It wasn't just Marcus's senses that had changed.
His memory had transformed too.
Things he'd forgotten—things he'd barely noticed in the first place—were suddenly crystal clear in his mind. Like they'd just happened.
He could remember walking past a random classmate in middle school ten years ago. Not just vaguely. He could see the kid's face. Could picture exactly how tall he'd been. What clothes he'd worn. What kind of backpack he'd carried.
Before taking NZT, Marcus couldn't have even told you that kid's name.
Now he could describe him in perfect detail.
It was like unlocking a god's-eye view of his own past.
English classes from years ago came flooding back. Every foreign movie he'd ever watched. Every TikTok video with foreign dialogue he'd scrolled past without really paying attention.
All of it—all of it—was suddenly accessible.
Marcus blinked.
And realized he could speak English now.
Not fluently, maybe. But well enough. The grammar, the vocabulary, the pronunciation—it was all there, pulled from fragments of memory and stitched together by his enhanced brain.
He could hold a conversation. No problem.
Ideas flooded his mind. Connections. Patterns. Solutions to problems he hadn't even been thinking about.
Marcus stood there in Finn's kitchen for a few seconds, letting it all settle.
Then he glanced around the apartment one more time, and his expression shifted.
Calm. Controlled. Confident.
He was in charge now.
Marcus grabbed the package from the counter—the bag of NZT pills, the stack of cash, and the worn notebook.
The notebook was important. It had phone numbers scribbled throughout. Finn's customer list. People who bought NZT from him. If Marcus left it here, the cops would find it. And if they found it, they'd start tracing connections.
Better to take it.
He counted the cash quickly. About two thousand dollars in hundreds. Not a fortune, but enough.
Startup capital, Marcus thought. This is how I get started in this world.
He stuffed everything into the package, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the door.
Marcus stepped into the hallway just as the elevator dinged at the far end.
The numbers above the elevator door were counting up.
1... 2... 3...
Marcus didn't panic.
He turned calmly and walked toward the corner, slipping into the stairwell.
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Less than thirty seconds later, the elevator doors opened.
Eddie Moran stepped out, holding a suit from the dry cleaner and a paper bag with a breakfast sandwich. His long hair was tied back in a messy ponytail.
He walked down the hallway toward apartment 7B, completely oblivious.
He had no idea that someone had just walked away with the exact thing he'd come here for.
No idea that he'd missed it by less than half a minute.
Eddie reached Finn's door and paused.
It was open.
"Finn?" he called.
No answer.
Eddie frowned and stepped inside.
The apartment was trashed. Furniture overturned. Drawers dumped everywhere.
"Finn?"
Still nothing.
And then Eddie saw him.
Finn was slumped on the couch, his head tilted back, a bullet hole clean through his forehead. Blood had soaked into his bathrobe.
Eddie dropped the suit and the sandwich.
"Oh shit. Oh shit."
He grabbed a golf club from the corner—just in case—and started shouting.
"Hey! HEY! Anyone here?!"
Silence.
After a tense minute of checking the apartment, Eddie pulled out his phone and dialed 911.
"Yeah, hi, I need to report a—a murder. My friend's been shot. He's dead. I just found him. The address is—"
Eddie gave the dispatcher the details, his voice shaking.
And then, as he hung up, something occurred to him.
The NZT.
Finn had sent him out to run errands. Told him to pick up the suit, grab breakfast. Why?
Because Finn was stalling. Buying time.
Which meant he was hiding something.
Eddie's eyes widened.
He started tearing through the apartment, searching frantically. Checked the cabinets. The drawers. The closets.
Finally, he thought about Finn's behavior—the way he'd asked Eddie to pick up food.
Eddie ran to the kitchen and started ripping open cupboards.
Nothing.
He checked the oven.
Empty.
"Shit!" Eddie slammed the oven door shut.
Either there had never been any NZT here, or whoever killed Finn had already taken it.
Eddie was betting on the latter.
A knock at the door.
"Police! Open up!"
Eddie exhaled and walked over to let them in.
Less than ten minutes since he'd called.
Typical, Eddie thought bitterly. Cops show up after everything's already over.
Down on the street, Marcus walked casually through the crowd, taking in his surroundings.
He'd taken the stairs all the way down. No elevator. Less chance of running into someone.
Now he needed to blend in.
First order of business: clothes.
Marcus glanced down at himself. His shirt was torn and filthy. His pants were stained with dirt and sweat. He smelled like a combination of desert sand and body odor.
He looked—and smelled—worse than a homeless person.
He spotted a small clothing store half a block away and headed inside.
The clerk—a middle-aged guy behind the counter—looked up and immediately frowned.
"Hey, man, you can't—"
Marcus pulled out two hundred-dollar bills and set them on the counter.
The clerk's expression changed instantly.
"—uh, I mean, welcome! How can I help you?"
"I need to clean up," Marcus said. "And I need new clothes. You got a bathroom I can use?"
The clerk pocketed the cash. "Yeah. Back there. Take your time."
Twenty minutes later, Marcus stepped out of the bathroom wearing a plain black T-shirt, jeans, and a cheap jacket. His hair was still damp from washing it in the sink, but he looked a hundred times better.
Almost human again.
The clerk did a double-take.
"Whoa. You clean up nice."
Marcus ignored him and grabbed his old clothes—now washed and bundled up—and stuffed them into a plastic bag. He wasn't ready to throw them away yet. They'd come with him from the Marvel universe. Might be useful later.
The clerk stared at him, surprised.
Huh. Asian guy. Skinny, but not bad-looking. How the hell was he dressed like a beggar?
Marcus walked past him without a word and stepped back out onto the street.
First priority: food.
Marcus found a burger joint a block away and ordered a combo meal. Burger, fries, soda. He sat down at a corner table and ate like a starving man.
Because he was a starving man.
For the past two weeks, the Ten Rings had fed him nothing but gray slop. Mystery paste that tasted like cardboard and dirt. This burger—cheap, greasy, fast-food garbage—tasted like heaven.
Marcus chewed slowly, savoring it.
Another reason to hate those bastards, he thought. Add it to the list.
When he finished eating, Marcus stepped back outside and glanced down the street.
In the distance, he could see police cars parked outside Finn's building. Cops standing guard. An ambulance.
And then he saw it—two officers carrying a stretcher out of the building. A white sheet covered the body.
Finn.
Walking beside them was a man with long hair tied back in a ponytail.
Eddie Moran.
Marcus watched as Eddie climbed into the back of a police car. A moment later, the car pulled away and disappeared down the street.
Marcus turned and walked in the opposite direction.
I'll need to get in touch with Eddie eventually, Marcus thought. But not now. Not yet.
Right now, the cops would be questioning everyone. Looking for witnesses. Searching for whoever killed Finn.
Marcus was an undocumented stranger in this world. No ID. No backstory. No record of existing.
The last thing he needed was to get caught up in a murder investigation.
Better to disappear for now.
Marcus walked through the streets of New York, his enhanced mind working through the details.
The timeline here was 2011. Back in the Marvel universe, it was May 2008—right around the time Tony Stark had been captured.
That was a two-and-a-half-year gap.
Which meant Marcus had access to information from the future.
Not everything. The broad strokes of history were probably the same in both worlds. But there would be discrepancies. Stock market trends. Company performances. Economic shifts.
And Marcus could exploit those gaps.
That was the plan.
In the Limitless movie, Eddie Moran had taken NZT and torn through the stock market like a hurricane.
On his first day trading, Eddie had turned $800 into $2,000.
On the second day, he'd turned $2,000 into $7,500.
After that, he'd decided making money slowly was for suckers. So he'd gone to a loan shark and borrowed $15,000.
One week later, Eddie had over two million dollars in his account.
That was the kind of money that bought you freedom. The kind of money that let you do whatever you wanted.
And Eddie had done it all in ten days.
Before taking NZT, Eddie had been a complete nobody. A failed writer who knew nothing about stocks or trading.
But with his enhanced brain? He'd dominated Wall Street. Made investors and hedge fund managers scramble to get his attention.
For a normal person, turning $15,000 into $2 million through stock trading was impossible. Not in ten days. Not in ten years.
Hell, most people would be lucky if they didn't lose money.
But Eddie had pulled it off.
Because of NZT.
And now Marcus had NZT too.
He could do the same thing. Study the market. Find the patterns. Make the right trades.
And when he went back to the Marvel universe, he'd use the information gap to get even richer.
It was a perfect plan.
Marcus smiled to himself as he walked.
Step one: Get rich in this world.
Step two: Go back to the Marvel universe and get even richer.
Step three: Buy enough firepower to blow the Ten Rings off the map.
Simple.
But first, he needed to figure out the details. Learn the market. Understand the differences between this world and his own.
It wouldn't be easy.
But with NZT? It was doable.
Marcus kept walking, his mind racing with possibilities.
Because for the first time since he'd woken up in Afghanistan, he wasn't just surviving.
He was winning.
And he was just getting started.
Marcus thought about Eddie's trajectory again as he walked.
Eddie had gone from broke to millionaire in ten days. Without any trading experience. Without any connections. Without any background.
Just raw intelligence and pattern recognition.
Could a normal person do that?
Turn $15,000 into $2 million through stock trading?
Not a chance.
Not even in ten years.
Hell, most people would be lucky if they didn't lose everything.
PLZ THROW POWERSTONES .