For advance chapters /patreon.com/HandsomeDuckGod
A week after the verification, the noise finally began to settle.
The headlines moved on. The comment sections cooled. The name "Ethan Mercer" faded from the trending lists and settled into the background hum of public memory, the way all stories eventually do when there's no new fuel to burn.
Ethan was fine with that. Silence meant space, and space meant he could start work on the armor without the entire country watching.
He'd spent the week planning. Sourcing. Running calculations. The Mark III was exponentially more complex than the reactor, and the materials list alone was daunting. Rare alloys. Precision machining equipment. Micro-fabrication tools. A biomechanics laboratory with human kinetics testing capabilities. None of it was cheap, and most of it wasn't available through commercial channels.
He was deep in a procurement spreadsheet when the news broke.
Voss Industries held a press conference.
Not a quiet corporate briefing. A full-scale, nationally televised event with a notarized legal framework, a battery of lawyers, and every major media outlet in the Republic invited to attend.
Adrian Voss stood at the podium in a charcoal suit, and his face wore an expression of carefully manufactured grief.
"Members of the press, on behalf of Voss Industries, I must begin with an apology to the public."
He paused. Let the cameras find their angles.
"Due to an internal security failure, classified nuclear fusion research that our company had been developing for nearly a decade was leaked. A prototype, the product of years of investment and the work of dozens of our top researchers, was stolen from our facilities."
Another pause. Longer. The reporters leaned in.
"We have identified the individual responsible for this theft. The technology that has been publicly attributed to a young man named Ethan Mercer is, in fact, the proprietary intellectual property of Voss Industries."
He produced a binder. Thick. Leather-bound. Official seals.
"This documentation proves that our research into controllable nuclear fusion began over ten years ago. Internal project records. Patent filings. Laboratory logs. All notarized, all time-stamped, all verifiable."
He set the binder on the podium and looked directly into the nearest camera.
"We bear no ill will toward Mr. Mercer. It is possible that he was an unwitting participant in this theft. But the facts are clear: the technology is ours. And we will pursue every legal avenue to reclaim what belongs to us."
He bowed.
The Republic of Valoria lost its collective mind.
Within hours, the name "Ethan Mercer" was back at the top of every trending list, and the tone had flipped like a light switch.
"I KNEW IT. There's no way a teenager invented fusion. Voss Industries has been in nuclear research for years. This makes so much more sense."
"Plagiarist. Thief. Fraud. This kid fooled the entire country."
"Remember when everyone was praising him? Turns out we were celebrating stolen goods."
"This is beyond embarrassing. He completely disgraced Ashford City. Get him out."
"Wait, doesn't Voss Industries have some questionable history with patent acquisitions? Maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions."
That last comment was buried under five hundred replies calling the poster naive.
Adrian Voss, watching the coverage from his office, allowed himself a thin smile.
The "evidence" was fabricated. Every page of it. Backdated project records, falsified laboratory logs, patent filings submitted through shell companies and postdated to create the illusion of a decade-long research program. The entire binder was a masterpiece of corporate fraud, assembled in seventy-two hours by a team of lawyers and document specialists who understood that the public doesn't verify evidence. The public reads headlines.
And the headlines all said the same thing: VOSS INDUSTRIES ACCUSES TEEN GENIUS OF PLAGIARISM.
By the time anyone actually examined the documentation, it wouldn't matter. Public opinion would have already hardened. And a seventeen-year-old orphan arguing against a billion-mark defense contractor in the court of public opinion was bringing a knife to a gunfight.
The first casualty was Frank Holloway.
Less than a week after being reinstated as principal of Third Middle School, Frank was summoned to the Education Bureau for the third time in as many months. The meeting lasted twelve minutes. The officials were sympathetic but firm: given the "new developments" surrounding his nephew, the Bureau felt it was "prudent" to temporarily suspend his appointment pending "further review."
Frank walked out of the Bureau building with his jaw set and his fists in his pockets. He didn't spit at the door this time. He was saving his energy.
When he got home and dropped onto the couch with a grunt of disgust, Ethan was already sitting across from him.
"How many times is this now?" Ethan asked.
"Three. I'm starting to think they have a revolving door installed just for me."
He loosened his tie with the resignation of a man who'd stopped being surprised by institutional cowardice.
"Don't worry about it, kid. I know the truth. And when those snakes come crawling back to offer me the job for the fourth time, I'm going to make them grovel."
Ethan opened his mouth to apologize, to say something about how this was his fault, and Frank cut him off with a look.
"Don't. You built a fusion reactor. I got temporarily suspended from a middle school. One of those things matters, and it isn't mine."
Before Ethan could respond, his phone rang.
The caller ID made him sit up straight.
"Elder He?"
"THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!"
The volume coming through the speaker was sufficient to make Frank flinch from across the room. Ethan pulled the phone three inches from his ear.
"I have NEVER seen such shameless, brazen, unconscionable—"
"Dr. Hargrove, please calm—"
"CALM? You want me to be CALM?"
The ninety-one-year-old physicist was in a state of fury that would have alarmed his cardiologist. His voice shook not from age but from the kind of righteous anger that only a lifetime of scientific integrity could produce.
"I sat in a car with you for two hours. I listened to you explain concepts that I, after seventy years in physics, had never encountered. I watched you power military equipment that would strain a conventional reactor. And now this... this company has the audacity to claim your work is theirs?"
He took a breath that sounded like it physically hurt.
"If I had known this would happen, I would never have allowed that snake Dominic to take the reactor remnants from the testing facility. Not if they'd brought a signed order from the Chancellor himself."
Ethan waited for the storm to pass. It took a while.
"Dr. Hargrove, I appreciate your anger more than I can say. But I need you to listen to me."
"I'm listening."
"Your status is sensitive. You hold no official government post, which means any direct intervention on my behalf could be framed as overreach. The Whitfield family and the Voss brothers would love nothing more than to drag you into a public confrontation where your credibility becomes the issue instead of their fraud."
Silence on the other end. The kind of silence that comes from a very intelligent man recognizing that a seventeen-year-old had just made a political calculation he hadn't considered.
"You're right," Hargrove said, quieter now. "Damn it, you're right."
"But if you genuinely want to help me, there is something I need."
"Name it."
"Funding. Thirty million marks, to start. And purchasing access for certain restricted rare metals. I'll send you a detailed list."
Hargrove grunted. "What else?"
"I've heard you have a biomechanics and human kinetics laboratory under your personal authority. The most advanced in the Republic. I need exclusive access to that facility and its equipment for a minimum of three months."
The line went quiet. Then:
"Kid. Are you trying to rob me?"
"Dr. Hargrove, your contribution to this nation is priceless. How could I possibly be robbing you?"
"By asking for thirty million marks and my best laboratory, apparently."
Ethan heard a rustling sound that might have been Hargrove rubbing his temples.
"What do you need all this for? These materials, the biomechanics equipment — this isn't for another reactor. What are you building?"
Ethan weighed his words.
"The reactor was a stepping stone, Dr. Hargrove. A power source. What I'm building next is what the power source was always meant to fuel."
A long pause.
"You're telling me that the technology which has caused a national crisis and an international incident was just the warm-up act?"
"Yes."
Hargrove was silent for so long that Ethan checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped.
"Fifty million," the old man finally said.
"What?"
"You asked for thirty. I'm giving you fifty. Experiments fail. Materials get wasted. Prototypes break. Fifty million gives you room to fail and try again."
Ethan's throat tightened.
He'd braced himself for rejection. He'd prepared arguments, justifications, cost breakdowns, return-on-investment projections. He'd been ready to negotiate for weeks.
And this ninety-one-year-old man, whom Ethan had known for less than a month, had heard the request, doubled it without being asked, and committed everything on the strength of a single conversation.
"I'll send you the laboratory address tonight," Hargrove continued. "Starting tomorrow, it's yours. Exclusively. Three months. I'll have the staff reassigned and the security clearance updated by morning."
"The rare metals procurement will take longer, but I have channels that the Ministry doesn't monitor. Give me your list and I'll start immediately."
"Dr. Hargrove—"
"And one more thing."
The old man's voice carried something new. Not anger. Not worry. Anticipation.
"Whatever you're building, I expect it to be something that makes this old man's jaw drop. I haven't been genuinely surprised in twenty years. Don't disappoint me."
Ethan swallowed hard.
"I won't, Dr. Hargrove. I promise."
Hargrove paused, and his voice softened.
"Are you sure you don't want me to intervene with the Voss situation? I have enough influence to—"
"I'm sure." Ethan's voice was steady. "I'll take back what they stole. With my own hands. In my own time."
"They ruined my reputation once before, and I came back stronger. They're trying it again, and the result will be the same. Except this time, when I'm finished, the Voss brothers are going to pay a hundredfold."
After they hung up, Ethan sat in the quiet for a long time.
That night, Ethan sat at the kitchen table with his phone, his laptop, and a cup of tea that had gone cold two hours ago.
In front of him was the most ambitious materials list he'd ever compiled. Titanium-gold alloys. Palladium micro-lattice components. Neodymium magnets rated for extreme thermal loads. Ceramic-polymer composites that could withstand supersonic aerodynamic stress. Fiber-optic sensor arrays. Neural interface components.
Everything needed to build the Mark III Iron Man armor.
Behind him, the television murmured with coverage of the Voss Industries press conference. Pundits debating whether Ethan Mercer was a genius or a fraud. Comment tickers scrolling with opinions from people who'd never built anything more complex than a bookshelf.
Ethan didn't look at the screen.
Three months. Fifty million marks. The most advanced biomechanics lab in the Republic.
The Voss brothers wanted to play? Fine.
In three months, Ethan Mercer was going to give them something to talk about.