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It was no wonder Brandt had lost his composure.
He knew that the man across from him genuinely had the means to carry out every one of those threats without ever stepping over a line.
Brandt did not care in the slightest what became of Rouse or Sterling Energy. If anything, some part of him wished the profiteer Rouse would go bankrupt sooner rather than later. But not now. Not yet. Because if something happened to Rouse, what happened to his son's medical bills?
Seeing that the guards and prosecutors outside the door made no move to intervene, his heart sank halfway through the floor.
Left with nothing else, Brandt dropped to his knees in front of Ethan.
"Mr. Mercer. You're a generous man. Please, just do me this one favor and let the matter rest. I'll carry all of it myself. Every bit of it."
Ethan's eyes stayed calm.
"Manager Brandt, you're showing me no sincerity. How am I supposed to help you like this? Tell me the whole story, from the beginning. Maybe there's a better way through this than the one you've settled for."
The panicked Brandt had lost all his earlier steadiness. Under the steady pressure and the thread of hope Ethan held out, he finally gave up the entire account.
In the monitoring room, the prosecutors and interrogators were quietly shaken. Days of questioning had not moved the man an inch, and Ethan had unraveled the whole thing in under half an hour.
While they were still absorbing it, an unfamiliar voice spoke up in the monitoring room.
"Good day, gentlemen. I am J.A.R.V.I.S. I'll be sending the recording of Mr. Brandt's testimony to each of your email addresses. New Future will also retain a copy."
The room froze, and then several jaws came loose.
The interrogation suite's firewall was configured to the highest civilian security standard. It lagged behind military-grade, true, but it was not something anyone simply walked through. And yet Ethan's artificial intelligence had not only broken in but had done so without tripping a single alarm.
It was, frankly, absurd.
---
Inside the interrogation room, Brandt's account came in fragments, his emotions running too high for it to come out clean. It took about twenty minutes to get the whole of it.
Looking at the middle-aged man in front of him, a man prepared to spend his life in prison for his child, Ethan felt a thread of sympathy.
Put in the same position, if he were the sick child, Ethan was certain Frank and Linda would have moved heaven and earth to save him too. No question.
But sympathy was not forgiveness. A child's illness was no license to sabotage the Hidden Dragon program, and no reason to commit a crime. If the program had genuinely been shelved or delayed over an incident like this, it would not have been an exaggeration to say the whole of the Republic's development would have stumbled half a step backward. And then the cost of what Brandt did today would have been paid by hundreds of millions of people across the country. People who had done nothing to deserve it.
Having gotten the answer he came for, Ethan didn't linger. He stood to leave.
Seeing his expressionless face, Brandt's heart clenched, and he hurried forward.
"Mr. Mercer. I've told you everything. Can you leave some way out for Rouse, and for my child?"
Ethan didn't stop walking.
"Give that up. Rouse has come at me more than once, and after a thing like this, there's no version of events where I let him walk."
He paused.
"However."
Brandt's heart vaulted into his throat at the turn.
"With me in the picture, you don't need to lose much sleep over your child's medical costs. Conduct yourself well in here. Do that, and you might still get out in time to bounce a grandchild on your knee."
And with that, Ethan was through the interrogation room door.
Brandt stood frozen for a moment. Then his eyes filled, and he bowed, deeply, in the direction Ethan had gone.
---
Out in the corridor, Ethan's own mood sat heavy.
In honest terms, Brandt was not a bad man. He could fairly be called a deeply responsible father. Being willing to trade a life sentence for one's child was not something every father had in him. Whatever his reasons, in the end the man had only ever been a sacrificial animal in Ethan's contest with Rouse.
"What's the matter? Feeling soft?"
The speaker drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped two out with practiced ease, and offered one across.
"Thank you, Minister. But I don't smoke."
It was their first meeting, though Ethan had seen the man on television more times than he could count.
Hearing it, Renner deftly tucked the cigarette back.
"Good that you don't. If my wife caught me, she'd have my hide for teaching a kid bad habits again."
Listening to the Minister of Public Security mutter this, Ethan was briefly at a loss. He genuinely had not expected that the highest official in the country's public-security apparatus, a man who had brought down no end of powerful, supposedly untouchable figures, would turn out to be a touch henpecked.
"Don't carry too much of this," Renner said. "Everything we do in life has consequences. Good or bad, large or small, we shoulder them ourselves. Today's outcome was Brandt's own choice. You've no cause to feel guilty over it."
A wry smile touched the corner of Ethan's mouth.
"Maybe so. But in the end, this began because of me. If not for the Hidden Dragon program, Rouse would never have done any of what followed. And Brandt wouldn't be going to prison."
Renner exhaled a ring of smoke.
"Have you stopped to consider how much development the whole Republic would forfeit without the Hidden Dragon program? And as for Brandt's sick child, if medical science were advanced enough to treat the boy outright, would any of this have happened at all?"
His cigarette had burned down to the filter.
"We've had bad luck this time. But if we want to spare people tragedies like these, if we want life to be genuinely prosperous and good for ordinary people, then we have to lean on you. The researchers. That's where it has to come from."
The words lifted Ethan's mood considerably.
"Thank you. I feel a great deal better."
"I can't speak for other countries. But as long as there's breath in me, I'll make sure the Republic stays safe and prosperous."
Hearing Ethan's resolve, Renner said nothing, but the ease in his expression made his mood plain.
"By the way, Minister. Why are you in Northridge Province today? Surely you didn't make the trip just for me."
Renner stubbed out the cigarette.
"In your dreams. I happened to be passing through. I'll be in Crestmark City for a while. And not only me. The Ministry has moved a substantial number of officers into the area, to keep things orderly when we make our move on Sterling Energy."