Tony and Phastos, two workaholics, got together and spent all their time in the armor lab, working non-stop from morning till night, eating their meals at their workbenches, and drinking coffee one cup after another. Despite a seven-thousand-year age difference, they were remarkably compatible when it came to engineering and materials, arguing heatedly every day, but always managing to come up with new solutions in the blink of an eye.
That morning, the two were discussing the energy distribution of the wrist pulse cannon in front of the holographic model.
Tony's thinking was incredibly fast. Before Phastos had even finished the first half of his sentence, he had already calculated three sets of parameters, his fingertips moving rapidly across the projection.
"See? With this adjustment, energy consumption is reduced by eight percent, and the initial velocity can be increased significantly."
Tony raised an eyebrow, a hint of smugness in his voice.
He paused abruptly as soon as he finished speaking, raised his hand and rubbed his right temple, applying slight pressure with his fingertips.
Phastos looked up at him. "What's wrong?"
"Fine."
Tony lowered his hand and smiled. "It's throbbing a bit; I guess I drank too much coffee yesterday."
Phastos didn't think much of it and lowered his head to continue calculating. Nobody took it seriously. After all, they had been staying up almost every night recently, so headaches and nerve twitching were perfectly normal.
But the matter did not end there.
Over the next week, Tony's headaches became more and more frequent. What started as a dull throbbing pain every three to five days turned into one or two headaches a day, each lasting for ten seconds or so.
Tony thought it was because he hadn't rested well, so he buried himself in calculating the data.
Only Phastos gradually realized something was wrong. He noticed that Tony would often suddenly stop writing, tilt his head, as if listening to something. When asked what he was listening to, he would always casually say, "Nothing, I think someone called me just now," and then continue doing what he was doing. Sometimes, in the middle of a discussion, Tony would suddenly blurt out a nonsensical number, and when Phastos asked him about it, he would shake his head and say that he had miscalculated.
Phastos spoke with Banner privately once.
During lunch break that day, the two sat in a corner of the cafeteria. Phastos lowered his voice and said, " Stark hasn't been acting right lately."
Banner took a bite of his sandwich, raised an eyebrow, and said, "What's wrong with that? He's still spending all his time in the lab, isn't he? I think he's making more progress than anyone else."
"It's just too fast."
Phastos frowned. "He solved a problem that stumped us for ages last week all by himself in one morning. It's not that he's incapable, he's a genius, I know. But that feeling... something's not right."
Banner's expression slowly turned serious. He put down his sandwich, wiped his mouth, and said, "You sensed it too? I talked to him about gamma-ray shielding last week. He casually gave me four optimization schemes, each more ingenious than I had previously thought. But when I went back to verify them, I found that the derivation paths for two of the schemes were ones I had never even seen in existing literature."
The two men exchanged a glance, both seeing worry in each other's eyes. They tried to subtly inquire whether Tony had come into contact with any new technology or information. Tony just laughed it off, saying, "Just a burst of genius, I'm so envious," and brushed it off.
What truly unsettled Tony was that afternoon. The two were checking the optimal caliber of the pulse cannon on the screen when Phastos pointed to the data and said, "Thirty millimeters, any larger and the structure will be unstable."
Just as Tony was about to speak, a voice suddenly interrupted his mind, very soft and unfamiliar, as if whispering in his ear, "No, 28 millimeters is the optimal solution."
Tony instinctively added half a sentence: "Twenty-eight?"
"What, twenty-eight?" Phastos looked up, his face blank.
Tony froze. It wasn't Phastos who said it. The voice came neither from the headphones nor from the lab's loudspeaker; it was clearly ringing in his head. He glanced around; there were only the two of them in the lab—the workbench, the holographic projector, the parts on the shelves—all quiet and still; there was no one else.
Tony swiped his finger across the screen twice. "... Nothing. I was just spacing out. Thirty it is."
In the days that followed, the sounds appeared more and more frequently. Sometimes they were soft murmurs, sometimes a word or two, sometimes just a soft laugh, as if a stranger had taken up residence in his mind.
Tony tried everything he could think of: noise-canceling headphones, having JARVIS output a weak magnetic field to shield his cranial cavity, getting a mild sedative from Banner, and even secretly giving himself a nerve stimulation treatment. Nothing worked. The sound still came, as if it were etched directly into his brain; all physical methods were ineffective.
That day, Little Peter came to the base for training after school. He was carrying his schoolbag and passing through the corridor of the research and development floor when he saw Tony standing in front of the whiteboard.
He had his back to the corridor, a pen in his hand, muttering to himself, nodding and shaking his head as if he were arguing with someone.
Little Peter stopped and stood at the corner, peeking in. He had always admired Teacher Tony; he was smart, capable, stubborn but kind-hearted, and could solve any problem.
Seeing Tony talking to himself in front of the whiteboard, Little Peter thought he was working out some incredibly difficult technical problem, and his eyes were full of admiration.
After watching for a few minutes, Little Peter slowly realized something was wrong. Tony's conversation was strange; it didn't seem like he was deducing things from his own experience, but rather... like he was arguing with someone else. Every now and then, he would stop, tilt his head to listen, and then mutter a rebuttal like "Impossible" or "You're talking nonsense," but the corridor was quiet, and there was no other person's voice at all.
Little Peter was about to go over and ask, Tony suddenly turned around. Startled, Peter quickly hid behind the corner. When he peeked out again, Tony had already returned to the lab; the corridor was empty, except for the whiteboard densely covered with formulas.
Little Peter scratched his head, thinking he was overthinking things. But during training that day, he couldn't help but mention it to Natasha. Natasha didn't say anything at the time, she just frowned.
Tony began to shut himself in his private lab, rarely venturing out. When Pepper called, he always said he was busy; when Phastos asked him to discuss a plan, he would say to wait. Tony Stark had never been afraid of anything in his life, but he really didn't want to tell anyone about being plagued by auditory hallucinations.
Pepper waited for Tony to return to his room for several days in a row. Every time she brought dinner to the lab to find Tony, he would send her away with a few words.
She turned to find Phastos, Phastos also frowned and said that Tony had been acting strangely lately, sometimes not responding even after being spoken to for a long time.
The two then approached Banner and Ivan. Banner went several times, wanting to get Tony checked out. But Tony refused, saying he was fine.
The four of them huddled in the corridor and talked for a long time before finally thinking of one person: Lynn.
Lynn was hitting the punching bag in the training room, shirtless, sweat dripping down his muscles.
After Pepper finished explaining the situation, and after Phastos and the other two added details about the anomaly, he wiped his face with a towel, put on his coat, and followed them over.
The group arrived at the door of Tony's private laboratory and knocked for a long time, but there was no response from inside.
After a long while, the door opened a crack. Tony stood in the doorway, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot. Though he lacked his usual dashing air, he still managed a signature smile, "What's going on here, a group room check?"
Pepper's voice was filled with worry, " Tony, are you alright?"
"What could possibly happen?"
Tony shrugged and stepped aside to let them in. "It's just that a few technical issues have gotten stuck lately, and I've been pulling all-nighters, so I got a little carried away. I'll be fine once I've sorted things out."
As he spoke, his gaze swept over Lynn, he shrugged, and said in a relaxed tone, "Don't worry, if I really can't handle it anymore, you'll be the first person I come to."
Lynn didn't speak, she just looked at him. Tony's smile was standard, his usual way of dealing with people.
The table was covered with messy drawings and scanned reports, and three untouched lunch boxes were piled in the corner.
The moment Lynn entered, he had already relaxed his senses. It was very faint. There was indeed an unusual energy wrapped around Tony's brain. It wasn't an external invasion, nor was it mind control, nor did it resemble energy parasitism. The energy was very fine and dense, as if it were rooted deep in the brain, intertwined with Tony's own brainwaves, indistinguishable from each other. It was more like... growing out of his own body.
Lynn frowned. He had never seen anything like this before. Logically, with six Infinity Stones, no external mental intrusion or energy parasitism should escape his perception. But this energy was different; it was too "like" Tony himself. The frequency, fluctuations, and even the energy characteristics were highly consistent with Tony's brainwaves, as if it were part of his brain, only... more active, colder, and more unfamiliar.
He didn't call him out. Some people's pride is heavier than the sky, and Tony Stark is especially so. To be told "you've got something in your head" in front of so many people would be worse than death for him. "Okay." Lynn nodded, glancing around the room. "Just say the word if you need anything. Don't try to tough it out."
The group left shortly afterward. The door clicked shut, and Tony's smile vanished instantly. He slid down to the floor, leaning against the door, and looked up at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling slightly.
The voice in his head rang again. This time, it was clearer than ever before. It was as if a man was whispering a laugh close to his eardrum.
"What... are you planning to give up the struggle?"
Tony tensed up abruptly, his hands gripping the cold floor, his knuckles white. He stared at the vent in the ceiling, his voice low, almost forced out through clenched teeth. "Don't think you can hide forever. I'll find you."
The voice in my head didn't answer, but just chuckled softly, with a hint of nonchalance.
That night, Tony spent the first time in his mind talking about a stranger until dawn.
He sat on the floor, leaning against the door, sometimes questioning him sharply, sometimes listening silently, but the voice never uttered a complete sentence again, only occasionally letting out a few broken syllables, as if testing him, or as if mocking him.
As dawn approached, Tony even tried using the neural interface of his suit to suppress brain activity in reverse. He pressed the neural connector to his temple, adjusting it to the lowest level of current suppression, and a tingling pain spread along his nerves. But the stronger the current, the clearer the sound became, until finally it sounded like someone laughing loudly in his head. Tony ripped off the connector and slammed it against the wall.
Things gradually slipped out of his control.
Tony soon realized that his thinking was abnormally fast. The moment he picked up a pen, the answers seemed to flow out of his head. Lines of formulas flowed from the pen tip, and even the verification steps in the middle were ridiculously clear. In less than a morning, the entire whiteboard was filled with writing.
When Phastos came to see Tony, his eyes widened at the sight of the whiteboard as soon as he entered. He held the whiteboard for a full hour, repeatedly muttering, "How is this possible?"
Not only that. The neural connection delay issue of the armor, a long-standing problem that had dragged on for almost half a year, was resolved by him casually thinking about it during lunch and coming up with three revised solutions that afternoon. After testing, the delay was reduced to the millisecond level.
There were also satellite orbit calibration algorithms, shield upgrades for field teams, and even optimization of the base's energy network losses... Those problems piled up on the to-do list and scheduled for next month were solved one after another, as quickly as if a cheat code had been activated.
At first, Tony was secretly delighted. Geniuses always have those bursts of inspiration. He even joked with Phastos and the others, saying, "Thirty years of pent-up ideas have finally exploded!"
Phastos laughed along, but gave him a worried look.
Tony's eyes were bloodshot, yet frighteningly bright, as if he hadn't slept for two days and two nights, but his energy was unbelievably high.
A few days later, Tony found himself unable to stop.
His brain seemed to be plugged into a perpetual motion machine; even when he lay in bed with his eyes closed, his mind was racing, calculating energy conversion rates, material stresses, orbital parameters, and even the flow rate of coffee from a coffee machine. One question after another, without end.
He tried sleeping. He lay in bed, counted sheep, took deep breaths, listened to white noise—he tried everything.
But as soon as he closed his eyes, his mind started racing, faster and faster, clearer and clearer, forcing him to open his eyes, grab the draft paper next to him, and start writing.
Tony started to panic. For the first time, he felt that this "inspiration" wasn't his own. He tried to force himself to think about other things, about Pepper, about the past, about the times he went out with Lynn and the others. But it was no use. As soon as those thoughts popped up, they were swept away and crushed by his frantically working mind, turning back into a series of formulas and parameters.
That afternoon, he stood in the training room and punched the sandbag hard, one punch after another.
He wanted to use physical exhaustion to stop the frantic activity in his brain.
Unfortunately, it didn't work.
The moment his fist slammed into the sandbag, he was even calculating the sandbag's swing frequency, deformation under force, and energy loss rate in his mind.
"Hold."
Tony cursed, stopped, and gasped for breath, supporting himself on the sandbag. Sweat dripped from his chin and onto the floor. He raised his hand, looking at his trembling fingertips. He had lost control. His brain was being swept away by something, spinning faster and faster.
When Pepper forced her way into the private lab, she saw Tony sitting amidst a pile of draft papers, pen in hand, eyes fixed on the whiteboard, muttering to himself. The whiteboard was covered with formulas, not even missing the margins.
" Tony!"
Tony slowly turned his head, his gaze fixed, and it took him several seconds to focus on her face.
Why are you here?
He smiled, but the smile was stiff. "I'm fine, I just... got a little lost in thought."
Pepper didn't say anything; tears welled up in her eyes first.
"You haven't slept for five days. I'm going to find Lynn."
Tony wanted to say no, that he could handle it, that it was just a few days of bursting inspiration. But he opened his mouth and nothing came out. Looking at his trembling fingertips and listening to the thoughts racing through his mind, he lost his bravado for the first time.
As Pepper turned to leave, Tony heard the voice in his head chuckle again.
This time, it wasn't a soft murmur, nor indistinct syllables. The unfamiliar male voice resonated clearly deep within his mind, carrying a hint of amusement, softly saying, "It should have been like this a long time ago. I also want to see what he can do with me."