Chapter 22: Tony Stark Is Already Dead
With slightly trembling hands, I deepened my search. My fingers moved again, opening other archives, reading forum discussions packed with conspiracy theories and leaked data. That was where I found the explanation.
The original Tony Stark died from palladium poisoning.
The word—poisoning—stabbed into me like an icy nail slowly driven into the back of my neck. Palladium. The metal that powered the reactor embedded in Tony’s chest.
The very source of his life, and at the same time the toxin that eroded him from within. Ironic. A genius clad in armor, a symbol of technological progress, brought down by the very element that upheld his own glory.
I leaned back slowly in my chair, letting the information sink in. In this world, Tony Stark truly died because of the poison flowing through his body. But the story did not end there.
Before his death, Tony created a new body. He took his own consciousness—or perhaps a copy of it—and transferred it into a mechanical shell. Thus, Tony Stark Cyborg was born.
I swallowed hard. Awe, horror, and confusion churned together in my chest. I tried to imagine the flamboyant billionaire now walking around in a half-machine body. Skin replaced with metal plating, flesh replaced with synthetic fibers, perhaps with the reactor’s glow no longer embedded in a human chest, but blazing from the core of a steel framework.
A victory over death—or a far more tragic form of defeat?
Yes, in this world Tony Stark possesses a cyborg body. I had actually heard a brief mention of this version back in my original world, through a few short YouTube reviews discussing the Captain Carter comics. At the time, it had felt like trivia. An interesting fact for fans. Something to casually comment on and then forget.
But knowing that in the world where I now stand, Tony Stark truly died—and “came back” as a machine—felt entirely different. This was no longer a story confined to comic panels. This was reality.
I rubbed my face slowly, my palm warm against skin that had begun to cool with anxiety. The room around me felt narrower, the air heavier. It was like watching a spoiler for a movie I had once seen—except this time, that spoiler was alive, walking, and perhaps sitting in a boardroom at Stark Industries.
And what disturbed me even more was the question forming in my mind:
If the Tony I saw on television is a cyborg… then how much of him is still truly human?
On top of that, in this world Pepper Potts never became the assistant to the original Tony Stark. The fact seemed small on the surface, but the more I thought about it, the stranger it felt.
To me, Pepper and Tony were like two pieces that always fit together—sharp professional dynamics, rapid-fire banter laced with sarcasm, and trust that grew quietly behind the scenes of the company. But on Earth 76, their life paths had diverged from the very beginning.
And that was not all. This world was also inhabited by mutants, vampires, werewolves, and various other strange entities that seemed to have stepped straight out of classic horror tales and darker comic books.
The information was laid out across multiple archives and classified reports I managed to uncover—incidents of nighttime attacks leaving victims without a single drop of blood, reports of fur-covered creatures appearing under the full moon, and lists of individuals with abnormal genetic abilities categorized as “Mutants.”
My head began to throb, as if this world were trying to force all of its absurdities into me in a single breath. Mutants, vampires, werewolves? Yes, this was the Marvel I knew… but this version felt wilder, rawer, like a universe left to grow without restraints.
Even so, ironically, it still felt “not that different from most Marvel worlds”—except now I was standing inside it, not merely reading or watching from afar.
Damn it. If only in my previous world I had actually read the Captain Carter comics from Earth 76 instead of just skimming YouTube summaries. At the very least, I would have had a rough map of what was waiting for me here.
In truth, all I carried with me were fragments of half-blurred trivia. The rest? A vast, echoing blank.
A quiet sigh slipped past my lips as I bit down on my lower lip, holding back the frustration that crept through me inch by inch. It felt like sitting in an examination hall with a test as thick as a dictionary placed in front of me—while I had never even opened the textbook. No study guide. No hints. Not even a whisper of a leak to cling to.
During my search, I uncovered another crucial fact: Captain Carter was still missing.
That single sentence made me freeze for a long moment.
Should I go to the North Pole? Should I search for Captain Carter before the government found her? If I could reach her first, perhaps there was something I could change. Or at the very least, something I could understand ahead of everyone else.
But reality swiftly slapped my imagination back into place.
I had no plane. No icebreaker ship. No billions of dollars in funding or specialized polar expedition equipment. I wasn’t even sure I owned a proper winter coat thick enough to survive subzero temperatures.
The image of myself standing in the middle of an endless frozen ocean wearing nothing but a thin hoodie and ordinary sneakers made me scoff at my own foolishness. That wouldn’t be bravery.
That would be suicide with dramatic flair.
I exhaled slowly and forced myself to think more rationally.
If, in this world, Tony Stark was a cyborg, then shouldn’t he be capable of creating robotic security guards for his office building? Armed drones, patrol androids, automated defense systems—something far more futuristic than ordinary human security guards and standard access cards.
The question lingered in my mind.
I imagined Stark Industries again: employees busy in front of glowing monitors, research labs crowded with advanced prototypes, sophisticated electronic security systems humming quietly in the background—yet it all still felt… human. There were no ranks of robots stationed in every corridor. No mechanical sentinels watching every doorway.
Perhaps Tony could build them.
But why didn’t he?
Slowly, a possibility began to take shape. Even though Tony had died biologically and transferred his consciousness into a cyborg body, maybe he had deliberately preserved the company’s human-centered structure.
Tony still employed people. He still relied on administrative staff, technicians, analysts. It was as if he wanted to emphasize that Stark Industries remained a human company—not a machine empire.
The logic started to click into place, like puzzle pieces finally aligning.
Ah… or perhaps the reason was more political.
Legally speaking, the original Tony Stark was dead. No biological heartbeat. No bloodline. No legitimate heir who could automatically inherit the company. On paper, Tony was merely a billionaire who had died from metal poisoning.
The cyborg body now walking and speaking with Tony’s voice might be considered a separate entity—a technological product, not the same legal individual. That kind of loophole would be irresistible to governments or opportunistic investors.
I could easily picture sly-faced politicians seated around a long conference table, debating the legal status of a “man” now composed of steel and circuitry.
They likely didn’t care about consciousness or identity. What they saw was opportunity—the chance to seize control of Stark Industries, the most valuable technology company in the world.
Cyborg body or not, according to official documents, Tony Stark was dead.
By continuing to employ large numbers of humans, maintaining a normal corporate structure, and preserving the support of his workforce, Tony could create a powerful social and political shield.
As long as thousands of employees still acknowledged him as their leader, as long as the public still saw him as the face of the company, any forced takeover would risk chaos.
Only with human support could Tony truly retain control.
I nodded slowly to myself in front of the screen, a strange mix of admiration and amusement rising within me. Even as a cyborg, Tony was still Tony—brilliant, strategic, always one step ahead.
If this had indeed been his plan, then Tony Stark hadn’t merely defeated death.
He had outplayed the system itself.