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Ethan walked out of the Commerce Bureau holding the certified incorporation papers in one hand and a stomach that had begun making increasingly unsubtle complaints in the other.
The serum's caloric demands were not a small inconvenience. Three bowls of jellied custard and twenty fried dough sticks at six AM had gotten him through the morning. The fan mob, the negotiations, the dawning realization that he was now legally responsible for a company the state was about to inject ten figures into — all of that had burned through the breakfast in roughly four hours.
The sky was darkening. He spotted a small restaurant tucked between a dry cleaner and a bookstore, ducked inside, and ordered five servings of braised pork over rice without breaking stride.
The owner, a middle-aged woman with the unflappable manner of someone who'd seen everything in her years behind the counter, raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She brought out the food.
The other patrons — three tables, maybe seven people total — watched in increasingly fascinated silence as Ethan worked through his order. The first bowl disappeared in about ninety seconds. The second went down in less. By the third, several customers had stopped pretending not to stare.
Ethan, oblivious, polished off all five servings, set his chopsticks down, and let out a satisfied sigh that suggested he might have room for a sixth if pressed.
He patted his stomach, which was now eighty percent full and asking only mildly for more, and pulled out his phone.
He dialed Hargrove.
-----
Eight hundred miles away, in a research laboratory at the Republic of Valoria's most prestigious physics institute, Dr. Edmund Hargrove was bent over a workstation explaining a delicate calibration procedure to a graduate student.
His phone buzzed in his coat pocket.
He ignored it. He was mid-sentence. The student — a sharp young woman who'd been doing exemplary work on resonance dampening — needed her instructor's attention.
The phone buzzed again.
Hargrove pulled it out to silence it, glanced at the screen, and stopped speaking entirely.
The graduate student, who had been carefully adjusting a sensor array, looked up, alarmed.
"Dr. Hargrove? Are you—"
"Excuse me, Anna. I have to take this."
He set down his tools, walked out of the lab, and was through the hallway and into the stairwell before his graduate students could fully process what they'd witnessed. Edmund Hargrove did not interrupt experimental work. Edmund Hargrove was famous for not interrupting experimental work. Edmund Hargrove had once allegedly continued an experiment through a small office fire because, in his judgment, the fire was outside his focal radius.
Whoever was on that phone, Anna decided, was someone the rest of the world should probably know about.
Hargrove cleared the building, stepped out into the courtyard, and answered the call.
"You little punk."
His voice was warm, scolding, and unmistakably affectionate.
"You finally remembered to call this old man. I was starting to think your fame had given you amnesia about us."
On the other end, Ethan winced. He'd been busy. He had not, in fairness, called Hargrove in months. He'd meant to. The intention had been there. It had simply gotten buried under reactor deployments, assassination attempts, robotic press conferences, and seventeen patent filings.
"Dr. Hargrove. I'm sorry. It's been a chaotic stretch."
"Your apologies are getting smoother each time, kid. Either you're maturing or you're getting worse. Tell me what you need."
Ethan got straight to the point. He'd learned, over the months, that Hargrove had no patience for preamble.
"I've registered a new company. Energy sector. I need to hire a research division and an operations team, both at the highest level of expertise available in the country. I was hoping, given your standing at Hartwell University, that you might help me find candidates."
He kept his voice low. The restaurant was small. There were customers within hearing range, and he'd already learned today that being recognized in public came with consequences.
His attempt at discretion failed.
The conversation was, by any reasonable measure, audible from every table.
A man at the next table over snorted into his rice.
Another man, two tables behind Ethan, made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
A woman across the room muttered something to her dining companion that involved the words "kids these days" and "no shame."
Ethan, focused on the call, didn't immediately register the reaction. But Hargrove, on the other end, did not. The old physicist responded warmly, oblivious to the ambient skepticism in the restaurant.
"No trouble at all, kid. Honestly, with your current reputation, you don't even need my help. You could publish a single recruitment notice and have a thousand qualified applicants by morning."
"I disagree, Dr. Hargrove."
"Don't be modest."
"It's not modesty. The applicants who come because of my fame would be different from the ones who come through your filter. Anyone you'd vouch for would be qualified in skill and character. That saves me an enormous amount of vetting work."
Hargrove was silent for a moment. Then, with a small note of pleasure he didn't quite manage to hide:
"You've gotten better at flattering old men, kid. I'll allow it."
"Then you'll help?"
"I will. But I have conditions."
Ethan straightened up. "Name them."
"First. I want to be listed as a member of your company. Any position. Honorary, advisory, founding board, doesn't matter. Just have my name on the roster."
The request sat in the air for a moment.
It took Ethan about three seconds to understand the request, and another two to feel something warm settle in his chest.
Hargrove wasn't asking for a paycheck. Hargrove was offering protection.
The old physicist's name on a corporate document was a shield. Edmund Hargrove was a national figure of the kind the Valorian public didn't just admire — they revered. Politicians who tried to use his name carelessly got slapped down by the press. Bureaucrats who attempted to obstruct his research found their careers ending mysteriously. The man's standing in the Republic was not measured by his job title; it was measured by the fact that no functioning institution in the country would dare to cross him.
If Hargrove's name appeared on the New Future Technology Energy Co., Ltd. founding roster, the entire bureaucratic and political apparatus of the Valorian state would tread very carefully around the company's affairs. Trade ministry harassment, regulatory shakedowns, opportunistic local officials looking to extract bribes — all of it would dry up overnight. Because nobody in the country wanted to find themselves on the wrong side of Edmund Hargrove.
The old man hadn't waited to be asked. He'd offered, casually, like it was nothing.
"Dr. Hargrove. I— thank you."
"Don't get sentimental, kid. There's a second condition."
"Of course."
"I want you to take a teaching position at Hartwell University."
Ethan opened his mouth to protest, and Hargrove cut him off before the protest could form.
"Before you say no — and you were absolutely about to say no, I could hear it building — let me clarify. You don't need to teach a regular course load. I'm not asking you to grade papers or hold office hours. I'm asking for one or two guest lectures per academic year. That's it."
Ethan, who had been mid-objection, swallowed it.
The old man had, somehow, anticipated his every excuse and disarmed each one in advance. The "I don't have time" defense was preempted by the minimal commitment. The "I'll mislead the students" defense was preempted by the lecture-only format.
Ethan tried anyway.
"Dr. Hargrove, with respect, I'm not really qualified to teach. I'm good at building things, but I've never been a great communicator of foundational concepts—"
"Kid."
"Yes."
"This isn't up for discussion. Consider it a personal favor."
Ethan recognized the tone. It was the same one Hargrove had used when he'd announced, in front of the entire military verification panel, that Ethan was beyond his ability to teach. It was a tone that did not yield to negotiation.
Ethan caved.
"All right. Two lectures a year. I'll do my best."
"Excellent. I'll have the appointment paperwork drafted by tomorrow."
The line went silent for a moment. Then Hargrove's voice, slightly softer:
"Take care of yourself, Ethan."
"You too, Dr. Hargrove."
He hung up.
-----
Ethan slipped the phone into his pocket and looked up.
The entire restaurant was staring at him.
Six pairs of eyes. The owner's were wide. The man at the next table had stopped chewing. The woman across the room had set down her chopsticks. Everyone was looking at him with the specific expression of people who had just witnessed an extraordinarily committed performance and were now waiting to see how the punchline would land.
A weathered older gentleman at the corner table — the kind who'd seen seventy-plus years of Republic history and accumulated the conversational confidence to match — was the first to speak.
"Young man." His voice was kind. Almost paternal. "I have lived a long time and met many liars. But I have to say, I have never in my life seen anyone commit to a fabrication the way you just did."
The dam broke.
The whole restaurant burst out laughing. Not cruel laughter. Appreciative laughter. The kind reserved for someone who had performed admirably at a thing you didn't expect them to be good at.
"Hartwell University!"
"And he wanted Edmund Hargrove to draft the appointment paperwork!"
"This kid should be in films. He'd make a fortune."
"That's some serious dedication. He didn't even break character for the second condition."
The owner, who had been wiping down a counter, set down her cloth and approached Ethan's table.
"Young man." Her voice was gentle. "I've seen a lot of college students try to skip out on their bills. Usually they make up much smaller stories. Don't worry about the meal. Consider it on me. Just promise me you won't go this hard with your fabrications around people who don't have my patience."
Ethan stared at her.
Then at the older gentleman.
Then at the rest of the laughing patrons.
He didn't have time for this. He had to get to Hartwell University. He had to meet with Hargrove. He had documents to file, candidates to interview, an energy company to staff. He had a state ministry that was about to inject ten figures of capital into his bank accounts. He had bigger problems than convincing this restaurant's clientele that he had not, in fact, been play-acting through a phone call.
He pulled out his wallet.
He looked at a hundred-mark bill. A perfectly round sum that would have covered his meal and left a generous tip.
He felt a small, sharp pang in his chest.
The serum had not, regrettably, eliminated his fundamental relationship with money. He had been raised in Millbrook County. He had been the kid with the cracked phone and the threadbare clothes. He was now, on paper, about to become one of the wealthiest people in the Republic.
But none of that erased the muscle memory of being broke.
He swapped the hundred for a fifty, slapped it on the table with as much theatrical confidence as he could muster, and announced grandly:
"Keep the change!"
He turned and walked toward the door.
The owner stared at the fifty-mark bill on the table.
She stared at the receipt slip.
Five servings of braised pork rice, eleven marks each. Total: fifty-five marks.
By her count, the young man had just stiffed her by five.
Her mouth opened. The words "Sir, you actually still owe me—" formed on her tongue.
She did not get to deliver them.
Because at that exact moment, a deep, building roar rolled in from outside the restaurant, the kind of mechanical thunder that announced the arrival of something very large, very fast, and not even slightly subtle.
The owner forgot about the five marks.
Every patron in the restaurant turned toward the front window.
Ethan, halfway to the door, smiled.
Right on time.