Prologue

Thunder roared above the sky, and the oppressive dark clouds loomed heavily. Lightning danced wildly within the stormy clouds, casting bright flashes.

The famous Black Beach of San Diego, California, was now engulfed by a hurricane, shivering under the relentless storm and torrential rain.

Although the hurricane hadn't hit directly, the fierce winds still swept the rain like a long whip, mercilessly lashing against the glass panels.

If not for the special craftsmanship and polymer material used in the villa's floor-to-ceiling windows, they would have shattered long ago.

The torrential rain drummed against the ceiling, creating a sound like beans exploding. Outside, the sky was so dark it seemed as if it could collapse at any moment.

"Damn it! Why did it suddenly start raining so hard? How is anyone supposed to sleep—"

A woman's voice, heavy with the grumpiness of being woken up, suddenly rang out in the luxurious master bedroom, almost drowned by the storm outside.

"Ugh... where am I? How did I end up here?"

She hastily threw off the thin blanket that covered her and rolled out of the expansive, two-meter-wide bed.

But as her gaze lifted and landed on the full-length mirror in the corner of the bedroom, she froze.

Reflected in the glass, staring back at her, was a stunningly beautiful white woman.

Her long, wavy brown hair shimmered with an ethereal sheen under the dim light of the room.

Below her delicate willow-leaf eyebrows, a pair of deep, dark red eyes gazed back in blank confusion.

Her long lashes fluttered slightly, and a faint blush tinted her fair skin. Her lips, as delicate as rose petals, were slightly parted in disbelief.

The most captivating feature was the woman's breathtaking beauty—an ageless allure that seemed almost unreal.

She stared in shock at the reflection, the confusion mirrored in the woman's expression.

Her mouth fell open, too stunned to utter a word, her mind unable to grasp what had just occurred.

"Miss, it's 1:30 a.m. Is there something wrong?"

Accompanied by the flickering orange light from the ceiling, another voice suddenly echoed in the room.

The sudden voice startled her. She looked around the luxurious bedroom, finding no other person.

The voice had come out of nowhere, but upon closer inspection, it seemed not to belong to a real person, carrying a slightly cold tone.

Although her heart pounded like a drum, she quickly composed herself, hiding her panic well.

"No... I'm fine, it's nothing. I'm fine..."

No one answered her, and the orange light strip around the ceiling slowly dimmed.

The voice seemed familiar to her, and she furrowed her brows, trying to recall why it felt eerily familiar.

But as she began to remember, she suddenly froze—she had no memory of yesterday.

Yesterday, the day before, last week, this month, this year, all the way back for decades—gone.

No... not gone, but her mind was suddenly flooded with various scenes and events.

It felt like her brain was a tangled mess, with no coherent memory, or rather, her mind was filled with fragmented pieces of memories.

Pain surged through her head, as if her brain was about to explode, forcing her to clutch her forehead, her face turning pale.

"Miss, your heart rate is rapidly increasing. Should I call your private doctor?"

The cold synthetic voice sounded again in the room, but she was too preoccupied to care.

Deep in her mind, strange memories that had nothing to do with her began to surface.

The excruciating sensation lasted for about thirty to forty seconds before she started to feel numb.

She lay back on the bed, trying to shake off the dizziness.

"Calling your private doctor—"

The voice spoke again, completely ignoring her earlier refusal, as it dialed another person.

"No, Jarvis, don't. I'm fine—"

She lay on the bed, her brows furrowed, and as she opened her mouth, she unconsciously uttered a name.

The discomfort in her mind eased significantly, and she gradually adapted to the nausea.

"Miss Stark, are you sure you don't need your private doctor's assistance?"

"I don't need it. Please turn off the lights. What I need is rest, not—"

The room's lights dimmed in response to her words, and soon, the bedroom returned to the stillness of the night.

The only source of light was the lightning flickering thousands of meters above the clouds outside.

She collapsed back onto the bed, covered by a thin blanket, but an inexplicable anxiety gnawed at her heart.

Because she realized that deep within her mind, memories that didn't belong to her had emerged.

Those memories were mixing with her original ones, creating a chaotic mess.

No... those chaotic memories were more than just memories; they were... the future, someone else's future.

In those memories, she saw a man clad in red and gold armor kneeling, with a triumphant smile on his face.

He was a middle-aged man with a small mustache and short black hair. Despite his unremarkable appearance, his eyes carried a heavy weight.

He smiled triumphantly and, under the gaze of many, raised his right hand and gently snapped his fingers.

The mechanical glove was embedded with six glowing crystals of various colors.

At the snap of his fingers, a burst of rainbow-colored energy erupted, creating a terrifying wave of power.

"I'm Iron Man—"

The memory fragment ended there, but it left her with an inexplicable feeling of sorrow.

Because she had a feeling that there was a deep connection between her and that man.

She even had a ridiculous thought—that the man in the memory fragments was, in fact, part of her.

The events in the memory fragments overlapped with her own, but it wasn't just that.

To her, the fragments in her mind were not just memories but possible future events.

She suddenly noticed a small tablet on the bedside table and reached out to pick it up.

As her finger touched the screen, it instantly lit up, revealing an interactive interface.

"The date is... June 19, 2006. Did anything happen before this?"

She muttered to herself while trying to sift through the fragmented memories in her mind.

To verify whether these inexplicable memory fragments were real, she needed to compare them with past events.

"Jarvis, look up someone for me—Robert Bruce Banner, a nuclear physics major at Caltech."

She spoke in a cold, indifferent tone, her gaze fixed on the screen.

"Miss, I have retrieved unencrypted information about Robert Bruce Banner from the database."

In the blink of an eye, a new window appeared on the tablet screen, displaying a white profile page.

The profile detailed information about Robert Bruce Banner, along with a passport-sized photo.

Oh, and in the bottom right corner of the profile, there was a bright red stamp from the U.S. Department of Defense, marked with the word "Fugitive."

Robert Bruce Banner—an esteemed scholar in nuclear physics, a graduate of Caltech.

He matched the image in her fragmented memories of a frail scholar who could turn into a hulking green giant when angry.

So, if the Hulk was real, then perhaps Captain America, a figure her father often spoke about, wasn't just a fictional character?

S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, or even the future Mad Titan, Thanos—were these seemingly absurd things all real?

And was she closely connected to the man in the red and gold armor who snapped his fingers?

It seemed likely, considering that the name "Anthony Edward Stark" was only one middle name different from hers, Antonia Natasha Stark.

She, too, was a scholar of immense intelligence, well-versed in concepts like parallel universes.

If those memory fragments were real, representing her future, what should she do?

She had no desire to fight Thanos, who intended to wipe out half of the universe's life and ultimately sacrifice herself.

So... if she wanted to change her inevitable future, she would have to plan carefully.

Especially those six Infinity Stones embedded in the metal glove, each glowing with a different color.

The Orb, the Eye of Agamotto, the Tesseract, the Soul Stone, the Aether, and the Scepter.

These six artifacts represented the concepts of power, time, space, soul, reality, and mind, respectively.

"Wait, why do I vaguely feel like there should be two more Infinity Stones that haven't appeared yet?"

She gently brushed aside the long hair falling over her forehead, gathered the scattered strands, and placed her finger on her temple.

In the memory fragments, there were six Infinity Stones, each possessing world-ending power.

But besides those six, she couldn't shake the feeling that there should be two more.

"Jarvis—"

"Miss Stark, what do you need?"

The voice of the AI butler, Jarvis, echoed in her bedroom once more.

"...I need money, a lot of money, as much as possible, as quickly as possible."

"All methods of quickly earning large sums of money are clearly outlined in federal law, Miss."

In response to her request, the AI butler earnestly suggested some rather humorous ways to make money.

"I don't find that funny, Jarvis. Seriously, it's not funny."

Miss Stark shook her head slightly, her expression cold as she slowly descended from the soft bed.

"My apologies, Miss. Why don't you create a new weapon for the company to sell?"

"Because I find our previous methods of capital accumulation to be rather inefficient."

As she spoke, she pushed open the door to her bedroom and walked toward the mansion's main hall.

There, a spiral staircase connected the upper and lower levels.

She slowly descended the staircase, making her way to the underground garage of the villa.

Before her eyes were luxury cars like Bugatti, Pagani, SSC, Koenigsegg, Mercedes SLR, Maybach, and Porsche.

The meticulously arranged, multi-colored luxury cars lay silently in the garage, as if they were asleep.

But Miss Stark knew that once activated, they would roar back to life, stirring excitement.

Ignoring the lineup of luxury cars, she walked across the garage, heading straight for her private workshop, which took up half of the garage.

In this private workshop, one could see many incomprehensible technological creations.

Of course, there was also the robotic arm standing beside her workstation, assisting with her research.

It was her mechanical engineering graduation project from MIT, and she had given it an affectionate name—Dum-E.

"I need to start a new project file, Jarvis. I believe it will serve its purpose."

She slowly approached her workstation, a computer setup with several interlinked screens.

"Please enter the project name, Miss."

"Then—Codename: Veronica."