Well, Killian sure as hell left Ellen out of the loop. Tony nodded and tapped the tip of a finger against the tip of his nose, a clear confirmation that she figured out who it was.
That had been a huge screw you to Tony, and probably a bit to Pep, since she knew Killian before she worked as his executive personal assistant. It hadn't been easy to watch Pepper go through that, even for a brief moment, so he didn't like to dwell on it too much. What he preferred to think about was the concept of second, third, fourth, and even fifth chances. Given his tendency to barrel ahead with an idea and realize the repercussions when it was too late, it was hard not to believe that something better could be achieved with another chance. And something better included half of his plans being based on a whim (often without backup), and the other half was over-planning every minute detail to cover future possibilities (when he sometimes couldn't see the forest for the trees due to focusing on some pine needles).
Those future possibilities never included the dead coming back to life, that was for sure. But maybe - in yet another of his stupidly optimistic insights - he considered this busted up universe just might be about granting some much needed second chances.
"Well? Yeah, it seems pretty gone. I mean, there's always going to be some residual background traces that it was in her. I've been tinkering around with it some more." He patted his pocket where the sample was. "This'll help me compare the two. I can run the coding through and see if there's any other tweaks that could be made."