No One Is Richer Than Me

Russell didn't know the military had sent the more formidable Hound 10 after him. Or rather, he had expected something like it all along. Right now, though, getting stronger mattered most.

Lying in the luxurious bathroom, he was in agony—and loving every minute of it.

[Super Self-Healing Experience +0.8]

[Super Self-Healing Experience +0.5]

As the experience gains on the panel dwindled, Russell had to face reality: Sulfuric acid baths were losing their effect.

The first time he soaked, the Superhuman Healing experience bar had shot up like a lit fuse. The second time, it rose more slowly. The third, slower still.

Now, after two hours in the tub, the bar had moved less than one percent.

His skin had adapted to the low-concentration acid. His Healing Factor had even begun building a more corrosion-resistant layer of keratin over his epidermis. His body was optimizing itself.

That should have been a good thing, but for Russell, it meant his "self-torture training method" needed an upgrade.

He rose from the bathtub, water running down skin that had been soaked unnaturally pale and leaving faint acidic traces on the tiles.

He wrapped himself in a bath towel and stepped out. Felicity sat on the living room sofa with a thick book on New York's architectural history, borrowed from the hotel library. She was engrossed in it.

Laura sat cross-legged by the floor-to-ceiling window, spinning the fruit knife she always carried around her fingers in flashing silver circles.

"Lord Russell, finished your bath?" Felicity looked up. Her gaze lingered on him for a second before darting away, the tips of her ears turning pink.

"Mm." Russell walked to the coffee table, picked up the phone he used for dark-web orders, and swiped rapidly across the screen. A few minutes later, he set it down.

"Another delivery's coming. Sorry for the trouble, but could you ask the hotel manager to bring it up?"

"What is it?" Felicity asked curiously.

"Aqua regia."

Felicity froze. "Aqua regia? The stuff that dissolves gold?"

"That's right. Concentrated nitric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid, mixed three to one. It's several times more corrosive than sulfuric acid. Bathing in it should get the results going again."

The room went quiet for two seconds.

Laura stopped spinning her knife. She turned to Russell with an expression he couldn't begin to describe. "Last time, you bathed in sulfuric acid?"

"Diluted sulfuric acid," Russell stressed.

"You bathed in sulfuric acid." Laura repeated it in the same flat tone she might have used to say, "You ate lunch."

"Anything's worth it if it makes me stronger," Russell said calmly.

Laura stared at him for three seconds, then turned back and resumed spinning her knife.

"Freak." Her voice was soft, but Russell heard her. So did Felicity, who covered her mouth as her shoulders shook.

Russell's mouth twitched. He decided not to argue with a little girl.

Money worked its magic, and the delivery arrived soon afterward.

The hotel manager personally wheeled a trolley to the Presidential Suite. Two sealed glass containers sat on it, wrapped in thick shock-absorbing foam and marked with hazardous-material labels.

He wore the look of a man who didn't want to ask but couldn't contain his curiosity.

"Mr. Russell, your order has arrived." He pushed the trolley inside, his gaze resting briefly on the containers.

"Concentrated nitric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid, both of the highest purity. But..." He hesitated. "May I ask what you need them for? You ordered sulfuric acid an hour ago, and now nitric and hydrochloric acid.

"If you need equipment for a chemistry experiment, the hotel can put you in touch with a professional laboratory—"

"No need. They're for my bath."

Russell said it casually. The manager's smile froze.

"...What? Mr. Russell, I must have misheard you."

"You heard me. They're for my bath." Russell picked up the two containers and headed for the bathroom. "Sulfuric acid isn't working as well anymore, so I'm trying aqua regia."

The manager stood motionless, mouth open and eyes wide. His mind was plainly bouncing between He must be joking and He sounds serious.

At last, he chose the safer response. "Then... would you like me to have the bathtub replaced with a corrosion-resistant one? Aqua regia can eat through ordinary ceramic—"

"No need. I can handle it." Russell's voice came from the bathroom, followed by the soft clink of glass containers being set on tile.

"Thanks. That'll be all."

The manager left with the expression of someone who had just watched a science-fiction show he hadn't understood at all.

Before the door closed, he faintly heard Felicity's voice from the bathroom. "Lord Russell, are you really getting into that? It can even dissolve gold—"

"That's why I'm silver."

"...What?"

"Nothing."

The manager shook his head. From now on, he would ask no questions about this guest's orders.

Some answers only made it harder to sleep.

In the bathroom, Russell stood before the custom glass bathtub and slowly poured in the aqua regia he had just prepared.

The moment the concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids mixed, the liquid became a faintly orange, transparent solution. Tiny, almost invisible bubbles of chlorine gas drifted across its surface.

The smell was sharp, but the powerful ventilation system quickly drew it away.

He dipped a hand into the liquid. A burning sensation far stronger than sulfuric acid struck his fingertips. It wasn't the dull pain of a burn, but something sharper and more aggressive, as though countless tiny teeth were gnawing at his skin.

Superhuman Healing activated at once. Damaged cells were replaced at a visible rate. New tissue struggled to survive in the acid, only to be eaten away and replaced again.

[Superhuman Healing Experience +0.8]

Sure enough, this worked much better.

Satisfied, Russell lay down in the tub, leaving only his head above the surface, resting against a soft pillow on the rim.

As the aqua regia submerged him, the even, stinging pain across every inch of his skin jolted him awake. It wasn't masochism. It was the sight of his experience bar rising.

It felt just like watching experience points tick up in a game.

He didn't sleep this time. The fierce gnawing sensation down to his bones wouldn't let him.

He activated Molecular Vision.

The molecules and ions floating in the air spread through his sight as a precise microscopic map.

He lifted a hand out of the liquid, fingers pointing upward, and focused his mind—

Carbon atoms began gathering a few centimeters above his palm.

He wasn't plucking them from the air one by one. That would take too long. He stripped them from the carbon dioxide molecules in the room.

One carbon, two hydrogens, three carbons, five hydrogens. Molecular chains lengthened, carbon frameworks took shape, and hydrogen bonds settled into their most stable configurations.

This wasn't chemical synthesis. It was weaving matter directly, stitching atoms together one after another with invisible needle and thread.

A few minutes later, a brand-new US banknote appeared at his fingertips.

Its serial number was random, its watermark exact. Even the microscopic printed lines visible only to a bill validator had been reproduced perfectly through molecular-level manipulation.

This was no counterfeit.

It was more genuine than the real thing, because at the molecular level, there was no difference at all.

Russell placed the bill in a waterproof box beside the tub and started weaving a second.

[Psychic Telekinesis: Molecular-level Control Experience +0.3]

By the time Felicity opened the door, a thick stack sat neatly in the waterproof box.

She saw Russell half-submerged in the faintly orange liquid, his fingers hovering above the surface. Over his palm floated a Franklin that was still "growing." It wasn't being printed or sprayed. It was taking shape from nothing, atom by atom.

Her mouth fell open.

"Are you... printing money?"

"Weaving money," Russell corrected her. "Printing is mass production. Too crude. Mine is handcrafted."

Felicity looked at the stack of bills, worth at least twenty or thirty thousand dollars. Then she looked at the tub of aqua regia, which could dissolve even gold, and at Russell's overly young face, faintly reddened by the acid fumes. She suddenly felt her entire understanding of the world might need a reboot.

"What," she asked, swallowing, "are you going to do with all this money?"

Russell placed the finished bill in the box and began weaving another. "Remember the people in the slums whose homes burned down?"

Felicity paused. "I do."

"Where are they living now?"

"...I don't know."

"Probably on the streets, in sewers, or under bridges," Russell reasoned. "Their building burned down, their landlord was arrested, and insurance claims will take months.

"They have no papers, no jobs, no savings. Some don't even have shoes." His tone remained calm, as though he were talking about something that had nothing to do with him.

"The hotel's Presidential Suite is comfortable, but the people sleeping on cardboard boxes are part of this city too."

Felicity watched him in silence for a long time. Then she crouched beside the tub and asked earnestly, "What do you want me to do?"

"Take this money out and give it to them—to ordinary poor people who need it." Russell paused, then added, "Don't give anyone too much at once. They'll get robbed.

"A few hundred each will do. Enough to eat for a few days and rent somewhere out of the wind. Tell them it came from a man named Russell."

Felicity nodded without asking why.

She picked up the waterproof box and turned to leave.

At the doorway, she stopped and glanced back.

Russell had closed his eyes. His fingers still hovered above the liquid, and the bill above his palm was visibly taking shape.

The orange aqua regia rippled gently around his neck. A faint smell of chlorine hung in the bathroom, while the ventilation system hummed overhead.

"Lord Russell." Something like admiration was growing in her heart.

"Mm?"

"You're a good person."

Russell smiled faintly. He didn't tell her his real reason for giving away money was to earn Emotion Points.

The poorer someone was, the more heartfelt their gratitude would be when they received cash. The Emotion Points it generated might rival those born of a fear of death.

Felicity smiled too and went out.

Laura was waiting in the living room.

She looked at the box of money in Felicity's hands, then toward the bathroom. Her expression was complicated—not surprise, but something deeper and harder to put into words.

She had grown up in a laboratory, but she had still seen far too many people do far too many things for money.

Using superpowers to make money and then handing it to homeless people was outside anything she had experienced.

"I'm coming with you." It wasn't a request.

Felicity didn't object.

The two girls left the Presidential Suite, took the elevator to the ground floor, crossed the lobby, and pushed through the revolving door into the last sunlight before night fell over Manhattan.

Across the street, a black sedan was parked at the curb.

Its window was rolled halfway down. Tony Stark sat in the back seat, sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead, a glass of still-fizzing soda in his hand.

Happy Hogan sat behind the wheel, watching the two girls emerge from the hotel through the windshield.

One was brown-haired, the other blonde. Both were young. The brown-haired girl carried a box, while the blonde walked lightly but kept a watchful eye on her surroundings, like a small animal ready to turn and bite.

Neither looked their way.

They headed straight for the corner, where several people wrapped in tattered blankets crouched on the steps outside a store.

The brown-haired girl crouched, took several bills from the box, and offered them to one of them.

The man froze, then looked up at her, mouth open. His eyes held a bewilderment somewhere between Is this a scam? and Did God send you?

The brown-haired girl said a few words, pointed to the hotel behind her, then to the money in her hand.

The man took it and stared down at the Franklins. His lips trembled, and he said something.

Then he began to cry.

He didn't wail. He cried silently, his shoulders jerking.

Tears cut two clean tracks down his dusty face. Someone beside him came closer, and the brown-haired girl handed out more bills. One person, then two, then three.

Soon everyone at the corner was on their feet. Some wiped their eyes, some grinned, and some turned their bills over and over, as if checking they weren't imagining it.

Tony set down his soda, took off his sunglasses, and watched intently. "Happy."

"Yeah?"

"Those two girls came out of the hotel. If I'm not mistaken, they're with Russell?"

"Looks like it."

"What are they doing?"

Happy squinted for a moment. "Looks like they're... handing out money?"

Tony fell silent for a few seconds. Then he looked up at the floor-to-ceiling window on the hotel's top floor. Sunlight reflected off the glass in a dazzling white glare, hiding anyone who might be inside.

"So," he said slowly, "a Mutant who escaped from a laboratory is staying in a Presidential Suite and sending his young assistants out to hand money to homeless people."

Happy considered that. "Sounds crazy."

"Crazy?" Tony put his sunglasses back on, a smile curving his lips. "That's theatrical. I like people with a flair for drama."

He opened the car door and stepped out, his tailored charcoal-gray suit gleaming subtly in the sunlight.

"Stay in the car," he told Happy. "I'm going to meet this wealthy Mr. Russell."

"Wealthy?" Happy glanced in the rearview mirror at the homeless people still counting their bills on the corner. "Is he richer than you?"

Tony stopped and looked back at his driver and bodyguard with the solemnity of a man facing a philosophical question.

"Happy."

"Yeah?"

"No one in this world is richer than me."

"Then what's he doing?"

"He's—" Tony glanced toward the corner. The brown-haired girl was giving the last few bills to an old man clutching a cardboard box. Behind her, the blonde scanned every corner of the street like an active surveillance radar.

"—spending money. And he makes it look better than I do."

He turned toward the hotel's revolving door, his dress shoes clicking against the sidewalk.

Across the street, Felicity closed the empty box. When she looked up, she caught sight of a man in a suit entering the hotel.

She paused. His profile looked familiar. Laura, standing beside her, followed him with her eyes until the revolving door swallowed him.

"Who was that?" Felicity asked.

Laura didn't answer. She merely frowned, then turned and continued toward the next corner.

Several more people crouched beneath a store awning there, using cardboard boxes to block the wind.

Felicity followed her.

The empty box shifted gently in her hands. Sunlight stretched their shadows long across the pavement, all the way to the middle of the road.