For advance chapters /patreon.com/HandsomeDuckGod
Graves had blocked the information immediately.
The moment the Whitfield defection was confirmed, he'd issued a directive: no news about Frank Holloway's kidnapping was to reach Ethan Mercer. Not through Bureau channels, not through media, not through any source the Director could control.
The reasoning was simple. A seventeen-year-old genius with access to powered battle armor, learning that the man who raised him had been kidnapped by a hostile foreign power, was a scenario that kept Graves awake at night. The kid's track record with impulse control in high-stakes situations — refusing to retreat from armed fighter jets, for instance — did not inspire confidence.
But paper can't wrap fire.
The Aurelian Republic had no interest in keeping quiet. Under heavy promotion from Aurelian state media, the story that "Principal Frank Holloway is visiting the Aurelian Republic for an academic exchange" spread across the world within days. The framing was deliberate: not a kidnapping, not a hostage situation, but a friendly visit. A school principal broadening his horizons.
Nobody who knew Frank Holloway believed a word of it.
One month into the laboratory work, Ethan's progress was ahead of schedule.
The battle armor commissioned by the government was complete. Unlike Mark One, which had been built on a budget with borrowed materials and improvised fabrication, this suit had received the full backing of a nation's resources. The materials were the finest available. The manufacturing conditions were optimal.
And for the first time, the armor included offensive weapons systems. Laser arrays integrated into the forearm assemblies. The kind of hardware that Mark One had lacked due to Valoria's weapons regulations, but which the government had now explicitly authorized for a military-specification suit.
The Super Soldier Serum was in its final stages. Two or three more days of work and it would be ready.
So today, exceptionally, Ethan had given himself a break.
He opened his phone, scrolled through social media out of habit, and felt the floor drop out from under him.
Every platform. Every news feed. Every comment section under his own account. All of it saturated with the same story: Frank Holloway visits the Aurelian Republic for academic exchange.
Official Aurelian Republic sources. Photographs of Frank at what appeared to be a government facility, smiling in a way that didn't reach his eyes. Diplomatic language about "cultural ties" and "educational cooperation."
The cold feeling that spread through Ethan's chest had nothing to do with the desert air.
He knew Frank. He knew the man's schedule, his priorities, his habits. At this critical moment, with Ethan freshly famous and the political situation volatile, Frank Holloway would never voluntarily leave the country. He'd been a soldier. He understood operational security. He wouldn't create a vulnerability by traveling abroad without reason.
This wasn't an academic exchange.
This was a kidnapping dressed in a press release.
He called home first.
The phone didn't finish its first ring.
"Hello, Auntie. Do you know anything about Uncle Frank's trip abroad?"
Linda's voice was confused. Worried in the way of someone who sensed something wrong but couldn't identify what.
"I've been wondering about that myself. When he left for the study program, he said he was going to Graystone Province. He never mentioned anything about going overseas."
Ethan's heart sank. But he couldn't let Linda hear it.
"Hah, sounds like your relationship with Uncle Frank isn't as close as you think, Auntie. Even I, his nephew, heard about the trip before you did."
He forced the teasing tone. Light. Casual. The voice of a kid ribbing his aunt, not a teenager processing the realization that his uncle had been taken.
"Maybe he'll bring back a foreign girlfriend."
Linda took the bait. "You little brat! You've been gone for a month and your mouth has gotten this bold? Trying to stir up trouble between me and your uncle?"
"When you get home, I'm going to skin you alive!"
She wasn't thinking about the gaps in the story. She was thinking about the insult. Good.
Ethan ended the call with a few empty promises about visiting soon, and the moment the line went dead, the mask came off.
He dialed Graves.
The Director of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, who had been dreading this exact phone call for weeks, saw the caller ID and felt his headache intensify by an order of magnitude.
He answered with a voice pitched several degrees warmer than his actual mood.
"Ethan! How's the research going? Making progress on that biochemical project of yours?"
"Director Graves, has anyone ever told you that your skill at changing the subject is terrible?"
Silence.
"Tell me what happened to my uncle. Straight. No misdirection."
Graves tried one more deflection. Ethan cut him off.
"Director, I respect you. But your ability to lie convincingly is nonexistent. I already know the outline. I need the details."
Seeing that concealment was no longer possible, Graves laid out the full sequence of events.
The Whitfield family's defection. The sleeper agent inside the Aurelian Department of Defense. The fake study program in Graystone Province. The tranquilizer rounds at the empty station. The military transport to Aurelian soil. Conrad Whitfield's involvement. Callister's deal with Edgar. The fourteen Bureau agents killed by Whitfield-compromised operatives. The global Red Notice.
And the purpose behind all of it: Frank Holloway was a hostage, held as leverage to force Ethan to come to the Aurelian Republic with his technologies.
As the story unfolded, Ethan's face went through a transformation that had nothing to do with the serum.
He'd known the Aurelian Republic was aggressive. He'd experienced it firsthand when their fighters tried to shoot him down. But using a political dynasty's defection to kidnap a civilian — a fifty-year-old school principal whose only crime was raising the wrong nephew — was a level of calculated cruelty that made the missile strike feel almost honest by comparison.
At least the pilots had tried to kill him to his face.
This was a knife in the back, held to someone else's throat.
"Ethan, listen to me. You have to trust the Republic on this."
Graves's voice was urgent. Professional. The voice of a man who'd been rehearsing this speech.
"Valoria will resolve this. We will not allow a citizen to be held prisoner overseas. Diplomatic channels are active. International pressure is building. The Chancellor has made this his personal priority."
"I need you to stay where you are. Continue your work. Do not act impulsively."
"Do you understand?"
"I understand, Director."
"You won't do anything rash?"
"I won't do anything rash."
The words came out steady. Convincing. The kind of calm that, to someone who didn't know Ethan Mercer very well, would have sounded like acceptance.
Graves, who had spent decades reading people, didn't entirely buy it. Which was why, after hanging up, he ordered the Bureau security detail around the laboratory to tighten their perimeter.
Outside the lab, the agents positioned themselves without pretense. They weren't hiding anymore. They were standing in the open, watching the laboratory entrance, watching the desert approaches, watching every potential exit route.
One of them approached Ethan as he stepped outside for air.
"Don't worry," Ethan said, waving them off. "I'm not going anywhere."
He went back inside.
"Captain, should we go into the laboratory and keep an eye on him? If this kid uses the battle armor to escape, we won't be able to stop him."
The squad leader shook his head. "According to intelligence, it took him more than three months to build Mark One. He's been here less than a month. The armor for the government is done, but it's already been shipped. There's nothing in there he can fly."
Inside the laboratory, Ethan's eyes settled on the workbench where a reagent was emitting a soft blue glow.
The Super Soldier Serum. Not finished. But close. If he worked through the night, pushed the final synthesis, ran the stabilization protocols on an accelerated schedule, he could have it ready by tomorrow evening.
It wasn't that he didn't trust the Republic. He did. Graves was competent. The Chancellor was committed. Diplomatic pressure was real.
But Ethan also understood, with the clarity of someone who'd studied the Earth-Prime memories of a world where nations competed exactly like this one, that diplomatic pressure alone would not make the Aurelian Republic release a hostage this valuable.
Frank Holloway wasn't a bargaining chip in a trade negotiation. He was bait. The Aurelian Republic didn't want to exchange Frank. They wanted to use Frank to lure Ethan across the ocean.
Diplomacy could go on for months. Years. And every day it dragged on was a day Frank spent in captivity, a day the Aurelian Republic squeezed him for leverage, a day the conflict between two superpowers escalated toward something neither could control.
Ethan could end it. Not through negotiations. Not through proxy channels. Personally.
The people of both nations were innocent. They didn't deserve a war because of him.
He made his decision.
For the next thirty-six hours, he didn't sleep.
Late the following night, the desert outside was black and silent. Inside the laboratory, every light was on.
Ethan stood shirtless in front of a chamber that looked like something between a medical pod and a spacecraft escape capsule. Cylindrical. Reinforced. Lined with injection ports and monitoring systems. The control console beside it displayed vital signs that were currently flat — waiting for an occupant.
He stepped inside.
The hatch sealed behind him with a pressurized hiss.
On the console, programs began executing automatically. Calibration sequences. Safety protocols. Injection timing algorithms that Ethan had designed based on the System's downloaded knowledge, modified for his specific physiology, tested in simulation but never in practice.
Above him, three tubes of pale blue liquid began their descent into the chamber.
The serum entered his bloodstream.
The pain was immediate.
Not the dull ache of bruised ribs or the sharp throb of a strained wrist. This was something fundamentally different. Every cell in his body felt like it was being torn apart and rebuilt simultaneously. His muscles burned. His bones ached with a pressure that felt like they were being crushed from the inside. His nervous system lit up with signals so intense they bypassed pain and became something closer to white noise.
This was the improved version, optimized by the System for human tolerance.
He couldn't imagine what the original must have felt like.
The reagent continued flowing. The pain didn't stop. It built. Layer upon layer, system upon system, as the serum worked its way through his biology with the methodical thoroughness of a program rewriting an operating system from the kernel up.
Muscle fibers were being restructured. Bone density was increasing. Neural pathways were being reforged. Every aspect of his physical body was being broken down and rebuilt at a level that made the cellular equivalent of demolishing a building and constructing a skyscraper in its place.
Brilliant light filled the chamber.
Not from the overhead lights. From the reaction itself. The biochemical transformation was generating energy, and for ten seconds, the capsule blazed with a radiance that leaked through every seal and joint in the housing.
Then, slowly, the light faded.
The hatch opened.
Ethan fell out of the chamber and hit the floor.
He lay there, face down, gasping, every muscle trembling with the aftermath of the transformation. His body felt like it had been unmade and reassembled by someone who'd decided the original specifications were inadequate.
But underneath the exhaustion, underneath the trembling and the gasping and the memory of pain that was already fading faster than it should have, he could feel it.
Strength.
Not the temporary strength of adrenaline or the borrowed strength of a suit of armor. This was his. Built into his muscle and bone and nervous system. A fundamental upgrade to the machine that was his body.
He flexed his hand. The grip strength was different. Denser. More controlled. He pressed his palm flat against the floor and pushed himself up with an ease that surprised him, because the body that had fallen out of the capsule thirty seconds ago had been barely functional, and the body pushing off the floor now felt like it could punch through the concrete.
Still lying on his back, he turned his head.
The battle armor stood in the corner of the laboratory. Not the suit he'd delivered to the government. A different one. One he'd been building in parallel, using the same upgraded materials and specifications, with laser weapon systems and an improved reactor integration.
The Bureau guards outside didn't know it existed.
They thought the only armor in the lab was the government's suit, which had already been shipped.
They were wrong.
Ethan looked at the armor. Red and gold, catching the laboratory lights, waiting.
He knew it was time to go.