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On the deck, the applause continued for a full three minutes.
"Well done!"
"Incredible work, young man!"
"Standing up to a superpower without flinching — this is the standard our generation should aspire to!"
Ethan lost count of how many times he said "thank you." Finally, the senior officers gave the order and the crew dispersed back to their stations, though several of them found excuses to walk past the Mark Two one more time on the way.
The officers themselves lingered, eyeing the battered armor with the particular hunger of military professionals who understood exactly what it represented. But they were field-grade officers — not senior enough to influence where the armor program went from here. The smart play was to leave a good impression on the kid who built it. His word carried more weight than anyone else's on the question of production and deployment.
Over Ethan's protests, they steered him into the captain's private lounge and told him to rest. There were still several hours before they reached port.
Not that Ethan needed the rest. Nearly ten hours of travel and combat would have destroyed a normal human, but the serum had rebuilt his stamina along with everything else. His body felt like it could go another ten.
His mind, though, had somewhere else to be.
He turned off the Signal Bee. Closed his eyes. And opened the System.
-----
The familiar interface materialized in his mind's eye.
*[Prestige: 498,390]*
(Note: Prestige increase is linked to the emotional responses of people in this world. Shock, admiration, hatred, awe — any strong emotion caused by the Host's actions generates Prestige.)
*[Items: None]*
*[Level 1 Mall] — UPGRADABLE (150,000 Prestige)*
- Small Nuclear Reactor Technology (Marvel Universe, Iron Man series) — 1,000 Prestige (Exchanged)
- Battle Armor Mark I Manufacturing Technology (First-generation Iron Man suit) — 10,000 Prestige (Exchanged)
- Battle Armor Mark II Manufacturing Technology (Second-generation suit; drawback: cannot perform high-altitude flight) — 20,000 Prestige (Exchanged)
- Battle Armor Mark III Manufacturing Technology (Third-generation suit; classic red and gold design; equipped with infrared lasers and miniature missiles; extremely strong combat power) — 50,000 Prestige (Exchanged)
- Super Soldier Serum (Captain America) — 100,000 Prestige (Exchanged)
Ethan stared at the number.
Four hundred ninety-eight thousand, three hundred and ninety.
He'd started the day at 79,900. The Aurelian Republic operation had generated over four hundred thousand Prestige in a single day.
Nearly half a million. From one afternoon of terrifying the entire planet.
The kid who hadn't flinched while surrounded by forty fighter jets felt his breathing quicken at a number on a screen.
I've completely turned my life around.
Tomorrow at breakfast, I'm ordering two bowls of congee. Eat one. Stare at the other. Just because I can.
He upgraded the mall without hesitation.
*[Mall upgrading. Time remaining: 8 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.]*
A countdown. Nine hours until Level 2 opened.
The Level 1 Mall had given him a fusion reactor, three generations of Iron Man armor, and Captain America's Super Soldier Serum. Five items that had allowed a seventeen-year-old from Millbrook County to challenge a superpower and win.
What would Level 2 contain?
The question was a physical itch. The more he thought about it, the worse it got. Speculation was useless without data, and the countdown wasn't going to move faster because he was excited.
He flopped onto the captain's bunk and closed his eyes.
Sleep was always the best cure for an agonizing wait.
-----
He woke two hours later. The warship had entered port.
Two hours of sleep after a day like today should have left him groggy and disoriented. Instead, he felt sharp. Alert. Fully recharged. The serum's recovery enhancement applied to rest as efficiently as it applied to everything else.
He said his goodbyes to the crew, stepped off the gangway, and set foot on Valorian soil.
Half a day. He'd been gone for half a day. But the ground beneath his feet felt different from when he'd left. Warmer. More solid. The particular warmth of a place that was yours, not because you owned it, but because it owned you.
Outside the port gate, a Bureau car was waiting.
The driver's window was down. Behind the wheel sat Director Nathan Graves.
Ethan stopped walking.
"Director Graves, what are you — this is too much. You didn't need to come personally."
Graves looked at him through the window with an expression that communicated nothing and everything.
"Stop talking and get in the car."
Ethan got in the car.
The drive from the military port to Ashford City was roughly three hundred kilometers. Graves drove at a steady pace, not fast, not slow, the kind of driving that suggested a man who wanted the journey to take exactly as long as it needed to.
They didn't talk.
Ethan had met Graves three times, including today. They didn't have the kind of relationship that produced easy conversation. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who understood each other well enough to not need words, and not well enough to know which words to use.
The sky darkened as they drove. City lights appeared. Ashford City materialized from the highway like a photograph developing.
Graves pulled up outside Ethan's neighborhood. The engine idled.
Ethan opened the door, then paused.
"Director Graves, it's late. Why don't you come in and rest? You can head back in the morning."
Graves didn't answer immediately. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. The match flared orange in the dark car.
He shook his head.
Ethan felt the awkwardness of a conversation that wasn't quite happening. He was about to say goodbye when Graves exhaled a stream of smoke and spoke.
"Thank you."
Two words. Quiet. Not loud enough to carry beyond the car.
Ethan understood what they meant. Not "thank you for coming home." Not "thank you for the technology." Something more specific and more personal.
Thank you for not dying. Thank you for not making my failure permanent. Thank you for coming back so I don't have to live with losing you.
Before Ethan could formulate a response — something gracious, something that acknowledged the weight behind those two words — Graves rolled up the window and pulled away from the curb with the decisive speed of a man who had used up his entire emotional vocabulary for the year and needed to leave before the deficit became visible.
Ethan stood alone on the sidewalk, watching the taillights shrink.
He'd never seen someone say "thank you" that aggressively.
-----
Less than two hours remained on the Level 2 Mall countdown.
Ethan wanted to go home and wait. But he had a stop to make first.
Frank and Linda's apartment was a fifteen-minute walk. He didn't bother knocking. He had a key, and the Holloway household had stopped treating locked doors as a meaningful barrier years ago.
"I'm starving! What's for dinner?"
The sound of his voice brought Frank and Linda out of the back room at a speed that suggested they'd been sitting in there specifically waiting to hear it.
Frank looked at Ethan. Assessed. Confirmed: alive, standing, intact. His expression settled into something that was mostly relief and partly the residual fury of a man who'd spent weeks as a hostage because his nephew couldn't leave well enough alone.
He was okay.
Linda was not okay. The tears started before she reached the hallway and didn't stop when she got to the living room.
"Useless," Frank muttered, watching his wife cry. "What are you crying for? The brat's back, isn't he?"
Linda turned on him with the precision of a woman who had spent decades perfecting the art of exposing her husband's hypocrisy.
"I'M useless? I wonder who spent the entire day watching the live broadcast with hands shaking so badly he couldn't hold his tea?"
"If this kid hadn't come back, I would have checked you into the hospital as a Parkinson's patient."
"Woman, I was NOT shaking—"
"You spilled three cups of tea! On the CARPET! The stains are still there!"
Ethan watched them bicker and felt the warmth settle into his chest like sunlight filling a room.
He'd lost his parents at four years old. Everything he had — every meal, every scolding, every awkward expression of love disguised as criticism — had come from these two people. They'd raised him as their own son, and he regarded them as his second parents.
Ethan's personality ran toward casual indifference. He joked through crises, deflected compliments, and treated most things in life as problems to be solved rather than emotions to be felt.
But Frank and Linda were different. They were the line.
Anyone who crossed it — who touched these two people, who threatened them, who used them as leverage — would discover that Ethan Mercer's casual indifference had a limit, and beyond that limit was something that didn't negotiate, didn't forgive, and didn't stop.
Edgar and Conrad Whitfield had discovered this.
Their necks could confirm.
-----
Linda fed him. Three dishes, a soup, and rice that had been kept warm for hours because she'd known he would come here before going home. He ate everything and asked for seconds.
After dinner, with the Level 2 Mall countdown ticking toward zero, Ethan didn't linger. He hugged Linda (who cried again), clapped Frank on the shoulder (who grunted), and headed home.
The night air was cool. Ashford City was quiet. The streetlights cast familiar patterns on familiar sidewalks.
Ethan walked home with his hands in his pockets and a countdown running in his head.
Less than an hour until Level 2.
Whatever came next, he was ready.