The sound of a shutter.
A telephoto lens's shutter.
Someone was photographing his clinic.
Lynn didn't move.
He lay on the bed, his expression unchanged, his breathing steady.
But his mind was already working.
The shutter clicked about once every forty-five seconds. It had been going on for roughly ten minutes.
The subject was probably the clinic's exterior walls, doors and windows, and the surrounding streets.
A standard reconnaissance photography rhythm.
Not a journalist.
Journalists took pictures at random, and moved around frequently to find different angles.
This person had stayed in the same spot, taking pictures at regular intervals—an intelligence operative with professional training.
Not someone from S.H.I.E.L.D.
Fury's surveillance methods were far more sophisticated. He wouldn't use such a primitive approach.
Not Batman.
Bruce used drones and remote sensors.
He'd finished eliminating the possibilities.
Lynn whispered a name into the darkness.
"Kingpin."
For the next four days, Lynn kept to his normal routine.
He opened the clinic and saw patients during the day.
At night, he listened.
The scout on the rooftop across the street didn't come every day, but there was a clear pattern: every other day, sometime between ten at night and midnight.
Each time, he stayed for about an hour.
Lynn didn't alert him.
From the sound of the shutter, he identified the camera brand: the Nikon D5 Series. Its shutter had a distinctive high-frequency component.
Then, using the shooting angles and the scout's exact position on the rooftop,
he deduced what the man was photographing: the front of the clinic, the back door, the second-floor windows, and the distance between the neighboring buildings.
It was a survey of the terrain before an intrusion.
On the afternoon of the fourth day,
a familiar black Audi A8 pulled up outside.
When Tony Stark walked into Miracle Clinic for the second time, he was carrying a paper bag in his left hand.
Inside were two bottles of wine: a Burgundy Pinot Noir and a bottle of Japanese Yamazaki 18 Year.
"Which bottle is for me?" Lynn asked.
"Depends on how you behave." Tony set the bag on the front desk.
He looked much better than he had the last time.
The general gray pallor was gone, replaced by a healthy wheat-colored complexion. The discolored patch on his neck had mostly faded.
His right hand no longer trembled.
All-Things Diagnosis automatically scanned him: serum palladium concentration, twenty-one micrograms per liter—five points lower than it had been at the end of his last treatment.
His body was naturally metabolizing the residual effects of the chelating agent.
His current concentration was well below the safety threshold.
"You look good," Lynn said.
"I feel like I'm back to how I was three years ago." Tony sat down, crossing one leg over the other.
"But I didn't come just for a checkup. I've got some good news, and a... proposal, I guess."
"Let's hear the good news first."
"What you told me last time about the material my dad left behind. I found it."
Tony took off his sunglasses.
His eyes were much brighter than they'd been last time. There was something in them that Lynn hadn't seen before.
Not excitement. Something closer to a complicated sense of relief.
"The old man hid a molecular structure diagram inside the scale model of the 1974 World's Fair."
"I played with that model hundreds of times as a kid and never noticed. Not until I did what you told me—took another look at what he'd left behind."
"The structure of the New Element?"
"JARVIS finished analyzing the model. Its atomic number falls outside the known periodic table. It has a unique electron resonance structure between the 4d and 5d orbitals. Its energy density is two orders of magnitude higher than palladium's, and it's perfectly biocompatible. Zero toxicity."
"Have you synthesized it?"
"I'm one step away. The synthesis requires a huge amount of energy, so I'm modifying a particle accelerator in my lab to do it."
"But the theory's already been verified. Once I synthesize it, I can replace the palladium core in my reactor. My poisoning problem will be solved for good."
Lynn nodded.
"That's the good news. What's the proposal?"
Tony leaned forward a little.
"Fury told me what you did in the Harlem District. You cracked Hydra's mutant serum in twenty minutes. I looked at the molecular structure data for your Reversal Agent. It took JARVIS three hours just to verify how you'd designed that molecule. It's extremely ingenious."
"Thanks."
"I'm not complimenting you." Tony waved a hand.
"I'm saying your abilities made me think of someone. Bruce Banner."
Captain America mentioned him to me, too.
"Then I'll spare you the details. You probably know the basics of Banner's situation: gamma radiation triggers an uncontrollable transformation."
"He's been struggling with it for years. He can't fully control Hulk, and every transformation could cause massive destruction. He's suffering."
Tony paused. "Honestly, I wasn't sure someone at your level could help him. Hulk's problem isn't an ordinary medical issue. It's a transformation caused by energy on the level of Cosmic Rays. But what you did in the Harlem District changed my mind."
"You want me to help him control his transformations?"
"Not control them. Give him a way forward. Let him choose whether to transform or not. Right now, he has no choice. He gets angry, he transforms, and once he does, he can't stop."
Lynn considered it for two seconds.
Hulk.
A gamma-powered body.
That level of potential—
"I can arrange it. But Dr. Banner's case is more complicated than anyone else's. I'll need to conduct a full assessment and get all his medical data before I can determine whether I can treat him, and how."
"I'll call him."
"No rush," Lynn said. "I have some things to take care of first. I'll get in touch with him in about a week or two."
Tony looked at him. "What things?"
"Upgrading the clinic's security."
"Don't you have S.H.I.E.L.D. watching your back?"
"Some things can't be left to other people."
Tony didn't press him.
He stood up and nudged the paper bag toward Lynn.
"Keep both bottles. It's a thank-you for helping me find my father's legacy."
"I'll add the consultation fee to your bill next time."
"You really are charging me."
"I never work for free."
Tony chuckled and shook his head.
He walked to the door, then glanced back at the clinic.
"This place has changed quite a bit since my last visit. You upgraded the equipment?"
"I made a few adjustments to the stuff you gave me."
"Adjustments?"
"Improved its performance."
Tony stared at him for two seconds.
Lynn had seen that expression before, on Tony's first visit: the distinctive look of one genius encountering another.
"You upgraded my twenty-seven-million-dollar equipment to a resolution of 1.6 nanometers? It took my engineering team three months to calibrate that machine at the factory—"
"Goodbye, Mr. Stark."
Tony left.
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