Inside the temporary Avengers base meeting room.
All the superheroes had gathered here. Steve stepped forward and turned on the holographic screen to introduce:
"We currently only know this man's name is Rory, of Asian descent. Tony and I brought him back from the 1970 timeline."
"Why would you bring someone like that back?" Hawkeye Barton voiced the question on everyone's mind.
Steve explained: "This person obtained the Tesseract and Pym Particles ahead of time, and he also knew that Tony and I came from a future timeline to 1970."
"By his own explanation, he is also from the future—the exact year is unclear—and was accidentally transported to 1970. He wants Tony and my help to return to his own timeline."
"I think both you and Tony were fooled by him." War Machine Rhodes walked around the conference table to the front.
He took out a miniature controller and connected it to the holographic panel. The panel then displayed the footage of Iron Man Tony snapping his fingers.
"This is the footage recorded by War Machine at the time." Under Rhodes's control, the footage began to rotate, and he pressed the play button.
*Bang.*
Rory raised a handgun and fired at Thanos.
"How could he be there? Did anyone see him on the battlefield back then?"
Steve asked, and all the superheroes shook their heads.
"He's just an ordinary person with no special abilities. Logic dictates he should have run as far away as possible."
War Machine Rhodes fast-forwarded the footage and pressed play again.
In the holographic projection, everyone was gathered around Tony at this moment, except for Rory.
"Look here, he picked something up from the ground." War Machine Rhodes pointed at the screen, then zoomed in, zoomed in, and zoomed in again.
"What is it? A bullet?"
"No, analyzing it by its shape, it should be a very sharp object."
Dr. Banner stood up at this moment and said: "I know what it is."
Everyone turned to look at Dr. Banner, who explained: "Rory indeed has no special abilities, but he is no ordinary person—he's a very thoughtful scientist."
"As for what he was holding... it was actually a needle made of Vibranium."
Dr. Banner shrugged: "That's right, I took a tiny scrap piece from the storage room and gave it to him for his research. Truly just a tiny bit, probably not even 3 grams. I didn't expect him to turn it into a needle."
At this, Banner suddenly paused, then realization dawned on him: "I get it! He wants a blood sample from Thanos!"
Dr. Banner had experienced something similar before; Dr. Samuel Stern had once cloned the Hulk's blood samples, and those blood samples were even used to create that monster, Abomin-ation.
The others had heard Dr. Banner's story to varying degrees.
After listening, War Machine shrugged and quipped: "We get rid of one Thanos and another Thanos pops up, and this one's a scientist 'Thanos'."
Steve immediately stated: "We must find Rory as soon as possible, destroy Thanos's blood sample, and finally send him back to his original timeline."
"How do we find him? No one's seen him since that war ended, and nobody knows where he went."
"Pull satellite footage, city surveillance, cell phone and computer cameras—every available method. We have to root him out, otherwise the consequences will be unthinkable."
.
"Logging, time 21:33, 65th blood sample infection experiment, test subject code number 13, fourth iteration Thanos blood sample, compressed to 1/27 concentration, experiment begins."
Rory injected his own plasma into the vessel, removed the freshly isolated Thanos Serum from the centrifuge, and extracted an appropriate amount to drip into the vessel.
In the blink of an eye, the pale purple serum and Rory's plasma intertwined, faintly emitting a glow.
Moments later, it turned dark purple. Rory hurriedly used a pipette to draw a sample, dropped it onto a slide, and immediately observed it under a microscope.
Through the microscope, it could be seen that Rory's blood cells had undergone massive changes.
The division rate accelerated, activity increased, and Rory's own DNA had changed—breaking down and recombining, with certain indefinite segments replaced by Thanos's genes.
After finishing his observations and recording the data, Rory placed the fused blood sample back into the analyzer to observe chromosome changes.
After finishing his busy work, he returned to the camera: "The experiment didn't fail, but it didn't succeed either. The lineage fusion has a new discovery. The intensity of Thanos's serum is too high; we still need to continue iterating and compressing."
He turned off the camera.
Rory took a can of soup from the shelf, poured it into a bowl, and placed it on the heating device at the workbench to heat up.
The heating was finished in two minutes, and he picked up a spoon and began to eat directly.
While eating, he fiddled with the Time-Space Travel Bracelet on the workbench. He had studied this bracelet for a long time without figuring out its principles.
Beneath the workbench sat a small box containing half a dose of Pym Particles.
When he had just traveled through time, all the Pym Particles were taken by Tony Stark, leaving only the half-dose on his person—most likely forgotten.
Tony and Steve traveled back to the past, and a round trip took exactly one dose, whereas Rory only traveled once, so the Pym Particles still had one use left.
Having just the bracelet and Pym Particles was not enough; they needed to be used in conjunction with a machine to complete time travel, which was a condition he currently lacked.
After finishing the canned soup to barely fill his stomach, he tossed the can into a trash bag, grabbed the bag, and walked out of the laboratory.
Just as he threw away the trash bag, a passing punk suddenly reached out and shoved Rory.
"Get lost, kid, you're in the way."
Rory glanced at the punk and said nothing.
He was just an ordinary person, while the other party was a group of three punks. If he started trouble, he would definitely be the one on the losing end.
"Kid, this is Hell's Kitchen. You need to adapt to life here." The old man from the fruit shop next door came over to comfort Rory, casually handing him a bright green apple.
"Thanks." Rory kept a blank expression, took the apple, handed two dollars to the fruit shop old man, pulled down the brim of his hat, and left without looking back.
Rory didn't know the Avengers were looking for him; he simply didn't want to be found by those superheroes.
He purchased daily necessities and chemical testing reagents, and it was already night by the time he returned to the underground laboratory.
Not long after Rory left the street, a motorcycle suddenly drove past the corner he had just walked down and parked in front of a convenience store.
*Click.*
"Clint, I've arrived. Where are you?"
Steve, wearing a jacket, got off the motorcycle, took out his phone, and called Hawkeye Barton's communicator.
"I'm right behind you."
Hawkeye Barton walked out of the convenience store.
"I just checked this—it's surveillance footage from the supermarket on the next block. Even though his face isn't shown, his build and posture are very similar to the Rory you're looking for."
Steve nodded after watching the footage: "That should be him. He left on foot carrying daily necessities, which means he's somewhere around here."