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The money was coming soon. The hundred-million-dollar plasma cannon bonus.
Ryan wasn't sure exactly how much the cannon's fabrication had cost. But he was certain it had come in under budget. The research process had been nearly zero-cost: no wrong turns, no failed prototypes, no wasted iterations. The only real expense beyond materials had been Thornton's team's salaries. If that alone was enough to blow the budget, it meant Thornton was overpaid.
Tom absorbed this. "Your end has a bonus coming?"
"About a hundred million."
Tom went quiet for several seconds. He'd learned to accept numbers from Ryan the way a surfer accepted waves: you didn't fight them, you just found your balance.
"I'll take your word for it. Mason's team has some big purchases coming up. Let me know when it hits."
Tom handed the phone to Lisa, who chatted for a few minutes about the weather, Tom's diner project (apparently he was going to publish his chicken fried steak rankings), and a distant cousin's wedding. The normal family talk that Ryan had been missing without realizing it.
When the call ended, Ryan finished both bowls of noodles and left the cafeteria.
Walking back along the gravel path, he texted Patricia.
"When does the bonus come through?"
The reply came in under thirty seconds.
"Two days. Need a new bank account?"
"Send it to my dad. I don't care about the money."
"…"
The reply was just the ellipsis. Patricia, who had seen a lot of billionaires in her career, had apparently given up reacting to Ryan's relationship with money.
It wasn't an affectation. A year ago, a hundred million dollars would have been life-changing. Now it was a budget line. At this rate, he'd be at a billion before his voice finished changing. The numbers had stopped meaning anything.
Back in his quarters, Ryan dropped his phone on the desk and was about to open the Crimson Typhoon database when he saw a second message from Patricia, sent two minutes earlier.
"Just checked your Twitter mentions. Something's off. Let me handle it."
His stomach lurched.
The trolls. Patricia had found them.
Ryan typed fast.
"Leave them alone. Economy is bad this year. Let them earn their paychecks. It's the least I can do."
Patricia's reply was another ellipsis.
He shrugged. The trolls were doing important work. Their progress contribution to the system was measurable in real time. But Patricia was Patricia, and if she decided to act, she would act. The troll farms were operating on borrowed time.
Ryan mourned them briefly and moved on.
He opened the system and pulled up Crimson Typhoon's shock absorption system. This was the technology he'd been forcing himself not to study since it had unlocked during the chairman call. Now that the plasma cannon test was complete and the firefighting mech mobility test had proven the team's competence, he could finally dig in.
The damper system was extraordinary.
For a machine the size of Crimson Typhoon, vibration management wasn't a comfort feature. It was a survival system. Every footfall of a 1,700-ton machine generated shock loads that would shake a lesser vehicle apart. Multiply that by running speeds. Add combat impacts. Add wave strikes from deep-ocean deployment. Add the occasional fall from height.
Without an elite damper system, the mech's internal components would disintegrate within weeks of operation.
Crimson Typhoon's solution layered multiple technologies. Achilles dampers in the feet absorbed primary impact energy. Magnetorheological fluid dampers in the leg joints handled secondary resonance. A distributed network of inertial absorbers throughout the frame managed high-frequency vibration. The systems worked in concert, each covering a different energy band, collectively reducing shock transmission to the internal structure by over ninety percent.
And it wasn't just protective. It was active. The magnetorheological dampers could modulate their stiffness in real time, stiffening to absorb hard impacts or softening to allow rapid joint motion during acrobatic maneuvers. This was the technology that let Crimson Typhoon perform combat moves no other Jaeger could execute.
Ryan studied the architecture for hours. The engineering was layered deep enough that he kept finding new details to appreciate: a cross-connected bleed valve that redistributed pressure across the leg during asymmetric loading, a secondary inertial reference frame that isolated the cockpit from the main hull's oscillations, a torque-decoupling mechanism in the shoulder joint that let the arm move without transmitting reaction forces to the torso.
Pieces of this system would revolutionize multiple industries on their own. Aerospace shock isolation. High-rise earthquake damping. Precision manufacturing vibration control. A single researcher who fully understood this damper architecture could build a career spanning the rest of their life.
At eleven p.m., Ryan forced himself to close the database and go to sleep.
-----
The next morning, he visited the weapons lab.
The atmosphere was different. No exhausted faces. No post-adrenaline crash. The team was vibrating with the specific energy of people who'd just accomplished something they'd spent their lives trying to do and hadn't slept because they couldn't stop talking about it.
Thornton was at his desk, writing. His face showed fatigue, but his eyes were bright.
"Sleep at all?" Ryan asked.
Thornton yawned in answer. "Enough. Finished the results report." He handed Ryan a portable drive. "You probably don't need this, but procedurally, you get one."
The gesture was deliberate. Thornton was treating Ryan as a superior, not a peer. The senior researcher on a classified weapons program formally reporting to a fifteen-year-old. If Ryan had been capable of being moved by institutional recognition, he might have been.
"Thank you."
"One more thing. Once we finish the baseline testing cycle, we may be relocating."
Ryan raised his eyebrows. "Already? This facility is practically new."
Thornton laughed ruefully. "Nobody predicted the project would move this fast. A dedicated facility is being constructed on an accelerated timeline. By the time the basic tests are finished, the new site should be ready."
"I guess the next research center will get more careful planning."
"I'd imagine so."
They shook hands. The gesture was mutual: two people who'd done good work together and expected to do more in the future. Thornton walked Ryan to the door and went back to his report.
-----
No tests were scheduled for today. The cannon was being disassembled for component inspection: measuring wear patterns, identifying stress points, projecting the weapon's operational life.
Ryan watched from a safe distance and opened the Prism Sciences group chat on his phone.
"Mason, list every technical problem your team has encountered in the last two weeks. Drop them in the chat."
The messages started coming in. Drive system efficiency issues. Finger articulation timing conflicts. Thermal management in the wrist actuator housing. Power draw optimization for the onboard computer. A dozen specific engineering problems that Mason's team had been wrestling with.
Ryan worked through them one by one, typing corrections, sketching solutions, flagging misconceptions. Two hours of remote consultation compressed into rapid-fire technical answers. By the time he was done, Mason's team had clear direction on every outstanding issue.
Viv sent the last message.
"Ryan, the Whitfield prosthetic that Helios is backing. There's news that they're preparing to launch. They're building direct-to-consumer fitting centers already."
-----