For advance chapters /patreon.com/HandsomeDuckGod
The roar of the engine pulled the entire street to a halt.
Pedestrians stopped mid-stride. A delivery cyclist nearly clipped a lamppost. Cars slowing for the intersection inched forward to get a better view. Inside the restaurant, conversation cut off as a bright yellow streak drifted around the corner and screeched to a stop directly outside the front door.
The vehicle was unmistakable. Even people who didn't follow tech news had seen it on social media — the angular, sharp-lined sports car with the matte yellow finish that had been all over every channel for the past month.
"What the hell — whose car is that?"
"That's gorgeous. I have never seen a sports car that looked that mean."
"Look at the lines on it. What manufacturer is that? Some custom shop?"
"Hold on. Hold on. I know that car from somewhere."
"Yeah, me too. It looks really familiar."
Then the driver's door swung open by itself.
The cockpit was empty.
A woman near the window dropped her chopsticks.
"Wait."
"Oh."
"OH."
"That's Bumblebee."
The street erupted.
People who'd been politely staring suddenly fumbled for phones. Pedestrians abandoned their destinations and clustered around the parking spot. Someone shouted "Where's Professor Mercer?" and the crowd's attention spread outward like a ripple in a pond, every head turning to scan nearby windows and storefronts.
Inside the restaurant, every patron was staring at the empty cockpit through the front window. The same patrons who, ninety seconds ago, had been laughing at a young man for fabricating an absurd phone call to Edmund Hargrove.
The teenager in question stood up from his table, walked calmly toward the front door, and pushed it open.
He crossed the sidewalk in three steps, slid into Bumblebee's driver's seat without breaking stride, and the headlights flashed twice in greeting as the car detected its master.
The door closed.
The engine purred down to a satisfied idle, then growled back up as Bumblebee pulled away from the curb and accelerated into the evening traffic.
The restaurant didn't move.
For approximately ten full seconds, every person inside stood frozen in the exact posture they'd been in when Ethan walked out the door.
Then someone, very quietly, said:
"…that was Professor Mercer."
The owner — the same woman who, two minutes earlier, had been gently telling Ethan to seek help for his apparent compulsion to fabricate elaborate stories — slowly turned and looked at the table he'd been sitting at.
The fifty-mark bill was still there.
She stared at it.
Stared at the empty bowls. All five of them. Each one wiped clean.
Stared at the door he'd just walked out of.
Stared back at the bowls.
Slowly, the owner brought one hand to her forehead.
"Oh my God."
"Oh my God."
"Who else in this country can eat five servings of braised pork rice without stopping to breathe?"
Behind her, a woman at the corner table had pulled out her phone and was already typing furiously.
"Was anyone filming? Did anyone get the moment when he walked out and the car opened by itself?"
A man near the window held up his phone with shaky hands.
"I — I think I got it. I was filming the car when he came out."
The crowd descended on him.
The owner, meanwhile, had snapped out of her shock and was running toward the back of the restaurant. She had a security camera that recorded the dining area. She had a security camera that recorded the front entrance. And if her instincts were right, she had approximately eighty minutes before the entire country knew that Ethan Mercer had eaten dinner at her establishment, and she intended to extract every available marketing opportunity from those eighty minutes.
She already had the video title in her head.
Shocking! What Restaurant Could Possibly Get Professor Mercer To Eat Five Bowls Without Stopping?
She'd have it framed in the entryway by tomorrow morning.
-----
Bumblebee covered the distance from Ashford City to the capital in just under four hours, which was, by most measures, physically impossible.
Conventional sports cars could not maintain that kind of pace over that kind of distance. Conventional roads couldn't absorb the punishment. Conventional engines would have melted.
Bumblebee was not conventional.
Ethan had originally considered taking Blackout. The helicopter form was faster, and the airborne route would have shaved off another hour. But the capital's airspace was strictly regulated, and an unannounced ten-meter flying war machine entering controlled zones would have triggered alarm responses Ethan did not want to deal with at the end of a long day.
Bumblebee, for his part, had also pleaded against it. Through means that Ethan had not entirely sorted out, the yellow Transformer had developed a rivalry with Blackout that bordered on actively territorial. Whenever the two of them were in the same room, Bumblebee subtly positioned himself between Ethan and Blackout — a young, loyal partner asserting prior claim over the new arrival. It was juvenile. It was also, Ethan had to admit, kind of charming.
The Earth-Prime memories had warned about this. The factional rift between Autobots and Decepticons predated human civilization. Even with the System's modifications turning Transformers in this world into engineered constructs rather than sentient aliens, the ideological tension was apparently embedded at the architectural level. Bumblebee was an Autobot. Blackout was a Decepticon. They might both serve Ethan loyally, but they were never going to be friends.
Ethan, frankly, didn't mind. As his Transformer roster grew, having internal factionalism would prevent the units from forming an aligned bloc. If they ever decided collectively that they didn't like an order, that would be a problem. Mutual suspicion kept that from happening.
So Bumblebee got the trip.
The capital came into view as the sun was setting. Ethan instructed Bumblebee to drive directly to the National Energy Ministry headquarters rather than to Hargrove's residence. He could see the old physicist later. The ministry conversation was time-sensitive.
The Energy Ministry building was a sprawling, gray-concrete complex in the central administrative district. Most of its windows were dark. A handful of upper-floor offices were still lit, and one of them, Ethan suspected, belonged to the man he was here to see.
He pulled into the visitor parking area, climbed out, and approached the security checkpoint.
He had not announced his visit. The plan had been to arrive, check in at the gate, request an appointment, and wait politely.
The guard at the gate took one look at him, straightened up, and waved him through.
"Director Holt is expecting you, Professor Mercer. Top floor, west wing."
Ethan blinked.
Right. Apparently Holt was tracking my movements.
He nodded thanks and walked into the building.
-----
By the time Ethan reached the top floor, Director Xavier Holt was already waiting at the elevator, hands in his pockets, dressed casually for a man who normally wore a suit during business hours. He'd shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
"Ethan." Holt extended a hand. "Sorry to drag you across the country at this hour."
"You didn't drag me, Director. I came on my own."
"I should have come to Ashford City myself. The project warrants the courtesy. But—" he gestured vaguely toward the offices behind him, "—the desk situation has been unkind to me this quarter. I have not been outside this building in eleven days."
"Director, please don't apologize. You're managing the energy policy for the entire Republic. Your time is genuinely valuable. I'm a free agent. The drive was nothing."
Holt smiled — a real smile, slightly tired but warm.
He led Ethan down the corridor to his office.
The space was simpler than Ethan had expected. A desk piled with file folders. A bookcase along one wall. Three chairs and a small conference table. No decorative art. No vanity photos with politicians. The office of a man who actually did the work and didn't have time to pose for the version of himself that hung on the wall.
The secretary's desk in the antechamber was empty. Holt had clearly given his support staff permission to leave for the evening.
He moved to the corner of the office where a small electric kettle sat on a sideboard, and began preparing tea.
Ethan stood up immediately.
"Director Holt, please. I can do that."
"Sit down, kid. I've made tea before."
"I don't want you to—"
"Sit."
Ethan sat.
Holt brought two cups to the conference table and slid one across. He took the chair opposite, leaned back, and studied Ethan over the rim of his cup.
"You're younger in person than you look on television. Did you know that?"
"I get that a lot."
"It's the camera. Adds about five years to everyone. You look like you should still be in school."
"Technically I am, in a sense. I just got asked to take a teaching position at Hartwell."
Holt's eyebrow lifted. "By Hargrove?"
"By Hargrove."
"That old shark. He's been trying to keep that university relevant for thirty years. You're his coup. He's going to milk this for everything it's worth."
Ethan grinned. "I figured."
Holt set his cup down and turned serious.
"All right. To business. You brought the documentation?"
Ethan slid a folder across the table. Holt opened it and began reviewing the contents.
He read fast. Holt was, Ethan could see, the kind of executive who'd been reading dense technical proposals for so many years that he could parse them at speeds that would embarrass most academics. His eyes moved across each page in clean horizontal sweeps, his expression unchanging, his cup of tea cooling untouched at his elbow.
After fifteen minutes, he closed the folder, set it down carefully, and let out a long breath.
"You're going to need a headquarters."
"I am."
"You have a location in mind?"
"I was going to set up in Ashford City. Familiar territory. Lower property costs. Existing relationships with local infrastructure."
Holt nodded slowly. Then, after a pause:
"Have you considered the capital?"
Ethan blinked.
"The capital?"
"Hear me out." Holt leaned forward. "I understand the appeal of Ashford City. It's where you have your network. It's where your support team is based. It's where the Bureau's coverage of you is strongest. All of that is real."
"But."
"Property in the central administrative district of the capital is, on paper, prohibitively expensive. Land within the Third Ring is held by the state, by major corporations with sixty-year leases, or by old families with property going back generations. Acquiring a sufficient parcel for a corporate campus would, under normal circumstances, cost a fortune and take five years."
He paused.
"Your project is not normal circumstances. If you want the capital, the Mayor will personally clear a location for you. Within the Third Ring. He will, to use the technical term, grit his teeth and make it happen."
Ethan absorbed this.
The Third Ring of the capital. The most prestigious and tightly held real estate in the Republic of Valoria. A square meter of office space inside the Third Ring went for prices that made foreign investors blanch. And the Mayor was, apparently, prepared to displace whatever currently sat on a prime parcel of land to give it to a teenager's energy company.
"Director Holt. The kind of footprint I'd need for a research-grade corporate campus would be… significant. We're talking ten or fifteen blocks. Maybe more for the manufacturing facilities. The cost—"
"The cost has been pre-authorized."
"Pre-authorized?"
"Ethan." Holt's voice was patient. "The state is prepared to invest ten figures into your company. A real estate allocation in the capital, even a generous one, is a small percentage of that figure. The math works."
Ethan sat back in his chair.
The state, he was beginning to understand, was not making a polite gesture. The state was actively trying to anchor him in the capital — physically, geographically, and politically. A headquarters within the Third Ring would mean his daily presence in the seat of government. Ministers would drop by. The Chancellor's office would be a short walk away. He would become, by virtue of location alone, an integral part of the national power structure.
It was a generous offer. It was also a strategic move.
He could decline. The state would back off. They'd let him build in Ashford City if he insisted.
But the capital had advantages he hadn't fully considered. Direct access to ministry-level decision-makers. Proximity to Hargrove and Hartwell University. A higher-grade talent pool. International visibility. Easier defense coordination if the Aurelian Republic tried another infiltration attempt.
And one more advantage that Holt was probably not consciously offering, but that Ethan registered immediately:
The capital was where the Voss brothers had their corporate base.
If Ethan was going to compete with Adrian and Dominic Voss for the future of Valorian defense technology, doing it from a headquarters fifteen blocks from their own office would be more than a strategic advantage.
It would be a statement.
He looked up at Holt.
"Director Holt. I'd like to consider the capital seriously. Can you give me until tomorrow morning to make a final decision?"
Holt smiled. He'd been hoping for this answer.
"Take all the time you need, Ethan. The offer doesn't expire."
He raised his teacup.
"To New Future Technology Energy."
Ethan raised his.
"To New Future."
They drank.
Outside the office windows, the lights of the capital spread out in every direction, a city that had, without quite realizing it yet, just acquired a new center of gravity.