“So, what exactly was that guy we just met?
A new spiritual guru?
Or was he planning to get you to donate toward building a temple?”
The Rolls-Royce glided smoothly away from Queens.
From the driver’s seat, Happy Hogan glanced at his boss in the rearview mirror.
Tony Stark leaned back in the rear seat.
Uncharacteristically, he wasn’t playing with his phone or holographic projections.
Instead, he simply rubbed his temples, digesting the worldview-shattering conversation he had just experienced.
“Much more interesting than that, Happy.” Tony suddenly let out a brief laugh, his smile a mix of exhaustion and irrepressible excitement.
“Do you believe in God?”
Happy’s hands paused slightly on the steering wheel.
“I believe in payday, boss.
Anything else…
is up to fate.”
“Excellent attitude.” Tony sat up straight.
“I don’t believe either.
But that kid just taught me about…
a brand-new discipline.
One that Jarvis can’t even model, let alone falsify.”
“Sir,” Jarvis’s voice chimed in right on cue from the car’s speakers, “based on Mr.
Leon Hall’s descriptions, any logical analysis would lead to an infinite feedback loop of paradoxes.
My recommendation is to treat it as an unknown field with its own independent system of axioms, rather than a simple true-or-false proposition.”
“Hear that, Happy?
Even Jarvis says it’s ‘high-end.'” Tony shrugged, wearing his classic expression when discovering a new toy.
In fact, he hoped all this was true even more than Leon Hall himself did.
Compared to the possibility of pulling back the curtain on an entirely new world, the risk of being conned was practically negligible.
“Jarvis.”
“At your service, sir.”
“Initiate a feasibility analysis on the ‘Lava Octopus’ and the ‘Stellar Crystal.’ Set it as a background task.
But no rush—until we see a return on our ‘angel investment,’ it remains a purely theoretical project.”
…
Two days later, Malibu.
The underground workshop of the Stark Mansion.
*Clang!
Clang!*
The collision of robotic arms and high-strength alloy rang out in a crisp, rhythmic cadence.
Tony was fully focused, installing leg hydraulic stabilizers on a silver suit of armor that was beginning to take shape.
This armor boasted sleeker lines and a more precise structure than the crude suit he had hammered out in that Afghan cave.
He stared at the circular hollow reserved in the center of the chest, where a brand-new, upgraded Arc Reactor would soon be fitted.
That blue light always reminded him of another glow—dimmer, yet one that had similarly given him his life.
He remembered Dr.
Ho Yinsen.
In that cold, filthy cave, the gentle, bespectacled man had told him in a voice far steadier than any terrorist’s: “You are Tony Stark.
You can build a Jericho missile out of a box of scraps.”
Tony’s gaze softened, turning deep and reflective.
With his dying breath, Yinsen had told him: “Don’t waste it.
Don’t waste your life.”
He hadn’t wasted it.
This armor, the Mark II, was his silent answer to Yinsen.
It was not a weapon, but a shield.
It was his way of atoning for his past, of giving meaning to Yinsen’s sacrifice.
“Sir,” Jarvis’s voice interrupted his contemplation, “there is an incoming call on the encrypted line reserved by Mr.
Leon Hall.”
Tony paused for a moment before remembering the mysterious young man who claimed to be a devotee of “The Fool.” He casually swiped open a virtual screen.
Leon Hall’s face appeared on the screen, the background still that dim, dusty antique shop.
“Mr.
Stark, I hope I’m not interrupting the creation of your new toy,” Leon Hall said, his tone entirely flat and calm.
“Get straight to the point.
My time is very valuable.” Tony wiped the grease from his hands.
“The ‘return’ you’ve been waiting for has arrived.” Leon Hall turned his screen toward an old television set.
On the news broadcast, Queens was plunged into chaos, under a prominent headline: *Mass Hysteria of Unknown Origin Outbreak in Queens, Suspected Link to Water Contamination.*
“Those who drink it become irritable, their aggression spikes, and they experience collective auditory hallucinations at night, claiming to hear ‘whispers’ from the water,” Leon Hall explained point by point.
“The CDC and the EPA have already stepped in, but their instruments can’t detect a single thing.”
He turned the lens back to himself, staring directly at Tony.
“Now, you can send someone to retrieve a sample from the Jefferson Reservoir and analyze it with your most advanced equipment.
You will find that it is nothing but ordinary water.
And this is the first ‘out-of-bounds’ reality I am showing you.”
“I have proven to you the existence of ‘Erosion.’ Tomorrow morning at ten, at the Jefferson Reservoir, I will prove to you my ‘value.'”
The call disconnected, and the screen went dark.
Tony remained silent for a few seconds, and then the corners of his mouth curled into an irrepressible smirk.
“Jarvis.”
“At your service, sir.”
“Send the nearest drone to the Jefferson Reservoir and bring back a high-purity water sample!
Activate our Class-A biolab in New York.
I want to see for myself what makes this ‘divine water’ so special!
Notify Happy, we’re heading back to New York.”
…………..
Erosion began in the most mundane of corners.
It didn’t arrive with the roaring spectacle of a disaster movie.
Instead, it was like a drop of ink in clear water, spreading silently and bleeding outward.
Some residents of Queens began to feel an inexplicable irritability.
Normally trivial annoyances were amplified a thousandfold into uncontrollable rage.
A routine traffic jam would devolve into a street brawl over a prolonged horn honk; a neighbor’s casual complaint could escalate into a hysterical shouting match.
Even stranger was the sound.
In the dead of night, people always felt they could hear something.
It wasn’t clear speech, but a chaotic, viscous whispering, like countless damp insects crawling through their ear canals.
The source seemed entirely connected to water.
The dripping of a faucet, the spinning of a washing machine, the rush of pipes behind the walls…
everything took on an ominous, seemingly sentient quality.
Angela, a young mother, was among the first to be stained by this drop of ink. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
She was in the kitchen preparing dinner, while her seven-year-old son, Jamie, scribbled with crayons on the living room rug.
*Smash!*
A glass slipped from her hand, shattering and splashing water and shards all over the floor.
“Dammit!” An inexplicable annoyance surged in her chest, and she couldn’t help but curse under her breath.
She crouched down to clean it up, urging, “Jamie, go wash your hands, dinner’s almost ready!”
“Mommy,” the little boy looked up, his large blue eyes filled with confusion, “listen.”
“Listen to what?” Angela asked impatiently.
“The faucet…
it’s talking to me.”
Angela frowned and looked.
The kitchen faucet was shut tight, with only the occasional drip seeping out, making a faint, rhythmic *drip-drop* sound.
“Stop talking nonsense, that’s just a dripping sound!”
After dinner, Angela curled up on the sofa to watch television.
The noisy soap opera on the screen, however, failed to dispel the thickening anxiety in her chest.
She felt as if a strange static-like rustling was constantly hovering by her ears, like a radio with poor reception, or a crowd whispering in the distance.
She turned off the television, and the apartment fell instantly silent.
“Rustle…
rustle…”
The sound actually grew clearer, seemingly emanating from the water pipes inside the walls!
An instinctual panic seized her heart.
She sprang up and rushed into her son’s room, only to find that Jamie wasn’t asleep.
Instead, he was lying on the floor, frantically drawing on a blank sheet of paper by the moonlight.
Angela walked over and picked up the drawing.
There were no houses, stick figures, or suns on it.
There were only terrifying shadows, one after another, made of countless tangled black lines—faceless and leech-like.
And in the center of all those shadows was a massive, empty vortex.
…
A biological laboratory on the top floor of Stark Tower.
Tony stared at the row of test tubes before him, containing water samples rushed in from Queens.
“Jarvis, report!”
“Sir, the seventeenth analysis of the water sample has been completed.
The composition consists of hydrogen, oxygen, and trace minerals conforming to municipal supply standards.
Spectroscopy, bacterial screening, toxicological tests…
all returned negative results.
Conclusion: it is indeed ordinary water.”
“Ordinary water can make half a district experience collective auditory hallucinations?” Tony paced the lab irritably.
The news broadcast was playing silently, its headline stark: *Mass Hysteria of Unknown Origin Outbreak in Queens, Suspected Link to Water Contamination.*
His instruments couldn’t find a single thing wrong, which made him feel like a fool trying to analyze a poem with a calculator.
Just then, the black, unmarked encrypted phone rang abruptly.
Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he immediately grabbed the phone.
“It’s me.”
Leon Hall’s voice was calm and clear, cutting through his current predicament with the precision of a scalpel.
“I believe it is time for your first ‘investment’ to yield a return.
How does tomorrow morning sound?”