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By the time Ethan poured Ryan into a taxi, the sky was turning grey at the edges.
He looked at the journalist slumped across the back seat like a man who'd lost a fight with a bottle and felt a mix of contempt and affection.
"And here I thought you could actually drink. Turns out you're only good at talking big."
Ryan mumbled something incoherent. Ethan gave the driver the hotel address, closed the door, and hailed a second cab.
He had somewhere to be.
Dr. Hargrove's residence was located inside a high-security compound in the capital's most exclusive district. The same compound where the old man had lived for decades, protected by military-grade access controls and a roster of security personnel who took their jobs very seriously.
At the Hargrove residence, Marcus was exhausted.
The night had been a marathon. Ever since watching the verification meeting, his father's excitement hadn't dimmed for a single minute. The old man had spent the entire night alternating between praising Ethan to Marcus's face and calling every colleague, former student, and old friend he had to brag about his judgment.
"I told them. I told every one of them. They said I was senile. They said I was throwing my reputation away. And now? NOW?"
This had been going on for approximately eight hours.
Marcus had answered more phone calls than he could count, fetched more cups of tea than he cared to remember, and listened to the same "I told you so" speech delivered to seventeen different people with seventeen slightly different phrasings.
Since dawn, visitors had begun arriving. An endless procession of academics, officials, and former students, all wanting to congratulate the old man and, not coincidentally, position themselves closer to whatever was going to happen next.
Currently, one of his father's former students was in the sitting room. A researcher from a provincial institute in Northvale Province. Which made him, technically, Ethan's fellow provinceman.
Marcus was just allowing himself a moment of quiet when the phone rang.
"Who is it?"
His tone was shorter than intended. Anyone who'd been fielding calls all night would have been the same.
"Uh... Mr. Hargrove?"
Marcus recognized the voice instantly. And the moment he did, something complicated happened to his expression.
"Ethan?"
"It's me, sir. I wanted to visit Dr. Hargrove in person. To thank him properly for everything he's done."
Marcus felt a rush of energy that had nothing to do with caffeine.
"Of course! My father will be thrilled. Where are you? I'll send someone—"
"I'm at the compound gate. But they won't let me through without an escort."
Marcus didn't hesitate. "Wait there. I'm coming."
He grabbed his coat and was out the door before the sentence finished.
Under Marcus's escort, Ethan cleared the security checkpoints and entered the compound. The houses here were set back from the road, screened by mature trees, the kind of neighborhood where the residents' identities were classified and the property values were a state secret.
Hargrove was waiting by the door of his residence, leaning on his cane, wearing an expression that combined genuine warmth with theatrical indignation.
"There he is! I was beginning to think you'd gotten too famous to visit an old man."
Ethan's face fell into an apologetic grimace.
"Don't even start. This past night has been a disaster. I spent hours trying to shake the Bureau's security detail, then I had to pour a drunk journalist into a taxi, and the cab from the hotel took forty minutes because the driver didn't believe the address was real."
Hargrove laughed, the deep, full laugh of a man who'd been waiting all night for someone he actually wanted to talk to.
Marcus, watching Ethan interact with his father, frowned slightly.
"You came here alone? Where's your security detail?"
"I convinced them to give me some breathing room."
"The Bureau is being negligent with your safety. You're a sensitive person right now. You shouldn't be walking around—"
Hargrove cut his son off with a look.
"Stop fussing. The boy might look like he's alone, but trust me, at the first sign of trouble, Bureau agents would materialize out of thin air. They're out there. You just can't see them."
Then, as if a thought had just occurred to him, the old man's expression turned mischievous.
"Wasn't someone 'completely unimpressed' by Ethan just yesterday? Telling me about accumulated research and how science doesn't work this way?"
"How is it that same person is now worried about the boy's safety?"
Marcus's ears reddened. Ethan was about to step in and defuse the situation when Marcus spoke first.
"Ethan, I owe you an apology."
The words came out direct and undecorated. No preamble, no excuse-making. Marcus Hargrove, in front of his father and a room that included at least one other visitor, bowed.
Not a nod. A bow. Deep enough that it meant something.
"I was wrong. Completely, fundamentally wrong. About you, about what's possible, about the assumptions I built my entire career on."
"I'm grateful to you. Not just because you vindicated my father's judgment, but because you showed me things about physics that I didn't believe existed."
"Please forgive my behavior at the laboratory."
Ethan looked at the top of Marcus Hargrove's head, bowed toward him, and felt the specific discomfort of a teenager being formally apologized to by a man in his fifties who had more published papers than most departments.
"Please don't do that, Mr. Hargrove. I understood your position at the time. Honestly, if I'd been in your shoes, I probably wouldn't have believed me either."
He reached forward and helped Marcus straighten up.
"From here on, let's call it a clean slate."
Hargrove, watching his son apologize and his protégé accept it with grace, looked happier than he had in years.
"Good. Good! Now, Marcus, remember this: despite being decades older, you'll be coming to this boy for physics advice from now on. Best get used to it."
Marcus nodded without protest. Three months ago, that instruction would have made him bristle. Today, after watching what Ethan had built and what he'd done with it, the idea of learning from a teenager felt less like humiliation and more like common sense.
"Now then, Ethan, you've come at exactly the right time. A former student of mine is visiting today. Works at a research institute in Northvale Province. When he heard that such an extraordinary talent had emerged from his own province, he insisted on being introduced."
Hargrove's eyes twinkled.
"Come. Douglas, come meet your fellow provinceman!"
A man in his early forties emerged from the inner room. Well-dressed. Academic bearing. The kind of face that projected confidence and institutional authority.
"It's been a long time, Ethan."
The moment Ethan saw the face, his expression went flat.
Douglas Langford. Sophia's father. Researcher at the Northvale Provincial Institute of Physics. Former student of Dr. Hargrove.
And one of the people who had looked down on Ethan the most during his years of poverty and orphanhood.
"It's you."
Then two more figures stepped out from the inner room behind Douglas.
Ethan knew all three of them intimately.
Throughout his middle school and high school years, these three people had been a constant source of humiliation and contempt. The father who'd told his daughter to stop associating with "that orphan boy." The daughter who'd publicly denied ever dating him. And the friend who'd helped spread the rumors.
Sophia Langford.
And beside her, Megan Pryce.
"What are you doing here?"
The question came out colder than Ethan intended. Or maybe exactly as cold as he intended.
"You know each other?"
Hargrove, who had no knowledge of the history between them, assumed the connection was a pleasant coincidence. He immediately gestured everyone toward the sitting room.
Seeing Ethan frozen in place, Douglas stepped forward and spoke in a low voice, pitched so Hargrove couldn't hear.
"Ethan, I know you're angry. And you have every right to be."
"But this is Dr. Hargrove's home. You wouldn't want to make a scene here, would you?"
Ethan looked at Douglas Langford. Then at the stooped, beaming figure of Dr. Hargrove, who was already heading for his favorite chair, completely unaware of the tension crackling between his guests.
He took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out.
Then he followed them into the sitting room.
Hargrove settled into his chair, pulled Ethan down beside him, and immediately launched into questions about the Mark One. How did the shock absorption system handle the missile impact? What was the theoretical maximum altitude? Could the reactor configuration be optimized for sustained higher speeds?
Ethan answered everything. Hargrove's curiosity was genuine and his questions were sharp, and despite the poisonous atmosphere generated by the three unwelcome guests, Ethan found himself unable to hold back. When Edmund Hargrove asked you about physics, you answered. It was that simple.
To the side, Douglas Langford listened to Ethan speak with fluent expertise about subjects that most professional physicists couldn't follow, and felt something twist in his chest.
Regret.
Deep, nauseating, inescapable regret.
He'd dismissed this kid. Told his daughter to stay away from him. Looked at the orphan from Millbrook County with the secondhand clothes and the uncle who couldn't hold a job and decided that there was nothing there worth his time.
And now that orphan was sitting beside Douglas's own mentor, discussing physics at a level that made Douglas feel like a first-year student listening to a lecture in a language he barely spoke.
The verification meeting replayed in his mind. The armor. The flight. The speed test. The altitude record. The missile. The aerial combat.
A seventeen-year-old had achieved what no institution on the planet had ever accomplished.
And Douglas Langford had told his daughter to dump him.
The most terrifying part wasn't the technology. It was the age. Seventeen. What would this kid accomplish at twenty? At thirty? At fifty?
If Ethan wanted to emigrate to the Aurelian Republic tomorrow, they'd roll out every red carpet they owned. Honorary professorships. Academy memberships. Unlimited funding. Anything.
And Douglas Langford, sitting in his mentor's living room, watching his former neighbor's orphan hold court with a legend, understood with perfect clarity exactly how badly he had miscalculated.