For the next several days, Ethan stayed home and waited.
There was nothing else to do. The reactor was built. The footage was live. The next move belonged to the world, and the world was taking its time deciding what to think.
He scrolled through the comments on his phone every few hours. Not because he needed validation, but because the comment sections were, in their own way, a barometer. The ratio of believers to skeptics. The tone of the skepticism. Whether the arguments against him were getting smarter or dumber.
Mostly dumber.
"A high school dropout claiming he invented nuclear fusion. Sure. And I'm the President of Valoria."
"People will do literally anything for views these days. This kid needs a psych evaluation."
"Okay but has anyone actually explained how ten generators ran for an hour off that thing? Because I've watched the video six times and the output data looks real."
"To the person above: search 'Ethan Mercer Ashford Prep.' This is the same kid who got expelled for being a terrible student. Does that sound like someone who cracked fusion?"
"Don't drag Ashford City into this. I'm from Ashford, and this guy has completely embarrassed our hometown."
"For someone who dares to desecrate science like this, the government should step in. @Ministry of Science and Technology"
Ethan read that last one and smiled.
Yes. Please. Tag them. Tag everyone.
At Ashford Preparatory Academy, Gerald Thornton sat in his office with a cup of tea and a sense of deep, personal satisfaction.
The video had been all over his feed for days. He'd watched it once, laughed, and moved on. A "press conference" in a warehouse. A glowing disc on a table. Claims about fusion technology from a kid who couldn't pass a physics exam without cheating.
It was pathetic. And it was perfect.
The heat from the commendation assembly had been fading. Thornton had been quietly worrying about that. The public had a short memory, and if Mercer disappeared from the conversation entirely, people might start asking uncomfortable questions about why a Grade Director had used a televised assembly to publicly humiliate a former student.
But now? Mercer had done the work himself. The viral video had reignited every negative story, every damning headline, every comment calling him a fraud and a disgrace. The narrative was reinforced without Thornton lifting a finger.
"Director Thornton, have you seen that video everyone's been talking about?"
A colleague leaned into his doorway with a smirk.
Thornton arranged his features into something resembling concern. "You mean student Mercer's video? I have to admit, I didn't realize the boy had such a talent for self-promotion."
The colleague scoffed. "Talent? More like shamelessness. Claiming to have cracked nuclear fusion at seventeen. The scientific community must be loving that."
"It's a good thing you removed him when you did, Director. Imagine if he'd pulled this stunt while still enrolled. The school would be a laughingstock."
Thornton sipped his tea. "Let's not be too harsh. Although Mercer has left us, we did share a school for two years. I still hope he finds his way to a better path."
"Director Thornton, you really are too kind."
"That's why the leadership values you. I wouldn't be surprised if we're calling you Vice Principal before the year is out."
The flattery washed over Thornton like warm water, and he let it.
Three classrooms down, Megan Pryce slid into the seat next to Sophia Langford during the break between periods.
"Sophia, have you seen the video? The one everyone's been sharing?"
Before Sophia could answer, a voice cut in from the row behind them.
"How could anyone miss it? That's our very own Ashford Prep alumnus, the inventor of the 'small nuclear reactor.'"
Brandon Carlisle. Class monitor. Son of one of the largest business families in Ashford City. He delivered the line with the specific brand of sarcasm that rich kids use when they want to sound witty but only manage to sound mean.
Megan's expression soured. She knew Brandon had been circling Sophia for months. He was persistent, well-funded, and just charming enough to avoid being openly annoying. But his habit of tearing down other people to make himself look better turned her stomach.
Brandon, oblivious to the reaction, struck what he clearly believed was a casual, confident pose against the desk behind him.
"Honestly, thinking about how I once attended the same school as someone that delusional makes me physically ill."
He turned to Sophia, and his voice softened into something he probably thought was sympathetic.
"It must be rough for you, Sophia. Having people constantly bring up the fact that you knew this guy in middle school. But hey, at least he's gone now. Silver linings."
Sophia looked at him. Her face gave nothing away.
Brandon Carlisle was, by objective metrics, a strong option. His family's company was one of the top five in Ashford City. His grades were high, propped up by an army of private tutors and test prep services. His face was fine. Not exciting, but fine.
Among the rotating cast of boys who competed for her attention, he was near the top of the list. Which meant she couldn't afford to be cold.
"It's fine, Brandon. Ethan and I went to the same middle school, but we barely knew each other. We crossed paths a few times. That's all."
Brandon's face lit up. "Good. Don't let someone like that affect your mood."
"By the way, my family's garden just got a new shipment of imported orchids. I know you love flowers, so maybe this Sunday we could—"
But Sophia wasn't listening.
Her mind had snagged on the video. Not the science, not the generators, not the claims about fusion. She didn't care about any of that. What she was thinking about was simpler and colder:
Ethan, I don't know why someone as smart as you would pull a stunt like this.
If you think you can prove yourself through some viral video and make me regret leaving, you've only proven that I was right to go.
You should know your place by now. Let go of the fantasies. That's the best thing you can do for yourself.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and turned back to Brandon with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
Eight hundred miles east, in the capital city of the Republic of Valoria, a convoy of black sedans pulled through the gates of a residential compound that didn't appear on any public map.
The compound was old. Built in the decades after Valoria's founding, when the republic was still finding its footing and the scientists who'd built its nuclear program were national treasures in the most literal sense. The buildings were weathered, the electrical wiring was ancient, and the roads were cracked in places that maintenance crews patched every spring and nature cracked again every winter.
But every corner of the compound was patrolled by armed soldiers. The security was tighter than anything in the civilian world. Because every person who lived behind these walls had, at some point in their lives, done something that changed the trajectory of an entire nation.
Inside one of the residences, a group of officials from the Valorian Ministry of Science and Technology stood in a cramped living room, trying not to fidget while an old man watched a video on a tablet.
Dr. Edmund Hargrove was ninety-one years old.
In the early days of the republic, when Valoria was isolated, sanctioned, and decades behind the world's leading powers, Edmund Hargrove had been one of the men who closed the gap. Working with pencil stubs and scrap paper in underground laboratories, he and a handful of colleagues had broken through technological blockades that the rest of the world thought would keep Valoria contained for generations.
He was, by any reasonable measure, a living legend. The kind of scientist whose name appeared in textbooks and whose face appeared on commemorative stamps.
Right now, that face was very still.
"Dr. Hargrove." The lead official spoke carefully. He was a capable man in his fifties who'd spent decades in the Ministry and had long ago mastered the art of hiding his emotions. But standing in front of Hargrove, he couldn't quite suppress the reverence. "Can you identify anything wrong with the footage? Any sign of fabrication?"
Hargrove didn't answer immediately.
He rewound the video. Watched the same thirty-second segment again. Then a third time. His eyes tracked the reactor's glow, the generator displays, the steady climb of the output numbers.
His breathing had changed. The officials noticed.
In a lifetime spent in physics, Edmund Hargrove had seen things that most people would never believe. He'd witnessed controlled nuclear reactions in classified facilities. He'd been present at tests that reshaped global power dynamics. He'd spent seventy years building an intuition for what was real and what was theater.
And he could not find a single flaw in this video.
That was the problem.
If it had been obviously fake, he'd have said so in thirty seconds and gone back to his afternoon tea. If it had been cleverly fake, he'd have found the seams within a few minutes. He always did.
But this footage had no seams. The reactor's glow, the energy output data, the behavior of the generators under sustained load, the characteristics of the light itself. Everything was consistent with genuine nuclear fusion.
And Hargrove knew what genuine nuclear fusion looked like. He was one of maybe twenty people on the planet who did.
Three years ago, he and a small group of Valorian scientists had been quietly invited to the Meridian Commonwealth to observe an experimental fusion reaction. The reaction had been uncontrolled, wildly inefficient, and ultimately impractical. But it had been real. And the color of the energy release, the specific wavelength of light produced by hydrogen isotopes fusing under extreme conditions, had been burned into his memory.
The glow in this video was the same color.
Not similar. Not close. Identical.
The Meridian Commonwealth's experiment had been conducted in a facility the size of a football stadium, staffed by hundreds of researchers, funded by billions. And the result had been a brief, uncontrolled burst that proved the concept without solving the problem.
The device in this video was the size of a phone. It ran continuously. It powered ten industrial generators without fluctuation.
If it was real, it wasn't just an advancement. It was a leap of several decades. Maybe more.
"There are no signs of forgery," Hargrove said. His voice was quiet, and the room went absolutely still. "This young man likely possesses genuine nuclear fusion technology."
The lead official's composure cracked, just slightly. "Dr. Hargrove, with respect, he's a seventeen-year-old high school student. Is it possible he obtained classified experimental footage through some unauthorized channel and recreated the visuals?"
Hargrove looked at the man the way a professor looks at a student who's just asked a very stupid question.
"I've had this boy's background investigated since the video surfaced. Orphan. Raised by his uncle, a public school principal. No connections to any research institution, military program, or classified project. His highest-ranking relative held a position that wouldn't grant access to a municipal water treatment plant, let alone nuclear fusion research."
He paused.
"And even if he had somehow obtained classified footage, the light signature of a fusion reaction cannot be replicated with commercial equipment. The specific wavelength requires conditions that exist in exactly two places: inside a fusion reactor, and inside a star."
The official said nothing.
Hargrove set the tablet down on the coffee table and, slowly, pushed himself to his feet. The officials moved instinctively to help him. He waved them off.
"Book the travel arrangements. I'm going to Ashford City."
"Dr. Hargrove, we can send a verification team. There's no need for you to—"
"I'm going myself."
His voice left no room for discussion.
"I'm going to look this boy in the eye and determine whether I, Edmund Hargrove, have finally gone senile, or whether a seventeen-year-old has just changed the course of human civilization."
PLZ Throw Powerstones