In the end, Peggy Carter was recalled to London by a transfer order.
The Strategic Scientific Reserve's operations in Europe needed someone tough and smart enough to take charge, and she was the obvious choice.
For Lynn, the news was like having the last searchlight hanging over his head removed.
He stood by the window, watching Agent Carter get into a car and leave.
Fortunately, she was gone. Otherwise, she might have sniffed out flaws at every step of his plan.
Without the female agent's scrutiny, so sharp it bordered on intuition, he would be much freer to act.
Preparations for Captain America's nationwide tour were in full swing.
As the "chief planner," Lynn frequently visited Stark Industries' temporary offices, working out stage effects, broadcasting equipment, and a host of other technical details with Howard Stark.
"Honestly, Lynn, you're the best money-making journalist I've ever met."
In Stark Industries' private lounge, Howard Stark pushed a glass of whiskey toward Lynn, his mustache curling slightly with his smile.
"I used to think journalists were just a bunch of scribblers, but you're different. You've got alchemy in your head instead of ink."
"Packaging a super soldier as a national idol to sell war bonds-only a guy with a head full of gold coins could come up with that."
"I'm just fulfilling the doctor's last wish."
Lynn picked up his glass, a trace of remembrance on his face.
"He wanted Steve to become a symbol, not just a weapon."
"Yes, yes, a symbol."
Howard shrugged noncommittally.
"A symbol that lays golden eggs."
They clinked glasses, the amber liquor swaying in the light.
Lynn knew the time was about right.
After a few drinks, he began to "feel the alcohol," his speech growing a little slurred.
"Howard... don't you think... this world is strange?"
Lynn sprawled across the bar, dipping a finger in spilled liquor and drawing meaningless circles on the smooth surface.
"We... we write knowledge on paper, carve it into stone... but what if... what if information itself is a kind of matter?"
Howard raised an eyebrow, listening with interest to the "drunkard's" ramblings.
He remembered that the last time, Lynn had also been half drunk when he discussed "the paradox of applying energy conservation to superhuman individuals" with him.
At the time, Howard had thought it was madness, but afterward, he found the idea terrifyingly brilliant.
"Just like... like Dr. Erskine... he loved tinkering with all those plants and flowers..."
Lynn's voice grew increasingly indistinct, as if he were talking in his sleep.
He even hiccuped, nearly knocking over the glass in front of him.
"He said... he'd found a key... a key that could lock life away... found it in a very special orchid..."
"An orchid?"
Howard's hand paused.
"Yeah... he said... it could stabilize everything... what the record held wasn't sound... it was the formula for life..."
Lynn's head tilted, and he "passed out" completely on the bar, snoring softly.
The drunkenness vanished from Howard Stark's face within seconds.
The glass in his hand stopped in midair.
An orchid?
A key?
Reading the information recorded in matter itself?
It was vaguely consistent with the "superhuman paradox" he had discussed with Lynn last time!
He remembered that Dr. Erskine had been a passionate amateur botanist.
His office had been piled with books and specimens on botany.
Could it be... that the secret of the Super Soldier Serum wasn't purely chemical?
Was its core... biological?!
Howard put down his glass and looked at Lynn, who lay "unconscious" on the table.
Was this guy a scientific genius held back by journalism, or a madman who could always commune with spirits when drunk?
The next day.
Howard Stark submitted an urgent request to the military on the grounds that he needed "to collect the most precise physical data on Captain America for his nationwide tour, to make absolutely sure nothing goes wrong."
The request was for an unprecedentedly thorough spectral analysis of Steve Rogers's blood.
Colonel Davis scoffed at this "tech geek's" eccentricity, but considering Howard's status and the importance of the tour, he impatiently approved it.
In the laboratory.
Howard personally operated a "spectral analyzer" that would have driven any university physics professor wild.
A small vial of Steve Rogers's blood was injected into a high-speed centrifuge.
At speeds beyond the limit, the blood was separated layer by layer.
Plasma, platelets, white blood cells...
Finally, only the red blood cells remained.
Howard held his breath and placed the cell samples in the analyzer.
A beam of light passed through the samples, projecting a dazzlingly complex set of spectral bands onto the photosensitive screen at the other end.
"Magnify it! Keep magnifying! Isolate spectral bands 113 through 117!"
He shouted at his assistant, his eyes fixed on the screen.
After tens of thousands of times' magnification, an extremely faint, almost negligible dark line appeared at a position in the spectrum where it should never have appeared in a normal human.
"That's it! Analyze it for me!"
The massive computer began processing furiously, countless streams of data cascading across the screen.
A few minutes later, a molecular structure was clearly reconstructed.
It was an extremely rare alkaloid structure.
Howard rushed to another computer, his hands a blur on the keyboard as he rapidly checked it against Stark Industries' enormous database.
On the screen, the source was listed beside the molecular formula.
An extract from a rare orchid that grew only in certain high mountain regions of Asia!
"My God..."
Howard murmured to himself, feeling his scalp tingle.
That drunkard Lynn... he was telling the truth!
With that thought, he rushed out of the laboratory and found Lynn talking with the tour staff.
"Come with me! Hurry!"
"What's wrong?"
Looking utterly bewildered, Lynn let Howard drag him away.
Only when they reached the laboratory did Howard excitedly tell him what he had discovered.
Lynn watched his feverish excitement without a ripple of emotion.
But Howard gradually reached an impasse.
He had found the "key," but he didn't know which "lock" it fit.
The serum's formula was a whole, and a single alkaloid catalyst was nowhere near enough to reverse-engineer the entire chemical reaction.
He needed more clues.
And Lynn had already prepared the next "signpost" for him.
A few days later.
Carrying a dust-covered cardboard box, Lynn found Howard in the laboratory, scratching his head in frustration.
"Howard, I was ordered to sort through the doctor's belongings, and I found something. I thought you might be interested?"
He put the box on the table.
Inside were some old manuscripts and notes that looked as though they had been forgotten for a long time.
"What are these?"
Howard picked one up suspiciously.
"They're some of the doctor's early research manuscripts. They cover all sorts of things, mostly botany and... some hypotheses about gene mutagenesis."
"I can't understand them, but I thought they might help with your research."
Half skeptical, Howard opened the manuscript.
It contained notes in German written by Dr. Erskine himself, along with a few scattered chemical structure diagrams.
At first, he was completely baffled.
But when he compared the contents of the manuscripts with the data he had analyzed from Steve's blood, his expression became utterly exaggerated.
There in the manuscripts was a hypothesis about "using specific plant alkaloids as stabilizers to induce targeted recombination of peptide chains in a gamma-ray environment"!
Beside it were several crossed-out chemical structures!
They were the very same key substances that reacted with the orchid alkaloid, the ones Howard had been unable to work out no matter what he tried!
"It makes sense... it all makes sense!"
Howard let out a bizarre cry of sheer excitement!
"I did it! I cracked it! I really am a genius!"
The logic behind the synthesis of the entire serum suddenly became clear!
He had no idea that these so-called "early manuscripts" were merely the tip of the iceberg, copied by Lynn from the real notebook and deliberately aged with coffee stains and exposure to sunlight.
Still less did he know that he, the great genius, was following a path laid out by someone else, translating that inscrutable book step by step into "plain language" Lynn could understand.