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The plasma generation chamber passed its pre-test inspection without issues. Every sensor reading nominal. Every connection secure. Every safety system responsive.
"Everyone into the control room," Ryan called.
The test corridor emptied. Thornton's team filed through the reinforced door into the observation bay, a hardened room built into the corridor's side wall with blast-rated glass, redundant ventilation, and a master control console that could operate every system in the test chamber remotely.
Forty researchers packed into a space designed for twenty. Nobody complained. Nobody wanted to miss this.
The test chamber was visible through the observation window. The generation chamber sat on its firing platform, disc-shaped, taller than a person on both faces, bolted to the rail-mounted base. It looked like a flying saucer that had been captured and chained to the floor.
The device worked by converting neutral gas into plasma using high-energy laser excitation, then heating the resulting plasma to operational temperature. Ryan had mastered the underlying physics weeks ago and sent the fabrication specifications to Aegis's manufacturing network. The unit that sat in the test chamber was the result: the first real-world plasma generation system ever built to the i-22's specifications.
Whether it would work as designed was about to be determined.
"You should do the honors," Thornton said, stepping back from the console.
The team parted. Ryan walked to the window, found the activation switch on the console panel, and pressed it.
A soft tone. Then a hum that built from nothing to a low vibration felt more in the chest than heard with the ears.
Through the observation window, the generation chamber came alive. Blue light erupted from the inspection ports, bright and sharp, like lightning trapped inside a drum. The laser arrays were firing, ionizing the oxygen feed gas, stripping electrons from atoms, converting stable matter into a roiling cloud of charged particles.
Plasma. Real plasma. Generated on command, contained inside a chamber that existed because a teenager had drawn it on paper.
The ozone hit almost immediately. Even through the sealed control room, the sharp, fishy smell of ionized oxygen seeped through the ventilation system.
"Get the air cycling," Ryan said. Someone hit the environmental controls, and the scrubbers kicked in.
Ryan turned his attention to the monitoring display.
*Plasma temperature: 1,374°C*
Climbing. The lasers were heating the plasma toward its target state. The curve was smooth, consistent, tracking the theoretical projection almost exactly.
"Nominal?" Thornton asked, his eyes locked on the display.
"Nominal. Generation is stable. Temperature rising on profile."
*1,600°C. 1,800°C.*
Through the observation window, the test chamber was changing. The generation chamber's thermal exhaust ports were venting waste heat into the corridor. The air temperature in the sealed chamber was spiking. Moisture in the atmosphere was flash-evaporating and re-condensing, filling the space with thick fog that obscured everything except the blue glow pulsing from the device's core.
Inside the control room, the temperature was rising too. Not dangerously. But noticeably. The wall nearest the test chamber was warm to the touch.
*2,000°C.*
The number held. Stable. No fluctuation. No degradation. The plasma was at target temperature and the generation chamber was containing it without distress.
A few researchers exchanged nervous glances. Two thousand degrees Celsius was contained behind a wall of engineered materials and a pane of blast glass. If something failed catastrophically, the plasma would breach containment and turn the immediate area into an approximation of the sun's surface.
Ryan read the room. "The chamber has an emergency shutdown mode. If internal pressure or temperature exceeds design limits, the system vents the plasma through a controlled exhaust pathway. It can't explode. Worst case, you get a plasma leak, not a plasma bomb."
"How reassuring," someone muttered.
"It should be. I designed it that way."
Thornton wasn't worried about explosions. He was watching the data. Temperature stable at 2,000 degrees. Plasma density within predicted parameters. Energy input matching the theoretical consumption curve. Every number on the screen corresponded to an equation in Ryan's technical outline, and every equation was proving correct.
"This is a success," Thornton said quietly.
Ryan nodded. He watched the readouts for another thirty seconds, confirming stability, then pressed the shutdown command.
The generation chamber began its cooling cycle. The plasma was routed to a containment vessel for controlled dissipation. The internal cooling system activated, pulling heat out of the chamber and dumping it into the corridor, which responded by producing even more fog.
The test chamber looked like a steam room. Through the white haze, the blue glow of the generation chamber faded to nothing.
"The fog is a problem," someone observed. "We need an atmospheric management system in here. Dehumidifiers, at minimum. Probably a full HVAC overhaul."
"I'll add it to the requirements list," Ryan said. "But that's an infrastructure issue, not a physics issue. The test was clean."
The control room relaxed. Smiles appeared. A few people clapped. One of the senior researchers, a man who'd been on Thornton's original team a decade ago, sat down on a storage crate and put his face in his hands. Not from distress. From relief.
Ryan and Thornton stepped aside to discuss the data.
"I need this test's thermal profile cross-referenced against your archived data from the original program," Ryan said. "Same gas composition, same excitation method. The core numbers should align. Any discrepancies will tell us where the real-world physics diverge from the theoretical model."
Thornton was already nodding. "I'll handle the comparison myself. The original tests were mine. I know the data better than anyone."
He paused. Then, with the careful tone of a man who'd learned something about how this research facility operated: "I've heard from some of the other team leads that volunteer work tends to become permanent work around here."
Ryan looked at him. "Is that a problem?"
"Not at all. I'd rather be useful than idle." Thornton smiled. The thinning hair on his crown caught the fluorescent light. "Just don't let me burn out before we fire the first shot."
"If you need help, come find me."
They separated. Ryan started walking back to his quarters, already planning the evening's work: downgrading the neural link architecture for the prosthetics application. Simpler sensor array, limited signal scope, consumer-grade housing. A version of the technology that could sit inside a prosthetic arm and never reveal its classified origins.
His phone rang. Kyle.
"Do you have a minute? The firefighting mech team finished our component assignments and submitted everything to the professors, but they're swamped. We were hoping you could review our work so we can start revisions sooner."
Ryan sighed internally. The professors were busy because they were designing an entire mech from scratch. The assistants were anxious because they'd finished their parts and wanted feedback. And Ryan was the only person in the facility qualified to review both.
"Send everything to my room. I'll look at it tonight."
"Thank you. Really."
Ryan hung up and looked at the ceiling.
Neural prosthetics downgrade. Plasma cannon data review. Firefighting mech component audit. Drift experiment oversight. Facility management.
He was fourteen years old.
He went to his room and got to work.
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