[ Tony's expression changes by subtle degrees—for once—in that it goes a little still and fixed, and he says, ] Uh huh.

[ And snaps out of it, and he isn't being insincere as he says, ] I will be. Fine. Kind of hard to put the pieces together seeing as we're missing a big chunk of picture, but I assume the Venatori replaced the normal core with something with a faster decay rate. Way faster. A preventative measure if I escaped, who knows, but if so, it worked.

So as long as that doesn't happen again— [ —spoken into his mug of coffee. ]