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Hearing Ethan agree so readily, Linda lit up with delight and called toward the bedrooms.
"Sweetheart! Your brother said yes! He's going to get you that singer Zane Cross's autograph!"
Before Ethan could process what had just been volunteered on his behalf, Chloe came flying out of her room with the unmistakable energy of a devoted fan.
"Really, Ethan? You really agreed to help me get Zane Cross's autograph?"
Looking at Chloe's thrilled expression, and at Linda off to the side wearing the serene look of someone whose plan had gone exactly as designed, Ethan realized he had, once again, been thoroughly maneuvered by his aunt.
An autograph.
He had never even heard the name of this particular star. Whether the man would give him so much as the time of day was an entirely separate question.
But faced with the hope on his little sister's face, he couldn't bring himself to refuse.
The girl had spoken harshly to him in the past, true, but that had its reasons. Putting himself in her shoes, if the people raising him had been pouring out their savings, selling off the house, emptying the accounts, all for the sake of a kid who wasn't even theirs by blood, running the family into the ground in the process, what child wouldn't grow bitter and desperate? He understood it completely.
And besides, he had just finished boasting in front of Linda that there wasn't much inside the Republic he couldn't handle. If he couldn't even produce a single autograph now, how was that going to look?
"No. No problem at all." Ethan rallied. "Do you know my standing these days? An autograph is nothing. Consider it done."
Chloe was so excited she nearly came off the floor.
"That's amazing! In two months, Zane Cross is coming to Ashford City for a concert. You have to come with me when he does. You absolutely cannot back out, you hear me?"
"All right, all right."
Seeing Ethan agree, the girl was overjoyed. She threw her arms around him in a quick, delighted hug, the same uncomplicated hug she'd have given him at ten years old, and then, just as quickly, let go and bounced back a step.
"Mom! Ethan! I'm going to go study now. I'm going to meet my idol with a perfect report card."
And with that she headed back to her room, her step noticeably lighter than it had been all evening.
Watching Chloe disappear into her room, Linda picked her moment.
"That girl turns eighteen in about a month. From the time she was small right up to now, your uncle and I have never managed to give her a proper gift. I'll leave that to you."
Ethan couldn't be sure it wasn't his imagination, but he had the distinct sense that his aunt had leaned, just slightly, on the word eighteen.
"You and Uncle Frank can relax. I'll see to it that the girl gets a perfect eighteenth birthday."
---
It was nearly nine in the evening by the time Ethan left.
He genuinely enjoyed the atmosphere at the Holloways' house, but there was a great deal waiting for him at the laboratory.
Back home, he packed a few things. Between the five Transformers, Megatron, and the Vibranium research, Ethan estimated that even with J.A.R.V.I.S. doing the heavy lifting, he would not be stepping out of the underground laboratory for at least half a month.
Once everything was arranged, he called Yvette. He was about to disappear for two weeks, and she at least deserved a heads-up.
On the other end, Yvette took it in stride. The Chairman vanishing into hands-off seclusion was nothing new to her by now.
Before they hung up, though, she added something, almost as an afterthought.
"New Future is on solid footing now. We're still a young company, but in terms of raw influence, we already stand with any established enterprise in the country. The problem is that this is only true inside the industry. To the general public of the Republic, New Future is still a near-total unknown."
Ethan fell quiet at that.
It was a fair point. To the average person, the entire concept of energy infrastructure was remote and abstract. Most people would never think about where their electricity came from as long as the lights turned on.
"I don't pretend to understand the technology," Yvette went on. "But business runs on momentum, on one thing leading to the next. If New Future can become a genuine household name off the back of the Hidden Dragon program, then every venture the company undertakes afterward becomes that much smoother."
Ethan nodded.
"So what's your plan?"
"The most direct route is advertising. We put ourselves in front of the public using language ordinary people can actually grasp."
Hearing that she already had a direction in mind, Ethan answered without hesitation.
"Senior Sister, if you've got an idea, run with it. I'll leave the whole thing to you. I trust you."
---
Half a month passed in what felt like the blink of an eye.
Over those two weeks, the energy sector, and indeed the entire heavy-industry landscape, from small firms worth tens of millions of marks to giants holding tens or hundreds of billions in assets, lived on a knife's edge.
In the immediate wake of the Hidden Dragon program's successful pilot, the government, without any warning whatsoever, launched a sweeping investigation and enforcement campaign. Vast numbers of officials were mobilized. They moved into enterprise after enterprise, auditing the books, inspecting production conditions on-site. Where a violation surfaced, there was no room for negotiation. The company was shut down on the spot.
By the two-week mark, the state had already closed down fourteen firms in the tens-of-millions class, five in the hundreds-of-millions class, and one in the billions class. The severity of the crackdown was something the Republic had rarely seen since the era of market reform began.
---
In the Meridian Commonwealth, at the global headquarters of Maha Energy.
The chairman, Reginald Ashcombe, sat frowning over a report on his desk. After a long moment, he turned and addressed the man beside him.
"Harris. You're our man on Asian affairs. What do you make of this move by the Valorian government?"
Hearing himself called on, Pieter Harris answered with care.
"Mr. Ashcombe, my read is this. On the surface, the campaign is a straightforward purge of the rot in the relevant industries. But there is a deeper purpose underneath it."
Ashcombe's eyes narrowed, and he gestured for Harris to continue.
"I'm not certain whether you've noticed, but although the investigation nominally targets all of heavy industry, the firms actually being dismantled are, specifically, energy enterprises that have run afoul of the law. Nothing else."
Ashcombe, at his desk, seemed to grasp the shape of it.
"They're clearing the ground for that boy's company. For New Future."
"Yes, sir." Harris inclined his head. "Once New Future's Hidden Dragon program rolls out fully, it threatens the survival of every energy firm operating in the Valorian market. If those firms were anything but stupid, they would band together and do everything in their combined power to strangle New Future before it grew further. And the government's campaign is, in effect, a public declaration of where the state stands. It tells the entire industry, in advance, not to try."
He paused.
"There's a second layer as well. As the Hidden Dragon program expands and the energy shortage is resolved, a great many existing energy companies are going to face extinction regardless. Rather than wait for the moment when a wave of firms collapses all at once, and find themselves managing a passive crisis, the government is taking the initiative now, cutting out the diseased tissue ahead of time, on its own schedule. It also gives the state more room to manage the mass-unemployment problem that will follow."
Having delivered all of that in one breath, the Meridian gentleman found his mouth had gone dry. He picked up the glass of water at his elbow, drained it, and added one final point.
"I'd stake my reputation on this. Liam Rouse's Sterling Energy will not survive the campaign. The man's hands are nowhere near clean enough."