They say that if you want to know how fast time really moves, try holding your breath. But if you want to know how slow it moves, try being a ten-year-old kid stuck on an alien military base, waiting for a war to start.
It had been exactly one week since the Transwarper—the dead, green-glowing bracelet currently hiding under my long sleeve—dumped me into this universe. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours of breathing recycled air, eating synthetic protein paste that tasted like wet cardboard, and trying to build an indestructible super-suit without anyone noticing.
Spoiler alert: It's really hard to be a secret ninja genius when your best friend is a giant, squeaky balloon.
I laid on my back, sliding out from under a heavy ventilation grate in the corner of Grace's secondary storage room. My face was covered in a thick layer of black soot, and my hands were cramped from holding a tiny screwdriver for three hours.
"Baymax," I whispered, wiping the sweat from my forehead, leaving a dark smear across my skin. "Status report. Are the coast and the hallways clear?"
Baymax was standing perfectly still next to a stack of empty sample crates. He had tried to camouflage himself by holding a single, tiny green potted fern in front of his massive white belly. It was not working.
"My sensors indicate that the hallway is currently devoid of human personnel," Baymax replied, his calm, robotic voice vibrating in the quiet room. "However, my sensors also indicate that you are experiencing severe muscle fatigue, minor dehydration, and you have inhaled a significant amount of industrial dust. I strongly recommend a glass of water and a nap."
"I don't need a nap, buddy. I need rocks. Magic, floating rocks."
I spent my days living a double life. During the daylight hours—or what counted as daylight when you lived under a gas giant—I was the science division's unofficial, unpaid intern. I stuck close to Doctor Grace Augustine.
Grace was... well, she was a lot. She was grumpy, she smoked way too many cigarettes, and she had a habit of yelling at the corporate guys until her face turned purple. But underneath all that tough armor, she had the biggest heart on the planet.
I sat on a tall stool in the main lab, watching as Grace carefully calibrated the neural-link bed.
"Tony, hand me the micro-calipers," she said without looking away from her monitor. "And tell me what the feedback loop is doing on the tertiary synaptic relay."
I picked up the tiny metal tool and handed it to her, glancing at the glowing screen. I didn't even need to read the numbers; I could tell by the sound of the machine that it was out of alignment.
"You've got a lag, Doc," I said, swinging my legs. "About point-zero-four seconds. If you try to push your brainwaves into the Avatar body with that kind of delay, you're going to wake up with a headache that feels like a Thanator chewed on your skull."
Grace stopped what she was doing. She slowly turned her chair to look at me, her eyes narrowing. She took the cigarette out of her mouth. "Point-zero-four? Are you guessing, kid, or did you actually read the raw data stream?"
"I'm a good guesser," I smiled innocently.
She sighed, a mixture of annoyance and pure amazement crossing her face. She typed a few commands into her keyboard. The screen flashed green. "I'll be damned. You're right. I adjusted the phase variance. How did you know that?"
"I just listen to the hum," I lied smoothly. "It sounded... wobbly."
I couldn't tell her the truth. I couldn't tell her that I had spent days in my world studying Kree technology and alot of their notes which resolved around psionic connections. I couldn't tell her I understood her Avatar program better than the guys who invented it. So, I played the part. I was the prodigy. The whiz kid. I helped her fix her scanners, I organized her botanical samples, and I listened.
She taught me everything about Pandora. She showed me holographic maps of the root systems, explained how the animals communicated, and told me stories about the Na'vi. She missed them. She missed her school. Every time she talked about the native people, her voice got quiet, and she looked like she had lost a part of her own family.
"You know, Tony," Grace said later that afternoon, sitting back in her chair and rubbing her tired eyes. "You're a weird kid. Most ten-year-olds would be begging to go see the guns or the big robot suits. You just sit here and help me map tree roots."
"Trees are cool," I said, handing her a fresh cup of terrible base coffee. "Besides, the guns are boring. They just break things. You're trying to understand things. That's way harder."
Grace took the coffee, giving me a soft, genuine smile. "Don't let Parker Selfridge hear you say that. He might actually fire you."
Grace was my teacher, but Trudy... Trudy was my big sister. When Grace was busy in the link-room, sleeping in her Avatar body miles away, I would sneak down to Hangar Four.
The noise of the hangar was deafening, a constant roar of engines and heavy machinery. I loved it. It smelled like home. It smelled like my dad's old garage.
I ducked under the belly of the Rogue One, Trudy Chacon's Samson helicopter. Trudy was lying on her back on a mechanic's creeper, wrestling with a heavy hydraulic line.
"Need a hand, Sparky?" Trudy called out, hearing my sneakers squeak on the concrete.
"You're stripping the bolt," I told her, grabbing a smaller wrench from her toolbox and sliding under the chopper next to her. "You're using the metric wrench. This is an RDA standard part. It's imperial."
Trudy blinked, pulling the wrench away and looking at it. She groaned, dropping her head back against the creeper. "I swear, the guys who supply this base do it just to mess with me. Good catch, kid."
I handed her the right tool. She grinned, her dark eyes flashing with that fierce, rebellious spark she always had.
Trudy treated me like I belonged there. She didn't talk down to me. She showed me how the Samson's rotors compensated for Pandora's weird gravity. I showed her how to bypass the engine's limiter so she could get an extra burst of speed if she ever needed to dodge a flying mountain monster. We had a deal: I didn't tell her boss she was modifying company property, and she didn't ask why a ten-year-old knew how to hotwire a military aircraft.
"You're a lifesaver, Tony," Trudy said, wiping grease off her forehead and sitting up. She reached into her cargo pocket and pulled out a small, squished packet of chocolate cookies. "Here. Stole these from the officers' mess. Don't tell Quaritch."
"My lips are sealed," I promised, taking the cookies. "Thanks, Trudy."
"Anytime, Sparky. Now get out of here before the safety inspector sees a kid without a hardhat and gives me a citation."
I had friends. I had a routine. But I was running out of time. I knew the timeline. I knew that soon, a shuttle was going to land, and everything was going to go completely crazy. If I was going to protect Baymax, I needed that Unobtanium. I needed to build the armor. And that's where my week turned into a giant, embarrassing comedy of errors.
Stealing from the RDA is not easy. They have cameras everywhere. They have guards with big guns. And my partner in crime was not exactly built for stealth.
"Okay, Baymax," I whispered, crouching behind a stack of metal crates near the primary smelting facility. It was Tuesday night. The base was running on a skeleton crew. "The plan is simple. We wait for the automated conveyor belt to stop. You reach out your arm, grab a chunk of the raw Unobtanium ore, and we run. Got it?"
"I understand," Baymax said softly. "I will retrieve the rock."
We waited. The giant metal belt squealed to a halt. A massive, gray chunk of rock sat right on the edge, floating just a tiny bit above the metal surface because of its magnetic properties.
"Now!" I hissed.
Baymax waddled forward. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
He reached out his big, puffy white hand. But his hand was too thick. When he tried to grab the rock, his fat fingers bumped it. The rock, which repelled magnetic fields, reacted to the static electricity building up on Baymax's vinyl skin.
The rock shot backward like a slippery bar of soap. It bounced off the wall, hit a metal pipe with a loud CLANG, and fell straight into a giant recycling bin filled with empty tin cans. It sounded like a bomb going off.
"Intruder alert in Sector 4!" a robotic voice blared from the speakers.
"Abort! Abort!" I yelled, grabbing Baymax's arm and dragging him backward.
"I did not retrieve the rock," Baymax noted calmly as we ran away as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.
"I noticed!"
That was failure number one. Failure number two happened on Thursday. I decided that if I couldn't grab the rock with our hands, I would use science.
I stood above a ventilation shaft looking down into the secondary storage room. I had built a makeshift electromagnet using a battery pack, some copper wire, and a metal rod. I tied it to a long rope. It was basically a high-tech fishing pole.
"Lowering the line," I whispered to Baymax, who was standing behind me, holding the other end of the rope.
I carefully fed the magnet down through the grate. Below us, sitting on a table, was a small, perfectly sized piece of Unobtanium. All I had to do was turn on the magnet, stick it to the metal table next to the rock, and pull the whole table up just enough to grab the stone.
"Activate magnet," I commanded.
I flipped the switch. But I had severely underestimated how much power the base battery pack had.
Instead of just grabbing the table, the electromagnet created a massive pulse. Every loose piece of metal in the room—wrenches, screws, metal clipboards, and a very heavy steel toolbox—flew through the air and smashed into my magnet with a deafening crash.
"Whoa!" I yelled as the rope violently jerked.
Because Baymax was holding the rope, and because Baymax didn't let go of things unless I told him to, the sudden weight pulled him forward.
His giant marshmallow belly hit the metal grate. The grate popped out.
Baymax squeezed through the hole like toothpaste coming out of a tube. Pfffffwomp! He fell ten feet, landing right on top of the pile of magnetized tools with a loud, squishy bounce.
A security guard ran into the room below, pointing a flashlight. "Who's there?!"
He shined the light on Baymax. Baymax, sitting on a pile of wrenches, slowly raised a hand.
"Hello," Baymax said politely. "I am a healthcare companion. Would you like a lollipop?"
The guard just stared, completely frozen in confusion.
"Excuse me! Medical emergency!" I yelled down the vent, trying to sound like Grace. "That robot is malfunctioning! Do not touch it! It might explode!"
The guard screamed and ran out of the room. I had to use a winch to pull Baymax back up.
Failure number three was the worst one. Friday night.
We had finally found a loose piece of Unobtanium just sitting near the hangar doors. Nobody was around. It was perfectly quiet. I walked up to it, picked it up, and slipped it into my pocket. It felt like holding a piece of floating ice.
"We did it," I whispered, doing a tiny victory dance. "We actually did it."
I turned around to sneak back to the lab. And bumped right into a pair of combat boots.
I looked up. It was Trudy. She was holding a wrench, looking at me with her eyebrows raised so high they almost touched her hairline.
"Hey, Sparky," she said slowly. "What exactly are you doing sneaking around the restricted loading dock at two in the morning?"
"Sleepwalking?" I tried.
Trudy sighed, shaking her head. "Kid, you're going to get yourself shot. Come here."
She grabbed my arm, dragging me away from the loading dock. As we walked past the security checkpoint, the heavy metal scanner on the wall suddenly started blaring a loud, flashing red siren.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! UNREGISTERED MAGNETIC ANOMALY DETECTED!
Trudy stopped, looking at the scanner, then looking down at my pocket, which was currently glowing slightly and hovering away from my leg.
"Tony," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Tell me you did not just steal a piece of the rock that Parker Selfridge would murder his own mother to get."
I looked at her. I looked at the flashing red lights.
With a heavy, broken heart, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the Unobtanium, and tossed it into the nearby amnesty bin. The alarm stopped instantly.
"I was just looking at it," I mumbled.
Trudy knelt down so she was at eye level with me. She didn't look angry; she looked terrified. "Listen to me. You are a smart kid. Smarter than most of the adults here. But you are playing a very dangerous game. If Quaritch catches you taking that stuff, he won't care how old you are. He'll throw you in a cell. No more nighttime walks. Understand?"
I nodded slowly. "I understand."
I hadn't failed because I wasn't smart enough. I had failed because I was trapped. I was trapped in a ten-year-old body on a world that didn't play by my rules.
It was Saturday night. The end of the week.
I was sitting on my small bunk in the corner of Grace's lab. The lights were turned down low, casting long, eerie blue shadows across the room. The glowing tank holding the Avatar bubbled softly in the background.
Baymax was standing in his charging station, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling slowly to simulate breathing. He did that because he knew it made me feel better.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on my arms. I looked down at the Transwarper on my wrist. The green crystal was completely dark now. Dead.
A heavy, crushing weight pressed down on my chest. It wasn't the Pandoran gravity. It was the silence.
For the first time since I arrived, the adrenaline wore off. The excitement of the alien jungle and the thrill of the machines faded away, leaving me completely, utterly alone.
I was Tony Stark. I had fought aliens. I had saved a glowing space angel( Carol). But right now, sitting in the blue dark, I was just a little boy who missed his family.
I closed my eyes, and I could almost smell the sharp scent of ozone and motor oil in my dad's workshop. I could hear Howard swearing at a stubborn engine block, completely ignoring whatever fancy party he was supposed to be attending. I could hear the soft, elegant melody of my mother, Maria, playing the grand piano in the living room, her fingers dancing across the keys.
I missed them. I missed the way my dad would look at me when I solved an equation he couldn't figure out—a look that tried to be stern but couldn't hide how proud he was. I missed my mom's gentle hugs, the kind of hugs that made you feel like nothing bad could ever happen to you.I missed Rhodey too, my best friend who had my back whenever I needed him, who tried to learn as much as he could to have a conversation with me about what he would call 'smart stuff'.
And I missed Jarvis.
"Jarvis," I whispered into the quiet room.
Nobody answered. No dry, British voice telling me that I needed to ear, or offered to stay with me and watch a movie he didn't enjoy. There was no friend to steady me or keep me company.
I was a genius, but a genius without his tools is just a guy with a lot of heavy thoughts. I had the theoretical blueprints for Baymax's armor in my head. But I still never managed to build a functional armor, now that I think about it. How could I turn Unobtanium into an armor if I couldn't turn titanium into an armor?
A single tear slipped down my cheek, hot and frustrating. I wiped it away angrily, smudging the dirt on my face.
"There there, I am here" Baymax's soft voice suddenly spoke in the dark.
I looked up. His black dot eyes were open, glowing faintly. He stepped out of his charging station, waddling over to my bed. He didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't run a medical scan. He just reached out, gently wrapping his big, puffy arms around me, pulling me into a warm, silent hug and patted my back gently.
I buried my face in his soft vinyl chest, letting out a shaky breath.
"Thanks, buddy," I whispered.
"You are experiencing emotional distress," Baymax said softly. "It is a normal human response to isolation. I am here."
I wasn't completely alone. I had Baymax. I had Grace. I had Trudy. I had a week of failures, but failure is just data. It's just the universe telling you what doesn't work, so you can find what does.
I pulled back from Baymax, sniffing and rubbing my eyes. The sadness was still there, a heavy ache in my stomach, but the panic was gone.
"Alright," I said, my voice steadying. "No more magnet fishing. No more sneaking around the loading docks. We need a new plan. If we can't steal the rock from the base..." I looked out the reinforced window of the lab, toward the dark, looming shapes of the jungle beyond the fence. "...we're going to have to get it from the source."
Suddenly, the floor beneath us began to vibrate.
It started as a low rumble, a deep bass note that rattled the glass jars on Grace's desk. Then, the sound grew louder. A massive, thunderous roar tore through the sky above Hell's Gate. It was a sound I knew well—the sound of atmospheric thrusters pushing against gravity.
I jumped off the bed and ran to the window, pressing my hands against the glass.
High above the jungle canopy, breaking through the clouds, was a massive, blocky spacecraft. The Valkyrie shuttle. It was descending slowly, its massive engines painting the night sky with blinding orange fire as it lowered itself toward the base's primary landing strip.
The ship from Earth had arrived.
My heart started to hammer against my ribs, a new kind of adrenaline flooding my system. The week of waiting was over. The game was starting.
I knew exactly who was on that ship. I knew the scientists, the fresh-faced corporate guys, and the heavily armed mercenaries looking for a paycheck. But more importantly, I knew about the guy in the wheelchair. The shuttle touched down with an earth-shaking thud, the engines whining down as the massive cargo ramp began to lower.
Jake Sully was here.
The spark that was going to ignite this entire planet had just arrived. The war for Pandora was about to begin.
I looked at Baymax, the gears in my genius brain spinning faster than ever before.
"Get ready, buddy," I said, a fierce, determined grin spreading across my face. "Things are about to get really, really loud."