Elsewhere
"Mr. Stark, question, please."
Tony had been about to move on when he did a double-take and turned around.
"Hey—Tiffany, right?" He asked. The reporter looked familiar.
She blushed, brushing a loose strand of blonde hair from her cheek and motioning for her cameraman to come closer. Happy rolled his eyes but stayed on alert.
"Mr. Stark—"
Tony cut her off, pulling off his red-tinted glasses and flashing that signature grin.
"Mr. Stark was the old man. Call me Tony, beautiful."
Her blush deepened.
"Tony, the tech world has called you the Da Vinci of our time. Can you comment on that?"
He snorted, reaching behind him for his phone. Happy swatted his hand, and the two exchanged annoyed slaps until Happy gave up. Tony retrieved the device and handed it over with a sideways glare.
"Well, that's a loaded question," Tony said, adjusting his blazer. "But I'll say this—it's utterly ridiculous. I don't paint."
Laughter rippled through the onlookers.
"But," he added, grin widening, "we can dig into that over dinner. My place?"
Tiffany opened her mouth, then closed it, clearly flustered.
"Great. Say Friday. Dress comfortably."
He handed her the phone. She entered her contact info while the cameraman whispered under his breath, "We're live, Tiff."
Her face went pale.
"Tony," she pivoted, "can you comment on Armacham Technology? What's your opinion on the heir of Sebastian York emerging and heading one of his father's companies? Some draw parallels—you took over Stark Industries at a young age too."
The charm drained from Tony's face.
Great. Armacham again.
He schooled his features. Hopefully, this would be the final time he had to field questions about the company.
"Jarvis, make a note to set up a meeting with this York character."
Jarvis: "I'm afraid that's impossible, sir."
Tony frowned. The reporter noticed.
"Excuse me? I'm Tony Stark. I can meet the President. Set it up, Jarvis."
Jarvis: "Jeremy York has a strict policy of avoiding meetings—especially with competing CEOs. Outside of school attendance, he rarely interacts with anyone considered 'important.'"
Tony's HUD displayed Midtown High surveillance footage. A timestamp confirmed it: detention.
"He's in detention?" he muttered.
Jarvis: "Retaliatory. York Industries' injunction froze most of the company's charity assets and external expenditures. Midtown's disciplinary board acted following pressure from local politicians."
Tony blinked. He already knew about the injunction—he was nearly a minority shareholder. Most investors were panicking over the heir's aggressive legal moves.
"The school's punishing him? For what—corporate rebellion?"
Schematics floated into view. He scanned the designs—heavily redacted but unmistakably advanced. Safeguards. Layered redundancies. Traps for copycats.
"Holy moly. Jarvis… this is the thug? The hoodlum? The 'degenerate' the Yorks have been screaming about for years?"
Jarvis: "Mr. York is reportedly making a startling turnaround. He's proposed designs for a med-bed prototype—claims suggest it can heal injuries in record time. Possibly beyond known medical parameters."
Tony froze.
"Med-bed? Like, borderline superhuman recovery?"
He waved Happy over. Time to move.
Even redacted, the schematics revealed genius. Patterns, substructures, neural thread alignments—no one this young should have been able to conceptualize this, let alone build it.
"Is this Sebastian's legacy work?"
Jarvis: "There's no indication this comes from prior projects. It's wholly unique."
Tony marched toward the Stark Expo stage, numbers crunching in his HUD, diagrams forming and re-forming as he walked.
He needed to meet Jeremy York.
"Jarvis—how many shares do we hold in York Industries?"
Jarvis: "Before the asset freeze, you were on track to become a minority shareholder. Currently, you're short 123 shares—valued at seven hundred million. Your net loss sits at approximately three hundred thousand."
He didn't flinch. Losing money was inevitable in chaos. What mattered now was vision.
Happy walked beside him, concerned.
"You're not thinking what I think you're thinking."
"Oh, I am," Tony replied.
"I'll offer my shares to Jeremy York in exchange for access to his Synth-Muscle research. With his inheritance frozen, a public partnership would boost his standing with the board."
"And piss off the rest of the Yorks," Happy reminded. "Especially since they took over half your DoD contracts after you went clean on weapons."
Tony shrugged, snagged a drink off a tray, and downed it.
"Tony—no drinking, you have a speech," Happy chided.
"Calm down, Dad."
Jarvis displayed theoretical suit augmentations using the Synth-Muscle framework. Flexibility. Density. Response time. This could double the power ceiling of the Mark series.
"The kid's good. Too good," Tony muttered. "He's been playing the long game. While the board's been bickering, he's been building."
A few taps later, he pulled up sealed police reports. Redacted. But one line hit him like a truck:
Parents murdered. Orphaned. Inheritance seized by half-relatives. Sent to a public orphanage.
Tony's stomach turned.
"Nasty work, Happy."
"We don't know what's true. Also—stop hacking police servers. That's illegal."
Tony smirked but didn't answer.
He took his seat. Applause erupted.
His mind wasn't on the audience. It was on the ceiling of his technology. On the Hulk-level strength he hadn't cracked. On a kid who might have already solved it.
Meanwhile, in another part of New York…
Blade stared at the laptop screen. The schematics displayed something terrifyingly efficient.
"Armacham Tech Corporation's more than it looks," he said.
Whistler leaned over his shoulder. His eyes widened.
"Holy hell… if this is real, every hospital in the country will beg for one of these."
"F.D.A. won't allow it," Blade replied. "A twenty percent healing boost doesn't sound like much—until you factor in hospital billing. Room and board's the real profit center."
Whistler exhaled slowly. "And you think this thing's baseline performance is twenty percent?"
"Yeah. The numbers are too clean. I'd bet it can bring someone back from the brink."
Whistler took a swig from his pungent drink and gave Blade a long look.
"Son, you in there?"
Blade took off his shades and massaged his eyes. His fangs had extended again.
Whistler snapped his fingers and leaned in. "Reavers? Or ATC?"
Blade didn't answer right away. Whistler reached to inspect his teeth, and Blade slapped his hand away with a grimace.
The older man groaned as he stood, still healing from past wounds.
"You run the tests?" Blade asked, stepping closer to the makeshift lab inside their latest safehouse.
"Still analyzing. I don't trust what we saw in those files. There could be something hidden in the serum's molecular profile."
He opened an icebox and pulled out several vials. The one with the crimson glow caught Blade's attention immediately.
"You're getting sneakier," Whistler muttered as Blade silently approached and plucked the serum from his hands.
"We may need to reach out to Dr. Morbius," Whistler added.
Blade grimaced. "The bat guy? He uses vampire bat DNA. What could his research tell us?"
"A lot. That particular bat's genetics might help us decode your physiology. Your human adrenaline makes you stronger and faster than regular vamps. That's why you can keep up with Elders. But…"
"But something's changing," Blade said quietly.
He sat down, tension in every muscle.
"Transformations are gone. Mist form, bat form—nothing since I fed. It's like I'm whole, but hollow."
Whistler nodded slowly.
"I don't think it's just your thirst. I think it's puberty. Or something like it. Your physiology might be evolving. Latent vampire genes."
He held up a vial. The red one. Blade's pupils narrowed. His heart thumped in his chest.
"I think this isn't just a suppressant. I think it's a trigger."
Blade didn't speak. His instincts were screaming. Something in that vial was calling to him—and it was winning him over.