That time, on the hard consonants of Nick's curse, not the mostly expected shout (mostly, not entirely, because it was more clipped and simplistic than Tony anticipated, and had to fill in the blanks for himself [mother'Fuck!'ingcocksuckers]), but on the far more tense whisper, Tony finally turned. At the same moment Nick's Blackberry had alerted both of them, a copy of the same message had been transferred to Extremis, silently drawing Tony's attention to a flash of text somewhere behind his eyes. I love you all, I'm sorry. Tony finally took in the ragged, soaked dark hole in Nick's shoulder, focusing on it instead of what 'I love you all, I'm sorry' and 'fuck' meant together, trying to convince himself that it was only two feet nine inches six centimeters above him when it felt like acres and he thought he might stay about this small for the rest of his life.
When he looked back at the screen, he had forgotten his nausea and dizziness and the drink he could be having and two feet nine inches six centimeters and could only see 1:39:017. 1:38:010 1:37:030 1:36:00
The next breath he took was staggered in staccato bursts, his armored fingers just curled over the edge of the keyboard to keep it in his lap, not even trying for the occasional command. What he calculated then was where he had skipped a wire or dropped a curve or just got underfoot or just didn't try hard enough or just tried too hard or just was weak and he couldn't even look at the countdown anymore. He was no Iron Man. He wasn't even the Crimson Dynamo. If it had the time, one missile might hit in the ocean, just off the coast of Tanzania, it might get as far south as Mozambique, it might hit the water and the damage might not be too widespread. At one and a half minutes, what was he supposed to do? They could see it from the ground, he guessed. He might get a good satellite image of the impact. Red, orange, black, black, black.