Toxin Purification

"The first stage is treating the toxins in your body. The second stage is treating your reactor, but that requires your cooperation and involves your core technical secrets. We'll do the first stage first."

Tony thought for a moment. "Do it."

"Take off your shirt. Expose the reactor."

Tony paused for a second as he unbuttoned his shirt.

He was not used to exposing the Arc Reactor in front of strangers.

It was both his life-support device and his greatest weakness.

But he took it off anyway.

The circular Arc Reactor was embedded in the center of his chest, its blue glow shining steadily.

A ring of surgical scars surrounded the reactor—the marks left when it had been implanted in Afghanistan.

All-Things Diagnosis fully unfolded within Lynn's field of vision.

The Arc Reactor's internal structure appeared as a translucent three-dimensional model.

The Palladium Triangular Core burned slowly like a miniature sun. The electrolyte layer around it was indeed riddled with nanoscale cracks, like glass covered in spiderweb fractures.

Even more striking was Tony's body. Palladium toxins had spread through his bloodstream to every corner of his body.

Under All-Things Diagnosis's annotations, the toxins appeared as dark streaks spreading through his blood vessels.

They radiated outward from his chest, with the heaviest deposits in his liver, kidneys, and peripheral nervous system.

The tremor in his right hand was the result of palladium toxins damaging his peripheral nerves.

Lynn began preparing the medication.

What he needed was a chelating agent—a chemical molecule capable of forming a stable complex with palladium ions.

The standard medical approach used DMSA or EDTA, but neither chelating agent was specific enough in binding palladium ions. They would also strip useful zinc and copper from the body.

Batman's knowledge of chemistry, combined with the reactor parameters Tony had inadvertently revealed earlier, helped him find a better solution.

A combination of three compounds—a modified derivative of dimercaprol as the primary chelating component.

It was paired with a specific vitamin B coenzyme to protect normal metal-ion metabolic pathways, plus a trace suspension of carbon nanotubes to accelerate kidney excretion.

The formula's dosages were precise down to the milligram.

Every number had been calculated by Super Intelligence after accounting for Tony's weight, liver and kidney function, current palladium concentration, and daily intake.

Tony watched from beside him the entire time.

His eyes never left Lynn's hands.

As an engineering genius, he was no chemist, but he could still judge the precision of Lynn's work.

The speed and accuracy with which he switched between medicine bottles were not something a twenty-two-year-old dropout should possess.

"How much more efficient is what you're making compared to the chelation therapies on the market?" Tony asked.

"About four times."

"Four times? What's your theoretical basis?"

"Not theory. Calculation. I estimate your serum palladium concentration is around eighty micrograms per liter—"

"Seventy-eight," Tony corrected.

"Seventy-eight. At that concentration, a standard DMSA treatment removes roughly four to six percent of the total palladium in your body per session. My method can achieve fifteen to twenty percent."

"Because of the carbon nanotubes."

"You noticed."

"The surface-area-to-volume ratio of carbon nanotubes gives them far greater adsorption efficiency than conventional excretion pathways. But how do you ensure the nanotubes won't accumulate in the renal tubules?"

"Keep their length below two hundred nanometers. At that length, they won't be retained by renal tubular epithelial cells."

"Also, I added PEG modification—a hydrophilic surface that won't bind to proteins. The excretion rate is over ninety-five percent."

Tony fell silent for two seconds.

"Where did you learn all this?"

"Self-taught."

"Self-taught," Tony repeated.

The injection began three minutes later.

Lynn used the finest intravenous needle to puncture the median cubital vein in Tony's left arm.

The chelating medication flowed in slowly.

It took effect quickly.

About seven minutes later, Tony felt the change.

"There's a warm current," he said. "It starts in my chest and spreads through my whole body."

"That's the chelating agent binding with the palladium ions in your blood. The binding process releases a small amount of heat."

The warmth lasted around twenty minutes.

Lynn monitored the real-time data on the system panel throughout—the palladium concentration was dropping slowly but steadily.

Seventy-eight, sixty-three, fifty-one, forty-two, thirty-five...

Half an hour later, the injection was complete.

Tony lowered his head and glanced at his neck.

He remembered that, over the past few months, dark lines had appeared along the side of his neck, like the faint color of blood vessels showing through the skin.

Most of those lines had faded.

"How do you feel?" Lynn asked.

Tony raised his right hand.

It was no longer shaking.

He spread the fingers of his right hand, clenched it into a fist, then opened it again.

The movement was clean and smooth, without the slightest involuntary tremor.

"You repaired my peripheral nerves too?"

"No. Once the palladium concentration drops, some of your nerve damage will recover naturally. What's been relieved now are only the symptoms—structural damage needs time to grow back."

Tony stared at his right hand for about five seconds.

"What's the palladium concentration now?"

"Around twenty-six micrograms per liter, below the safety threshold."

"But the reactor is still leaking. In about two or three months, it'll rise back to dangerous levels."

"Then you'll need another purification treatment—or solve the reactor problem within those two or three months."

"The second stage?"

"We can do it now."

Tony did not hesitate.

He put his shirt back on, but left it unbuttoned—the Arc Reactor was still exposed.

"You said you were going to treat my reactor. How?"

Lynn pulled over a chair and sat across from him, their knees nearly touching.

At this distance, All-Things Diagnosis reached its highest scanning precision.

Every component of the Arc Reactor was clearly displayed in separate layers within his vision.

The casing, sealing ring, electrolyte interface layer, palladium core, energy output channels, and the biological interface embedded in Tony's chest cavity.

"Your reactor has three areas that can be optimized," Lynn said.

Tony raised an eyebrow.

"First, the feedback frequency of the electrolyte temperature-control system. You're currently using a sampling rate of two hundred hertz. The reactor core's temperature fluctuation cycle is roughly 0.8 to 1.2 milliseconds—two hundred hertz isn't dense enough. The missed temperature spikes are the direct cause of the cracks in the interface layer."

"If you raise the feedback frequency above five hundred hertz, the palladium leak rate can be reduced by at least forty percent."

Tony's expression changed.

Not in a bad way—it was the look of someone realizing, How hadn't I thought of that?

"Two hundred hertz is a legacy parameter from the first-generation design," he said, speaking faster than usual.