"This request is not too much because I want to..."
Seeing that Tony was about to say something to disrupt the atmosphere again, Pepper quickly said, "Okay, okay."
"I need you to help me," Tony said quickly, licking his lips.
Facing Tony's most vulnerable moment, Pepper stretched out her hand, passed through a layer of electrolyte, and found the wire in Tony's body.
"I found it, I found it!" Pepper said with a grin.
"Pull it out now, don't let it touch the side... Ah!"
Before he could finish his words, a sensation of electric shock spread throughout Tony's body, and he screamed, shaking!
"Sorry, sorry," Pepper almost cried as she finally pulled out the wire.
Still trembling, Tony looked at Pepper and continued, "Okay, now, remember not to pull the bottom..."
Halfway through his words, Pepper, who was nervous, had already pulled out the magnet underneath.
"There is a magnet together... ah... forget it, you pulled it out! Okay, I didn't expect this to happen!" Tony looked at Pepper speechlessly.
The machine next to Tony that detected his body started sounding an alarm.
Pepper held the copper wire magnet in a daze. "Oh, my goodness!" Full of worry, she seemed to want to put the magnet back.
"Don't, don't put it back again!" Tony raised his hand to stop Pepper, fearing another electric shock.
"Okay, what should I do?"
The flustered Pepper asked immediately, now all her attention on Tony.
"It's okay, but my heart is going to stop because you just pulled it out like fishing!"
Tony was still trying to joke.
Seeing Pepper panicked, Tony quickly handed over the new reactor in his hand. "Hurry, take this, replace it, you must hurry!"
Pepper panted, "Okay, okay!"
Seeing Tony unwell and having difficulty breathing, she quickly suppressed all the panic in her eyes.
"Tony, don't be afraid, it's okay!"
"What?" Tony looked at Pepper, surprised by her sudden assurance. "It's such a critical situation, and you're telling me it's okay?"
"It's okay, I can do it!" Pepper said, forcibly suppressing all her discomfort. She connected the new reactor to Tony's chest and focused on the task.
Within two seconds, she found the interface and plugged it in.
The sudden current sensation made Tony yell, but he quickly stabilized and recovered immediately.
Tony, seeing it was completed, regained his composure. "It's not difficult, it's fun, right? You did a great job!"
Tony reached out and fixed the reactor to his chest while Pepper took a sigh of relief. The first thing she said was, "Are you okay?"
"Yes, great. Are you okay?" Tony asked, looking at Pepper as if she had run a thousand meters.
Once Pepper confirmed Tony was okay, she let go of her anxiety and smiled happily. "Never, ever let me do this kind of thing again!"
"Besides you, I can't find anyone else to help me!"
Tony looked at her. She was the only person he could safely trust to help him with no other motive.
The two looked at each other for one, two, three, four seconds.
Tony's eyes crinkled in an unaccustomed way. "Let's talk about it!"
He was about to roll over and leave the chair, but Pepper wiped her hands clean, picked up the old arc reactor, and started examining it. "What should I do with this?"
"That? Destroy it!" Tony said indifferently, putting on his jacket.
"Burn it!" He pointed to the new one on his chest.
"Tony, isn't this... this is the model? The model you gave me is the same as this one!"
Pepper took a closer look at the reactor in her hand and said in surprise, "This is the model John gave you! How could he know this in advance?"
"This is also the question I want to know. How could he know?" Tony walked over.
Pepper examined it carefully. "It looks like it! John is so strange. You said he found you before you went to Afghanistan, and you didn't know what it was at that time. But now, you've made a real one!"
"Tony, have you investigated John's identity?"
"Jarvis! How about John's data collection?" Tony said to the empty room.
"Mr. Stark, the collection is complete!" A set of projections appeared on the workbench.
The large screen not only displayed many photos of John but also scrolled through a lot of information.
The two approached the projection table together, looking at the photo of John smiling happily in the upper left corner, a photo from his school records.
Tony searched twice, looking for John's academic records, campus videos, and even last year's test results. He frowned when he saw that the scores were almost perfect.
"His grades are pretty good. From the beginning of school, he has a record of a normal child. Nothing unusual has happened. It's so strange!" Tony looked at this ordinary information and set it aside.
"There's a record of a flight to Las Vegas here! Jenny and George also went, and the spending records show normal travel expenses."
"Tony, there is no birth certificate for John. His current adoptive parents took him from the orphanage when he was five years old. At that time, no information about John could be found," Pepper said after examining the information.
"George and Jenny's information is also very normal. There is no doubt about them, so where did this metal model come from?" Pepper asked.
"Here!"
Tony clicked on a piece of information, spreading it out on the screen.
"This is a bank account that George helped John register. There is fifty thousand and sixteen dollars in it, and various people used it over different periods."
"Jarvis, find the spending records of this account!"
"Yes, sir." Within two seconds, hundreds of spending records appeared in front of Tony.
"Summarize the results, Jarvis," Tony said, flipping through the hundreds of dollars in spending records.
"The largest payment in John's account was in July 2007. There were two payments of $50,000. The most spent was in September 2007, totaling $33,000."
"The transfer was made to a small company called Fit Steel, and it has a normal transaction record. The total amount of steel is six tons. According to the contract, it was delivered to Queens, New York, near Forest Road."
"Accounting records show that each account is roughly the same, ranging from two hundred to one thousand dollars. There are also twelve transaction records on an online model platform. Most of the people transferring money to John are model enthusiasts!"
"At the same time," Jarvis continued, displaying many colorful model patterns on the screen. "According to their IDs, I found 732 model pictures they posted online. Analysis shows that 78% are from the same person!"
"Need to hack into John's phone to find other information?" Jarvis asked.
Tony glanced at Pepper, who hesitated. "Forget it!"
"Tony, so John is a model maker, and he earned the money from selling models," Pepper said, looking at Tony.
"Maybe John's family just happened to meet you while traveling, and they gave you a model that looks very similar to this one."
"No, John is not that simple!"