The idea hit Ryan like a spark.
"Post something on my Twitter," he said. "One line. 'Looking forward to working together.'"
Chloe looked at him. "You just told me you're not selling. You told me you're not even meeting with them. Now you want to 'look forward to working together'?"
Ryan gave her a flat look. "That message isn't for them."
"Then who—" She stopped. Thought about it. Grinned. "Oh. Oh."
"Just post it."
She posted it.
The internet, which had been tracking the bidding war like a spectator sport, immediately assumed Ryan had accepted Meridian Motors' hundred-million-dollar offer. The reaction was instantaneous and deafening.
"HE SAID YES"
"Wait — 'looking forward to working together' — that's gotta be Meridian right? They're the highest bid"
"Could be Apex too, they were first"
"Bro just became a hundred-millionaire at fourteen. I can't even get a summer job."
The CEO of Apex Heavy Industries, currently in a rental car somewhere between the Austin airport and Crestfield, received the news mid-drive. His secretary showed him the tweet.
"He's accepting Meridian's offer?"
"Unclear, sir. The wording is ambiguous."
"Then call the girl. The one who manages his accounts."
The secretary called Chloe. It rang out. Called again. Rang out. Called a third time.
Chloe looked at the screen, silenced it, and went back to eating grapes.
On the other end, the CEO stared at his phone with the dawning realization that he'd flown halfway across Texas to buy a robot from a teenager who wasn't answering his calls.
The real target of the tweet called nine minutes later.
Ryan picked up before the second ring.
"What are you doing?" Ward sounded like a man who'd been in meetings for forty-eight straight hours and had just watched his entire negotiating position get undermined by a fourteen-year-old's social media post.
"What do you mean?"
"The tweet, Ryan. The bidding war. Someone flagged it to me ten minutes ago. You're entertaining corporate offers?"
"Well, we're running low on groceries. Figured selling a mech might help cover the food bill."
A long silence. Ryan could practically hear Ward pressing his fingers against his temples.
"The agreement is almost done. We've been in discussions nonstop — MIT administration, affiliated labs, funding committees, and several other parties I can't name on an open line. This is not a simple process. But we are close."
"How close?"
"Tonight. By tonight I will have something to show you. Can you please — please — not sell a hundred-million-dollar piece of technology to an electric car company before I get there?"
"Clock's ticking, Professor."
The line went dead.
Ryan looked at Chloe. Chloe looked at Ryan.
"You're terrifying," she said.
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I'm choosing to take it as one."
She threw a grape at him. He caught it and ate it.
Meanwhile, the Apex CEO arrived at the Mercer house to find two soldiers blocking the front door.
He was a large man — six-two, silver-haired, the kind of executive presence that made boardrooms go quiet. He was not accustomed to being stopped at doors.
"I'm here to see Ryan Mercer. I have a business proposal."
The soldiers didn't move. "Mr. Mercer isn't receiving visitors at this time."
"I flew from Houston specifically for this meeting."
"Understood, sir. Mr. Mercer isn't receiving visitors at this time."
The CEO's secretary, who was slightly more perceptive than his boss, had noticed the soldiers' bearing — the haircuts, the posture, the way they stood. He pulled the CEO aside and whispered.
The CEO's face went through several stages of realization, none of them pleasant. He looked at the soldiers again. Looked at the house. Looked at the workshop behind it.
"Get me back to the airport," he said quietly.
You didn't compete with the federal government for a piece of technology. Not if you planned to keep your government contracts.
Online, the bidding war had escalated beyond anything Ryan had expected.
After his tweet, every major industrial player in the country had smelled blood in the water. Offers piled up faster than Chloe could track them.
Consolidated Industries: $150 million, plus a ten-year engineering contract with a minimum $1 million annual salary upon turning eighteen.
Pinnacle Manufacturing: $170 million, plus establishment of a dedicated mech R&D division with $10 million annual funding, plus an immediate $5 million brand ambassador deal.
Atlas Automotive: $190 million...
Vanguard Aerospace: $200 million...
Even entertainment agencies had jumped in — talent management firms waving signing bonuses, promising endorsement deals, acting roles, talk show appearances. One agency offered to make Ryan "the face of American innovation" with a multimedia campaign spanning TV, streaming, and social media.
The comment sections had devolved into a mixture of awe, comedy, and existential crisis:
"My teacher said knowledge is power. Turns out knowledge is $200 million and a talent agent."
"I want to go back to school and study mech engineering. Does anyone offer that major?"
"Nobody offers that major because there's exactly ONE person on Earth qualified to teach it and he's fourteen."
"Has anyone noticed that stock prices for companies with 'Mercer' in the name have gone up 12%? The stock market is literally insane."
"Boxing-related stocks are up too because Scrapper sounds like a boxing name. Wall Street is a casino."
Ward saw all of it. So did everyone in the video conference he'd been trapped in for two days.
The discussion had been going in circles — funding structures, security clearances, intellectual property frameworks, institutional affiliations. Twenty people on a call, each with opinions, each with constituencies to protect. The kind of meeting that produced documents instead of decisions.
The tweet changed the math.
"If a private company acquires this technology before we formalize an agreement," Ward said to the group, "the cost of getting it back into the institutional pipeline increases by an order of magnitude. We're not the only people who understand what the neural link is worth. Right now, every defense contractor and industrial conglomerate in the country is circling. We have maybe twenty-four hours before one of them makes an offer that Ryan can't refuse."
"He's fourteen. He can't sign a contract."
"His father can. And his father just watched a parade of companies offer nine figures for something he helped build in his backyard. How long do you think that man is going to wait?"
The meeting produced a decision in forty-five minutes. A record, by institutional standards.
Ward downloaded the proposal to his laptop, grabbed his car keys, and drove to Crestfield for the third time that week.
He arrived at the Mercer house just after eight p.m.
Ryan met him at the door with the grin of someone who'd been expecting this exact outcome at this exact time.
Ward looked at the grin. Sighed. Set his laptop on the desk in Ryan's bedroom. Opened the document.
"I got you what you wanted," he said. "All of it."