"He what?"
Angela smiled. "Said if you refused, I should tell you it's not charity. Just balance. For all the times you gave him soup when he looked like hell."
Later that day, Marcus showed up with a nonchalant air and a box full of baby products—diapers, wipes, creams, organic formula, a collapsible stroller, and a ridiculously soft alpaca wool blanket that Tony Stark himself might have approved of.
"You bought a stroller," Mia said.
"I bought two," Marcus corrected. "One stays in your car. The other folds down so tight it could sneak through TSA."
"Marcus…"
"I've got money now," he said, a little more serious. "Not crazy rich, but enough. And if I can't use it to help someone who matters, what's the point?"
Mia sighed but didn't push back further. The help was real. Needed. And maybe even welcome. Besides she would pay him back once she was on her feet.
That night, after checking on Mia and handing off a fresh batch of baby bottles to Angela, Marcus returned home. He packed a small wooden crate with bottles of his enhanced chlorophyll juice—each one labeled and sealed—and tucked in a handwritten note:
Tony,
Thanks again.
They've been… adjusted. Should help slow the cell degradation, support redox balance. Maybe buy you time until you find a real fix.
I trust you'll use your labs to test it.
And hey, maybe take a day off once in a while. You look like you wrestle satellites for breakfast.
—Marcus
He left it with a courier he trusted and marked it for urgent delivery to Stark Tower.
Back in Greenpoint, life began to soften. Marcus was back at his pace. While she healed, he worked and would visit her place often to see baby Tony and her. Marcus wasn't fond of babies per se, but who wouldn't like occasional visits to touch the cheeks of babies.
So it was a win win situation for Marcus. The popularity of the food truck was really picking up pace and he had noticed multiple vloggers coming from far to just get the taste of his food. The queue to eat his food were now in place much earlier than the truck could even park.
Marcus was thinking of starting a ticket system like the ones he had seen in Japan where one had to take the ticket of first come, first serve and thus there wouldn't be many people in the queue. He might not be able to continue this venture alone.
Perks of being famous and unique.
Malibu, Tony's garage
Tony stared at the crate like it had personally challenged him to a duel.
"JARVIS, initiate containment scan on the box. Check for radiation, viral agents, and passive tech markers."
"All readings nominal, sir. Contents: six sealed bottles, liquid volume approximately 300 milliliters each. Organic. No embedded electronics. There is also a handwritten note."
Tony peeled the note from the top, scanned it with a flick of his eyes, and raised a brow. "He wrote me a letter. Like it's 1894."
He read it again, slower this time.
They've been… adjusted. Should help slow the cell degradation, support redox balance. Maybe buy you time until you find a real fix.
"Cell degradation. Redox balance." Tony muttered. "Kid either has a textbook in his spine or a med degree in disguise."
He grabbed one bottle and held it up to the light. The liquid shimmered faintly—barely perceptible—but enough for his sharp eyes to catch it. That same shimmer from the hospital. A molecular signature he still hadn't cracked.
"Alright, let's see what kind of pixie dust you're hiding," he said, placing the bottle in a sterile analyzer pod.
"JARVIS, full spectrum breakdown. Focus on unstable isomers and compound variances from Nestlé's baseline chlorophyll mix."
"Understood, sir. Running chromatographic analysis and deep-scan ion mapping."
Lines of data began scrolling across the display. The scan lit up like fireworks.
"Sir," JARVIS said after a moment, "the sample contains a modified compound chain—chlorophyll derivative stabilized with an unknown protein binder. It is not naturally occurring."
Tony squinted. "Protein binder?"
"Yes. Think of it as a microscopic scaffolding—a way to make the nutrients more bioavailable without oxidation. This alone would require lab-scale nano-sequencing. Or... something I can't yet identify."
Tony dropped into a chair, fingers steepled. He stared at the slowly rotating molecular model in the air.
"That's impossible. Yet it exists."
Tony leaned forward and sipped from one of the bottles. The same sensation bloomed again—an invigorating, clean rush of cellular relief that no drink should cause. It wasn't magic. It wasn't even medical. It was... designed.
"Try replicating it," he said.
"Already underway, sir. But the protein structure is degrading outside its original suspension medium. Replication is proving... unstable." Of course it was.
He rubbed his jaw. "So the juice only works when he makes it. Figures."
Tony stood, half-impressed, half-agitated, like a magician whose trick had been shown to work—but with no clue how the cards were stacked.
"Well played, Marcus Turner. Well played."
He looked back at the note and smiled faintly.
Maybe take a day off once in a while. You look like you wrestle satellites for breakfast.
"I do wrestle satellites," Tony muttered, then shook his head with a smirk. "Kid's got jokes."
Then, tapping a holographic display, he opened a secure channel.
"Pepper? Yeah. Tell the board I won't be in tomorrow."
Meanwhile Marcus was trying to look up Daniel. Though Mia and Tony had told about Daniel, the ex of Mia, as some horrible man, and he looked at Mia from the perspective of a brother, he still needed to look at Daniel from a neutral perspective. Thus for that he would need to do his own research. And for that one needed to know his ways around a computer.
While returning, he had brought a book on hacking and upped the knowledge of it by 10 times. It gave Marcus a proper knowledge of basic hacking. Though it was not that high of a level to go deep into the web, but this would do for him.