Chapter Text
Titan
Infinity War
Tony stares at Strange, watching him twitch and shift in place. It’s odd; he can tell the man’s head is moving almost too fast to keep track of, but it also seems to move with a gradual slowness in certain areas. The green aura around him shifts and swirls, making the air around him shimmer like heat.
“Is he okay?” Peter asks, leaning over and speaking quietly.
“Probably.”
He’d better be. Tony and the kid are stuck here because he let himself get kidnapped by that alien asshole.
Strange snaps out of his trance with a deep gasp, dropping onto shaking legs. Tony crosses the distance between them, steadying the man with a frown.
“You didn’t use up all of your magic juice on that, did you? We need you at your best, doc,” he says.
“I didn’t, no,” Dr. Strange says, standing up straight. He blinks, steps away from Tony and clears his throat. “But I did see a way for this to resolve. I need to see your Arc Reactor.”
“It’s built into the suit,” Tony says.
“Yes, I know. I need to enchant it, for your protection,” Dr. Strange says, holding his hand out expectantly. “It’s necessary, if we’re going to win this.”
Tony hesitates for a moment, lets out a huffing sigh, and taps a simple code into his suit to recall the nanobots back into the casing. The suit rolls off of him, shrinking down into the central light at the center of his chest. He pulls that off of his shirt and hands it over, suddenly feeling very naked and exposed.
“This won’t take long,” Strange says, taking the small puck in one trembling hand. Immediately, golden light and strange glowing symbols fade into view, swirling around the sorcerer and the arc reactor in his hand. The man shuts out everything around them, focused on his task.
It’s a good thing Titan has a breathable atmosphere, or this would be awkward. Still, the air is stale and dusty, and somehow smells wrong. Lifeless. Tony crosses his arms, aware of the fact that he’s now just standing around in his exercise clothes: sweatpants, hoodie, sneakers, and light t-shirt. None of them are really meant for the windy, dusty planet.
After a moment, Strange finishes his spell, letting out a sigh as he drops his magic. The arc reactor in his hand shimmers with power, both magical and regular, the steady white-blue now accented by shivering, red-orange symbols that gently orbit the metal casing.
“Fancy,” Tony says, reaching out to take it.
Strange pulls his hand back instead and says, “Forgive me, Tony.”
Tony can’t move. He freezes in place, hand twitching above the changed arc reactor. Confusion, followed by shock, follow very quickly by fear driven anger has Tony snap his eyes back to Strange.
Strange meets his gaze and says, “When you find him, ask Tim for help.”
A flash red-gold light sweeps over him, blinds him--
* * *
--and disappears as quickly as it forms.
When the light dissipates, Tony finds himself standing in the middle of a filthy alley inside a city. A human city. On Earth. Presumably. Hopefully.
More to the point, he’s in the clothes he had on under the nanosuit. The tracksuit. He doesn’t even have a phone, for fuck’s sake. Thank god he remembered to bring his wallet for some reason. He’d be screwed if he showed up in nothing but his clothes.
After a quick look around the dirty alley, he comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that he might be screwed regardless.
Oh, he is going to beat the shit out of Strange for this.
Step one, get off the streets. Find clothes. Blend in. Figure everything else out from there.
As plans go, this isn’t his best, but it’s all he has.
* * *
He finds a homeless shelter down the block from where he appeared. It’s overcrowded, stinks of cleaning agents and unwashed bodies, and a heartbreaking amount of human misery that should never exist.
Being poor sucks. And not just in the ‘rock bottom poverty’ way either, though he can’t pretend that isn’t a significant factor. Tony is used to being physically uncomfortable--being rich as hell doesn’t help when you have a goddamn power plant stuffed into your chest--but he isn’t used to the uncertainty that comes with being utterly broke. Food, water, and shelter have been constant no-brainers for him since he was a kid. Even if it’s just people looking for an easy payday because they gave the rich guy something he needed. That isn’t true here for obvious reasons.
Frankly, he isn’t used to being powerless, either. Giving someone his name was enough to guarantee some amount of authority without any issue from most people, especially after he became Iron Man. Even at his lowest point back in Tennessee, he had his reputation as both Tony Stark and Iron Man to trade on. In Gotham, he has nothing. Hell, he doesn’t even exist in the systems around here--no birth certificate, no social security number, no work history, nothing. A headache, but he can maneuver his way around that if he can get his hands on a computer and commit a felonious amount of identity theft and/or financial crimes. He’s not above it at this point.
Gotham itself is a nightmare. Casual violence is everywhere, and the poverty is almost overwhelming. The casual cruelty he sees in the homeless shelter alone is a soul killing affair.
If I get out of here alive, I’m beating Strange into a coma, Tony thinks furiously. This is what I get for saving his ass.
He realizes, with no small amount of misery, that he’s never been so painfully aware of the amount of money he has to his name. What used to be a facet of his background is suddenly a life or death thing.
He would’ve preferred getting skewered on Titan over dealing with this.
His wandering thoughts keep him distracted, which is something of a double edged sword when he stumbles over the ice and straight into the back of a man standing on the sidewalk near a bus. The big man scowls at him, but then pauses, taking in the state of Tony: bad shoes, worse clothes, soaked through by rain, obviously freezing and clearly confused.
“You alright, mister?” the man asks. His tone is gruff and guarded, but not openly hostile, which is a good start. And a mild surprise for Gotham.
“Yeah, yeah, fine--” Tony says, looking around the street as his awareness drifts back to full power.
It’s a disaster; dark shapes in the alleyways, slinking along the shadows, angry looking men stalking the street with poorly concealed weapons tucked into waistbands and under coats, with regular people clumping together and purposefully avoiding the eyes of said angry men. Tony isn’t a moron, he recognizes danger when he sees it. He was stumbling through a potential warzone, too wrapped up in his own misery to notice.
“Less fine than I was a week ago,” he finishes. “I’m kinda new in town. Hasn’t been a great experience.”
The big man grunts, motions to the bus parked along the street. “I’m Lou. Come on, let’s get outta this damn rain and you can tell me how the hell you ended up in the middle of Gotham lookin’ like that.”
“Deal.”
Lou hauls himself inside his bus and opens the doors for Tony. Tony sits behind the man and revels in the comparative warmth inside the bus. At least he’s not out in the damn rain.
“So, how'd you end up here?”
“Asshole coworker dropped me off and left with the car.”
Sort of. Metaphorically speaking.
“And no one came to help you?”
“Don’t have anyone here, at the moment,” Tony says. Which is technically correct. And desperately sad, now that he’s said it out loud.
“You need better friends,” Lou says mildly. He starts the bus and pulls out into traffic, smoothly making his way through the constant parade of cars and trucks on the street. The windshield wipes make a rhythmic sound in time with the rain. “I’ll take you somewhere safer than this place.”
“I can’t pay the fare,” Tony says.
Lou shrugs. “Didn’t ask you to pay.”
“You won’t get in trouble giving me a free ride?” Tony asks.
Lou scoffs. “They can bite me. I’m union.”
Tony smirks. “Fair enough, big guy. Where are we headed?”
“Wayne Enterprises is hosting a job fair a few blocks over. Sometimes they give out small loans to people, too,” Lou says, driving them out of the depths of Crime Alley and into a slightly less depressing part of the district. There are fewer bullet holes, at least. “Most of the time, they never collect on those loans. Bruce Wayne has enough money to throw it around.”
This is either a tax dodge or insanity. Tony has never heard of a billionaire going to that trouble, and that goes double for a billionaire in a place like Gotham. “How’d you hear about it?”
“Flyers. News. The radio has commercials for it every ten minutes,” Lou says. “And it's how I got this job ten years ago. It's not glamorous, but I'm not a glamorous kinda guy, and I like the work. They can help you.”
Tony mulls over that. A charity event. It never occurred to him to look for one of those. Sure, this one sounds entirely too good to be true and probably isn’t actually what he says, but what does Tony have to lose?
Lou pulls the bus up alongside an old brick building, the brakes letting out a hiss of air as the vehicle comes to a stop. He puts it in park, and turns to face Tony.
“Here, grab yourself a sandwich from the food truck across the street before you talk to anyone. Hard to think when you're hungry. And take this umbrella. It rains like hell in this city,” Lou says, digging out his wallet from well worn uniform pants. He pulls out a couple of twenties and hands them over to Tony, as well as an umbrella tucked beneath his seat. “You could probably use it to knock some heads around, too.”
Tony takes both the money and the umbrella, shocked. Lou has just handed him more money than he makes in an hour driving this rattletrap bus around town. The kindness from that gesture briefly overwhelms Tony, and he’s not sure how to react. In the circles he usually runs in back in his universe, there would be an unspoken understanding, a tit for tat, to go with it. Strings are always attached to kindness in his world. But he has nothing, and Lou doesn’t have much more than that in the grand scheme of things, but he’s sharing it all the same.
“I’ll pay you back--”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lou says, waving off the offer as if he didn’t just make the last two hours of labor a moot point. “I’ll be fine. Good luck, Tony.”
“Yeah, thanks, Lou,” Tony says, getting off the bus. “I'll remember this.”
“Just pay it forward. Good luck, Tony,” Lou says.
He closes the bus doors behind Tony and pulls away from the sidewalk, leaving Tony in a new part of town, forty dollars and one umbrella richer.
Tony takes the opportunity to grab a sandwich from the food truck. He eyes the squat brick building thoughtfully, and eventually heads inside.
Why not? The most they can do is call him a jobless bum--which, admittedly, he is--and kick him out. He straightens his shoulders and marches into the building as if he owns it himself. A little confidence might carry him a long way here.
The building is just short of crowded, with people moving to and from various rooms or conference rooms, and the air filled with the buzz of conversation. The overall mood is positive, but busy. A polite woman settled behind a desk at the entrance doesn’t give Tony a chance to speak. She looks him over and immediately sweeps him up into a whirlwind of questions and paperwork with the sort of prim efficiency that Pepper would have appreciated before depositing him in a waiting room sectioned off from the others. This room has two well dressed men here, both far more well dressed than Tony, and both of whom look entirely uncomfortable to be in the presence of someone visibly homeless. It’s also a bit nicer than the other rooms they passed on the way here.
Tony straightens his ill fitting jacket primly, tucks his gifted umbrella under one arm, and goes to sit directly between the two well dressed corporate drones. One of them actually flinches away from him, much to his amusement and disgust. Eventually, one man mutters an apology and practically flees the room, leaving Tony alone with the shorter of the two strangers.
Computers and tablets have been set out on a table for the waiting crowd. Tony grabs one, finds it too slow for his tastes, but makes do. This is his first chance to dig up some information on this weird universe Strange just shoved him into.
Ten minutes later, he’s left in a worse mood than before. He doesn’t exist here (probably for the best, really). Neither do the Avengers. Thor is just some myth. Captain America never existed--apparently someone named Wonder Woman intervened during World War II--and most of the heroes here are in a group called the Justice League. No Battle of New York has taken place, but apparently they've had similar nonsense. Mostly in Metropolis--which is a dorky name for a city--and mostly handled by Superman.
These people need better branding.
Another quirk is that this world is just lousy with famous billionaires. Lex Luthor, Ted Kord, Oliver Queen, Bruce Wayne--all of them drifting in and out of the headlines. Lex and Bruce more than the others combined, but Oliver Queen sometimes shows up for funding hero groups with his fortune or being a loud nuisance in some place called Star City.
Funnily enough, there was Howard Stark and Stark Industries back in World War II in this world. He had considerably worse luck though. He ended losing out on contracts to rival companies and couldn’t stand out from the crowd.
Wayne Enterprises bought him out. And he disappeared afterward.
Tough luck, Dad, Tony thinks idly. At least he can build something off of that.
One of the others in the waiting room, a meticulously dressed and thoroughly forgettable looking man, clears his throat.
“I think the job fair is on the other side of the building,” he says. There’s a forced politeness to his tone, as if he’s addressing a child.
“And this room is for...?” Tony asks.
“Business loans,” the man says. “Wayne Enterprises only holds these meetings once a year, and it's for established business owners.”
“Right. Well, good luck with your pitch,” Tony says, going back to the tablet. “You're gonna need it, pal.”
The man stares at him. “I'm going to need it?”
“Yep.”
Now he looks amused. And mildly annoyed by Tony’s attitude.
“Okay, smart guy. Lay it out for me.”
“You're forgettable. You need to be able to make an impression during these things. And, unfortunately, you're boring. They make guys like you in a factory,” Tony says. He glances at the man again, quick and dismissive.”Let me guess, Harvard?”
The man startles. “How did--”
“The smugness,” Tony says, secretly pleased his half formed guess was correct. He’s missed bullying corporate drones more than he realized. A part of him does feel bad that he’s . “Word of advice: no one cares that you went to school there. In fact, most people will think you’re a smug prick from that alone. If you aren’t in with the Harvard crowd--and if you're here, you aren’t--it'll be a detriment,” Tony says. The guy is starting to go red in the face. Tony figures he's pushed the guy's buttons enough. “What’s your big pitch anyway?”
“More efficient debt repayment systems,” the man says stiffly. “Wayne Enterprises is leaving money on the table---”
Tony scoffs and shakes his head. “You’re pitching that during a job fair for the homeless? At a place where they definitely don’t keep track of that? Did you learn anything at Harvard or were you too busy rubbing elbows with legacy wealth to pay attention?”
The man’s face flushes again, this time in genuine anger. Tony idly wonders if the guy plans on swinging on him. But he stops, frowns, and thinks over the conversation--and pales. After a few seconds, he stands up and stiffly walks out of the room, leaving Tony behind in the waiting room.
Another minute passes, and the door at the end of the waiting room opens. A tall, slim black man in a perfectly tailored suit steps out into the waiting room. He looks amused and somewhat relieved.
“That was well done,” he says, his voice rich and warm.
“I get the feeling your assistant put me in here to chase those two off,” Tony says, standing up to speak with the man.
The man smiles. “You were. Ms. Saberton assumed you wouldn’t be offended by it. And that you’d be very good at it.”
“She’s good at reading people,” Tony says.
“The best,” the man says. He approaches Tony, offering him his hand. “My name is Lucius Fox. I’m running today’s program on behalf of Wayne Enterprises. And you just saved me a lot of time, Mr...?”
“Tony Stark,” Tony says, meeting Lucius halfway and shaking his hand. It’s brief, businesslike, utterly free of the showmanship common to most people who work in senior management. “I don’t suppose you’re interested in helping me out with a loan. You know, since I volunteered to be your attack dog for the day and everything.”
Lucius considers him for a few long moments, and then gives him another polite smile, stepping aside to motion Tony towards his office. “Step inside and get comfortable. I’ll need to look over your paperwork first.”
Tony walks into Lucius’ office. The furniture is well made, but not ostentatious, and the room is nearly silent compared to the hustle and bustle of the crowds in the main entryway. Tony takes a seat while Lucius picks up a tablet from his desk and settles into his chair. He looks over the questionnaire the young woman filled out on Tony’s behalf earlier, idly scrolling his tablet with quick, sure movements. Tony does his best to not fidget or get up and pace around. He hates sitting still like this.
“College education, but you haven’t listed where you got your degree,” Lucius remarks.
Because I doubt MIT has me on record here. “There’s been a few issues with getting everything accredited.”
“Engineer?”
“Electrical and computer science.” Give or take a few other specialties.
“Hm.” The man folds his hands and stares at Tony frankly for a long moment. “You’re new to the streets. No drugs, no alcohol, and you aren't suffering from the kind of exposure most of the veteran homeless deal with. What happened?”
Tony mulls over that for a moment, and goes for simplicity.
“Lost my business, lost my family, got stranded here,” Tony says. Quick short facts are best, because being honest will put him straight into a psychiatric hospital.
Lucius hums, reads over the screen in front of him. “You were a business owner?”
“I know how to run one, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I haven’t found one registered under your name,” Lucius points out.
Yeah, he’s not getting this loan. “It’s...complicated?”
Another beat of silence. Lucius stares at Tony for a moment, considering him. Finally, he smiles. He taps the screen in front of him, brings up a document, and pushes the tablet over to Tony. Tony picks it up and frowns down at it, then quirks a brow once he recognizes what it is.
“That’s a generous offer,” Tony says. “Money and a building?”
“There’s a building in Park Row that used to belong to a mechanic. It’s a fixer upper, but it’s yours if you’re up for it. You’ve read over the terms of your loan?”
“Skimming it,” Tony says, scrolling through the document. His eyebrows raise further the more he reads. “An upfront loan large enough to get things off the ground, with debt forgiveness or investment from Wayne Enterprises if I let you guys come in and see what I’ve done with the cash. Either way, you’re signing over the building and footing the utility and tax bills for the next two years. This is generous to a suspicious degree.”
“But you’re not so suspicious you’ll turn it down,” Lucius notes, setting a set of keys down on the desk in front of him.
“I know a good deal when I see one,” Tony says.
Or, at least, a deal that he can work with until he finds something with no strings attached. The relief that sweeps through him when he grabs the keys almost breaks through his control. He has a place of his own again. That’s worth more than anything at this point. Living on the street means living in the public eye at all times.
Lucius smiles, and it looks sincere. “Mr. Wayne and his family believe in good deals for honest people, Mr. Stark. Your first inspection will be in a month. Good luck.”
Tony stands, turns to leave, and then stops and looks back at Lucius. “This is insane. Why me?”
“I have a good feeling about you, Mr. Stark,” Lucius says. He pauses and adds, a bit sheepishly, “And that Harvard guy was hounding me for weeks.”
Tony smirks at that, and leaves before Lucius can change his mind.
The young woman at the desk stops him at the door. She hands over a duffel bag, a card, and a phone. The phone is cheaply made, but serviceable, and the duffel bag appears to be a care package in bag form--food, toiletries, clothes. Tony quirks a brow and looks up at the woman.
She smirks. “A parting gift. Good work, Mr. Stark. You just saved my boss one hell of a headache.”
“I hope he’s paying you well,” Tony says, turning on the phone.
“Money isn’t everything, but I live pretty well,” she says. She smiles. “I’ve arranged a taxi for you. I hope everything works out for you.”
“Me too,” Tony says.
His taxi pulls up outside, and he considers it a moment before looking back at Ms. Saberton. She’s already back behind the desk, talking with another homeless person, this one a slightly terrified looking girl with a black eye. She looks barely older than fourteen. He can guess at her story.
Ms. Saberton is handling her with prim professionalism, filling out paperwork and tugging a much larger duffel bag out from under a neatly stacked pile of them behind her desk.
He leaves, gets into the taxi, gives the address of the shop to the driver and sits.
One chance meeting with a friendly bus driver just turned his luck around.
He's going to have to find a way to thank Lou for this.
* * *
The driver takes him into the heart of Crime Alley, right to the front door of the wrecked shop. It sits at the corner, across the street from an equally abandoned fire station that stands relatively whole in defiance of the ruined street. The shop is in decent condition, all things considered: bars over the windows, a heavy steel door, working lights that shine through grimy windows. It's in a sad state, but it’s a solid building, and it's his.
Tony steps out of the taxi, handing over some of the cash Lou gave him. The taxi driver leaves the engine idling, one foot on the gas, and barely waits to be paid before speeding down the street and around the corner. Tony scoffs, and then goes inside the shop, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The interior of the mechanics shop is a wreck. Full of rats, old equipment, and a pile of random car parts and scrap taking up most of the garage. Toolboxes and computers lay in dusty heaps across ruined shelves and trash, giving the place an overall wartorn look.
It's an utter goldmine for Tony, frankly.
He gets to work immediately, clearing out the back room and turning it into a makeshift living space that closely resembles the lab he had back in the Tower years ago. One of the first things he makes is a small wristwatch gauntlet, painfully weak but strong enough to blast someone away from him. He’ll have to work on nicer weapons and a suit at a later date.
In the space of three days, he has the place relatively clean and sorted. By the third, he's piled up the trash and spends the whole day dragging it out to the dumpster behind his shop. He drags junk out to the dumpster for most of the day.
He tosses the last bag into the dumpster. It lands with a thump, and is followed by, “Ow.”
Tony pauses, backs up, and peers into the dumpster. He recognizes the hero. Even homeless, Tony managed to piece together some information on the resident heroes of Gotham City. Birds and bats, who mostly slip through the nightly warzone of Gotham City, stopping god knows what from happening to the city at large.
He thinks finding one beaten half to death behind a dumpster is a bit rare, though.
At least, he hopes so.
The kid--and he is a kid, a teenager no older than Peter--is dressed in a red and black suit that’s ragged and torn, with a heavy yellow belt clamped around his waist. What’s left of the armor on his suit is misshapen and out of place, as if someone has taken a hammer to every protective plate woven into the suit. His mask isn’t much more than a thick covering across his eyes, not quite fabric.
“Oh, shit,” Tony says.
He lunges into the dumpster and hauls the kid up and out of the dumpster. The kid helps, taking Tony’s offered hand, grunting in pain as Tony sets him down on the ground. Tony is not at all happy to see a streak of blood running down the back of the kid’s head and back.
“Hey, focus up, stay awake,” Tony says, kneeling down. He snaps his fingers in front of the hero’s nose, whistling sharply. The kid wince. “Pop quiz time. What’s your name?”
He starts to say something, blinks, changes his answer. “Red Robin.”
“Good enough,” Tony says. Secret identities are probably sacred to all teenage heroes, which is the only reason why he hasn’t taken the kid’s mask off yet. He’s still tempted. He holds Red Robin steady, gently prodding the bleeding head wound. It isn’t deep, but head wounds bleed a hell of a lot. Red Robin hisses and winces, moving away from Tony’s hand. “You've probably got a concussion. Please tell me you have a way to call back up.”
“He could have killed me, but he stopped at the last second,” Red Robin says, as if he didn’t hear Tony at all. His voice is clear enough, but he’s speaking slowly, with a slightly puzzled tone that Tony doesn’t like at all.
“Well, it's not easy killing people. Most people stop before that point,” Tony says, leaning back and letting Red Robin get some space.
“No, he physically stopped himself. He was fighting for control,” Red Robin says. It almost sounds like he’s giving a report to someone.
“Lucky for you,” Tony remarks.
Red Robin doesn't argue that. “Urgh. Hard to think.”
“See previous comment regarding your concussion.”
“I've had plenty before.”
“Okay, that's worse. You realize that, right?” Tony asks. He eyes the kid, keeping him braced. “Do you need me to call someone?”
Red Robin waves irritably at him. “Already called them.” He pauses, and adds, “But thanks. You can go inside. In fact, you probably should. It's dangerous for someone to look too friendly to people like me in this neighborhood.”
“I'll deal. Look, I'm not comfortable leaving you out here alone,” Tony says, glancing around the eerily quiet street. It's late, and cold but not so late or cold that the more dangerous members of society won't be out looking for easy targets. “If your pals don't get here soon--”
“We're here,” a calm voice says behind Tony.
Tony whirls around to face the voice, hand drifting towards the half finished gauntlet in his pocket. He stops when he sees the man braced on top of his shop's roof, dressed in a blue and black suit, with a blue mask covering his eyes.
The man catches the movement and grins, a cheerful and amused expression crossing his features.
“Were you going to fight me?” he asks, dropping down to the asphalt and strolling over to Tony and Red Robin with an easy grace. He doesn’t seem intimidated or worried by Tony in the least.
“Still might. Call it professional courtesy,” Tony says, shifting slightly to block the man’s way. He glances at Red Robin from the corner of his eye. “Is he--”
“Nightwing,” Red Robin says, a twinge of relief in his tone. “Yeah. He's the one I called.”
Tony relaxes and moves out of the way. Nightwing gives him a long, pondering look as he walks past and Tony gets the feeling the man could have tossed him across the street if he wanted to reach Red Robin.
“Okay, let's get you home,” Nightwing says. He helps Red Robin up, lifting him gently, and bracing his arm across his shoulders. “And then you get to explain what the hell caught you off guard.”
A sleek black car prowls down the street and stops in the alley behind the shop. The movements on it are so precise, so finely tuned, that Tony has to assume it drove itself to his shop. He looks it over, curious. He has--had--cars with built-in autopilot back home, and a part of him is itching to pry open the engine hood on this car.
Red Robin pauses next to Tony on the way to the car, frowning up at him from beneath his bloodied mask. Nightwing dutifully stops, supporting his friend.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Tony,” Tony says.
“Tony. Got it. I'll remember this.”
“Remember how to duck next time,” Tony retorts.
That earns him a flat look from Red Robin and stifled snicker from Nightwing. The older man looks over Red Robin’s head to Tony.
“Thanks for looking out for him. It's always refreshing to meet people like you,” he says. “Stay safe.”
“You too. Next time, try the front door instead of the dumpster, kid,” Tony says.
That earns him another annoyed look from Red Robin and a smirk from Nightwing. The two heroes enter the black car, the engine kicking to life the moment the door shuts. Half a second later, the car backs out of the alley behind the mechanic’s shop and back onto the street. It zips down the street, leaving Tony alone in the alley.
He watches them, curious, and adds two new names to his research efforts. He found an old laptop inside the shop, and the internet is a part of the utilities. He was saving the research for later, but maybe he’ll bump that up to tonight’s project and put the gauntlet on hold.