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The team was staring at him.
Twenty pairs of eyes, all asking the same question without saying it. Ryan sighed. He genuinely did not care about his test scores. For most people, standardized exams were the hinge that their futures swung on. For Ryan, the hinge had been the moment he was reborn into this world with a system in his head and a brain that worked like a supercomputer. The SATs were a formality. A checkbox.
He was certain he hadn't made any real mistakes. The math and science sections were trivially easy. The only uncertainty was in the essay-based sections, where subjectivity in grading meant you could never be completely sure of a perfect score.
"Come on, check it!"
"We want to know!"
"Please, just look it up!"
The team had crowded around him like kids at a birthday party waiting for someone to open a present. A few of the women on the research staff looked ready to physically grab his phone.
Ryan shook his head, half-laughing. "The scores literally just went live. You think the College Board's servers can handle the traffic right now? The site's going to crash in about thirty seconds."
Patricia, who had been watching the scene with amusement from the edge of the group, stepped forward. "Give me your student ID number. I'll have someone at Aegis pull it. Their connection doesn't go through public infrastructure."
Ryan gave her the number. She made one call. The callback came in under two minutes.
Patricia listened. Her voice went up half an octave.
She hung up, turned to face the group, and delivered the number with the careful precision of someone announcing a verdict.
"Seven forty-nine. Out of seven fifty."
Silence.
Then chaos.
"SEVEN FORTY-NINE?"
"One point off? ONE POINT?"
"That's not a score, that's a war crime against the grading curve."
"What subject did he lose the point in? I need to know. For science."
Ryan stood in the center of the explosion with his hands in his pockets, completely unbothered. The score was within the range he'd predicted. 748 to 750. Somewhere in a grading center, an exhausted reader had probably docked him a point on an essay for stylistic reasons. It happened. Human grading was imprecise. He wasn't going to lose sleep over it.
"Was it the English essay?" he asked Patricia.
She checked her notes. "English. One point."
He nodded. Fair enough.
"Alright, everyone out." Ryan waved the group away. "Go study your documentation. The SATs are done. The mech is not."
They dispersed reluctantly, buzzing, already pulling out phones to share the number with anyone who would listen.
Ryan went back to his office and called home.
Tom picked up on the first ring. He'd been waiting. When Ryan said the number, there was a long silence followed by a sound that might have been Tom sitting down very quickly.
Lisa got on the line. She cried. Happy tears. The kind that came from a place deeper than pride, from the bone-level certainty that her son was going to be okay. More than okay.
They talked about coming back to campus to celebrate. Ryan told them there was no rush. They were coming anyway.
Next call: Chloe.
She picked up mid-bite. He could hear her chewing.
"Lemme guess," she said, mouth full. "Perfect score."
"Seven forty-nine."
A pause. More chewing. Then: "You're not human. You know that, right? Normal people don't do this. Normal people study for months and stress-eat and cry in the bathroom and end up with a score they're 'happy enough' with. You walked in, took the test like it was a Tuesday afternoon crossword, and missed one point. One. I hate you."
"Love you too."
"Don't say that to me while I'm eating a drumstick, it ruins the flavor."
She hung up. Ryan smiled.
He didn't have many close friends. Not in this life. The list of people who mattered fit on one hand with fingers to spare. Parents. Chloe. That was basically it.
Which left one more audience for this particular piece of news.
Ryan opened Twitter.
His mentions were already on fire. The SAT score release had coincided with peak internet hours, and the intersection of "viral mech builder" and "test scores" had predictable results.
"Scores are out. What did Ryan Mercer get??"
"No way he scored low, this kid is literally a genius"
"I bet he got a perfect score and doesn't even care"
Ryan typed three characters into the tweet box.
749
Posted it. Put the phone down. Went back to his equations.
Within thirty minutes, the tweet was the number one trending topic in the country.
Three digits. No context. No caption. No hashtag. Everyone who saw it knew exactly what it meant.
"SEVEN FORTY NINE????"
"this man posted his score like it was a phone number"
"the casualness of just tweeting '749' without any explanation is the most big-brain flex I've ever witnessed"
"I just checked. He doesn't qualify for any bonus points or special adjustments. That's a raw 749. On a 750 scale. I have no words."
"which subject did he lose the point in?? i need answers"
"bet it was the essay. even geniuses can't control grading subjectivity"
The companies that had tried to buy Scrapper weeks ago were back in the replies, this time offering congratulations instead of money. Meridian Motors posted a gif of someone slow-clapping. Apex Heavy Industries wrote "Respect." A venture capital firm that hadn't been part of any previous conversation posted an offer of two hundred million dollars "for whatever he builds next," which was either a joke or wasn't.
MIT's official account: "Congratulations to our research partner Ryan Mercer on an exceptional SAT performance. We look forward to welcoming him as a student in the fall."
The replies to MIT's tweet were predictable:
"'research partner' doing a LOT of heavy lifting in that sentence"
"translation: he's ours, don't even think about it"
"Caltech has entered the chat"
"Stanford requests a meeting"
Ryan didn't read any of it. He was three pages deep into a liquid neural connection derivation, drawing circles on a blank page with his pen, the phone face-down on the desk, the internet losing its mind without him.
Some things were more important than trending.
Plz Throw Powerstones.