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The kiss had not been technically accomplished.
The height difference between them was substantial, and it was Ethan's first attempt at anything of the kind, and the combination produced a result that fell some distance short of graceful. His mouth landed, in the end, against Yvette's upper lip rather than squarely where he had intended, and he registered, in the brief contact, the warmth of her and a faint trace of some clean floral scent.
In that half-second, Ethan was abruptly and intensely grateful that he had never picked up the habits of smoking or drinking. The thought arrived unbidden and slightly absurd in the middle of the moment, but it was sincere. Whatever impression he was making, at least he was not making it while tasting of cigarettes.
Their faces stayed pressed together for three, perhaps four seconds.
Then Yvette pulled away, fast, like a startled deer, and put a clear meter of distance between them.
Ethan was left standing where he was, still slightly leaning into a space that no longer contained anyone, with an expression that he was not aware had drifted toward the openly pleased.
The expression was, in Yvette's view, the problem.
The composure she had been holding by professional reflex finally failed her entirely. She abandoned every consideration of executive dignity, drew back one leg, and kicked at him.
With Ethan's reflexes, the kick was never going to land. His right hand snapped out and caught her ankle mid-arc, gently, with the easy precision of a man whose nervous system had been substantially upgraded.
"Let. Go."
The blush across Yvette's face deepened further at the new and even more compromising tableau they had constructed: the CEO of New Future Technology Energy balanced on one foot with her ankle held in the hand of her Chairman.
Ethan did not immediately let go.
His reasoning, in the moment, was a mix of wounded male dignity and tactical calculation. A man could not simply allow himself to be kicked on demand. If he released her ankle the instant she demanded it, after she had attempted to kick him, what authority would he retain in the building.
The reasoning lasted approximately two seconds before colliding with a more practical consideration: if he antagonized Yvette Caldwell past her tolerance, and she resigned, he would be left personally running the operational and commercial divisions of a company that was about to expand into fourteen cities. The prospect was significantly more terrifying than a kicked shin.
Yvette, sensing that force was not working, shifted tactics.
"Junior Brother. Please. Let go. Your grip is too strong. You're hurting your senior sister's ankle."
It was a transparent excuse. Ethan's control over his own enhanced strength was precise to the point where he could have held a soap bubble without breaking it. He was not hurting her ankle, and they both knew he was not hurting her ankle.
But he also did not want to push the young woman past the point of genuine offense. And there was, somewhere underneath the tactical reasoning, the simpler fact that he did not actually want her to be unhappy.
He let go.
He released the warm, smooth weight of her ankle and stepped back with what he felt was admirable magnanimity, wearing the small satisfied expression of a man who believed he had just decisively demonstrated his own composure.
The expression survived for slightly under one second.
The moment Yvette had her balance back, she put the full width of the office between them, and then objects began to travel through the air in Ethan's direction.
A water cup. A sofa cushion. A second sofa cushion. A decorative paperweight that, had it connected, would have genuinely hurt.
Ethan, with two rising lumps developing on his skull from the projectiles his reflexes had not bothered to fully dodge, retreated from the office with as much dignity as the situation permitted, which was not a great deal.
He emerged from the headquarters building with his head held high and two visible bumps on it.
He did not, for the moment, attempt any further interaction with his CEO. Some retreats were strategic. He pulled out his phone and dialed Director Graves.
"Old Graves."
On the other end, Nathan Graves, Director of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, produced an audible exhale of long-suffering. Ever since this particular young man had become a fixture in his professional life, the formidable weight of Graves's office title had ceased entirely to function as a deterrent.
"Say what you have to say or get off the line. I am genuinely busy. I do not have the bandwidth to be your conversational companion."
Ethan grinned into the phone.
"Director. You're aware that New Future has been running flat out on the reactor program. We're moving into the pilot rollout next, and the second-phase expansion brings us to fourteen cities inside a month. We are going to be badly short on qualified technical staff. I was hoping you might be able to help us source some manpower."
Graves was not surprised by the request.
The high-level offices of the Republic had, in fact, anticipated this exact problem long before Ethan had raised it. As the seabed reactor program scaled across the Eastern Region, the West-East Power Corridor program would, in parallel, be wound down. The Corridor employed an enormous body of senior engineers, grid specialists, and project managers, all of whom would, over the coming years, be displaced from their roles.
The displaced Corridor personnel were, conveniently, the single most precisely qualified labor pool in the Republic for the work New Future Technology Energy needed done. Ebb and flow. As one program declined, its talent could flow directly into the program replacing it.
The cabinet had identified this synergy and prepared the solution before Ethan had thought to ask.
When Graves explained the arrangement, Ethan slapped his own forehead.
"That's perfect. That's genuinely perfect. The leadership thought of this before I did. The skill profiles line up almost exactly."
"They do. The coordination details will route through my office. I'll handle the introductions and the security clearances. You'll have a steady supply of qualified senior personnel as the Corridor draws down."
"Director, I owe you. Again."
They talked for another minute. As they were about to end the call, Graves's tone shifted into something more serious.
"Kid. New Future's corporate structure is genuinely unusual for this country. The state holds equity but not control. Final authority sits with you. That arrangement is going to come under pressure as the company grows. With the Hidden Dragon program rolling out, New Future is going to expand fast. You'll be facing the question of a public offering before long. What's your thinking on that."
Ethan paused.
"Hidden Dragon program?"
"That's the cabinet's internal designation for the seabed reactor rollout. Why."
Ethan felt a small involuntary pang of envy. Hidden Dragon. It was a genuinely good name. His own working designation for the same program had been the seabed nuclear reactor project, which was, by comparison, embarrassingly literal. Whoever in the cabinet had named it Hidden Dragon had a flair for these things that Ethan, he privately admitted, lacked.
He set the envy aside and considered the actual question.
"No public offering," he said.
"You're certain."
"Completely. A public offering dilutes my equity, reduces my control, and exposes the company's internal operations to public scrutiny in a way I'm not willing to accept. There are aspects of how New Future works that I need to keep confidential. An IPO is fundamentally incompatible with that. We stay private."
On the other end, Graves let out a small breath of relief.
The relief was not personal. The state's interest aligned with Ethan's here. A public offering would have introduced thousands of shareholders, public disclosure obligations, regulatory transparency requirements, and a vastly expanded surface area for foreign intelligence interest. For a firm whose core technology base needed to remain confidential, staying private was, from the state's security perspective, the strongly preferred outcome.
"Good. Staying private is the right call. From our side as well."
A pause.
"One more thing. Be careful. Maha has withdrawn, but Sterling Energy's domestic influence is not gone overnight. And Liam Rouse is not the kind of man who accepts decline gracefully. He has spent his entire career accumulating status, and he is going to fight to keep it by every means available. Within the rules, I'm not concerned. New Future's position is unassailable on a level playing field. What concerns me is the possibility that Rouse, with his back to the wall, does something outside the rules."
Ethan felt a small warmth at the warning.
"Don't worry, Director. You know what kind of person I am. The man who can make me come out behind in a fight has not been born yet."
Over the following several days, the various threads of New Future Technology Energy's operations settled onto stable footing.
The Ashford pilot coordination moved forward. The recruiting pipeline began drawing from the Corridor talent pool. The technical staff cycled through J.A.R.V.I.S.'s simulation of the energy-routing protocols. The Maha withdrawal's contract transitions were absorbed.
And Ethan, for the first time in months, found himself with a genuinely light schedule.
He spent the time at home, with Frank and Linda Holloway.
The aunt and uncle who had raised him watched, with quiet and heartfelt pride, the scale of what their nephew had accomplished in under a year. They did not fully understand the technical details. They did not need to. They understood that the boy they had raised, who had once counted change for the laundry machine in their small apartment, had become something the entire Republic now spoke of with reverence. Linda cooked more than the three of them could eat, which had become her primary way of expressing pride, and Frank, who was not a demonstrative man, spent several evenings simply sitting in the same room as Ethan, occasionally clearing his throat as if to say something and then not saying it.
It was, for Ethan, a genuinely restful interval.
It did not last.
About a week after the dinner with Holt, Director Holt's procurement machinery delivered.
With an efficiency that genuinely impressed Ethan, Holt had assembled the entire special-materials list from the dinner. Every rare-earth metal. Every military-grade semi-finished component. The complete bill of materials for the transmission-research program, and, buried within it, the materials Ethan actually needed to build Megatron.
When the notification came through, Ethan ended his vacation without hesitation. He had been waiting for this for weeks.
The materials were staged at a military district facility on the northern provincial border, where the volume and the classification level of the shipment could be managed under appropriate security. Ethan traveled there to oversee the transfer personally.
At the Northridge Provincial Military District, a contingent of soldiers stood watching as Blackout, in heavy-helicopter configuration, casually lifted a several-dozen-ton pallet of special materials as though it were a duffel bag.
The soldiers had been briefed that the transport asset was unusual. They had not been adequately prepared for the reality of a ten-meter mechanical lifeform handling tonnage that would have required multiple crane arms working in coordination.
Standing beside Ethan, watching the operation with an expression of frank envy, was an old acquaintance: General Hao, the senior commanding officer of the Northridge Military District.
Hao had known Ethan since the very early days, before the press conferences and the reactors and the national fame. He felt, accordingly, entitled to a certain familiarity.
"Kid. I'm going to be honest with you. You're not playing fair. You got your real start at my district. We're practically from the same region. And in all this time, with everything you've built, you haven't thrown a single thing my way. Is that right? Is that how a man treats the people who knew him before he was famous?"
Ethan, who was genuinely overcommitted and did not have the bandwidth to take on side projects for old acquaintances however fond he was of them, produced a small helpless expression.
"General. I'd love to. I genuinely would. But I am, at this exact moment, more busy than I have ever been in my life. The day has too few hours in it as things stand."
Hao waved this off.
"Excuses. Fine. If you won't do business with me, I'll solve the problem a different way." He gave Ethan a sideways look of calculated mischief. "I'll introduce you to my daughter. She's a fine young woman. You'd be getting an absolute bargain, kid, and don't you forget it."
Ethan nearly tripped over his own feet.
"General. That's. That's your actual daughter. Your real, biological daughter. And you're, you're just offering her up, just like that, in a military equipment yard?"
"Why not? You're a fine prospect. National hero. Sovereign-tier whatever-it-is. Owns a company. Doesn't smoke or drink, from what I hear." Hao counted the points off on his fingers with evident satisfaction. "Frankly, she could do considerably worse, and so could you. I'm doing you both a favor."
Ethan looked at the general. He looked at Blackout, casually stacking dozens of tons of classified materials onto a transport platform. He looked back at the general, who was watching him with the patient expectant expression of a man who had decided this was a perfectly reasonable conversation to be having.
The thought of Yvette Caldwell, of the office that morning, of the water cup and the sofa cushions and the lump still tender on the back of his skull, surfaced unhelpfully in his mind.
He decided, firmly, not to pursue that thread of thought any further.
"General," he said carefully, "I'm flattered on your daughter's behalf, and I'm going to politely change the subject. How's the materials transfer documentation looking?"
Hao laughed, a big rolling laugh, and clapped Ethan on the shoulder hard enough that a man without serum enhancement would have staggered.
"Smooth, kid. The documentation is smooth. All of it's cleared. Take your terrifying helicopter and your dozens of tons of mystery metal and go build whatever it is you're not telling me you're building."
He paused.
"The daughter offer stays open, by the way. Indefinitely. Think about it."
Ethan made a noncommittal sound and walked toward Blackout, who had finished loading the materials and was waiting, in the patient looming manner of a ten-meter war machine, for its next instruction.
The materials were secured. The transport was ready.
It was time to go home and build the leader of the Decepticons.