He boosted the signal of the carrier, to mask a greater area--if there was screaming. And his fingertips faded away to the diaphanous flickering, his eyes drops of molten focus as he pressed his fingers into and through Stark's skull. Starting at the base of his brain, sweeping razor fingers up to contact and disconnect the first of many lethally programmed shackles seesawed all across the brilliant brain. A literal mindfield.

Only a machine could think fast enough to shut the devices down before they could send any kind of signals, particularly punishing shocks--and Ghost's suit was running at 3.3 milliseconds - the average amount of time between the initiation of a C4 charge and its detonation, and three hundred times faster than the average eyeblink. His technopathy put the speed of human action to shame, but he could barely maintain the output necessary to keep them from dominoing. Paramount was capturing and echoing the pulse of the destroyed piece to keep its fellows silently sleeping, despite the inevitable, punishing electrical leak.

He forgot to breathe, but he didn't forget to squeeze Tony's hand back.