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Bonus Chapter
Ryan was in his dorm room when his phone rang.
"Open the gate, we're outside." Chloe's voice. Impatient. Hungry-sounding.
"What gate? What are you talking about?"
"The campus gate. Your parents and I are standing outside MIT like tourists and nobody will let us in."
Ryan had completely forgotten. After the SAT scores came out, Tom and Lisa had said they were coming to celebrate. Then something had come up with the shop and the trip got delayed. Ryan had filed it under "later" and gone back to his equations.
Later was now, apparently.
He jogged to the main gate and found them under a streetlight. Tom with a rolling suitcase. Lisa with a tote bag. Chloe with her arms crossed and the expression of someone who'd been standing for too long on an empty stomach.
"Dad, Mom, I thought the shop situation was going to take longer."
Lisa smiled. "It resolved faster than we expected. We couldn't wait any longer."
"We just got off the train," Chloe added, grabbing Ryan's arm with the pitiful energy of a starving person. "Feed us."
Ryan read the subtext. Just off the train meant no dinner.
He dropped their bags at the dorm and took them to a restaurant off campus. Over food, he asked about the shop.
Tom was grinning. The kind of grin that meant good news and a story he'd been saving.
"Dad sold his share of the business," Chloe announced through a mouthful of food, beating Tom to the punch.
Ryan set down his fork. "Sold it? To who?"
Tom's shop was a partnership. He couldn't unilaterally sell. Someone had made an offer attractive enough for both partners to agree.
"Aegis Industrial."
Ryan stared. "Aegis. The company funding my project. The one that was specifically created as a project vehicle three months ago."
"That's the one."
"Why would a defense-adjacent shell company buy a machining shop in Texas?"
Lisa answered. "It wasn't just your father's shop. They also contacted several other people who'd helped with Scrapper's original construction. Suppliers, fabricators, anyone who'd been involved in sourcing or manufacturing components."
Ryan understood immediately. Aegis was cleaning up the trail. Every external party that had touched Scrapper's supply chain was being quietly acquired or compensated. Not to gain assets, but to eliminate loose threads. If someone reverse-engineered the procurement history, they could potentially reconstruct Ryan's technology pathway. Buying out the sources eliminated that risk.
Smart. Thorough. Slightly paranoid. Exactly what he'd expect from people with defense backgrounds.
"How much did they pay?"
Chloe jumped in again. "Ten million."
Ryan looked at his father. Tom's share of a small machining shop in Crestfield, Texas, was worth maybe a million dollars on a good day. Ten million was a premium of roughly ten-to-one.
"They overpaid," Ryan said.
"Significantly," Tom agreed, still grinning.
The overpayment wasn't charity. It was compensation. Ryan had developed the neural link, the control software, and every other core technology on Scrapper using his family's money and his father's equipment. When the Aegis deal converted those technologies into co-owned IP, Ryan had effectively surrendered half the value of work he'd funded privately. The buyout premium was Aegis acknowledging the debt.
"These last few months feel like a dream," Lisa said quietly. She wasn't exaggerating. From worrying about her son's obsession with a steel skeleton in the garage to watching him get recruited by MIT and score 749 on the SATs, to her husband's shop being bought for ten times its value. The trajectory was so steep it didn't feel real.
"Now," Lisa said, brightening, "all that's left is for you to find a nice girl."
Ryan choked on his water.
Chloe's eyes narrowed. The temperature at the table dropped approximately fifteen degrees.
"Have you met any attractive college women during your time here?" Chloe asked. Her voice was carefully neutral. Her grip on her chopsticks was not. "I'd love to be introduced."
"Campus is on break. There's nobody here."
"Nobody? Your research team has several women on it."
"They're colleagues."
"Colleagues. Interesting word choice."
"Chloe. I've been living in a prefab workshop doing equations and piloting a mech. I haven't spoken to anyone who isn't on the project payroll."
"Hmm."
"I don't even know where the social areas on campus are."
"Hmm."
Ryan looked at Lisa for help. Lisa was watching Chloe with a warm, amused expression that offered zero assistance.
Tom was eating and pretending the conversation wasn't happening.
After dinner, they walked the campus. It was summer break, so the paths were quiet. They ran into Kyle near the engineering quad.
"Hey! Ryan's family visiting?" Kyle spotted the group and walked over. He looked at the three people flanking Ryan and made a guess. "Your parents and your sister?"
Chloe stopped walking.
She turned to Kyle with the slow, precise movements of someone selecting their next words very carefully.
"I'm his classmate."
Kyle looked at Ryan. Looked at Chloe. Looked at the three-year age gap that was visible from space. Realized his mistake. Stammered something incoherent. Fled.
They encountered a few more project members along the way, including several of the female researchers. Chloe tracked each one with the vigilance of a radar installation.
Ryan walked beside her, helpless.
Before visiting, Chloe's friends had given her a warning: as a childhood friend, her greatest natural enemy was the "newcomer love interest." The girl who appeared out of nowhere, beautiful and mysterious, stealing the protagonist's attention while the childhood friend was away.
Chloe intended to be vigilant.
No newcomers would be tolerated.
Plz Throw Powerstone.