Chương 157: Ethan's Demon

Vincent's call had gone into Chris like adrenaline straight to the heart, and his head was completely steady now. But when he got back to his station, Ethan was wrong. Ethan was alone in his molecular area, repeating one extremely fine operation over and over — using a syringe to inject a specially made liquid into another droplet suspended in oil, forming a miniature capsule with a filling inside it. The technique was brutally difficult.

Ambient temperature, surface tension, the steadiness of the operator's hand: it demanded all of them to an unreasonable degree. Chris noticed the fine sweat across Ethan's forehead, and the very slight tremor — almost invisible — in the hand holding the syringe. He'd already failed a dozen times. Every time a capsule burst he swore under his breath and started again in silence. Everything coming off him was agitation and stubbornness. This was wrong, Chris thought. They'd settled on precise chaos.

Ethan should be putting his energy into building controllable variables, not grinding himself down on a piece of pure showmanship.

"Ethan." Ethan didn't look up. His eyes stayed locked on the beaker and his voice came out hard.

"Don't bother me. I need to concentrate." Again the needle went through the capsule wall, and the liquid inside blew out into the oil. Failed." Damn it." Ethan slammed the syringe down on the bench.

"What are you actually doing?" Chris took him by the shoulder and turned him around.

"We talked about this technique. The risk is too high. It doesn't belong on a finals menu."

"I know." Ethan's volume came up all at once. He knocked Chris's hand off. His eyes were shot through with red.

"I know the risk is high! But if we don't put something like this out there, what are we bringing against Arthur? Kira's mystical little moods? Your so-called stories?" The words went in like a splinter.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Chris's face darkened.

"What's it supposed to mean?" Ethan laughed at himself, once.

"It means I'm scared. I'm scared that all our fancy tactics won't survive one contact with that perfect machine. He can replicate a Wellington perfectly. He can replicate the Spanish sphere perfectly. That means he can replicate any top-tier technique perfectly. We have to put something on the pass that even he can't copy easily — more complex, further out — or we don't have a chance." He'd finally got the fear out of himself. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road.

If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Arthur's strength had hit Ethan hardest, because technique was where Ethan lived. The ground he stood on had been crushed flat by someone doing the same thing in a more absolute and more purified form. He could say out loud that he accepted imperfection and wanted to make chaos, but underneath he still wanted to beat the man the way he knew how. With technique. He was in a closed loop.

The harder he tried to prove himself with technique, the more clearly he felt the gap between himself and Arthur, and the more afraid he got. Chris looked at him, and the anger went out of him slowly. He could see the struggle. He could also see the boy underneath it, terrified of failing, desperate to be told he was enough.

"Ethan." His voice came down.

"Do you remember the roast chicken you made in the semifinal?" Ethan blinked, thrown.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Did that dish use any earth-shaking molecular technique? Centrifuge? Rotary evaporator?"

"…No. It was as traditional as it gets."

"So why did it make a judge cry? Why was it the thing that won us the semifinal?" Ethan said nothing. He knew the answer. Because that dish had his childhood in it, and his most honest feeling, and the warmth of a person being a person.

"You already found the answer, Ethan." Chris looked straight at him and said it one word at a time.

"Your strongest weapon was never the cold machinery and the complicated technique. Your strongest weapon is you. Your story. Your feeling. Everything you have as a man who isn't perfect."

"Arthur can copy any technique. Can he copy the way you felt on Christmas morning when the smell of roast chicken reached you? Can he copy the warmth you felt watching your father carve that chicken badly? He can't. Those things belong to you and there is one of them in the world."

"We can't beat Arthur if we try to race him on his track. But we can drag him onto ours — a track with mud on it and thorns in it, and laughing, and crying, a track that belongs to people. On a track like that, his perfect car can't even get moving." Chris picked up the syringe Ethan had thrown down and put it back in the tool case.

"We don't need this," he said.

"We need you. Not the cooking machine called Ethan Cole who's chasing a hundred percent. The Ethan with blood in him who thinks about his father when he smells a roast chicken." Ethan stood where he was. His body was still trembling a little, but the agitation and the wildness were draining out of his eyes. As though something had pulled the strength out of him, he leaned back slowly against the bench.

"I just… I'm scared of dragging you two down." His voice was low and something caught in it.

"Kira has her gift. You have your read of the whole board. And me — if I can't even beat people on technique, what am I for?"

"You're for being you. That's the whole use." Chris stepped up and gripped his shoulder hard.

"You're our heavy gun. You're the one who breaks the wall. Your technique is the shell that carries the feeling — not a blank fired off to look impressive. Without your execution, Kira's ideas and my story are a castle in the air."

"We're a team, Ethan. Nobody drags anybody. We win together and we lose together." Ethan lifted his head and looked at him, and in Chris's eyes he saw absolute trust. That was stronger than anything anyone could have said to comfort him. He let out a long breath, as if pushing every anxious thing in him out with it.

"All right." He straightened up, and the smile that came was tired and clear.

"You're right. So let's go take that English clock apart, piece by piece." He put his hand out first, and Chris gripped it hard. In the corner, Kira, who had not said a word through any of it, watched, and something turned up faintly at the corner of her mouth. Her two teammates had found their best states at last. The American team's war machine — the one built out of contradiction and uncertainty — locked its final piece into place on the eve of the final.