Sanctity Part V
by elfin


Sanctity - the quality or condition of being safe from assault, trespass, or violation


Tony stared at the screen, at the proof of betrayal staring him right in the face.  He felt anger surge through him like those first moments of seeing his weapons stockpiled in the desert in Afghanistan.

"Fuck!"  A sideswipe of his arm noisily relocated pens, pencils, a wireless mouse and a half-drunk mug of coffee to the floor.  "Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!"

Two lines, white on black, in plain Courier font on the flat screen monitor.

>141024 goodbye tony
>141503 hello tony

He'd trusted Fury, trusted Kitt, even trusted Nick to a point.  He'd been an idiot and they'd all betrayed him.  Pushing his chair back hard he crossed to the drinks cabinet.  His hands were shaking as he grabbed a handful of ice and dropped it into a crystal tumbler, sloshing a more than generous measure of scotch over it.  Trembling, he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it, savouring the sweet burn at the back of his throat as he tossed in more scotch and took the bottle and glass back to the desk.

Picking up the mouse from amongst the china shards and cold coffee, Tony turned on a second monitor and called up a new session the old-fashioned way.  He stopped a few basic functions, including Jarvis' human voice, and assigned perimeter and house security to other processes.  He severed the connection between Jarvis and every other system in the house for the first time since he'd brought the AI online.  All system communications were logged and stored in real time, and he called up a file dated today, with a timestamp of a tenth of a second before access hand been granted to an external party.  That third party had been clever enough to mask the shutdown and restart of the system, but Tony had made Jarvis human in his own way and the 'hello' and 'goodbye' messages had been missed by whoever had done this.

The file was a communication in binary - one computer to another - and he couldn't read it, but he could get the IP address of the external system, and once he had that he could find out exactly where it had come from.  Only there wasn't an IP address associated with the communication, just a code, like a telephone number.  It was Kitt's code, Tony would have bet his life on it. 

He started a line by line comparison between Jarvis' code now and the last backup, almost twenty-four hours ago.  There were millions upon millions of lines, but he had access to some of the fastest processors in the world by connecting to Stark Industries' computer array, and the comparison ran in a matter of minutes.

The checksums matched, no changes detected, not a single semi-colon out of place.  Every line of code was a line he'd written.  He made a couple of phone calls, and within the hour two white vans were parked outside his house while inside a team swept for planted technology and a single man wearing headphones and an iPod swept for surveillance devices.  Both sweeps would take hours, the house was huge and Tony wanted every inch checked.  He hated this, hated letting these people into his home but it was necessary.  They'd shut down Jarvis for a reason and the only reason he could think of was to gain access.

But to what?

With a secondary system monitoring and recording every movement of the people upstairs, Tony retreated to his workshop and started diagnostics on every one of his systems.  And only when the house was being physically and electronically searched for a sign of what Kitt and his friends had done, Tony picked up the bottle of scotch and refilled his glass for a third time that afternoon.

#

Crouching down. Rhodey wrapped his hand around the back of Tony's neck and pulled him forward without resistance until their foreheads touched.  "You okay, man?"

Tony nodded, nose momentarily touching the other man's, hands rising hesitantly to rest lightly on his shoulders.  He could smell the alcohol on Tony's breath, like a distillery.  "Yeah."

"What happened?"

Tony pulled back slightly and Rhodey immediately let him go.  "I don't know if getting involved with this Avengers Initiative was a good idea.  When I came back from Afghanistan, when I survived Obie… I realised I don't have much that's mine, I'm splashed all over the covers of every magazine and paper in the galaxy.  But I have this place, and it's private.  These guys… they're getting into my home, into Jarvis...."  Despite the obvious depletion of scotch, Tony didn't sound drunk.  But then, he'd given lectures that had made Rhodey's head spin after four bottles of champagne and eight whisky chasers. 

"Into Jarvis?"

"Yeah, it's… complicated.  I went out this afternoon to meet this guy Fury hired, Nick MacKenzie.  When I got back, someone had rebooted Jarvis."

Rhodey's dark eyes widened.  "But I thought… thought he was secure.  Jeez, Tony, you do systems security that makes NASA look like a grad student."

Tony snorted.  He knew some grad students who'd made NASA look like a technophobe, he had them working for his company.  "Someone, or something, broke through six levels of encryption, entered a fifty-two character access code and a random, circulating fifteen character password.  I've got him offline but there's nothing."

"You think this guy, MacKenzie, did it?"

"No.  I think… someone who works for him did.  Trouble is the system was only down just over four minutes and there's no change in the code, so whatever they did it for it wasn't to get to Jarvis.  I've had the house swept for surveillance devices, any devices - even fucking bombs.  There's nothing.  Nothing's been taken, nothing's been left.  I don't understand."

Rhodey looked around and wondered how Tony knew nothing had been taken when the workshop was always in such disarray.  "Why don't you ask him?  Call him, challenge him about this.  Why did Fury hire him in the first place?"

Tony tapped at the blue glow through his white shirt.  "He thinks I'm vulnerable.  He wants extra protection for me.  I told him I only wear ribbed but he didn't-"

"Tony… too much information, man."  Tony smirked, one eyebrow raised, and Rhodey looked away.

"I survived for three months in a fucking cave with an open wound in my chest," Tony continued, all serious again, "escaped in a suit of armour I constructed from fucking scraps!  I can look after myself."

"Sure you can, Tony."  Rhodey took a couple of steps forward.  "But you know, announcing you're Iron Man probably painted a bigger target on your back than cutting weapons development from your company's business plan.  Anything that helps keeping people from hitting the target, man, is good in my books."

Tony's head canted to one side and he regarded his friend.  "Aren't I just a pain in your ass, Rhodey?  Wouldn't your life be easier without me in it?"

His answer was immediate.  "Don't say that.  I got to experience life without you, remember?  I didn't like it, not at all, so don't start with the self-effacing, self-sacrificing crap.  I know you, Tony, you want to live more than anyone I've ever met."  Tony rolled his eyes in response.  "So why did you call me?  I don't see what I can do that you can't."

Tony glanced away, at the Hot Rod, at the Iron Man suit, at anything but Rhodey.  "I thought you might feel like pizza and a game?"

It took him a moment or two to work it out.  "You… don't want to be alone in the house?"  He wasn't sure which of them was more shocked.

Looking down at the floor, Tony murmured softly, "I don't know what they changed, Rhodey.  Every time I hear a noise I remember Obadiah that night….  Just for tonight, okay?  Fury's back in town tomorrow, I'll go over and beat the shit out of him until he tells me where I can find the bastard."

Rhodey smiled gently.  "That I'd pay to see."

"Hey, I could take Nick Fury."

"Tony, you're useless at hand to hand combat without the suit.  And that's okay, because if you could fight you'd be a very dangerous man and you're already enough to give me a heart attack a week.  Come on, I'll order the pizza, you get the beer." 

He tried to take the three-quarter empty bottle out of Tony's hand as they walked up the stairs, but he wasn't letting go, and Rhodey wasn't about to press the issue.

#

Tony had long ago learnt to read Pepper's level of stress in the formality of her stance.  This morning she was ramrod straight, calves taut below her knee-length black skirt, suit jacket buttoned, hands crossed, fingers clasping a black leather Filofax which she handed him the moment he'd cleaned the engine oil from his palms.

"You have to go to this meeting," she told him curtly.  "It's with the members of the board and your senior share holders.  All the details are in there," she nodded to the leather case, "Happy's here with the car.  You need to get changed and read this on the way."

Tony regarded her for a time.  "That's a bad plan."  His $10,000 leather biker's jacket was thrown carelessly over the seat of the Harley Davidson and he grabbed it.  Opening the passenger door of the R8, he threw his jacket and the filofax in, and made his way around to the driver's side.  Pepper's protests - presumably about his inappropriate state of dress (an oil rag of a light blue T and torn jeans) - were drowned out by the roar of the Audi's engine in the enclosed space and Tony floored it out of his garage.

#

Something was different, something was wrong.  It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, just a feeling he got every time he stopped at a light and looked at the dash.  Like something was looking back at him.  It was stupid but by the time he pulled into his named space in front of his own building, he'd convinced himself there was a camera in the dash - a pinhole to the right of the steering wheel.  He'd covered and uncovered it with his finger half a dozen times during the journey.

Climbing out of the car he saw one of the security guards hovering and tossed him a wave.  Reaching across, he lifted his jacket out with the black filofax, and something caught his eye.  The dark grey leather of the passenger seat was flawless, and that was a problem because a week after he'd taken ownership of the car he'd had a Perfect 10 model blow him in the driver's seat and in the clutches of a ten second orgasm he'd burned the seat with the tip of his cigarette.  He hadn't had it fixed because he'd liked to tell the story.

This wasn't his car.

Popping open his cell phone he called Pepper.  "Have a low-loader come and pick up the R8, would you?"

"Has something happened?"  He could hear her instant concern.  "Do you need Happy to…"

"No.  Well, yes.  But I don't want anyone driving the R8 until I've checked it out.  Make sure it's taken back to the house and dropped outside, not inside, okay?"

"Of course."

"Thanks.  And tell Happy I'll need a lift to SHIELD in an hour."  He ended the call.  That arrogant fuck Fury had some explaining to do.  And when he found out where MacKenize hung out, Iron Man was going to pay that bastard a call.