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The holiday spirit reached Dome Base.
By the duty roster, part of the staff could go home for the break while the rest stayed to maintain the facility. Ryan, despite holding the highest security clearance on the base, was unambiguously in the group cleared to go home.
He took the train. A few hours later, he was back home.
His new home, to be precise.
The family's old house had been on a busy street, traffic and foot traffic in constant motion, perpetually noisy. Tom had never liked it. The new place was somewhere quiet. Quiet enough that you could install three hundred security cameras around the property and maintain round-the-clock, no-blind-spot surveillance of the perimeter without a single neighbor noticing or caring.
Tom had also hired a few professional bodyguards. They stayed close during the day.
When Ryan arrived, he saw the bodyguards standing by in the living room. The members of his own security detail, who had traveled back with him, walked over and exchanged familiar greetings with Tom's bodyguards.
Ryan made a face. They knew each other perfectly well. The whole "standing at attention" routine was theater.
Lisa came in from the backyard and immediately spotted her son.
"Let me look at you. How much have you grown?"
She pulled Ryan over to a particular wall in the living room.
Ryan looked at the height marks on the wall and sighed. "Mom. We moved into a whole new house. You re-created the height wall in the new house?"
"Less talking. Stand up straight."
"There. Five foot nine. No idea how much taller you'll get."
Ryan thought about Victor Thornton's height, a full head above everyone around him, conspicuous in any crowd.
"Average height is fine," he said. "I don't need to be too tall."
"Where's Dad?"
Lisa rolled her eyes, withholding any warmth from the expression. "He's in his study on a conference call. Go find him yourself."
Ryan stuck out his tongue. He knew his mother was still annoyed about the fact that he'd been the one who gave Tom the technology, the one who steered him onto the entrepreneurial path that had consumed the family's quiet life.
He didn't dare ask where the study was. He'd just find it. It would double as a tour of the new house.
The house wasn't lavish. A three-story home, nothing extravagant. The one genuinely special feature was the backyard, which had a tasteful, landscaped quality to it.
The backyard had a small pond with a gazebo at its center. From inside the gazebo, you could see the fish in the water, both eating fish and ornamental fish, along with a few small turtles. Ryan couldn't identify the species. Zoology had never been one of his research areas.
The study was a third-floor room facing the backyard. Turn your head and you could see the little pond.
When Ryan walked in, Tom was still talking into his phone. He saw Ryan, pointed at the phone, and gestured for him to wait.
"How's the business going on your end? Running into any problems?" Tom asked.
Someone immediately translated his words into English. A moment later, someone answered.
"We're installing prosthetics for around four to six customers a day. But they're all people from the same city or living nearby."
"Our after-sales network is very thin right now. A lot of people from other regions want our prosthetics, but they're worried about maintenance and repair access. I think we need to expand the service points as quickly as possible."
The speaker on the other end had a heavy accent, one of the new international markets Triton-1 had recently entered.
Tom listened and nodded along, offering a suggestion now and then.
When the call ended, Ryan settled onto the study's sofa.
"Dad. How's the suspension situation going over there?"
"It's improving. Helios has backed off. I reached out to an old friend and had him work the situation from the inside. The deadlock is going to break soon."
"I'm also planning to bring him in as a shareholder in the international prosthetics subsidiary. We're doing business in a foreign market, and he's a local power player. If something like this happens again, we won't be caught as flat-footed as we were this time."
Ryan didn't object. It was a minority stake in a foreign subsidiary, and a prosthetics subsidiary at that. Trading a piece of equity for local protection was standard practice. When you opened a business in a new place, you shared a bowl of soup with the local power players. The only thing that mattered was controlling the size of the bowl, and Ryan trusted Tom to handle that.
The two of them talked, and the conversation drifted to the state of brain-computer interface research, domestic and international.
"You wouldn't believe this," Tom said. "Before the suspension order, I heard NeuraPath's investors were pulling out. I sent them a tentative acquisition inquiry, just testing the water. They actually replied. Told me they'd be glad to sit down and discuss it."
"Then the suspension order hit, and I didn't have the bandwidth to deal with them. Yesterday they called me, asking about the acquisition again."
"And here's the other thing. The moment Triton-1 launched, the whole brain-computer interface field reacted like a dragon had surged up the river. Countless small fish got flattened in the wake. There are surgical-prosthetic labs trying to change their entire research direction, switching to our technology path."
"There have even been companies coming to us recently saying our Triton-1 security is excellent, asking whether we'd consider providing security system design. They want us to build encryption for their products."
Tom recounted these recent developments, all of which were tied to his son, with the puffed-up satisfaction of a man who had had a couple of small drinks and reached a pleasant warmth.
Ryan rubbed his chin and narrowed his eyes.
"Dad. This... NeuraPath. What kind of company is that?"
Tom went quiet.
CLACK.
"You two. Come down. Dinner."
Lisa had pushed the study door open. There was murder in her eyes and a spatula in her hand.
"Okay, okay."
Father and son cut the conversation short and obediently followed her downstairs.
The moment Ryan reached the dining room, he saw a heaping plate on the table.
Cola-braised chicken.
"Mom. Is Chloe coming over?"
Lisa set out bowls and chopsticks. "You're back home. Of course she's coming over."
Speak of the devil.
The words had barely left her when Chloe's bright, energetic voice rang out from beyond the front door.
"Mrs. Mercer, I'm here!"
Ryan went to open the door.
Chloe stood outside in a goose-yellow down jacket, both hands cupped in front of her mouth, blowing warm air into them. The wind had turned her face bright red with cold.
"Ryan. I'm here. Surprised?"
"Surprised. Very surprised."
He pulled her inside and shut the door behind her.
"That delivery was completely flat," Chloe complained, pouting.
"Wash up and come eat," Lisa's voice carried from the dining room. "I made the things you like."
"Thank you, Mrs. Mercer!"
Chloe pushed straight past Ryan, peeled off her down jacket, and bounded toward the dining room like a small deer. Ryan could only follow behind her.