The alloy corridor opened into a hall that made no apologies for what it was.
Mechanical components in various states of assembly occupied most of the available surfaces—arms, chassis sections, power core housings, arrays of tools organized with the systematic precision of someone who knew exactly where everything was and maintained that knowledge actively. The ceiling was high enough to accommodate equipment that needed to stand upright. The lighting was calibrated for detail work. Everything about the room communicated that the person who used it spent most of their waking hours here and had optimized the space accordingly.
Dr. Kuseno was at one of the central benches, setting down a component he'd apparently been in the middle of assessing when Jordan's voice had arrived through the gate speaker. Up close, he was exactly what the facility suggested: a man who had made his choices decades ago and had been refining the execution of them ever since. The eyes behind his glasses were precise and currently doing the thing precise eyes do when they're evaluating something new.
"Jordan." He extended his hand. "I've been hoping for this introduction."
Jordan shook hands. "The pleasure is mine, Doctor. Genos has told me a great deal about you."
The formality in Dr. Kuseno's posture eased by a degree. He gestured toward a pair of chairs near a workstation with a kettle on it, and an intelligent assistant unit that had apparently been monitoring for the correct moment to be useful—it produced two cups of tea with the timing of something that had been waiting for exactly this situation.
"Genos tells you a great deal about everything," Dr. Kuseno said, with the dry affection of someone who has watched a seventeen-year-old take notes in a notebook for two years. "He sends me reports. They are thorough." A beat. "Sometimes very thorough."
"He takes his work seriously."
"He takes everything seriously. It's his nature." The doctor wrapped both hands around his cup. "I worry about that sometimes. Serious is fine. But he's not yet eighteen, and he talks about his own potential self-destruction with the same tone one uses for weather forecasts." He paused. "I apologize—you've barely arrived and I've already—"
"It's why I'm here," Jordan said. "Partly."
Dr. Kuseno looked at him over his tea.
"You came specifically about Genos?"
"Among other things."
Jordan set down his cup and produced the USB drive—white, materialized from the card that had been holding its data in compressed form since Capsule Corporation. He held it for a moment before placing it on the workstation's reader.
"I've been doing some traveling," he said. "I've encountered some research along the way that I think work better in your hands."
The screen above the workstation came alive as the drive's contents populated the display. Dr. Kuseno leaned forward.
The first folder opened onto schematics for a space-folding system—dimensional compression technology that allowed objects of arbitrary size to be reduced to a portable capsule and restored on demand. Frieza Force standard propulsion specifications followed: faster-than-light interstellar travel documented in engineering terms rather than theoretical ones, the math already solved and tested over decades of fleet operation. Behind those, the bio-android blueprints from the Red Ribbon Army's research division—organic-mechanical integration at a level that Dr. Kuseno's own work approached from a different angle.
The doctor's expression went through several phases.
The first was professional skepticism—the automatic response of a scientist to extraordinary claims. The second was engagement, the shift into the specific focus of someone recognizing real technical work. The third was something Jordan had seen before in scientists encountering information from orders of magnitude ahead of their current knowledge base: a kind of cognitive vertigo, the sensation of a reference frame being adjusted without consent.
His complexion had gone noticeably different by the time he reached the fourth folder.
Jordan applied the Super Healing at a low setting—not an intervention, just a stabilizing warmth, the kind that keeps a moment of overwhelming information from becoming a medical incident. The doctor's breathing evened out. His color returned.
He sat back in his chair, looking at the screen, and said nothing for several seconds.
Jordan summoned a white lab coat from the card inventory—materialized it from ambient energy with the Dragon Clan's quiet efficiency—and put it on. It felt appropriate for the conversation he was about to have. He smoothed his collar and turned back to the workstation.
"These are results from research I encountered in my work," he said. "You've built a remarkable career across materials science, mechanical engineering, energy systems—you're one of the few people in the world who can actually use all of this, not just read it." He pulled a chair over and sat. "I didn't come here to donate a library. I came because of Genos."
Dr. Kuseno looked at him. The vertigo had settled into something more focused.
"Tell me," the doctor said.
Jordan connected the Mind Network to the facility's systems—the diagnostic databases, the current armor specifications, the upgrade queue that Dr. Kuseno maintained—and pulled what he needed to the forefront of his own awareness. He didn't announce this; he simply knew what he was looking at when he spoke.
"Genos's current configuration is excellent for what it was designed to do," Jordan said. "The nuclear core gives him effectively limitless energy. The chassis handles most combat scenarios he'd encounter. You've done genuinely exceptional work." He paused. "But the design assumes that he's going to keep sustaining damage and being rebuilt. The approach treats his body as interchangeable hardware."
Dr. Kuseno's jaw tightened slightly.
"He's been through major repairs how many times?"
The doctor's silence was its own answer.
"When he encounters an enemy he can't match," Jordan continued, "he doesn't retreat and reassess. He calculates what it would cost to take the enemy down with him and prepares to pay it. Not as a last resort—as a standard option." He let this sit. "For a cyborg whose core is theoretically recoverable, that's defensible tactically. As a habit of mind for a seventeen-year-old, it's something else."
Dr. Kuseno set down his tea. He was looking at the floor with the expression of a man reviewing something he'd been not-looking at.
"He's not wrong about what he can afford to lose," Jordan said. "He's wrong about treating loss as acceptable. There's a difference."
"I know." The doctor's voice was quieter. "I've tried to—I don't know how to reach him on this. He listens to me about everything else. The revenge, the monster, the mission—" He shook his head. "I want him to be able to put it down someday. To just be a person. I don't know how to make that possible."
Jordan looked at the bio-android blueprints still visible on the screen—Dr. Gero's work, thoroughly cleaned of its original purpose, the biological framework available for a completely different application.
"We can give him a body," Jordan said.
Dr. Kuseno looked up.
"Not replacement hardware. Actual biological construction—grown tissue, real nerves, organic systems that integrate with the mechanical components instead of hosting them. The technology I've brought gives you everything you need to build it." He brought the relevant schematics forward on the display. "We keep whatever he wants to keep—the power systems, the weapons, anything that matters to him. We design around his preferences. But the baseline is biological. Flesh and blood first."
The doctor was very still.
"The permanent energy reactor solves the power problem," Jordan continued. "With the capsule technology, anything that needs to be large can be made portable—he could carry a full weapons deployment system in a coat pocket. There's no functional argument for the current configuration over what I'm describing. The only argument for it was that this technology didn't exist here yet."
He paused.
"Now it does."
Dr. Kuseno looked at the blueprints. At the schematics. At the careful stack of technical folders that represented decades of research from civilizations that had solved problems this world hadn't finished asking yet.
"He'd have to agree to it," the doctor said.
"Of course."
"He might not. He's—he's attached to what he is now. It's part of the revenge. Part of the way he remembers what happened."
"He might surprise you." Jordan thought of Genos as he'd encountered him over the past months—precise, disciplined, genuinely thoughtful under the earnestness. "He adapts when he understands why adaptation is better. He's not rigid. He's focused." A beat. "Present the option. Give him time. Let him decide from a position of having all the information."
Dr. Kuseno nodded slowly. The gratitude in his expression was the quiet kind—the kind that doesn't need to announce itself.
"Thank you, Jordan." His voice was steady. "Genos is fortunate."
"He's earned what he has," Jordan said. "I'm just adding a door." He picked up his tea, which had cooled to the temperature he preferred. "Now—I'd like to hear about what you've been working on. There's no rush. We have the morning."
Dr. Kuseno's expression underwent a small but clear transformation: the look of a man who has been asked about his work by someone he's just assessed as capable of understanding the answers. The scientist surfacing through the guardian.
"Well," he said, and reached for his own cup, "where would you like to start?"