Chapter 18

Tony had been lost in his thoughts for several hours when the voice of Jarvis broke the silence of the workshop.

"Analysis complete, sir." The AI reported crisply.

It took Tony several seconds to remember exactly what analysis Jarvis was talking about, but it suddenly clicked in his mind, and he stood up and exclaimed "Show me!"

Holographic graphs appeared suddenly in front of him as Jarvis' voice started explaining "According to the simulation, it seems that the substance presence in young Potts' blood comes from a mutation in his genome." DNA sequences in front of Tony highlighted the source of the problem in red for him.

"I see" Tony agreed as he studied the hologram intently "And do you have any idea where this comes from?" Tony asked.

"Of course, sir." Jarvis stated simply, Tony opened his mouth and his eyes went round at this statement. "The mutation comes from you, sir."

"What do you mean, J?" Tony asked, not sure about exactly where Jarvis was heading with his explanation.

"Your last DNA analyses show the same deletion in your DNA sequences," Jarvis patiently explained.

"OK, now I don't follow you anymore Jarvis." Tony said completely lost in what Jarvis was saying. "If I have the same mutation, then firstly why you didn't tell me, secondly why don't I have any presence of this element in my blood, and thirdly, why didn't SHIELD pick up on this when they did their initial analysis?" Tony asked.

"The simple answer is that, this mutation seems to be silent in you, so SHIELD probably didn't even consider it to be a factor." Jarvis stated.

"Silent?" Tony asked in disbelief, "What do you mean by silent?"

"I mean that it doesn't affect you at all. This mutation is present in your DNA but with no effect on you." Jarvis tried to explain.

"Are you implying that the people at SHIELD are idiots J.? 'Cause you were the one that reminded me that they probably have a horde of genomics people working on Dane's case." Tony told him scratching his forehead in frustration.

"I wasn't implying anything, sir. I just wanted to point out to you that these are really small anomalies and that it would be very easy to miss them." Jarvis defended.

"But apparently not hard for you to find them?" Tony challenged back.

"I have been following your genetic profile for years, sir. I am aware of even the smallest changes in you." Jarvis explained.

"So why is it that you never told me about these particular mutations before, Jarvis?" Tony asked suddenly growing annoyed with the AI.

"With the presence of the both the shrapnel and the arc reactor in your body, your body has changed in a multitude of ways. And when I started to point them to you one by one as they occurred you became impatient with me on numerous occasions until at last you ordered me to warn you only if it was really important or some kind of emergency." The AI said almost sarcastically.

Tony recalled the numerous conversations with the AI warning him about possible problems resulting from both the shrapnel contamination and the arc reactor effects on his body, and he suddenly groaned in frustration.

"And this particular mutation was both minor and silent, so I concluded that it was not significant enough to report to you." Jarvis added.

"OK, OK, I get it J." Tony cut him off. "So why isn't this mutation silent in Dane?" Tony asked now very concerned.

"I am not 100% certain, but I believe that this mutation affects one of the endocrine gland genes and the combination of your allele with Miss Potts' allele appears to have an unpredictable effect on the young Dane's body."

"And what could be the repercussions for him?" Tony asked as he sinking down in his seat as he anticipated bad news from Jarvis.

"I can run worst case analysis on my results but, as I have said, the result will be very unpredictable for now." Jarvis concluded.

Tony sighed heavily as he put his head in his hands. He was so focused on his conversation with Jarvis that he didn't hear the person coming up from behind him…