The footsteps faded into the distance.
Only the two brothers remained in the lab.
The atmosphere was quiet for a few seconds.
Tony leaned against the lab table, his arms crossed over his chest.
He quietly glanced at Luca a few times, a faint smile appearing on his lips.
"Alright. She's gone."
"What are you going to tell me?"
Luca didn't rush to speak.
Instead, he faced the screen directly and tapped his fingers lightly twice on the table.
JARVIS.
"Yes, Mr. Luca."
"Retrieve Tony's recent palladium concentration data from his blood tests."
JARVIS didn't hesitate, and a line graph immediately appeared on the screen.
The data points are arranged from left to right, and the curve shows an upward trend.
The numbers are crystal clear.
The latest test results clearly state this.
[An 8% increase compared to the last test].
Tony's smile became somewhat uneasy when he saw the data.
" Luca, I said yesterday that I know about this problem."
"I monitor this data every day. You don't need to remind me."
Luca turned to face Tony.
"Four to six months, Tony."
"At the current rate of increase, blood palladium concentrations will reach 50 micrograms per liter within four to six months."
"At that point, your body will begin to decline."
Luca paused for a moment, then continued.
"Stop telling me I can handle it. You can't handle it my foot."
"I've tried over forty times and failed each time, Tony. I told you yesterday the problem was serious."
These words struck Tony right where it hurt most.
His jaw clenched, but he said nothing.
There was no rebuttal, nor any explanation.
But the silence itself says it all.
He simply cannot do it.
This was one of the very few moments in Tony Stark's life when he admitted he was powerless to change anything.
He chose silence instead of acknowledgment.
Luca sighed; they had almost gotten into a fight about it yesterday.
I need to make this clear today.
" Tony."
"What will we do if you die? What will happen to Pepper? Tell me."
Tony looked up and stared directly at Luca.
The brothers' eyes met in mid-air for a few seconds.
Silence is like an invisible wall.
But Luca didn't intend to keep the silence going for long.
He dislikes sentimentality.
Emotional appeals are the behavior of the weak.
The Stark Family doesn't resort to emotional appeals; they solve problems.
"Dad's notes have given us direction."
Luca's tone softened somewhat.
"He foresaw the problem with palladium forty years ago. Although he didn't complete the final step himself, he paved the way to be ninety percent complete."
"Give us time, and we can solve the remaining 10%."
At this point, Luca paused, his gaze becoming serious.
"But on the condition that you also receive an injection of strengthening serum from me. Double insurance."
" The New Element is the long-term solution, the serum is the short-term solution. If you pursue both paths simultaneously, whichever succeeds first, you will survive."
There was a moment of silence.
Tony snorted.
"Why are we talking about injections again? Don't you think I have enough holes already? I already have one in my chest, do you want to give me another one in my butt?"
"Your ass isn't worth wasting my serum on. I'm going to stick it in your arm. Be civilized."
Tony remained silent for an even longer period.
final.
"Okay, I'll buy you your burger today."
Luca was taken aback.
Then she rolled her eyes.
"I don't eat cheeseburgers. I'll have chicken instead."
"A picky jerk."
The two exchanged a glance.
Nothing more needs to be said.
This is the unspoken understanding within the Stark family.
However, the words had barely left his mouth.
Tony suddenly frowned.
His gaze sharpened as he stared at the projected notes.
"Etc."
"What did you just say? Dad's notes have directions?"
Tony straightened up and looked at Luca in disbelief.
"What direction? I don't know anything about this! I saw this stuff six years ago!"
Luca scoffed.
Are you sure you saw the whole thing?
JARVIS showed him his notes from March 17, 1974. (Full version)
"Yes, Mr. Luca."
The images on the holographic screen change.
A complete handwritten notebook was presented to Tony.
The date in the upper right corner: March 17, 1974.
Title: On the Existence Hypothesis of Super Palladium Element – To the Future
Tony leaned closer to the screen.
He began to read it word by word.
At first, his expression was one of curiosity.
Then it turned into focus.
Then came the shock.
Finally, there was silence.
Luca quietly observed Tony's reaction.
He doesn't need to be urged.
With Tony's intelligence...
He only needs to look at it once to understand the value of these notes.
As expected.
Tony grew increasingly calm as he looked around.
He did indeed see these files six years ago.
The problem is that six years ago, he only saw the surface theory and failed to connect the deepest logic.
Now, after the actual construction and operation of the Arc Reactor, and after the accumulation of more than forty failed replacement experiments, it has been achieved.
He finally had enough experience and data benchmarks to understand what his father was thinking forty years ago.
"Fuck."
Tony muttered a curse under his breath.
My father reached this point forty years ago.
He derived the theoretical outline of the substitute element.
Although the final verification was not completed, he provided a clear path.
Given the technological level at the time, this path was not feasible.
But with current equipment and computing power...
I wouldn't say it's 100% successful, but it has at least a 70% success rate.
A New Element that does not exist in the known periodic table.
A New Element that can perfectly replace palladium to power the Arc Reactor without any problems.
Forty years ago, Howard Stark used pen and paper to explore the possibility of such a thing in a laboratory where even computers were still bulky.
This is a true genius.
Tony turned to the last page of the notebook.
There was only one sentence there.
The handwriting was more refined than the previous content, as if it were written specifically for someone else.
"I cannot synthesize this element myself. Perhaps it doesn't belong to my time. But I believe that one day, my children will go further than I have. I leave that question to them."
"I have confidence in them."
Tony stared at the last two lines of text.
I stared at it without moving for a long time.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then remained silent.
Luca saw Tony's reaction and shook his head helplessly.
From childhood to adulthood, Tony always felt that his father didn't value him enough.
Howard was busy with work and research all day and rarely had time to spend with young Tony.
His adolescence was spent almost entirely in an environment of loneliness and lack of recognition.
Although Howard always boasts to outsiders that my son is a genius.
But at home, when they were face-to-face, he rarely offered Tony words of approval or encouragement.
This led Tony to develop a habit of using arrogance to mask his insecurity from a young age.
The more arrogant and confident he appeared to the outside world, the more he longed for his father's approval.
And now.
This notebook from forty years ago directly exposed the wounds in Tony's heart.
It turns out Dad always believed in them.
Luca did not comfort Tony.
The men of the Stark family don't need comforting.
He knew he couldn't do it. But he left the way for us.
"Therefore, there's no reason why we can't succeed."
Tony took a deep breath.
Then he reached out and touched the reactor on his chest.
Blue light filtered through the shirt fabric, shimmering faintly between the fingers.
"Old man. "Tony's voice was a little hoarse.
"He's been dead for seventeen years, and he's still giving us homework."
Luca smiled.
"What can we do? We're his sons, after all."
The two remained silent for a few seconds.
Some things don't need to be expressed in a grand manner.
A glance, a sigh, is enough.
Then.
Luca broke the silence first.
He hates heavy atmospheres the most.
"Alright. That's enough with the sentimental stuff."
"Didn't you say you wanted to discuss something with me when you came back? What is it?"
Fortunately, Tony isn't one to dwell on his emotions.
"Yes. I almost forgot."
Tony walked to the other side of the console and opened an encrypted terminal.
I swiped my finger across the screen a few times and brought up an email.
"I received an anonymous email at 6:00 AM this morning."
"The sender address is encrypted, so the origin cannot be traced."
Tony glanced at Luca.
"I originally wanted to open it and see it right away. But then I thought about it, and since its origin is unknown, it's safer to wait until we both see it."
"That's why I went to the company early this morning for the press conference, planning to deal with this matter when I got back."
Luca walked over to Tony and looked at the email on the screen.
The email has no subject and no preview of the body.
There is only one encrypted file package in the attachments section.
The filename is a string of meaningless letters and numbers.
Who posted this?
"I don't know. I traced the IP address; it jumped through more than a dozen proxy nodes and finally disappeared on a server somewhere in Eastern Europe."
Luca frowned.
Anonymous encrypted email.
Send it to Tony Stark himself.
It can bypass JARVIS's firewall and deliver directly to Tony's private email address.
This in itself demonstrates that the sender's technical skill level is beyond that of an ordinary person.
"Open it and take a look."
Luca stared at the encrypted file package and said.
JARVIS, assisting in the decryption.
"Okay, Mr. Luca. Parsing the encryption protocol..."
Tony also came over, and the two brothers stood side by side in front of the screen.
The protocol type is military-grade encryption, but some custom algorithms are embedded in the structure.
JARVIS paused for half a second.
"Decryption complete."
The file package on the screen slowly unfolded.
There was a document inside.
Luca and Tony both moved closer.
Their eyes fell on the contents of the document.
However, as the text appeared line by line...
Their gazes instantly turned cold.