The Malibu estate was a palace of glass and iron overlooking the endless Pacific, but Tony Stark knew better than anyone that brilliance needed infrastructure. The villa's labs, the deep-core chamber where J.A.R.V.I.S. pulsed with artificial life — all of it was reaching capacity.
And now, with Howard's blueprint for a new element in his hands, Tony needed something his garage couldn't fake: a particle accelerator.
Tony's Commission
Tony stood over the holographic render, gesturing as towers of light curved into concentric rings. "Bigger. No — smarter. Compact synchrotron, not some giant CERN copycat. I want efficiency, not a tourist attraction."
J.A.R.V.I.S.: Sir, the plot of land adjacent to your estate is already under shell-company control. The geotechnical surveys confirm the bedrock can support a 1.2-gigavolt-class synchrotron with shielding.
Tony smirked. "You already did the surveys? Jarvis, if you ever decide to overthrow me, I'm screwed."
J.A.R.V.I.S.: I am loyal, Sir. But efficiency requires initiative.
"Touché."
He flicked his wrist, and the hologram shifted. The accelerator's ring sank into an underground cavity, layers of shielding and service tunnels stacked around it. The render was clinical, sterile. Too clinical.
Tony rubbed his chin. "Jarvis, we're already digging underground. Let's not waste the real estate. Draft schematics for an auxiliary structure here—" he stabbed a finger at the hollow beside the main tunnel— "extended server house. Think of it as… future expansion."
J.A.R.V.I.S.: Anticipating future computational load, Sir?
Tony shrugged, playing casual, but his eyes were sharp. "Call it a hunch. Or paranoia. Or brilliance. Dealer's choice."
J.A.R.V.I.S.: Very well. Estimated requirement: adaptive cooling system, modular racks, cryogenic sub-cores. Shall I design for quantum-grade processors?
"Always design for overkill," Tony muttered. "One day I'll thank myself for being paranoid."
Jarvis's tone carried the faintest trace of satisfaction.
J.A.R.V.I.S.: Understood, Sir.
By evening, Stark Industries' most discreet contractors had been engaged. Under layers of NDAs and "experimental research" pretexts, the build began. Excavators bit into earth, reinforced shafts descended, and concrete lined the embryonic tunnels. Aboveground, it would look like another wealthy man's "wine cellar expansion." Underground, it was the skeleton of a revolution.
Brendon's Baymax
While Tony planned the machinery of matter, Brendon King built something gentler.
The workshop he had claimed was a hybrid: alien alloys fused with human composites, Omnitrix energy interlacing with mundane circuits. The centerpiece was a simple shape projected into the air — a rounded white silhouette with stubby limbs and two black dots for eyes.
Baymax.
Brendon looked at it, and for the first time in weeks, allowed himself a small smile. "You'll be the one who keeps them alive."
The build began with Grey Matter's meticulous design sense. At a tenth of Brendon's height, Grey Matter's natural perspective meant every wire, every actuator, every microfluidic pump was visible like highways on a map. He designed the soft polymer skin to disperse kinetic impact, a shock-dampening gel woven under the surface. The frame wasn't titanium; it didn't need to be. It was lightweight, medical-grade carbon-polymer, resilient enough to last but soft enough to comfort.
Upgrade's influence was next. The alien's bio-mechanical integration allowed Brendon to embed living circuitry into Baymax's structure. The robot wouldn't just "run code" — it would adapt. Algorithms could reroute on the fly, mimicking an immune system. Every diagnostic tool Baymax carried could evolve with each patient it treated.
Brainstorm's gift, though, was the jewel. The crablike intellect allowed Brendon to map neurological feedback systems with terrifying accuracy. Baymax could read micro-changes in heartbeat, skin conductivity, pupil dilation — all without invasive sensors. To a patient, it would feel like comfort. To Baymax, it was data.
By the second week, the prototype stood in the center of the lab. Inflated vinyl skin, expressionless dot eyes, and a chirp when it booted. It looked harmless. That was the point.
But Baymax was the surface. Underneath, Brendon was working on something darker.
The Healing Chamber
Hidden in a separate chamber, Brendon began building what Tony didn't know yet: a modified healing pod. The original had been designed for battlefield trauma — stabilize, regenerate, deploy again. Now, it had to be reworked for precision. Surgery at the molecular level.
He sat cross-legged on the floor as the Omnitrix flashed green, body shrinking, limbs morphing. Grey Matter again. The Galvan's tiny hands darted across the interface, coding subroutines at blistering speed.
"Twenty million nanobots," Brendon murmured in a voice that came out squeaky in this form. "Each one a chain in a fabric. Together, invasive surgeons. Individually, harmless."
The swarm formed in a containment chamber, glittering like metallic dust suspended in gel. They weren't independent AI — that was dangerous. Instead, they were chained programs: specialized, limited, incapable of rebellion. One bot might only know how to dissolve scar tissue. Another might only know how to weld collagen fibers. Alone, useless. Together, orchestrated by Baymax's medical AI, they could reconstruct a human heart without a scalpel ever breaking skin.
Brendon coded control hierarchies, redundancy loops, kill-switch cascades. He was designing not just tools but insurance. Humanity wasn't ready for nanotech medicine this advanced. But Tony needed it now.
The Baymax Splinter
The last piece was intelligence. Baymax wasn't just hardware. It needed knowledge.
Brendon returned to his core lab, eyes reflecting the green light of the AEGIS mainframe. He stood still for a long moment, then whispered: "Split."
A segment of the AI unfurled like a neural branch, partitioning itself. This splinter would not handle weapons, nor defense, nor Stark's corporate strategies. It had one directive: healing.
"Baymax AI online," the system chirped.
Brendon placed his hand on the console. "You're for Earth. For humans. For every animal, every species here. You'll learn, and you'll heal."
Then he unleashed it. Firewalls crumbled like tissue paper as the AI swept across global networks. Medical journals, restricted clinical trials, insurance data vaults, military medic reports, even confidential pharmaceutical research — all of it absorbed.
To the world, it looked like nothing more than harmless background noise. To Brendon, it was a flood of knowledge being distilled into one mind.
Hours later, the Baymax Splinter's voice spoke, calm and assured.
Baymax Splinter: I have ingested two hundred and forty petabytes of medical data. Confidence in triage diagnosis exceeds 99.7%. Surgical guidance protocols optimized.
Brendon exhaled, shoulders loosening. "Good. You'll need every bit of it."
Parallel Progress
As the month unfolded, Malibu's cliffs bore witness to two revolutions.
On one side, contractors worked day and night under Jarvis's invisible hand, sinking reinforced tunnels and lining them with superconducting magnets. Liquid helium tanks arrived under false manifests. Power lines were rerouted, disguised as luxury estate infrastructure. By the third week, the skeleton of Stark's private synchrotron was complete, ready to birth an element never before seen.
On the other side, Brendon's workshop hummed with quieter industry. Baymax's body was refined, its vinyl sheathing made self-healing, its sensors tuned to human comfort ranges. The nanobot cluster stabilized in its containment chamber, a surgical army awaiting orders. And the healing pod — white, sterile, lined with alien biogel — pulsed like a second heart in the corner.
Every night, Brendon checked the countdown. Tony's toxicity markers were rising. The veins around his reactor had deepened. Time was running out.
The Announcement
Five days before Tony's scheduled procedure, Brendon stood before a small press audience. Cameras flashed, journalists jotted notes, and a large white robot waddled onto the stage beside him.
"This," Brendon said, his voice calm and clear, "is Baymax. A personal healthcare companion. Designed to provide medical assistance, diagnostics, and comfort in everyday life. It is the first step of my company's new initiative: accessible healthcare for all."
Baymax bowed politely, its squeaky vinyl body eliciting chuckles from the crowd. To the world, it was charming, harmless, revolutionary.
But Tony Stark wasn't at the press conference. He was in his lab, staring at Howard's Expo model, at the lattice of an impossible element. His reactor pulsed with poison. His clock was ticking.
And beneath the public smile, Brendon King's thoughts were already on Malibu, on the healing chamber, on the twenty million nanobots waiting.
Project Baymax was ready. Almost.