A doctor crouched beside Tony now, checking his vitals with practiced calm while nurses and security kept the shouting man restrained against the corridor wall. Tony waved off the ice pack being offered to him with a grimace, but the doctor insisted, pressing it gently to the rising bruise on his cheekbone.
"Hold still, Mr. Stark. Looks like it's mostly surface trauma—nothing fractured," the doctor said, shining a small penlight into his eye. "Still, we'll run a scan to be safe."
Tony didn't flinch. His tone, however, had cooled to something sharp and surgical.
"You can shout, scream, foam at the mouth like a bad community theater audition," he said to the man. "But here's the reality. I'm not involved with your wife. I'm here because a friend of mine is her friend. That's it. That's the connection."
"Liar! You think I don't see what this is? You walk in with your suits and money and—"
"I've already called the police," Tony cut in. "They'll be here in five minutes. You'll be charged with battery, assault, and attempted forced entry into a restricted medical area. Oh—and public defamation. Which, if I really feel generous, I'll settle out of court. But that's not likely."
"You're bluffing!"
Tony reached into his jacket, pulled out his phone, and flipped it toward the man, showing the open call screen.
"Three minutes ago," he said simply. "They've got it all on tape. This is a hospital. Cameras everywhere."
The man went silent—shaking, but silent. The rage hadn't gone, but the cracks of panic were starting to show. Marcus was still standing there, caught halfway between fury and confusion. His hands clenched at his sides.
"Who is he?" Marcus was confused and wanted answers. Any other time he would have hit him on the face and get answers, but here he couldn't and Tony was already handling it.
"Apparently, Mia's husband. Or maybe ex. He's not big on details."
"She never mentioned—" He stopped himself. Of course she hadn't. He stared at the man—at the twisted, red face, the veins bulging, the pure bitterness radiating off of him. "She said she left someone. And that was it. Now wonder she left a person like him."
"You talk big for a teenager your age."
"I have to grow up anyways." Marcus replied. The man wasn't done. He hurled more insults and expletives and by the time the police arrived, he was more of a mess. The police seeing that it was Tony Stark, didn't even hesitate to cuff him and drag him away.
The hallway was quiet again. Marcus stood still, his breath coming shallow. His eyes flicked toward Room 612.
"She's asleep. She doesn't know any of this just happened."
"Good," Tony said, pressing the ice pack to his jaw again. "Let her stay in that peace a while longer."
"Let me get you something." Tony just shrugged his shoulders as he didn't care. Marcus returned a few minutes later with a bottle of chlorophyll water from the hospital convenience store. The liquid inside was a strange, earthy green, catching light like tinted glass.
No one noticed the way the water shimmered faintly for half a second. No one heard the soft click from the molecular lock as he jacked up its detoxification properties, boosting the chlorophyll's efficacy tenfold. Yup, he used the system and since Tony had even driven him, he should help him a bit too with his current problem.
"Here. Drink this."
"What is this drink?" Tony couldn't see the color inside but from the words, he knew that it was some kind of vegetable water like chlorophyll he was drinking these days.
"Chlorophyll water," Marcus replied simply. "Supposed to help with toxin flushing and recovery. It's legit." Marcus's words raised the eyebrows of Tony but he didn't refuse.
Tony took it, twisted off the cap, and took a cautious sip.
Then another. He froze.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at the bottle like it had just whispered a secret. The bitterness was still there, but… under it, something was different. Cleaner. Potent. A slow burn of restoration blooming in his chest. He was beyond surprised but he didn't say a word. He needed to know what had happened and excused himself.
He went straight to the restroom and checked his toxicity level and was beyond dumbfounded to find out that the level had gone down by 2%. This 2% might be very less in the eyes of everyone but for him it was a huge issue.
Over the days the toxicity of his blood had slowly been going up steadily and most of his remedies didn't work or whatever was working was not efficient enough. But this drink that Marcus gave him hope. Hope to overcome the adversary that was his own making.
"JARVIS, what am I looking at?" Tony asked as he looked at the bottle.
"Sir, it's a chlorophyll juice that is made by the Nestle company. You have tried this drink before too and it was the least effective among all the drinks that you have sampled. The current result on the meter doesn't match with all the data that I have previously collected." JARVIS spoke over comms in his mobile.
"JARVIS, I need the footage of all the cameras in the hospital."
"Sir, do you want me to hack to the main server of the hospital? This hospital is primarily run by the charity of Stark Industries and other investors. You want me to go through the official route?" JARVIS asked.
"Do what you need to do to make it the fastest." Tony didn't care at this point of how he obtained information. He was in desperate times. Desperate times calls for desperate measures. After spending some time in the restroom he came out and saw Marcus sitting on the chair scrolling his phone.
For some reason, he felt like the chlorophyll juice's effectiveness was due to Marcus and not because of that shitty Nestle company. He knew how these company operated, in fact, in broader terms his company was too like them. So it was very hard to believe that their bottled juice, that he had tried before would suddenly turn miraculous so that leaves the option of Marcus.
A man whose burger turned out to be the best in the world and now the juice. There was definitely something fishy about Marcus. He needed to uncover Marcus too, it seemed.