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The clerk stared at Ethan for a good five seconds, brow furrowed, certain he'd seen this face somewhere but unable to place it.
The line behind Ethan was getting restless. The clerk shook off the feeling, took the stack of documents, and slid a blank form across the counter.
"Fill in the name and registration type."
Ethan bent over the counter and began writing. He already had the company name ready. He'd been turning it over in his head for weeks, and every other option had felt either grandiose or forgettable.
Three minutes later, he slid the form back.
The clerk barely glanced at it. He was already reaching for the bureau stamp, his body on autopilot after a morning of identical paperwork, when the company name caught his eye and his hand stopped mid-reach.
New Future Technology Energy Co., Ltd.
The clerk's brain rebooted.
He'd been processing business registrations for the Ashford City Commerce Bureau for five years. He'd seen every kind of small business get incorporated — trading companies, livestreaming ventures, food and catering operations, the occasional pharmacy or cosmetics startup. He'd even handled one or two adult novelty firms, which had been uncomfortable but professional.
But an energy company?
Filed by an individual?
Energy companies, as far as he understood the industry, were not founded by private citizens walking into commerce bureaus with paperwork. Energy companies were founded by governments, consortiums, or state-backed conglomerates. The capital requirements alone — power plant construction, grid infrastructure, regulatory compliance — were measured in the billions. No individual had that kind of money. And the technical expertise required was something that took institutions decades to build.
The clerk looked up at the young man on the other side of the counter. Late teens. Casual clothes. Not even wearing a watch.
The clerk sighed. Pushed the form slightly back across the counter.
"Kid, I know you think this is funny. But look behind you." He gestured at the line. "I've got a hundred people to process before lunch. Take the form, go home, and stop wasting my time. If you try to file this again, I'll have the guards escort you out."
He made a show of lifting the form toward the nearby trash can.
Ethan stood frozen at the counter, his brain cycling through three different responses. None of them were diplomatic.
He's going to throw it away. He's going to actually throw my company registration in the trash.
The clerk's wrist was already moving when his peripheral vision caught the legal representative field at the bottom of the form.
Ethan Mercer.
The clerk's hand paused in mid-air.
His eyes tracked from the name, to the young man's face, back to the name.
"Huh." He muttered to himself. "Same name as Professor Mercer. Probably a fan."
A moment passed.
"Eighteenish. Same age as Professor Mercer."
Another moment.
"Same city as Professor Mercer."
The clerk stared at Ethan, who was now quite visibly trying not to laugh.
"Filing… an energy company."
The color slowly drained from the clerk's face.
"Oh. Oh no."
"No."
"Oh no."
The clerk looked at Ethan. Looked at the form. Looked at the trash can he'd been about to throw the form into.
Then, at a volume that rattled the service window glass:
"HOLY — YOU'RE PROFESSOR MERCER."
The entire hall went silent.
Every head turned. The ambient noise of a hundred simultaneous conversations cut off as if someone had pulled a master switch. Every person in the Commerce Bureau — citizens in line, clerks at their stations, guards by the doors — pivoted toward the service window where a teenager was standing next to a trash can.
Ethan pulled off his cap and managed a sheepish half-wave.
"Morning, everyone."
The hall detonated.
-----
So this, Ethan thought, twenty minutes later, is what being a celebrity actually feels like.
He'd been escorted — by several overwhelmed clerks and a small knot of guards — to the center of the hall, where he was now attempting to field what had spontaneously reorganized itself into a fan line.
"Professor Mercer, is it okay if my daughter gets a photo with you?"
"Professor Mercer, my son wants to be an engineer because of you, could you sign this notebook?"
"Professor Mercer, I cried when I watched the press conference, the whole thing, Bumblebee and everything, could I just—"
"Professor Mercer—"
"Professor Mercer—"
"Professor Mercer—"
He was smiling. He was trying very hard to keep smiling. In the first five minutes, the smile had been genuine. In the next five minutes, the smile had been enthusiastic. By minute fifteen, the smile had become something he was mentally maintaining through willpower alone.
The line was not shrinking. If anything, it was growing. Word had somehow gotten outside the Commerce Bureau, and people were coming in off the street. A crowd had formed on the sidewalk. The noise level was building.
Ethan signed a notebook. Posed for a photo. Signed a T-shirt. Shook a small boy's hand. Took another photo. Signed an actual physics textbook. Nodded sympathetically while a grandmother told him about her arthritis. Agreed politely that yes, physics was certainly an interesting subject. Took yet another photo.
At the thirty-minute mark, he was starting to wonder if this was how he was going to die.
He had faced down a hostile foreign superpower's defense apparatus. He had flown at Mach 6. He had been shot at with automatic weapons. None of that had prepared him for the physical toll of sustained polite enthusiasm directed at him by people who sincerely, fervently loved his work.
I have new respect for Ryan Calloway. Journalists are built different.
An hour in, his hand was cramping. His face hurt from smiling. The line showed no signs of ending.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
I'm going to be stuck here until dinner. I'm going to starve in the Ashford City Commerce Bureau. A statue of me will be erected on this spot with the inscription: He signed autographs until his pen ran out of ink and then he died.
That was the moment the cavalry arrived.
A cluster of Commerce Bureau managers came down the main staircase, led by a portly, middle-aged man in a slightly rumpled suit. The man moved with the specific purposeful haste of a senior administrator who'd just been informed that his building contained an unexpected VIP and he had approximately ninety seconds to handle the situation before it became an international incident.
He shouldered through the crowd with practiced efficiency, reached Ethan, and extended a hand.
"Professor Mercer. Martin Briggs. Director of the Ashford City Commerce Bureau."
Ethan, who had been signing his name for so long he was pretty sure he'd started misspelling it, gripped the director's hand like a drowning man grips a life preserver.
"Director Briggs. Very pleased to meet you."
"Professor Mercer, sir, I have to apologize. We had no idea you would be coming in person today. There was no reason for you to come in yourself — we would have been delighted to send a representative to your residence to handle any administrative matters."
Briggs's voice was warm and practiced, the well-oiled diplomacy of a career bureaucrat.
"Your status as a national figure does introduce significant complications when you're out in public. We understand that completely. Please, let us handle this personally from here."
Under normal circumstances, Ethan would have made a couple of polite demurrals before accepting. Those were the social scripts, and he generally knew how to follow them.
But Ethan had been signing autographs for an hour and he was hungry and his hand hurt.
"Director Briggs." He kept his voice low. "I will follow you literally anywhere if you get me out of this room."
Briggs had been a government official for a long time. He read people for a living. He caught the edge of desperation in Ethan's eyes and pivoted seamlessly.
He raised his voice to address the crowd.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I apologize, but Professor Mercer and I have urgent business to attend to upstairs. I appreciate your patience and enthusiasm. Please, let us through."
There was some grumbling. Some hopeful stragglers reached out with last-minute autograph requests. Briggs's body, which was not small, became a surprisingly effective blocker as he ushered Ethan toward the main staircase at a brisk walk that was not quite a jog.
Ethan, for his part, waved apologetically to the fans as he was extracted. He felt mildly guilty. He felt very, very relieved.
They made it to the stairs.
They made it up the stairs.
They made it into Briggs's office.
Briggs closed the door.
Ethan collapsed into the nearest chair.
-----
"Water?" Briggs offered, already filling a glass from the cooler in the corner.
Ethan accepted the glass with both hands and drained it without pausing for breath. He set it down, caught his breath, and managed a grateful look at his rescuer.
"Director Briggs. I owe you one."
"Not at all, Professor Mercer."
"I was starting to think I was going to have to fight my way out."
Briggs chuckled, though his eyes betrayed the specific amusement of a man who found this particular detail fascinating. Before this afternoon, his entire impression of Ethan Mercer had been shaped by media coverage: the Aurelian Republic infiltration, the fighter jet combat, the robotic press conference. The young man sitting across from him in a rumpled morning after battling fans for an hour did not match those images at all.
It was, honestly, refreshing.
"Can I ask how this happened, Professor Mercer? You're not scheduled on the Bureau calendar today. We could have made arrangements."
"I was trying to avoid arrangements." Ethan set the empty glass down. "I figured if I just walked in and filed like a regular person, I'd be in and out in twenty minutes."
"And how did that work out?"
"Director Briggs, you are holding me together with your bare hands at this moment."
Briggs laughed — a genuine, startled laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He was warming to this kid quickly. Media coverage made Ethan Mercer look like a cold, calculating operator. In person, he was a sarcastic eighteen-year-old who'd been mobbed by his own fans and was now drinking tap water in an administrator's office with his hair sticking up.
A knock at the door interrupted the moment.
The clerk — the same one who had nearly thrown Ethan's registration form into the trash — stepped in, white-faced, holding the documents with the careful reverence of a man handling a live grenade.
He crossed the room to Briggs's desk and set the papers down with painstaking care. Then he shot Ethan a pleading, desperate look that could be roughly translated as:
Please, Professor Mercer, I have a family.
Ethan nearly laughed out loud.
He gave the clerk a small wink.
"Relax. We're all good."
The clerk's shoulders collapsed with audible relief. He bowed — actually bowed — in Ethan's direction, then in Briggs's direction, then in the approximate direction of the office plant, and then retreated out the door as quickly as his legs could carry him without officially being called running.
Briggs raised an eyebrow at Ethan.
"Is there something I should know about?"
"Nothing of consequence, Director. Your clerk handled my documentation very professionally."
"Mm-hmm."
Briggs picked up the documents and settled into his chair. He opened the folder. Glanced at the first page. Glanced at the second. By the third page, his eyebrows had climbed halfway to his hairline.
Ethan took another sip of water.
The real conversation was about to begin.