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Luke didn't know exactly when Tony and Obadiah would have their confrontation, so he assigned EMIYA to surveillance duty.
That's what Servants were for, right? Reconnaissance, infiltration, the boring work that needed doing. If it were Skadi or Riven, Luke would have felt guilty about sending them on stakeout missions.
EMIYA? The man had spent eternity as a Counter Guardian, doing far worse things for far less reason. Watching a billionaire's mansion was practically a vacation.
But while reviewing his assets, Luke had a realization.
Ivan Vanko knew arc reactor technology. And in Iron Man 2, Tony had needed a new element to stabilize his reactor—an element whose atomic structure was hidden in Howard Stark's old model of the 1974 Stark Expo.
What if Luke got there first?
EMIYA's infiltration skills were legendary. Breaking into the Stark mansion, accessing the old display models, extracting the dimensional ratios that encoded the element's structure—child's play for someone who'd spent lifetimes as an assassin.
The data came back within a week.
Synthesizing the element was harder. Luke had money, facilities, and access to theoretical physicists through various shell companies. But translating Howard Stark's hidden message into actual atomic engineering required months of work.
Fortunately, he had Vanko. The Russian genius might not know why he was being asked to analyze specific dimensional ratios, but he understood particle physics well enough to fill in the gaps.
The element was created in Umbrella's underground laboratory.
Luke moved fast after that.
A paper was drafted—with professional ghostwriters who actually understood what they were describing—and submitted to Nature. Simultaneously, Luke's legal team filed patent applications covering every conceivable use of the new element.
The patent office processed the application with unusual speed. Money and connections had that effect.
The element needed a name. Luke briefly considered something humble, then decided humility was overrated.
"Fosterium."
Let the world know who'd discovered it.
The Nature paper hit the scientific community like a bomb.
A new stable element with unprecedented energy density. Potential applications in power generation, propulsion, materials science. The kind of discovery that came along once in a generation.
And it was attributed to Luke Foster, CEO of a mysterious company called Umbrella Corporation.
Within days, "Fosterium" was trending globally. Science journalists scrambled to explain the implications. Energy sector analysts revised their projections. Stock markets fluctuated as investors tried to figure out what this meant for existing power companies.
Umbrella Corporation's estimated valuation skyrocketed—not that it mattered, since Luke had no intention of going public. But the perceived value was there.
Some people tried to challenge the discovery. Claim it was fraudulent, or that Luke had stolen someone else's work. A few attempted more direct approaches—corporate espionage, legal harassment, the usual tactics deployed against disruptive innovators.
They discovered that Luke Foster had powerful friends.
A phone call to Pierce. A quiet word to Gitano's organization. The challengers withdrew their objections, sometimes permanently.
Tony Stark was investigating weapons leaks when the news caught his attention.
"New element?" He pulled up the Nature paper, scanning through the technical specifications. His genius-level intellect processed the data rapidly, identifying implications that would take other scientists years to understand.
This wasn't a hoax.
The atomic structure was elegant, stable, and theoretically sound. The energy density measurements were extraordinary. If these numbers were accurate—and Tony's analysis suggested they were—this "Fosterium" could revolutionize the entire energy sector.
Including his own arc reactor technology.
"JARVIS, run simulations. If we replaced the palladium core with this new element, what would the efficiency gains look like?"
"Preliminary models suggest a three hundred percent improvement in power output, sir. Additionally, the new element appears to lack palladium's toxic byproducts."
Tony touched his chest, feeling the arc reactor humming beneath his shirt. The palladium poisoning was already beginning—a slow death sentence he'd been trying to solve for months.
This Luke Foster might have just handed him the cure.
"Who is this guy?"
"Luke Foster, age twenty-six, founder and CEO of Umbrella Corporation. Limited public information available. The company appears to have substantial funding but no commercial products or public presence."
"A ghost." Tony frowned. "I want a meeting. If this is real, we could dominate the new energy market together."
He could also consider acquisition, but something told him this Foster wouldn't sell. Anyone who could synthesize a new element and patent it that quickly had resources and intelligence beyond the average startup founder.
Partnership might be the smarter play.
Luke refused all meeting requests.
He knew exactly what would happen if he sat down with Tony Stark—or any real scientist, for that matter. Three questions into the conversation, they'd realize he had no idea what he was talking about.
The element was real. The science was sound. But Luke's contribution had been money, connections, and stolen data. He couldn't explain the synthesis process, couldn't discuss the theoretical underpinnings, couldn't answer basic questions about atomic physics.
Better to stay mysterious. The reclusive genius was a well-established archetype. Howard Hughes had made it work.
Besides, Luke had other goals. Fosterium was a means to an end—establishing Umbrella Corporation as a legitimate player in the technology sector. Now that the company had credibility, other opportunities would follow.
Maybe he'd even use his influence to back a political candidate someday. A senator. A governor.
A president.
The possibilities were intoxicating.
Umbrella Corporation's HR department was drowning.
The Fosterium announcement had transformed the company's reputation overnight. Where before they'd struggled to recruit even mid-level talent, now applications poured in from every corner of the industry.
Engineers. Scientists. Executives. Everyone wanted to be part of the next Stark Industries.
Emil Garrett and Michelle Harper worked eighteen-hour days just processing the incoming resumes. The pile never seemed to shrink.
"We need to filter these somehow," Michelle said, dark circles under her eyes. "There are thousands of applications."
"Sort by qualification level," Emil suggested. "Senior positions and specialists get forwarded to the boss. Everything else, we handle ourselves."
Even with that system, Luke found himself buried in paperwork. Hundreds of profiles to review, credentials to verify, backgrounds to check.
He was a lawyer by training. A good one, actually—he'd nearly made judge before his reincarnation. But corporate HR was an entirely different skill set.
And somewhere in these applications, there were probably HYDRA plants. Pierce would be stupid not to try infiltrating a company this important.
"I wish I had an AI for this," Luke muttered, flipping through another stack of resumes. "Red Queen. JARVIS. Anything."
The drop system had given him many things, but an artificial intelligence wasn't among them. Yet.
Eventually, he gave up and delegated everything to Emil. The CEO would handle hiring decisions, with Luke reserving veto power for senior positions.
It wasn't ideal. But Luke couldn't do everything himself.
Note to self, he thought. Next time the system offers me something useful, pray for an AI.