Max pulled out the plastic chair and sat down. "I have an offer for you."
Ethan frowned. "An offer? Why the hell would I want an offer from you? And how the hell did you find me?"
His former boss sighed. "I'm not the one offering. I'm just the messenger."
"So, who's offering?"
Max stuttered for an instant. Ethan in all his time of knowing his former boss knew that Max never stuttered. Something was different about him now. The scientists couldn't place his finger on it, but he knew something was off. "The president."
Ethan couldn't help but burst out in laughter. "The president?" he mocked. "What the hell would the president of South Africa want from a chef like me? A three-course dinner?"
Ethan's smile quickly faded when Max pulled out a device from his pocket and placed it on the table. He thought he'd destroyed it when he left but it was very much intact and as new as the day he built it. The scientist pushed himself away from the table, hitting his head on the pillar behind him.
"Get that thing away from me," he hissed as his invention began to glow a jade green.
"Calm down…There's no Secronium in it."
"I don't care!" he said firmly. "Shut it down!"
"Okay, okay, fine," Max conceded, tucking the device back where he took it from. "I didn't think you'd react like that to a harmless piece of tech."
"That is far from harmless," Ethan said. "And the last place I want it is in your hands."
"How about the hands of the president? You trust him, don't you?"
Ethan pulled his chair forward, trying to ignore the strange looks the other patrons were giving him. "What do you mean?"
"This morning, the president reached out to my laboratories regarding the incident you just saw on the news. He wanted a way to access the database of the malfunctioning teleporters that were responsible for the accident. Unfortunately, no person on the planet has access to teleporting data."
"And for good reason," Ethan added.
"Ah! But whoever sabotaged the teleporter did."
Ethan paused to think about Max's statement. He never took notice of the state of the teleporters behind the bodies since he was too disturbed by the corpses shown on the screen to look at anything else. He thought the cause of their deaths was an explosion caused by a teleporter.
"What makes the president so certain that the data was sabotaged. They could have just blown up the teleporter, right?" asked Ethan. Max was a shady businessman and an expert liar. Why would the president reach out to him of all people? Ethan thought. Something isn't adding up. The accident happened too recently for the president to have already taken action.
"I don't know," shrugged Max. "I'm not the expert here. That's all he told me and that's all I know." He pointed at Ethan. "He asked me if I had anyone who had extensive experience in harnessing the capabilities of Secronium. I told him I had someone in mind."
"Harnessing the capabilites of Secronium?" Ethan mocked. "That's just a politically correct way of saying you want me to weaponize the Secromium ore. You can tell Mr. President, if that is really the person asking for my help, that I'm not his man."
"But Eth—"
Ethan leaned forward resting his elbows in the table with his eyes fixed on Max. "I know what you want from me, and you are not going to get it."
"Trust me Ethan… You don't want to deal with him. You'd rather deal with two of me than one of him. Do what he wants, and you won't have to worry about him ever again."
Ethan stood up from his chair and grabbed his and Troy's belongings. "Trust me, Max… Given the recent events I've been through, I have no reason to fear anyone. We're done here."
"Ethan, just listen to me for once. I'm trying to help you here and you're being stubborn agai—"
"I said we're done!" Ethan insisted. He turned to walk out of the restaurant. I have had just about enough of this bullshit, he cursed. The scientist turned around to face his former boss once more. "If you know what's good for you and the world, you'll forget about that device."
"You built it didn't you?" he said.
"I… I didn't mean… Just stop sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. There's no money you can make off of this," Ethan snapped before marching off in frustration.
Max got up from his seat and exited the restaurant behind Ethan. "Is that what you think? You think this is about money?"
Ethan turned around stopping dead in his tracks. "It always is for you. What did they promise you? Another investor that grows your valley of gold?"
"It has nothing to do with money," Max replied. "In fact, if I wanted the money and the publicity, I would've minded my own damn business and let you deal with them on your own."
"Who. The fuck. Is them?"
"I don't even know. And truth be told, I didn't offer you up. They asked for you." Now that makes even less sense, Ethan thought, his brain becoming a muddled mess trying to decipher what was going on. "They wanted you to do something with this device. I can't remember," Max said scratching his hairless head. "I know thugs when I see 'em, and these folks were worse than thugs. So, I offered to talk to you and convince you. You do your thing for them, and I'll take care of the rest."
The last place he'd want that device to be in is in the hands of those who are powerful. "Do you even know what that 'thing' does?" asked Ethan.
"No, and frankly, I don't care. It's just some stupid gimmick."
Ethan rubbed his forehead in frustration. "That device is called a DNA deconstructor or the DNA-DEC. It can target the DNA of trillions of cells of the user's choice and rip them to shreds in milliseconds using activated Secronium. The part of my design I hadn't figured out yet was how to limit this to disease spreading cells. Then you fired me which meant that the DNA-DEC did not have that feature limiting its use." Ethan could tell he lost Max as soon as he started by the look on the businessman's face. "What happens when the target of this device is a person's heart muscles? Brain cells? Red blood cells?"
"You can kill someone with it," Max whispered to himself more than he did to Ethan.
"You can kill a room full of people in a heartbeat."
Ethan let his statement hang in the air as he could visibly see Max regret his deal. In some way, Ethan was surprised his boss went to such lengths to prevent him from seeing whoever these thugs are. It was out of character for what Ethan knew of him.
"And that's exactly why I am not giving anything to you or to these thugs you met," Ethan said firmly.
"So, you're telling me that you just created a weapon of mass destruction… Knowingly… Illegally…" Max replied.
"Well, there was supposed to be a featu—. You know what? It doesn't matter," Ethan shouted in frustration. He pointed to Max's pocket where his invention had been kept. "Take that device and burn it to the ground, ship the Secronium off-world, I don't know. Just get rid of it!"'
"Why don't you destroy it?" pressed Max.
"I am not touching that device. If it has even a whiff of Secronium I'm going to be in big trouble." Ethan insisted. "You're going to disassemble it and melt the metal. Then freeze the Secronium and get it off this planet. Understood?"
A suspenseful period of silence passed between the two. "Fine. But what am I supposed to tell them when I come back empty handed?"
Ethan shrugged. "That's not my problem. It isn't my fault you reconstructed an invention I purposefully destroyed just because a few thugs intimidated you."
The scientists turned around and walked away from his former boss. He didn't care to look back. Why should he care? Max brought this problem on himself and it wasn't Ethan's job to pull him out.
Questions clouded Ethan's mind as he walked out of the market and onto the street. How did these 'thugs' know about him or the deconstructor? What kind of gang goes after a failed prototype or its inventor? At least this is all going to be put to bed soon, Ethan reassured himself. The device gets destroyed and the thugs leave them alone. No big deal, right?