Story #2#7.1 (no title given)
Writer: Nick Spencer. Penciler: Kano. Inker: Kano. Colorist: Kano. Editor: Alejandro Arbona. Cover Penciler: Salvador Larroca. Cover Inker: Salvador Larroca. Cover Colorist: Frank D'Armata. Letterer: Joe Caramagna.
Synopsis / Summary / Plot
In a hotel in Paris Christine makes sure preparations are perfect for President Nabavi, dictator of an unspecified Muslim country. Unrest in his country has forced him to come here for peace negotiations. Christine is determined not to give him any excuse to back out.
James Rhodes returns to Mackelroy army base, centre for the hunt for Palmer Addley (which occupied the 1st 4 issues of this series, and is unfinished). Ernst Hoyer and Mike Zelinsky are already there, but the other team member Kaylie Harrison is absent and not answering her phone. Rhodey is angry because she's the one who has just got to see the real file on their target (in #4), and he was expecting a briefing on it.
Kaylie is at home, not intending to go to work but refusing to give her roommate a reason.
Jim wants the others to run through what they know about Palmer Addley again. But they distract him by asking about the new armour (gained in #3) they heard him talking to Tony Stark about on his phone as he came in. And about Suzi Endo, who they suppose is his ex-girlfriend.
Meanwhile Suzi gets a bunch of flowers from Jim, and a note thanking her for helping save him (from a nuclear blast in #2). She's torn between keeping them and shredding them. And shredding them wins.
But we finally get to the potted recap. Palmer Addley was a genius inventor working in deep secrecy for DARPA, until he committed suicide. But now some months later his inventions are cropping up all over the world in the hands of terrorists. The investigation confirmed that he really is dead, and there's no way his secrets could have leaked out. But his official file was a fake, and Kaylie got permission to see the real one. And now she's AWOL.
Rhodey's boss Gen'l Babbage is notified of another of Addley's inventions flying towards Paris. He sends Iron Man 2.0 there. Jim finds a hulking robot to hit, making use of the armour's ghost mode to become intangible, and chameleon mode for invisibility. But old-fashioned repulsors to destroy it.
Our hero thinks he's stopped the robot's plan, whatever it was. But Nabavi uses the incident to pull out of negotiations, and his country falls deeper into conflict.