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The migration to Dome Base started immediately.
For a full week, the entire facility was a parade of crates and dollies. Equipment, files, sensitive instruments, all of it relocated piece by piece from the old radar station to the new building. The trickiest move was the two mechs themselves: Scrapper and the firefighting prototype. Disassembling them, transporting the components, and reassembling them at Dome Base took the technical crew four full days of careful work.
On the upside, both machines now had their own dedicated bays. No more sharing space. They sat in adjacent hangars with room to breathe and dignity intact.
Meanwhile, Ryan and Mason's team finished the prosthetic's final development work.
The prototype Mason had built was a right arm. The market needed both arms, obviously, so a left-arm version had to be derived. This was straightforward engineering. The left arm was a mirror image of the right with minor symmetry adjustments. A week of work, mostly checking that nothing in the actuator routing assumed handedness.
Ryan handled a different challenge: the forearm-amputation case.
Their existing prototype was designed for above-elbow amputations or full-arm replacements. But a substantial fraction of upper-limb amputees had lost only the lower portion of their arm. For these patients, a full-arm prosthetic was overkill. They needed something simpler: a forearm-only unit with hand and wrist articulation.
Ryan designed it in three days.
He was at the workshop now, watching it run through its paces.
Grant was the test subject again. The forearm prosthetic was lighter than the full-arm version, with two degrees of freedom: finger articulation and wrist rotation. The smaller scope meant fewer signals to map, faster training, and lower power consumption.
The fingers and wrist responded to Grant's commands with even better fluidity than the full-arm unit. The reduced complexity allowed Ryan's optimized control algorithms to run with more headroom, which translated to faster response times.
"This thing is too good," Mason said, watching the demo with mixed admiration and frustration. He'd genuinely thought he understood the project's scope. Ryan handed him a forearm prosthetic out of nowhere a week after announcing he wanted one. It was disorienting. "I'm never going to catch up to him. I've made peace with this."
"Status on the battery?" Ryan asked, ignoring the existential complaint.
The arm was nearly production-ready. The remaining details were small but important.
"We sourced the highest-capacity prosthetic battery on the market. Forty-five minutes of continuous operation for the full-arm unit. Two hours under typical daily use." Mason held up a thick rectangular cell. "We modified the battery housing to accommodate the larger pack. The arm is slightly heavier and the housing extends a bit more from the bicep, but it's still well within ergonomic norms."
He led Ryan to a display unit. The new full-arm prosthetic's bicep section had a flat raised panel that hadn't been there before.
"Cover plate. Pop it open and the battery comes out for swap. Users can carry spares and switch on the fly."
Ryan inspected it. The runtime wasn't ideal but it was acceptable for first-generation. Two hours of typical use covered most daily activities. Power users could carry spare batteries. Technical limitations got documented and disclosed honestly.
"Acceptable. Put our logo on the cover plate. It's prime visual real estate, and the cover gets seen every time someone changes a battery."
"Got it."
"Send the manufacturing files to my dad. The forearm version too, once final testing is done."
Mason nodded and went to get the documentation packages ready.
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Three thousand miles away, Tom was at his desk reading the day's news.
The headlines were unmissable.
*"Helios Group's Angel Prosthetics Brand Enters Production. Estimated Three Hundred Thousand Lives Will Be Transformed."*
*"January 1st: Helios to Host Angel Product Launch Event."*
*"Helios Announces Twenty Global Cities for Initial Fitting Center Network."*
*"Science Fiction Becomes Reality: The Future of Human Augmentation Arrives."*
Tom smiled.
He'd been waiting for exactly this moment. Helios had finally committed publicly to a launch date and a venue. The marketing machine was firing on all cylinders, telegraphing the announcement weeks in advance to maximize the buildup. By the time January 1st arrived, Angel would be the most anticipated product launch in the consumer technology calendar.
That was exactly what Tom needed.
He buzzed his communications lead, gave specific instructions, and watched her hurry out of the office with her phone already raised.
Within thirty minutes, the Prism Sciences corporate account stirred to life.
Despite Ryan's internet visibility, Prism Sciences as a corporate entity had maintained a low profile online. The account was active but careful, posting occasional product updates and avoiding any direct engagement with industry rivals. Despite the modest activity, the account had attracted over a million followers, mostly because anything connected to Ryan's name commanded attention. The followers had been waiting for something to happen.
The new post arrived without preamble:
*"Prism Sciences is pleased to announce that our first-generation neural prosthetic has reached final development stage. Our flagship fitting center is in advanced preparation. We are planning our first product launch event for January 1st. Stay tuned."*
Tom reviewed the post, approved it, and watched the responses begin to populate.
"Wait. What."
"January 1st. Same day as Helios. Are you kidding me."
"This is a direct challenge. They're going head-to-head with a billion-dollar company on the same day."
"I thought you guys were going to spend a year quietly developing the technology. You're really going to slug it out with Helios on the same calendar date?"
"This is so Ryan Mercer's company. Of course they would. No fear. Let's go."
"This is… this is going to be the most-watched single day in tech industry history."
The post racked up shares at a rate that put it on every major platform's trending list within an hour.
Tom watched the engagement climb and nodded with quiet satisfaction.
The strategy had been planned weeks ago. He'd held the announcement specifically until Helios committed publicly to a date. The moment Helios locked in January 1st, the response landed within a single news cycle.
The framing was perfect. Helios had been positioning Angel for months, building anticipation, telegraphing the launch as a flagship moment for the brand. They'd intended to own the news cycle on January 1st, with no significant competing announcements to dilute the coverage. By scheduling the same day, Prism Sciences forced every news outlet covering the Angel launch to mention the Prism Sciences launch in the same article.
Helios's marketing department had spent millions creating expectation around the date. Prism Sciences was about to consume a significant fraction of that expectation for free.
The trolls had attacked Ryan's reputation for weeks. Tom had absorbed the attacks calmly, knowing that the response wouldn't come until the timing was right.
The timing was right now.
Helios had spent months leveraging Prism Sciences' visibility to amplify their own. Today, the dynamic flipped.
Tom typed a private note to himself: Whoever practices long enough at riding someone else's coattails should not be surprised when someone rides theirs.
He saved the note. Then he went back to reviewing manufacturing schedules.
The forty-five days to January 1st had begun.
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