Reputation Snowballs

Over the following week, business at the clinic could be described as "taking off," and that would be a conservative estimate.

The daily patient count climbed from ten to fifteen, then twenty.

Some came from local 49th Street, some from neighboring blocks, and some even traveled all the way from Brooklyn.

The reason was simple—Lynn's diagnoses were too accurate.

How accurate? Accurate enough to be frightening.

A Puerto Rican man in his sixties came in with a cough.

"I've been coughing for two months. I've taken plenty of cough medicine, but nothing works." Before Lynn even opened his mouth to ask, he had already caught the faint, barely audible moist rales in the man's breathing—deep in the lower right lobe of his lung.

All-Things Diagnosis popped up in sync.

"Your cough isn't caused by a cold. There is a small patch of fluid in your lower right lung, about three hundred milliliters."

"The cause is a slight regurgitation in your heart's mitral valve. It's not severe, but you need to get an echocardiogram to confirm it."

The old man was stunned. "Are you checking my cough or my heart?"

"Both. The root of your cough is in your heart. If you don't treat the heart and just keep taking cough medicine, you'll never get better."

Half-doubting, the old man went to the hospital for an echocardiogram.

On the day the results came back, he returned with the report, his hands trembling. "Doctor, you were right about every single word. Mild mitral valve insufficiency. Even the cardiologist at the big hospital asked me who told me to get this test done."

Similar incidents happened at least five times within the week.

A woman who had been beaten by her husband and was too afraid to go to a big hospital came in for a "sprained wrist."

Lynn felt her pulse and knew immediately it wasn't a sprain—there was a subtle fracture of the distal radius, the kind that might not even show up on an X-ray.

He splinted it for her, then used his Super Senses to smell the lingering scent of alcohol on her—

It wasn't from her; it was from her husband, the sweat having soaked into her clothes.

"Your hand was twisted by someone, not sprained by yourself," Lynn said calmly.

The woman's eyes turned red, but she said nothing.

"I won't ask who did it. But given the position and angle of this fracture, if it's twisted with the same force again, it won't just crack—it will break. And it won't be fixable then."

He pulled a business card from his drawer and handed it to her—

The contact information for a women's legal aid organization.

The woman took the card and left with her head bowed.

Lynn only sighed softly after closing the door.

He wasn't a saint—he knew exactly why he did it.

That card and the free treatment weren't born of kindness; they were the result of a precise cost-benefit calculation: one grateful patient would bring in ten new ones. In a place like Hell's Kitchen, community reputation was the most valuable asset.

Meanwhile, he hadn't forgotten what was truly important.

When he had downtime, Lynn would scroll through the news on his phone.

He could capture patterns in the fragmented information that ordinary people would miss.

A piece of news that interested him greatly appeared on the third day—

<Stark Industries CEO Tony Stark misses board meeting again. Spokesperson claims "mild cold">

Next to it was a recent photo of Tony Stark—taken at a charity gala a month ago.

He analyzed every pixel in the photo.

Skin tone.

Comparing it to a photo from the same time last year, Tony's skin tone had grayed by about 7%.

This comprehensive grayish tint wasn't caused by natural aging—aging appeared first around the eyes and neck, but in the photo, the grayness was evenly distributed across Tony's entire face.

This was a sign of diffuse circulatory decline.

Weight.

Compared to a photo from six months ago, the depth of the shadows at his cheekbones had increased by about two millimeters, and his jawline had become more defined.

He was losing weight. Not the kind of weight loss from working out, but the kind where "muscle is wasting away."

Right hand.

In the last three public photos, the hand Tony used to hold his coffee cup was his left.

A right-handed person suddenly switching to their left hand to hold a cup—it meant there was a problem with the right hand.

The most likely cause: fine motor impairment due to peripheral nerve damage.

Synthesizing all the data, Lynn's brain provided a conclusion within two seconds:

Palladium poisoning.

Early to mid-stage symptoms.

The Palladium core of the Arc Reactor was slowly poisoning Tony Stark.

A priceless "big order" might be on its way.

If he could cure Tony—no, he didn't need to cure him completely, just delay the poisoning process or provide critical diagnostic information—he would have a chance to copy Iron Man's abilities.

What was Tony Stark's talent?

It wasn't the suit.

The suit was a tool.

It was that brain.

Engineering genius, invention, quantum mechanics, nanomaterials, energy systems... Bruce Wayne's Super Intelligence leaned toward detective work and tactics.

Tony Stark's intelligence leaned toward engineering and creation.

If the two were to complement each other...

Lynn put down his phone.

He wouldn't take the initiative to find Tony.

That would be too deliberate and beneath him.

He needed Tony to come to him.

And to do that, he needed his reputation to spread further and higher—from the community word-of-mouth in Hell's Kitchen to a level that could reach Stark's circle.

"I need more fame," Lynn muttered to himself.

What he didn't know was that this "more fame" would arrive in a way he hadn't anticipated.

On the twelfth day of business.

Lynn sensed something was wrong the moment he opened the door in the morning.

Underneath the sign at the clinic entrance, there was an extra two-meter-long red banner with white lettering. It read:

"Strongly demand the closure of this unlicensed black clinic! Return a clean space to the community!"

Three people stood next to the banner.

Deputy Director Griffin stood at the front, having specifically changed into a dark suit and tie today; he clearly wasn't here for a checkup.

Behind him stood a middle-aged woman in a gray suit—wearing an ID badge on her chest that read "New York Community Medical Association."

At the very back was a young man with a backpack and a camera hanging around his neck, holding a video camera in his hand.

A reporter.

It wasn't even nine o'clock, and seven or eight curious residents had already gathered at the entrance.

Lynn stood at the clinic door, holding the coffee he had bought that morning, looking at the banner and then at Griffin.

Two abilities activated simultaneously.

In three seconds, he completed a full scan of the three people—

Griffin: Pulse seventy-eight, breathing steady, not nervous.

The soles of those leather shoes—they had a specific deep red fiber that only the carpets of high-end hotels would have.

He had been to a luxury hotel last night.

The woman from the medical association: The same deep red fiber appeared on the soles of her high heels.

She and Griffin had been at the same hotel last night—they had planned this stunt together.

The reporter: A corner of a two-hundred-dollar bill was peeking out of the side pocket of his backpack—not a salary, but something he had just received.

Additionally, her briefcase—no, the medical association woman's briefcase—the zipper wasn't fully closed, revealing the edges of a stack of documents.

The paper texture and font format were standard templates for legal notices.