had run out of web fluid two nights ago on his right shooter. At first, he was going to stop his patrols. He texted Mr. Sark again but just wouldn't get a reply. So he went out anyway. It was good training, right? Relying on only one of his arms. Maybe he wouldn't have been hurt that night in that alley if he would have known how to deal with using only one shooter. If he hadn't frozen up. The one left only worked for a couple more hours though and had run out the next day. No web fluid meant basically no patrolling. He could still do stuff but he relied on the web-shooters for a quick escape. For wrapping up the thieves and criminals.