November, 2008
Ethan realized he had been thinking like a man who expected to lose.
The thought came to him in an unremarkable moment—standing in his kitchen, watching the coffee maker drip with all the urgency of a dying snail, while his private tablet quietly displayed the movements of people who were definitely not interested in routers.
SHIELD dots.
HYDRA dots.
Circling.
Watching.
Waiting.
"…This is dumb," Ethan muttered.
He sipped his coffee and grimaced. "Cold. Fantastic."
He turned and leaned against the counter, staring at the moving map.
"I'm acting like I can hide forever," he said. "That's not how this world works."
He thought about Tony Stark.
Not Iron Man.
Tony Stark.
The man whose life was a permanent press conference.
The man who couldn't be quietly removed without the planet noticing.
"SHIELD doesn't make Tony Stark vanish," Ethan said quietly. "They negotiate."
"And HYDRA doesn't either. They infiltrate. They wait. They corrupt."
He rubbed his face.
"…I've been trying to be a ghost. Ghosts get erased."
He didn't make a dramatic decision.
He made a practical one.
If Mercer Technologies stayed small, it was manageable.
Which meant it was disposable.
If it became important—truly, structurally important—then touching it would become expensive.
Politically.
Economically.
Publicly.
"…I don't need to be untouchable," he said to himself.
"I just need to be too costly to touch quietly."
He wrote a single line in his notebook:
Objective: Make Mercer Technologies indispensable.
Then underneath:
Timeline: Top 10 global tech company by 2010.
He stared at that second line for a long moment.
"…Ambitious," he admitted. "But not impossible."
Not for someone who knew the future.
And knew how fast the world was about to change.
He did not decide to dump miracle tech on the world.
That was how you got government committees and men with questions.
Instead, he changed direction.
Subtly.
Mercer would stop being a niche "reliability" company.
And start becoming a platform company.
But slowly.
Credibly.
He called a meeting.
Not a big one.
Just his senior engineers and managers.
"We're not pivoting," he told them. "We're… widening."
He laid out a roadmap.
Better small computers
Better networking
Better power efficiency
Better integration
All of it achievable.
All of it building on what they already did.
"But," he added, "we're going to start building things that set standards, not just meet them."
They didn't explode in applause.
They asked questions.
Hard ones.
Good ones.
He answered them honestly.
Not with future knowledge.
With engineering.
With manufacturing.
With timelines.
Then he did something else he'd been avoiding.
He went public.
Carefully.
The first interview was with a mid-sized tech magazine.
He sat in a very uncomfortable chair under very bright lights and tried not to look like a man who used to sneak across rooftops.
"What's Mercer Technologies' long-term vision?" the interviewer asked.
Ethan smiled.
"We want to build technology that disappears," he said.
"…Disappears?"
"Into people's lives," he clarified. "So reliable, so consistent, so well-designed that nobody thinks about it. It just works."
The quote got picked up.
Then another outlet called.
Then another.
He found himself doing small press conferences.
Standing at podiums.
Answering questions.
Wearing suits he hated.
"…I feel like a villain origin story," he muttered backstage once.
He didn't promise miracles.
He promised stability.
He promised predictable progress.
He promised long-term planning.
"We're not here to shock the market," he said at one Q&A. "We're here to raise the floor."
Behind the scenes, Mercer started growing.
New hires.
Bigger contracts.
Longer-term manufacturing deals.
Nothing explosive.
Just… steady.
He kept his personal tech personal.
None of that entered the company.
Ever.
He wasn't stupid.
By early 2009, Mercer Technologies was no longer "that router company."
It was:
"That platform company that's really good at efficiency."
People started comparing them to early Intel.
That made him nervous.
And proud.
He stood in front of a press backdrop in March 2009 and answered a question he'd been expecting.
"Mr. Mercer, do you see Mercer Technologies becoming one of the major tech players?"
He smiled.
"We're not trying to replace anyone," he said. "We're trying to become… unavoidable."
He watched the SHIELD dots change.
Not disappear.
But become… formal.
Less "watching a curiosity."
More "tracking an asset."
"…Good," he murmured. "That means you have rules now."
HYDRA's patterns didn't change.
Which meant they were thinking.
Which meant they were dangerous.
That night, he stood on his balcony, looking at the city.
"…Top 10 by 2010," he said softly.
He smiled.
"…Let's build a mountain the slow way."
Mercer Technologies wasn't a giant yet.
But it had a direction.
And for the first time, Ethan wasn't trying to hide from the future.
He was walking toward it.