Chapter 4: Shadows Beneath Iron
Adrian had always been rational. Logic was his anchor, even in the face of the unimaginable. So when his new world started collapsing around him, he did what any logical person would do: he searched for answers.
But there were none.
Why hadn't he seen it coming? Why hadn't he known his parents—Howard and Maria Stark—were doomed? He had lived in a world where their deaths were history, chronicled on every Marvel fan site, analyzed in every cinematic universe video essay. So why hadn't he remembered? Why hadn't he connected the dots?
The answer was humiliatingly simple: he'd never paid much attention to the Starks.
Back in his old world, Marvel had just been background noise. He wasn't a fan of superheroes, nor a binge-watcher of caped crusader films. His only real exposure to the Marvel Universe had come during college, when someone had shown him the first Iron Man movie, praising Tony Stark's arc reactor as a visionary concept.
That had fascinated him—not the suits, not the battles, not even the Avengers.
Just the reactor.
Just the science.
He had admired Tony Stark not as a hero, but as a physicist's fantasy. The man who turned theory into technology. Adrian had gone down a rabbit hole researching arc energy, reading interviews with Marvel Studios engineers, even sketching his own rough models—just for fun. But the rest? The plotlines, the deaths, the deeper lore? That had never stuck. He didn't even know how Howard and Maria had died, or when.
In retrospect, that ignorance had cost him everything.
---
The night of the attack replayed itself like a broken film reel.
The Stark vehicle had been armored. The driver experienced. The route, secure. Yet none of it mattered.
Adrian hadn't seen the shooters. He only remembered the aftermath—the bleeding silence, the cold ache in his bones, and his mother's face twisted in pain as she reached for him. Then a blunt force strike to the head. Then nothing.
When he came to, he was somewhere else. Somewhere cold. Metallic.
A light buzzed above him. The world swam sideways. His vision doubled. His wrists were cuffed.
He tried to move. Pain flared in his skull like lightning. He touched the back of his head. Dried blood.
He was in a medical bed, or maybe a lab table. Strange instruments lay on metal trays nearby. A window too small to crawl through showed only darkness. No sun. No moon. Just walls—steel, thick, unfriendly.
He was underground.
The air was sterile and heavy. He could smell ammonia and antiseptic. The silence was unnatural. Not a silence of peace, but the hush of something concealed.
Then the door opened.
Two men entered, both in uniforms with no insignia. Behind them, a woman in a lab coat with icy eyes and a datapad.
"Subject Two is stable," she said coldly. "Proceed with behavioral scan."
They didn't look at him like a person. Not even like a prisoner.
He was a specimen.
---
Days passed. Or weeks. He couldn't tell. Time blurred underground.
Sometimes he was conscious. Sometimes he wasn't. When he was awake, they poked and prodded him. Took blood. Measured vitals. Asked questions—meaningless ones.
"Do you remember your birth date?"
"What was the last book you read?"
"What's the square root of 1369?"
Sometimes, they injected something into his veins. One serum burned like acid. Another made him dream—nightmares stitched from memory and imagination. And still others just knocked him out again.
Once, during a moment of clarity, he heard them talking beyond the door.
"…preliminary serum batch was unstable. Subject One rejected it. Subject Two shows better genetic viability."
"…brain trauma may have suppressed memory resistance."
"…Howard's prototype is still unrefined. If it fails again, we go back to the original formula."
Howard's prototype?
Adrian's blood ran cold.
He hadn't known his father—this world's father—had been working on a new Super Soldier serum. Not like Erskine's. This one was supposedly more adaptive, less volatile, and tailored to stabilize both brain and body enhancements.
But it hadn't been finished. And now, Hydra had it.
They were using him as a test.
And worse—they were brainwashing him.
---
He remembered flashes.
Being strapped to a chair, metal coils around his temples. Electrodes pulsing with each spoken command.
"You are loyal."
"You were abandoned."
"Howard Stark created you for sacrifice."
"You will forget."
"You will serve."
Each session chipped away at something inside him. At first, he resisted. Screamed. Bit his tongue. Told himself it wasn't real.
But his mind began slipping.
He forgot his birthday.
Then his mother's laugh.
Then Tony's voice.
It scared him more than pain ever had.
---
In the deepest hours of isolation, when the lights dimmed and the guards changed shift, Adrian talked to himself—not aloud, but in thought.
He recited equations.
He remembered his own name—not Adrian, but the name from his past life, the one they never knew.
He held onto who he had been, clinging to the memories of the lab, the betrayal, the streets he walked alone as a child, the energy generator that had cost him his life.
Because if he forgot that, he feared he'd disappear entirely.
(Can't you give me some power stone's plz..and also vote for me plzzzzzz..plzzzzzzz)