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Adrian Voss studied the boy through the car window the way a jeweler studies an uncut stone.
Unremarkable. That was the word. If this kid walked past him on the street, Adrian wouldn't have slowed down. Thin, tired, rumpled clothes, the kind of face you'd forget before the next traffic light.
But the thing this unremarkable kid had built was sitting in a military testing facility behind two hundred armed soldiers and a maximum security perimeter. And that made him the most valuable person Adrian Voss had ever laid eyes on.
He didn't get out of the car. That was deliberate. Over the years, Adrian had recruited dozens of brilliant people. Engineers. Designers. Researchers with patents worth millions. He'd learned their psychology the way a hunter learns the behavior of prey.
Brilliant people were proud. The younger they were, the prouder they burned. And pride, if you didn't break it early, turned a useful asset into a liability. The trick was to establish the hierarchy from the first interaction. You didn't come to them. They came to you.
He rolled down the window.
Ethan, meanwhile, had been standing on the roadside wondering if he was going to have to walk ten miles home in the dark. The luxury sedan had been creeping alongside him for the last thirty seconds, matching his pace, which was either a ride offer or something significantly more concerning.
When the window came down, the face behind it was the one he'd never seen before: silver temples, sharp jawline, clothes that whispered wealth. The man's expression was pleasant. His eyes were calculating.
"Ethan Mercer?"
Two words. And Ethan could already feel it — that specific brand of arrogance that came from people who'd spent too long being the most powerful person in every room they entered. He'd felt it from Thornton. From Greer. From every rich kid at Ashford Prep who'd looked at his secondhand shoes and decided his opinion didn't count.
"What do you want?"
The bluntness didn't bother Adrian. He'd expected it. Geniuses who'd just been validated by the government tended to have inflated senses of their own leverage.
"Allow me to introduce myself. Adrian Voss. Voss Industries."
He let the name land. Watched for the reaction.
And got one. Ethan's eyes narrowed slightly. He hadn't followed the defense industry closely before, but the name "Voss Industries" had enough media coverage to register. Mixed reviews. Aggressive growth. Connections in places that made people uncomfortable.
But recognizing the name and being impressed by it were different things.
"Never heard of you," Ethan said flatly. "Whatever you're selling, make it quick."
A flash of irritation crossed Adrian's face, there and gone in less than a second. He'd held boardrooms full of executives in the palm of his hand. He'd negotiated with generals and ministers and men whose signatures moved billions. And this kid was telling him to hurry up.
He swallowed it. The technology was worth swallowing a lot more than wounded pride.
"I'll be direct. I want to invite you to join Voss Industries. Full corporate backing. Lab access. Funding. Legal protection. Everything you need to develop your work at scale."
He paused, letting the offer breathe.
"At the same time, I'm prepared to purchase the technology and patent rights for your reactor. Five million marks."
Silence.
Adrian watched Ethan's face for the reaction he expected: the widening eyes, the quick breath, the mental calculation of a teenager who'd never seen that kind of money trying to process the number.
Instead, Ethan almost laughed.
Five million marks. The exact amount it had cost to build the reactor. This man was offering to buy the most revolutionary energy technology in human history for the price of its own R&D budget.
Forget the insult to his intelligence. Forget the arrogance. The math alone was so absurd it was almost funny. The patent rights for controllable nuclear fusion were worth — what? Five hundred million? Five billion? More? Countries would bid for this. Entire industries would restructure around it. And Adrian Voss was sitting in his luxury sedan offering pocket change with a straight face.
The man had done his research. He knew Ethan was an orphan. Knew he'd sold his parents' house. Knew his uncle had just been fired. He was betting that a broke teenager would hear "five million" and see a number too big to refuse.
He was wrong.
Ethan said nothing.
"Time is a factor, Ethan. I don't have the luxury of waiting for you to deliberate."
The urgency in Adrian's voice was subtle but detectable. Ethan caught it immediately. Adrian knew that once the verification results became public — once the government officially confirmed controllable fusion — the price of this technology would skyrocket beyond anything a private company could afford. He was trying to close the deal in the gap between the test and the announcement.
"Let me sweeten it." Adrian's voice shifted into the register of a man who'd done this before. "I'll personally add another two million. Seven million total. The contract is ready. Sign it tonight."
The driver produced a folder from the passenger seat. Contract. Pen. Pre-printed. Ready to go. As if the outcome had already been decided.
Ethan looked at the folder. Looked at Adrian. Looked at the sedan, the tinted windows, the military-prefix plates.
"Mr. Voss."
Adrian leaned forward slightly.
"I'm just a poor kid from Millbrook County. I really can't afford to associate with a company like yours."
The words were polite. The tone was ice.
"And a piece of advice: next time you try to buy something, be more sincere about it. Treating everyone else like a fool tends to backfire."
For three full seconds, Adrian Voss didn't move.
Then a vein surfaced on his forehead, visible even in the low light. The driver, who'd worked for Adrian for six years and had seen him negotiate with heads of state without breaking a sweat, felt the temperature in the car drop ten degrees.
In all those years, nobody had spoken to Adrian Voss like that. Not to his face.
Ethan turned and walked away.
He didn't look back. Not because he was making a statement. Because there was nothing left to say, and he was very, very hungry.
Behind him, Adrian watched the boy's retreating figure through the rear window.
The pleasant expression was gone. What remained was something colder. Something that had built Voss Industries from nothing and crushed every competitor who'd gotten in the way.
"In all these years," he said quietly, "no one has turned me down like that."
The driver kept his eyes on the road and said nothing.
"If he won't accept generosity, then he'll learn what the alternative looks like."
It was nearly midnight when Ethan crept through the Holloway front door.
The house was dark. Frank and Linda had long since gone to bed, and the last thing Ethan wanted was to wake them after the day they'd all had. He slipped off his shoes, padded down the hallway in socks, and made a beeline for the kitchen.
He hadn't eaten since a hurried breakfast that morning. His stomach had been making increasingly aggressive demands for the past four hours, and the fridge was calling his name with the force of a siren song.
He was elbow-deep in the refrigerator, pushing aside containers and peering at leftovers, when he noticed the dining table.
Three dishes. Rice. A thermos of soup. All of it still warm.
She reheated it. Multiple times. Waiting for me to come home.
"Eat your food and get to bed. Stop making noise in my kitchen."
Linda's voice drifted from the bedroom, muffled by a closed door and the specific tone of a woman who was pretending to be annoyed but had clearly been lying awake listening for the front door.
Ethan sat down and started eating. The food was perfect. Not restaurant-quality or fancy — just home cooking, the kind that tasted exactly the way it was supposed to taste because someone who cared about you had made it.
Between bites, he muttered to himself: "What's wrong with checking the fridge? Just wait. Couple more months and I'll buy you the biggest fridge they make. Fill it with whatever you want."
From behind the bedroom door: "I heard that! Make it two fridges! And a new stove!"
Ethan grinned and kept eating.
While the Holloway house settled into warmth and quiet, the military compound was anything but peaceful.
In the testing facility, the team of researchers was working through the night. The depleted reactor sat on a reinforced examination platform, surrounded by instruments, scanners, and scientists who hadn't slept since morning and had no intention of starting.
And they were stuck.
The device was a masterpiece of engineering — that much was obvious to anyone with the training to evaluate it. But the principles underlying its construction were unlike anything in their experience. Components that shouldn't function together did. Materials arranged in configurations that contradicted established theory produced results that established theory said were impossible.
It was as if someone had built a working machine using instructions from a textbook that didn't exist in any library on the planet.
Because that was exactly what had happened.
Even Dr. Hargrove, who'd spent the evening examining the reactor alongside the research team, eventually set down his instruments and admitted that the theoretical framework was beyond his ability to decode without additional context. The device worked. He could verify that. But why it worked, and how the underlying science differed from everything his world understood about nuclear physics — that was a puzzle that would take years to even properly frame, let alone solve.
Into this atmosphere of frustrated brilliance, Dominic Voss made his move.
He'd been hovering at the edges of the research group all evening, contributing just enough technical commentary to justify his presence, observing the growing frustration with the careful patience of a man waiting for the right moment to spring a trap.
When the fourth hour passed without a breakthrough, he stepped forward.
"I understand the difficulty," he said, his voice pitched perfectly between sympathy and authority. "This facility was designed for equipment testing, not deep research. The instrumentation here simply isn't designed for the kind of analysis this device requires."
He paused, letting the researchers feel the truth of that statement.
"Voss Industries, on the other hand, has dedicated nuclear research facilities. Advanced spectrometric equipment. Computational resources specifically designed for this kind of work. If the reactor were transferred to our labs, I believe we could make significantly more progress."
The researchers exchanged glances. Nobody objected. The man was right — the military testing ground was equipped for stress-testing engines, not reverse-engineering alien physics.
But nobody agreed, either. Transferring a device of this strategic importance without proper authorization was the kind of decision that ended careers.
Dominic read the hesitation perfectly.
"I understand the concern. Without authorization, a transfer of this magnitude would be unthinkable."
He produced his phone and showed them a screen.
"Which is why my brother contacted the relevant authorities tonight. We've obtained a transfer permit signed by Vice Minister Conrad Whitfield of the Ministry of Science and Technology."
The name landed with weight. Conrad Whitfield was a senior official — high enough to authorize exactly this kind of transfer, and connected enough that questioning his decisions was a career risk most people wouldn't take.
"With this authorization, the transfer falls entirely within proper channels. None of you will bear any responsibility. And if any of you are interested in participating in the decryption research, Voss Industries would be honored to have you."
He smiled. Warm. Collegial. The smile of a man who was absolutely certain that the trap had closed.
One by one, the researchers began to nod.
For every 500 Powerstones extra chapter.