Ryan Calloway had his follow-up question ready, but Ethan cut him off before he could finish.
"I know what you're going to ask. You're looking at a reactor the size of a phone and thinking: even if fission works at this scale, there's a hard ceiling on how much energy a container this small can produce. The math doesn't add up."
Ryan closed his mouth. That was, in fact, exactly what he'd been thinking.
Ethan pushed his lab goggles up onto his forehead and leaned against the workbench. His tone was calm — the patience of someone who'd anticipated this question and had the answer loaded.
"You're right. Nuclear fission can't produce this kind of output at this scale. Not even in theory."
Ryan's stomach dropped. For a moment, he thought the kid was about to admit the whole thing was a bluff — a glorified science project dressed up in big claims.
"But this isn't fission."
The words landed in the silence of the factory like a stone dropped into still water.
"What I've developed — what you're looking at on that bench — is a nuclear fusion reactor."
Ryan stood up so fast his stool tipped over behind him.
"That's — you can't be serious."
He wasn't a physicist. He'd barely scraped through his science electives at Hartwell. But every adult in the Republic of Valoria — in the world — knew what nuclear fusion meant. It was the holy grail. The white whale. The technology that every major nation had been chasing for decades with budgets in the billions, and not a single one had cracked it.
Fusion didn't just produce more energy than fission. It produced energy on a scale that made fission look like a campfire next to a forest blaze. And it did it cleanly — no meltdown risk, no radioactive waste that stayed lethal for ten thousand years.
If someone actually solved fusion, the phrase "energy crisis" would become a historical curiosity. Like "the plague" or "the dark ages." A problem humanity used to have.
Every government on the planet wanted it. None of them had it.
And this seventeen-year-old was claiming he'd built one in a rented warehouse.
"Mr. Mercer, if you're wasting my time with—"
"I'm not." Ethan's voice was flat. No salesmanship. No performance. Just fact. "And in about five minutes, I'm going to prove it. So I'd suggest you keep that camera rolling."
Ryan looked at the kid's face. Looked at the glowing reactor on the bench. Looked at his camera, its red light blinking steadily.
He picked up his stool, sat back down, and didn't say another word.
Ethan disappeared behind a partition at the far end of the factory and came back pushing a machine on heavy-duty casters. Then another. Then another.
Ten in total.
Ryan recognized them. Steam turbine generators — industrial grade, the kind you'd see at a municipal power station. Each unit was roughly the size of a commercial refrigerator, with a large digital display screen mounted on the front panel. The newer models, the ones that tracked output in real-time.
He'd actually filmed these machines last year, covering a story about the Ashford City power grid. He knew what they cost. A standard unit ran thirty to fifty thousand marks. But these were the high-capacity models — the ones rated for extreme loads — and they didn't come cheap.
"These are 1.2-million-kilowatt-rated generators," Ethan said, as if reading his mind. "Rental alone was a hundred thousand marks each, and that was with my uncle pulling strings to get the internal rate. I've got ten of them. Do the math on what that cost."
A million marks. Just for the generators. On top of the five million for everything else.
Ryan watched as Ethan connected each generator to the small reactor with methodical precision — cabling, junctions, cooling interfaces — his hands moving with the efficiency of someone who'd rehearsed this a hundred times in his head.
"Ordinary generators would burn out," Ethan explained without looking up. "The energy output from this reactor is too high for standard equipment. You need industrial-rated machines with sufficient load tolerance, or you fry the conversion system on the first cycle."
In three to five minutes, all ten generators were wired to the palm-sized reactor sitting on the bench.
Frank, standing near the factory door, caught Ethan's signal. He took a deep breath.
Everything we have. Everything we've risked. Right here.
He grabbed the master switch and pulled it down.
The generators hummed to life.
Not all at once — a cascading startup, each unit spinning up in sequence as the reactor's energy flowed through the system. The hum deepened, steadied, and settled into a constant, thrumming vibration that Ryan could feel through the soles of his shoes.
On the bench, the reactor's pale blue glow intensified. Not dramatically — it didn't flare or spark or do anything cinematic. It simply brightened, the way a lamp does when you turn up the dimmer. Steady. Controlled. Like it was barely trying.
The digital displays on all ten generators began to climb.
Ryan's eyes locked onto the nearest screen. The numbers ticked upward with mechanical regularity — kilowatt-hours accumulating in real time, each digit rolling over with the quiet certainty of a clock counting seconds.
One minute passed. The machines ran smoothly.
Five minutes. No fluctuations. No alarms. No smoke.
Thirty minutes. The numbers on each display had climbed into territory that made Ryan's mouth go dry.
One hour.
Frank, who'd been standing near the switch with his arms crossed and his jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth, finally exhaled. His shoulders dropped three inches.
But Ryan wasn't looking at Frank. Ryan was doing arithmetic.
Each generator was rated at 1.2 million kilowatts. In one hour, at full capacity, a single machine converted 1.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. Ten machines meant—
Twelve million kilowatt-hours. In sixty minutes. From a device he could hold in one hand.
And the reactor's glow hadn't dimmed. Not even slightly. If anything, it looked the same as when they'd started — like the past hour had been a warm-up. A light stretch before the actual workout.
Ryan stood very still and felt the floor shift beneath him.
Not literally. The factory was solid concrete. But the ground he'd built his understanding of the world on — the ground everyone stood on, the shared assumption about what was possible and what wasn't — that ground had just cracked wide open, and Ryan Calloway was staring into the gap.
To hell with Ashford Prep.
To hell with Thornton and his "black sheep" speech.
If this kid is a bad student, then every person at that school is delusional.
He could see it now, with the crystalline clarity of a man who'd just had a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. The expulsion. The media smear. The "problem youth" narrative. It was all garbage — a cover story built by petty, vindictive people who'd looked at genuine, once-in-a-generation talent and decided to crush it because it threatened their egos.
"Mr. Calloway."
Ryan flinched. He'd been so deep in his own head that Ethan's voice startled him.
When he turned, the kid was leaning against the workbench with his arms crossed and a look of mild amusement on his face. Like he'd been watching Ryan's worldview collapse in real time and found it entertaining.
"Y-yes? Mr. Mercer."
The shift in address happened without conscious thought. Five minutes ago, this had been "Student Mercer" — a teenager, a dropout, a charity assignment from a deputy director who couldn't be bothered to come himself. Now it was "Mr. Mercer," and the honorific felt insufficient.
"Based on my calculations, the reactor can sustain continuous output for roughly another forty-eight hours before depletion. You're welcome to stay and film the whole thing, but I'm guessing your camera battery won't last that long."
Ryan glanced at his equipment. The kid was right — the camera had maybe four hours of battery life remaining. Nowhere near enough for a two-day marathon.
But more importantly, he already had what he needed. An hour of continuous footage showing ten industrial generators running at full capacity off a palm-sized reactor. Real-time power output data on every screen. The inventor's own explanation of the technology, on camera, in his own words.
This was enough. This was more than enough.
And every second he spent here was a second this footage wasn't being broadcast.
"Mr. Mercer." Ryan was already packing his tripod, his hands moving with an urgency he hadn't felt in years. "My recommendation is that I take this footage back to the station immediately and get it on the air as fast as possible. The sooner the public sees this, the better. For you and for — well, for everyone."
Ethan nodded. He'd built the reactor and held the press conference. Publicity was a different discipline entirely, and he was smart enough to defer to the professional.
"Then I'll leave it in your hands, Mr. Calloway."
"Here—" Ryan fished a business card from his jacket pocket, slightly crumpled from the drive over. "My direct number. Call me anytime. Day or night."
He handed it over, and Ethan tucked it into his back pocket.
Ryan grabbed his camera bag, shook Frank's hand with considerably more vigor than the situation technically required, and headed for the factory door. He was halfway through it when he stopped and turned back.
"Mr. Mercer. One more thing."
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
"When those reporters at my station see this footage — the same ones who refused to come today, the ones who laughed when they heard your name — I want you to know that I plan to enjoy every single second of their faces."
The factory door closed behind him.
Ryan Calloway drove back to Ashford City at fifteen over the speed limit, camera bag on the passenger seat, and for the first time in eight years, the fire in his chest burned so bright it hurt.
For every 500 Powerstones a bonus chapter.