2009–2010
Ethan learned in 2009 that success was mostly just exhaustion with better lighting.
It started with a meeting in San Jose that ran two hours long, turned into a flight that got delayed, which turned into a phone call he took in an airport hallway while arguing with a CFO about copper futures, which ended with him realizing he'd forgotten to eat anything that day.
Again.
"…I'm going to die of spreadsheets," he muttered, hanging up and leaning his forehead gently against a glass wall.
A woman walking past gave him a concerned look.
He smiled politely and pretended he was normal.
That became a recurring theme.
Mercer Technologies didn't "take off."
It grabbed him by the collar and started sprinting.
Every quarter, something else locked into place.
A shipping company standardized on Mercer systems.
Then a cloud provider.
Then a government contract he hadn't even chased.
He kept thinking someone would blink.
No one did.
By August, his calendar looked like a war crime.
By October, he had started sleeping on planes.
By December, he was pretty sure he'd had the same argument about thermal margins in three different countries.
"…This is what building a mountain feels like," he said to an empty hotel room. "It's mostly just hauling rocks until you forget why you started."
The first acquisition nearly gave him a stress headache.
The second gave him three.
The third made him sit in his office after everyone left and stare at the wall for a full ten minutes.
"…I am absolutely not qualified for this," he told the ceiling.
The ceiling, unfairly, did not argue.
Somehow, it worked anyway.
Not because he was a genius executive.
Because he was good at systems.
He could see how things fit.
How inefficiencies hid.
How small changes cascaded.
It was the same skillset.
Just with less jumping and more lawyers.
The IPO happened on a Tuesday.
It felt wrong that something that big could happen on a Tuesday.
He watched the numbers stabilize on a screen while eating a terrible bagel.
"…That's it?" he said. "No lightning? No trumpet?"
Someone laughed nervously.
He went back to his office and closed the door and sat down.
And for about thirty seconds, he just felt very, very tired.
Then his phone started ringing again.
He still trained.
He had to.
Some things didn't go away just because you owned three suits.
Sometimes, late at night, in places with no cameras and no witnesses, he moved.
Fast.
Precise.
Controlled.
The Sharingan stayed locked away.
Always.
Because the world didn't react to miracles with wonder.
It reacted with scalpels.
SHIELD found him in April.
He was having a bad day already.
The man in the hallway was too still.
Too balanced.
Too… ready.
"Mr. Mercer," Phil Coulson said, smiling like this was the most normal thing in the world. "I work for a very boring part of the U.S. government."
Ethan looked at him for a second.
"…You're lying about at least one of those things."
Coulson's smile widened.
They talked.
Coulson was polite.
Careful.
Dangerous in a quiet way.
"At some point," Coulson said, "your company stops being just a company."
Ethan leaned back in his chair.
"Yeah. That's been keeping me up at night."
"If anything unusual ever happens around you," Coulson said, "call us."
Ethan snorted.
"Agent Coulson, if something unusual happens around me, I assume you'll be rappelling through the window."
Coulson laughed.
Didn't deny it.
HYDRA didn't knock.
They never did.
But Ethan felt them.
In wrong footsteps.
In reflections that lingered too long.
In the way his instincts never quite shut up anymore.
He never let his eyes change.
Not once.
By the end of 2010, Mercer Technologies was everywhere.
Not famous.
Not loved.
Necessary.