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The video crossed the Pacific at internet speed.
Mirror uploads to foreign platforms required no translation, no subtitling, no localization. Just a cache, a share, and the global audience took over. By morning, the same discussions that had erupted on domestic platforms were unfolding on international sites, with slightly different memes and identical conclusions.
Among the viewers that morning: Professor Andrew Whitfield, at his desk, coffee cold, calendar full.
He'd just finished a call with Michael Reeve discussing Angel's technical rollout schedule. He'd hung up, leaned back, and seen the push notification for Ryan Mercer's new upload.
Whitfield watched the video twice.
The footage was clean now. Professional editing. Multiple camera angles. No more classified-grade cinematography. Someone competent had taken over production, and whoever it was had made sure the critical moments were captured in focus.
And in focus, on the volunteer's head, was a sensor cap.
A neural interface mounted externally on the scalp.
Whitfield's stomach did the same thing Alcott's had done the night before. The same cold recognition. The same unwelcome implication.
He didn't have ninety percent certainty. He had a hundred.
Ryan Mercer's prosthetic was not reading signals from a surgically modified residual limb. It was reading signals directly from the cerebral cortex through a non-invasive surface sensor.
That wasn't an incremental improvement. That was a different technology category entirely. Whitfield's entire research program was predicated on targeted muscle reinnervation because non-invasive cortical acquisition at motor-control resolution was considered impossible. If it wasn't impossible, if Ryan Mercer had actually solved it, then Whitfield's technology wasn't just facing competition.
It was facing extinction.
He called Reeve immediately.
Reeve picked up on the second ring. His voice was casual, unbothered. "Andrew. What's going on?"
"The new video. Have you seen it?"
"My team sent me the summary this morning. Better production values, same technology, nothing to worry about."
"Michael, it's not the same technology."
A pause. "Meaning?"
"I believe he's using non-invasive cortical signal acquisition. The sensor is on the user's scalp, not on the residual limb. There's no indication of a surgical modification."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Non-invasive, you said?"
"Yes."
"No surgery required?"
"That's what the video appears to show."
Reeve's response came with the deliberate calm of a man who was processing information and choosing not to react emotionally. "Andrew, I don't know what technology he's using, and honestly, I don't care. What I care about is whether his approach has practical advantages over ours. You're the expert. You tell me."
Whitfield measured his words. "Theoretically, if his technology works as the video suggests, it has one massive advantage: no surgery. Users don't need to undergo any medical procedure. They put on a cap and operate a prosthetic. That's the entire interface."
"And the disadvantages?"
"The signal from outside the skull is noisier and lower-resolution than the signal from transplanted nerves. In principle, his system should be slower, less precise, and more susceptible to interference. The trade-off is speed versus accessibility."
Reeve digested this. "So he's shipping an inferior product that's easier to use."
"That's one way to frame it."
"Then we have nothing to worry about. We have a superior product backed by a billion-dollar brand campaign. He has a toy that anyone can wear. Our market is people who want the best prosthetic available. His market is people who can't afford ours. Those aren't the same customers."
Whitfield wanted to agree. He couldn't.
"Michael. The addressable market for 'prosthetic that requires surgery' is a few thousand people per year in premium markets. The addressable market for 'prosthetic that anyone can wear' is every amputee on Earth. If his product delivers even seventy percent of our functionality at a tenth of our price with no medical intervention, we don't have a customer base. We have a niche."
The line was quiet.
Reeve's voice, when it returned, had cooled slightly. "I appreciate the analysis, Andrew. My team will evaluate the intelligence on their technical approach. In the meantime, continue as planned. Angel launches on schedule. We'll adjust our positioning if we need to."
"Michael, this is serious."
"I understand the stakes. Let me handle the strategic response. You handle the science."
Reeve hung up.
Whitfield sat in his office, phone in his hand, looking at the image of the sensor cap on his tablet screen.
His lab. His life's work. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Dozens of graduate students' dissertations. Thousands of hours of surgical training for the practitioners who would install the nerve transplants.
All of it built on the assumption that external cortical acquisition was impossible.
If that assumption was wrong, it wasn't just his product that was in trouble. It was his entire research tradition. Every paper citing the impossibility of non-invasive motor decoding was now part of the historical record rather than the current literature. Every surgeon trained in targeted muscle reinnervation had just had their specialty partially obsoleted.
And somewhere on the other side of the world, a teenager was probably eating breakfast and thinking about something else entirely.
-----
That teenager was, in fact, thinking about something else.
Ryan woke up feeling refreshed. He'd slept eight solid hours, a luxury he hadn't experienced in months. The Crimson Typhoon damper research had reached a good stopping point before bed. The plasma cannon disassembly was proceeding without his input. The drift team was training pilots without his oversight.
He checked the system before getting out of bed.
*Project Two: 82%.*
Three percent gain overnight from the video release. Not bad. The trolls had been shut down (Patricia, obviously), which meant the domestic surge had tapered, but the international audience more than made up for it. People around the world were posting, commenting, debating, analyzing. Every mention fed the system.
He wished he could pay the trolls directly. If the system had allowed it, he'd have kept them on retainer.
"Ryan! Get up!"
Chloe was kicking his door.
He opened it without brushing his teeth. She was standing in the hallway holding a square gift box, which she thrust into his hands with the theatrical flourish of someone presenting a royal decree.
"Happy birthday! Present!"
Ryan took the box. Looked at the cover. A photograph of Scrapper was printed on the top, stylized but unmistakable.
He raised an eyebrow.
Chloe was grinning. "Open it."
He opened the box.
Inside was a Scrapper figurine. Ten inches tall. Chibi-proportioned, with the oversized head and shortened limbs that characterized Japanese-style stylized figures. Despite the exaggerated proportions, the detail work was striking: every major design feature of Scrapper was accurately reproduced, painted with the care of a collector's item.
"I had it custom-made," Chloe said, clearly expecting praise.
Ryan tapped her lightly on the top of her head with his knuckle.
"You think about fried chicken all day, and then you spend time commissioning a custom figurine of the mech I built?"
"Is that a yes or a no?"
"I already have the actual Scrapper, you know. Do I need the figurine?"
Chloe's face moved through three different emotions in quick succession: proud, wounded, murderous.
"However," Ryan continued before she could bite him, "it's a great gift. I love it."
"You better."
"I do."
"Hmph. Good." She pushed past him into the room and face-planted onto his bed. "I'm hungry. Brush your teeth and let's eat."
Ryan went to the bathroom, thinking about the figurine.
While he brushed, he pulled out his phone and searched for Scrapper merchandise.
The results were staggering.
Hundreds of listings. Scrapper figurines in every size, every pose, every material. T-shirts. Keychains. Phone cases. Desk models. Life-size standups. Sales counts in the hundreds of thousands for individual listings, across dozens of different sellers.
Every single one of them was unlicensed.
Ryan didn't own merchandise rights because he hadn't thought to secure them. His legal team (which at the moment consisted of whoever Patricia asked to handle issues) hadn't filed for trademark protection on Scrapper's appearance. The pirate merchandise industry had filled the vacuum with predatory efficiency.
"Unbelievable," he muttered.
He wasn't motivated by the lost revenue. He didn't care about the money. But allowing unauthorized parties to profit from his work without his involvement was a principle matter. Unless they were generating Summon Points (which these sellers likely were, making this a gray area), he needed to reassert control over the merchandise.
He made a mental note. Future agenda item.
He rinsed, spit, and walked out of the bathroom. Chloe was already at the door, impatient for food.
They walked to the cafeteria together, Chloe chattering about breakfast options, Ryan letting her talk while he processed the morning.
They pushed open the cafeteria doors.
*POP. POP. POP.*
Confetti. Streamers. A dozen people positioned on either side of the entrance, launching party poppers in perfect unison.
*"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"*
The entire research facility's population seemed to be packed into the cafeteria. Reeves, Cross, Thornton, the triplet pilots, the kitchen staff, the security detail, the engineers. Even Patricia was there, standing in the back with her arms crossed and a rare small smile on her face.
Someone rolled out a cake. Three tiers, chocolate, with fifteen candles on top.
Ryan stood in the doorway, genuinely surprised for the first time in months. He'd been so focused on the work that he hadn't noticed the coordination happening around him. These people, who had every reason to treat him as a demanding employer or an abstract authority, had instead planned a birthday party for him.
Chloe was grinning beside him.
"You knew."
"I helped coordinate. Patricia roped me in last week."
"Thanks, everyone!" Ryan called out to the room. "This is… unexpected."
"Make a wish!" someone shouted.
Ryan walked to the cake. Looked at fifteen small flames. Closed his eyes.
He'd wished for a lot of things over the past year and a half. The system had delivered most of them. The ones it hadn't were things no system could deliver: the feeling of being part of something bigger than himself, the trust of people who genuinely believed in him, the warmth of a moment where no one expected him to solve anything.
All of those were in the room with him right now.
He blew out the candles.
-----