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The Crown Imperial Hotel was the kind of establishment where the lobby alone cost more than most people's annual salary.
Crystal chandeliers. Marble floors polished to a mirror finish. Staff who moved with the quiet efficiency of people trained to be invisible. On any given evening, the guest list read like a directory of the Republic's most powerful families.
Today, the hotel's Grand Conference Hall had been transformed into the most anticipated media event of the year.
Reporters began arriving before sunrise. Television crews from every major network in Valoria staked out positions in the front rows. Independent journalists and online creators who'd driven through the night fought for the remaining seats. Camera operators jockeyed for sightlines. Sound technicians tested equipment. By eight in the morning, the hall was standing room only, and a line of people who hadn't gotten in stretched down the corridor and out the hotel's front entrance.
Everyone understood the math. Whatever happened today would dominate every news cycle, every comment section, every dinner table conversation in the Republic for weeks. Careers would be built on the coverage. The reporters who got the best footage, the sharpest quotes, the most dramatic angles would ride this story into the kind of visibility that transformed nobodies into household names.
The stakes drew them like moths to a spotlight.
Behind the stage, Adrian Voss surveyed the chaos with the satisfied expression of a conductor watching his orchestra tune up.
This was his production. Every element had been orchestrated. The venue (prestigious, expensive, signaling corporate gravitas). The timing (maximum media attendance). The seating arrangement (Voss Industries executives front and center, projecting institutional authority). The press materials (professionally bound, embossed with the company logo, distributed to every journalist in the room).
The spectacle wasn't just for show. Adrian had a specific strategic purpose: public opinion as a shield.
He knew the Bureau of Internal Affairs had been circling. He knew Director Graves had evidence of the fabricated press conference. He knew that the thread connecting Voss Industries to the Whitfield family was fraying.
But none of that mattered if the public believed the technology belonged to Voss Industries. Public belief was its own kind of armor. Even the Bureau couldn't move against a company that the entire nation considered the rightful inventor of controllable fusion. Not without massive political backlash.
Today's meeting was designed to cement that belief. One final, spectacular performance in front of every camera in the Republic.
All Adrian needed was for Ethan Mercer to walk through those doors, face the wall of evidence, crumble under the pressure, and either confess or fall apart. Either outcome worked.
He stepped onto the stage, adjusted his lapel mic, and began working the crowd. Handshakes. Smiles. The practiced warmth of a man who'd been performing confidence for twenty years.
Halfway across the capital, in an unmarked sedan parked three blocks from the hotel, a Bureau operative spoke into a secure phone.
"Director Graves. We're in position. Six agents inside the venue, four on the perimeter. We've identified the Aurelian assets."
"How many?" Graves's voice was clipped. Focused.
"Three confirmed. Two posing as foreign correspondents with legitimate press credentials. One embedded in a domestic camera crew. We've flagged their communications equipment. Old-model encrypted phones, the kind designed to bypass our standard signal monitoring."
"Don't engage. Observe only. I want to know who they contact and when."
"Understood. Sir, there's another concern. Mercer hasn't arrived. The lab reported he left the facility approximately forty minutes ago, but the drive from the lab to the Crown Imperial is at least thirty minutes. He's cutting it extremely close."
Graves was quiet for a moment. "He'll be there."
"And if he isn't?"
"Then we have a much bigger problem than a missed press conference."
Inside the hotel, the Bureau agents who'd infiltrated as journalists exchanged uneasy glances across the crowded room. Thirty minutes until the meeting officially started, and no sign of the kid.
The Aurelian operatives were easier to spot than they thought they were. Two men in the press section, overdressed for journalists, checking their phones too frequently. A woman near the back of the room whose camera equipment was conspicuously professional but whose press credentials came from an outlet that had been flagged as a front six months ago.
Defense Secretary Callister, sitting in his office across the ocean, received the agents' status report, glanced at it, and returned to the trade negotiation briefing on his desk. The fusion situation was still, in his assessment, most likely a Valorian disinformation campaign. He'd assigned assets to cover the verification meeting as a precaution, not because he expected anything to come of it.
If he'd known what was about to happen, he would have cleared his entire afternoon.
On the clock above the stage, the minute hand crept forward.
Twenty-five minutes to start time. Then twenty. Then fifteen.
The murmur in the crowd was shifting. Curiosity was giving way to impatience, and impatience was giving way to something nastier.
"Is Mercer seriously going to be late to his own verification meeting?"
"Late? I think the word you're looking for is 'absent.' The kid's not coming."
"Can you blame him? If I'd plagiarized a billion-mark defense contractor, I wouldn't show my face either."
Adrian Voss, standing at the edge of the stage, felt a cold spike of anxiety beneath his composure.
He wouldn't actually bail. Would he?
The entire plan depended on Mercer being here. In this room. In front of these cameras. Where the pressure of a thousand watching eyes and Adrian's mountain of fabricated evidence would crush whatever fight the kid had left.
If Mercer didn't show, the plagiarism narrative held by default. But Adrian would lose his only chance to get close to the kid with the Bureau watching. This meeting was supposed to be the final play. Corner Mercer publicly, demonstrate the "evidence" one more time, and then approach him privately afterward with a new offer. One the kid couldn't refuse, because by then his reputation would be in ashes and his options would be zero.
But if Mercer wasn't here, none of that happened.
Ten minutes.
The reporters were getting restless. A few had started filing preliminary stories with headlines like "MERCER NO-SHOW AT VERIFICATION MEETING" and "TEEN INVENTOR FAILS TO APPEAR."
Five minutes.
Adrian's jaw tightened. He turned to his brother, who was standing in the wings with a tablet and an expression of studied calm.
"Where is he?"
Dominic checked his phone. "Our contact at the lab says he left over an hour ago. No word since."
"An hour? The drive is thirty minutes."
"I'm aware."
At Ashford Preparatory Academy, the entire school was gathered in the auditorium.
Principal Davenport had organized the viewing with the enthusiasm of a man who'd found a life raft. Every screen in the building was tuned to the live broadcast. Students sat in rows, teachers lined the walls, and Davenport himself stood near the front with a microphone, ready to provide commentary.
When the clock ticked past the scheduled start time with no sign of Ethan, Gerald Thornton practically levitated out of his seat.
"There it is!" He grabbed the nearest microphone, his voice ringing through the auditorium with the desperate energy of a man who'd been drowning for months and had just spotted land. "I told you! I told all of you! This Mercer kid is nothing but a fraud!"
He was pacing now, feeding off the attention.
"You all saw the apology I was forced to make. The humiliation I endured because of this boy. And now? Now the truth comes out! He doesn't dare show his face because he knows he's guilty!"
"Expelling him was the best decision this school ever made. I said it then and I'm saying it now. This is what happens when you let sentiment override judgment!"
The students watched with a mix of contempt and unease. A few nodded along. Others looked less certain.
"He really isn't coming, is he? I guess he was a fraud all along."
"Called it. A scholarship kid from Millbrook County doesn't just invent nuclear fusion. That's not how the world works."
"An orphan with no connections and no moral compass. What did anyone expect?"
At her desk in the physics office, Dr. Helen Archer watched the broadcast on her phone with an expression that gave nothing away.
She didn't join the commentary. She didn't agree or disagree with the students' verdicts. She just watched, and waited, because she'd stood in a testing ground once and watched a boy solve a problem three different ways from memory, and the woman who'd witnessed that wasn't going to write him off because of a clock.
At the Holloway house, the television was on and the anxiety was thick enough to slice.
"Where IS he?" Linda was on her feet, pacing between the TV and the kitchen, unable to sit still. "Is he stuck in traffic? Call him!"
Frank, sitting in his armchair with his arms crossed, shook his head. "Calling him now just adds pressure. Leave the boy alone."
Natalie, home for a break, seized the moment.
"Traffic? Mom, you can't seriously still believe in this guy. He's obviously a fraud. He scammed our family, he scammed Dr. Hargrove, and now he's too scared to show up."
"I said from the beginning that he was no good, but Dad just had to play hero—"
"Shut your mouth, Natalie."
Linda's voice was sharp enough to stop Natalie mid-sentence.
"Can't you ever, once, root for him instead of against him?"
Natalie fell silent, stung.
In his armchair, Frank said nothing. His eyes were on the screen, and his expression was unreadable.
But Frank Holloway had raised this kid for thirteen years. He'd watched him endure two years of hell at Ashford Prep without breaking. He'd watched him build a fusion reactor in a rented factory with five million marks and no margin for error. He'd watched him stare down a general and a billionaire and a ninety-one-year-old legend without flinching.
If the boy wasn't here yet, it wasn't because he was scared.
That rascal is planning something.
Inside the Grand Conference Hall, the clock hit zero.
The scheduled start time arrived, passed, and kept going. One minute late. Two. Five.
The crowd was buzzing now. Reporters were filing "no-show" stories in real time. Social media was exploding with mockery and vindication. The comments sections across the Republic were writing Ethan Mercer's obituary.
Adrian Voss stood at the podium, microphone in hand, and made the calculation.
If Mercer wasn't coming, there was no point waiting. Better to capitalize on the absence. Declare victory by default. Let the cameras capture the empty chair where the "inventor" should have been sitting, and let the image do the work.
He was reaching for the microphone to begin his opening statement when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Not a text. A call. And when he glanced at the screen, the number stopped him cold.
Ethan Mercer.
Adrian stared at the name for two rings. Then he answered, still on stage, still in front of every camera in the Republic.
The room went quiet.
Plz Throw Powerstones.