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“And here we are in the place where superheroes go to die,” the voice beside Tony quipped as Tony Stark looked down at the boiling lava sputtering and popping up from below. It bubbled with a heavy, potent sulfuric scent accompanying the smoke rising, yet somehow from his position at the edge of the rock formation struggling to get a clear view of the path ahead of him it felt like the only path to freedom, “That’s a long way to fall Stark. I ain’t down with falling you know.”
“I thought you said your mutation included a healing factor,” Tony looked over his shoulder at the gruff man who’d been his cellmate for the last few months on this strange planet where he’d awakened in a laboratory locked up and surrounded by strangers all serving a shadier purpose in resuscitating him from the darkness.
Logan, as his cellmate called himself, was a gruff, cigar smoking, foul mouthed feral little man with remarkable metal running through his body. There was so much of interest happening behind Logan’s inner workings that if Tony was back in New York Tony could spent months observing the seemingly impervious foul-mouthed mutant now peering over his shoulder at the fiery world below. Like Tony, Logan had been trapped in an impenetrable cage, stolen from his world by a mysterious unknown force pulled from the world he’d known and into the same darkness Tony had faced after the battle against Thanos. As best as Tony could understand it, it was something of a quandary as both men were from different worlds, yet somehow in their entrapment the door to the multiverse had been opened wide revealing a much greater picture of the universe beyond what Tony had known before his ending.
“Ain’t no healing from that kind of fall,” Logan remarked looking down at the boiling, bubbling lava with a shudder. His hesitation was holding them back on their escape that Tony had expertly planned, keeping them one step further from returning to the lives that they’d left behind.
For so long Tony was beyond ready to return to the world he left behind, eager to escape this hell, but he’d been trapped without his tools or his tech and drugged most of the time to render him isolated from his mind in a different kind of cage until somehow Tony pulled together a plan for escape. It had guided Tony and Logan to make their move out of their seemingly impenetrable cell and rush towards freedom until finally they’d made their move which now included them standing on the edge of the ledge staring down at the fiery roadblock below. Right in front of them there was a narrow, thin stretch of weathered plywood that made the bridge in Temple of Doom look like a luxury palace. However, crossing it was their only option as it appeared the guards that they’d outrun and outsmarted were now catching up in the distance once the shock of Tony’s attack had worn off.
“This is our only chance Scruffy. The other side of this is the only way to freedom,” Tony quipped over his shoulder at the man who was now refusing to budge from his position, “We get across that and we’re home free.”
“If we don’t, we die,” Logan pointed out with a deep scowl as his feet were firmly planted on the ridge they were standing on. There was a fear in Tony’s otherwise fearless cellmate, yet Tony wondered if there was more beneath the surface of the gruff man he’d befriended in his imprisonment, “This option doesn’t exactly work for me. No offense Stark, but the idea of my nuts roasting on an open fire isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Not to mention the fall…”
“You won’t fall,” Tony insisted with less certainty than before as he calculated the weight the bridge would accommodate given its flimsy condition, “At least I don’t think you will. If we time this just right, we have a clear shot and…”
“Look genius there’s no way around this, so I’m gonna just lay it out there now. I’m afraid of heights,” Logan blurted out in a surprising move that set Tony back in his processing of their escape route, “Can’t stand to be anywhere that I know I can’t land on my own two feet without breaking every bone in my body. Hurts like a bitch when it happens.”
“But you said you’ve flown before—that you’re a hero in your world and…” Tony blinked back at him in confusion after all the bold, reckless things he’d observed Logan doing when he’d fought against his time in captivity with the guards, “I’ve seen you recover from a bullet to the face and…”
“Didn’t say I couldn’t recover. Just that I ain’t lookin’ to do it today,” Logan quipped as the footsteps grew closer until finally the guards were approaching, “No when we’re this close.”
“We’re running out of time,” Tony remarked watching as Logan spun around with claws unsheathed snarling at the approaching guards. Logan hunched forward prepared for a fight, ready to tear them all to shreds if need be much like he had in their initial escape once Tony had managed to work the dynamics to break them from their inhibitor collars meant to leave them confused and distorted in this strange world.
“Just go!” Logan yelled back over his shoulder at Tony. He was snarling and prepared for a fight, ready to do what Tony learned early on he did best in giving in to violence, “I have this handled. Get out of here. Get back to that little girl of yours. She needs you.”
“Just like your daughter needs you. I made you a promise Logan when we agreed to this plan. I’m not leaving you behind,” Tony decided as they guards closed in on him. He reached into his pocket, pulling out the device he’d put together from scrap metal and the tech he’d picked up in dismantling their inhibitor collars along with other scrapes he’d gathered in the open area of their isolated prison to orchestrate the plan. It wasn’t much, but if Tony could rework the wiring of his device than maybe just maybe he could pave the way to a new plan moving forward.
Rushing into the cavern they’d come out of seconds earlier Tony reworked the insides of the device twisting them around before hitting it a couple of times against the hard rock formation they’d rushed out of a short while earlier. He continued to slam it into the solid surface before it started to tick and pop. In doing so it started to smoke and buzz when Logan approached him with confusion behind his eyes.
“Um, what are you doing Stark? Why does that sounds like….?” Logan questioned as Tony’s smoking device started to fill the cavern with a different kind of darkness.
“We need to move now!” Tony shouted leaping across the cavern and guiding Logan over to the platform they’d been standing on seconds earlier. There was an explosion to be heard within the rock formation as the two men were standing up against the heavy slab behind them looking to the world below surrounded by steam and the boiling lava. In the moments that followed the sketchy looking bridge crumbled in a series of booming drops into the boiling liquid immediately disintegrating beneath the unforgiving heat and leaving nothing more than a frayed rope hanging from the ledge a few feet from where they were standing.
“You got a plan B?” Logan coughed as the gases rose in the overwhelmingly hot space seeking to fill their lungs with the toxic fumes in the opening they’d entered together.
“I have an infinite series of plans,” Tony surveyed the area, weighing out his options before he finally found what he was looking for. Up above where they were standing there was another rock formation with what appeared to be another tunnel dug out through it running parallel to the bridge.
“Hmm, yeah, well it might be nice ta hear one of those infinite plans right about now,” Logan scoffed looking around their environment as the bubbling lava created a cloaking effect pushing the smoke up higher in the opening that they were in.
“I think I might just have one forming as we speak,” Tony gauged the distance between the ledge and the formation above him. He stretched his arm up curling his fingers into the overhead formation deep and reaching for the rock before pulling himself up higher on the ledge.
“Wait Stark what are you doing?” Logan pulled Tony back onto the ledge before Tony could leap up and hop into the small space.
“Please don’t tell me you’re claustrophobic as well,” Tony sighed as Logan’s face said it all that once again his unruly roommate was about to complicate an already complicated situation with their escape plan failing faster with each passing second.
“Yeah, um…about that. Maybe ya should try to come up with plan C,” Logan suggested squeezing at Tony’s shoulder as the same nervousness Logan delivered about heights was returning full force.
“Right now B’s the only option,” Tony motioned to the tunnel above them, “I know it’s a tight fit, but we’ll both make it. We just have to crawl along the path and…”
“What if it drops out in the middle somewhere?” Logan looked down to the lava below where they were with one another.
“It’s a chance we’re going to have to take because right now it’s our only option. Just hold your breath as best as you can and trust me. I’m a genius. I wouldn’t lead us in the wrong direction. We’re going to make it out of this,” Tony vowed hoisting himself up again as Tony soon discovered that breaking out of prison might be a bit more complicated than he’d planned.