The call came at three in the morning.
Bruce was still awake. The Eye was running another sweep. Ninety-one demons still flagged across Gotham. The numbers weren't dropping fast enough.
His phone buzzed. Unknown number.
"Wayne."
"Bruce Wayne. This is Tony Stark."
The voice was tired. Under the bravado, something strained. Bruce sat up.
"Mr. Stark."
"Tony. Call me Tony. Listen, I've been digging through shareholder records. Shell companies. Offshore accounts. And I found something interesting. Eighteen percent of my company is sitting in accounts that all trace back to one name. Yours."
Bruce said nothing.
"You've been buying me for weeks," Tony said. "Before I came back. Before the press conference. You bet on me when everyone else was selling."
"I did."
A pause. Then a short, dry laugh. "I don't know whether to be flattered or paranoid. Let's meet."
---
The café was in midtown Metropolis. Neutral ground. Bruce arrived first. He took a corner booth, back to the wall, view of the door.
Tony Stark walked in ten minutes late. He looked worse than the press conference footage. Pale. Dark circles under his eyes. A faint blue glow visible through his shirt, right over the sternum. He moved like a man carrying weight.
He slid into the booth. A waitress appeared. Young, tired, working the early shift. She looked at the two billionaires with zero interest and asked what they wanted.
"Coffee. Black." Tony pushed a menu aside without looking.
"Water," Bruce said.
She nodded and walked away. The order was simple. She didn't care who they were. Her back hurt and her shift ended in two hours. That was her psychology. Bruce noted it.
Tony leaned back. "So. Bruce Wayne. Not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. Someone older. More boring. You look like you could bench press a car."
Bruce didn't smile. He watched the glow behind Tony's shirt. Then he spoke.
"It's nice to meet you, Tony. You look awful. It looks like you're poisoned."
Tony froze. Coffee halfway to his lips. He set it down.
"How did you know that?" His voice dropped. "Did you put a spy on me?"
"No."
"Then how?"
Bruce leaned forward. He felt a small flicker of something. Not excitement exactly. Something quieter. In another life, he had watched this man. On a screen. In a movie theater. He had watched him build a suit in a cave. He had watched him carry a nuclear warhead through a hole in the sky. He had watched him die.
Now he sat across from him, pale and poisoned and still cracking jokes.
"I know many things," Bruce said. "Your poison problem can be solved. Look at your father's old projects. The Stark Expo. The city planner model. There's a new element there. Hidden in the layout."
Tony stared. "A new element."
"Yes."
"What does that even mean?"
"Your father was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. He left you the answer. You just haven't looked at it the right way."
Bruce stood. Dropped cash on the table. Enough for both drinks.
"Wait." Tony half-rose. "You can't just say that and leave."
Bruce was already walking.
The waitress watched him go. Then looked at Tony. "You want more coffee?"
Tony didn't answer. He was staring at the table, mind already racing.
---
The old Stark warehouse smelled of dust and dead years. Abandoned projects lined the walls. Old prototypes. Failed experiments. And in the corner, covered in a tarp, was the city planner model from the Stark Expo. Howard Stark's vision of the future.
Tony pulled the tarp off with both hands. Dust billowed. He coughed. The arc reactor in his chest flickered, sending a jolt of pain through his ribs.
He ignored it.
The model was huge. A miniature city. Buildings. Roads. Monorails. Fountains. He circled it once. Twice. Nothing looked special. Nothing looked like an "element."
"Stark. You're losing it." He pressed his palms against the table edge. "A dead billionaire tells you to look at your dad's toys. And you listen."
But Bruce had known. Bruce had known about the poisoning that no one knew about. Bruce had known about his father.
Tony crouched. Leveled his eyes with the model. Hours passed. The light outside the dusty windows shifted from gold to grey to dark.
He pulled up old reels of his father's presentations. Watched them on a projector. Listened to Howard's voice.
"This is the key to the future. I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out."
"What did you leave me, Dad?"
He looked at the model again. Not as a city. As a structure. Atoms. Molecules. The buildings weren't buildings. The roads weren't roads. The whole thing was a diagram.
A new element.
"Oh my god."
He grabbed a holographic pen. Started tracing lines. The layout of the model translated into atomic structure. Spacing. Bonding. Configuration. The numbers worked. The physics worked.
The palladium in his chest was killing him. But his father had left him the cure thirty years ago, hidden in plain sight at the Stark Expo.
Tony stood before the holographic projection of the new element. Blue light washed over his face. His hands were shaking. Not from fear.
"I found it."
Outside, the first light of dawn was breaking over the city.