Chapter 768: Rising from Humble Beginnings

The second basement level of Pittsburgh City Hall.

Under Pennsylvania state law, the Pennsylvania Energy Administration, as a state-level agency, should have its headquarters in the state capital, Harrisburg.

But Leo Wallace felt it was too much trouble.

He didn’t want this powerful agency he’d personally created to be out of his sight.

So, on the grounds that it would be easier to coordinate the Computing Power Special Zone project, he set up the Pennsylvania Energy Administration’s temporary headquarters right inside his own city hall.

This temporary headquarters had once been a storage room for old office chairs and outdated files.

Now, the clutter had been cleared out into the hallway.

Four second-hand desks, castoffs from other departments, were pushed together, and a huge whiteboard hung on the wall.

This was the birthplace of the Pennsylvania Energy Administration.

Leo Wallace stood in front of the whiteboard, a red marker in his hand.

After hammering out the legal framework for the Pennsylvania Energy Administration with Roosevelt, Leo didn’t wait for the bill to be formally passed by the State Assembly. He issued an executive order and forcibly assembled this makeshift operation.

He couldn’t wait.

Leo looked at the young man sitting behind the desk, who seemed a little ill at ease.

Adam Halt.

He wore a pair of black-framed glasses, his hair was a mess, and he was wearing a faded plaid shirt.

He looked just like a PhD student who had just pulled several all-nighters to finish a thesis.

Just a few days prior, Leo had selected three candidates, including him, from a large pool of applicants.

“Sir, all three have exceptional expertise in the nuclear field, and for various reasons, they’ve all fallen off the grid,” Ethan reported. “What’s the next step? Should I schedule interviews?”

“Interviews only show you the masks they’ve carefully prepared,” Leo said, shaking his head. “Make arrangements. I want to know exactly how they’re living now. I need to see the raw details.”

Leo looked at the first report: Richard Stone, fifty-five, former senior reviewer for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He was currently standing on his neatly manicured lawn, watering his flowers with a hose.

A brand-new Mercedes SUV was parked in the driveway.

After refusing to bow to pressure from a Senator during a critical safety review, Richard had been transferred from his key post, after which he’d opted for a respectable early retirement.

His pension was generous, and his daughter was at an Ivy League school.

Although he occasionally published articles in academic journals complaining about the rigidity of nuclear regulation, his life was peaceful and comfortable.

He also had a Golden Retriever and played golf on the weekends.

‘A man with a happy family life.’

Leo thought to himself as he turned to the second report.

A motel on the outskirts of Houston, Texas.

Jason Miller, forty-two, former operations supervisor at a major nuclear power plant.

The room was thick with smoke, the table piled high with empty beer bottles and takeout containers.

Jason was frantically hammering at his keyboard, his eyes glued to a computer screen displaying various stock and cryptocurrency charts.

He had backed the wrong side in an internal power struggle, been made the scapegoat for a minor leak, and had his license revoked.

He had lost his family, his social standing.

He now scraped by selling insider industry data on the dark web and day-trading crypto.

His eyes were bloodshot, filled with a calculating resentment for the world.

‘A man of intense ambition.’

Leo’s gaze lingered on the report for a long moment before he turned to the third.

A basement lab at a remote, third-rate university in Pennsylvania.

Adam Halt, thirty-four.

PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT.

Two years ago, he had been a star researcher at a national laboratory under the U.S. Department of Energy.

During a routine safety review, Adam discovered a major energy company was seriously violating regulations by contaminating groundwater with its nuclear waste.

Instead of looking the other way, he reported it directly to his superiors and even went to the media.

In the end, the energy company mobilized its powerful lobbyists and put pressure directly on the higher-ups at the Department of Energy.

Adam’s whistleblowing was stonewalled. To make matters worse, he was framed for leaking classified national security data.

Though he avoided prosecution, he was completely blacklisted by the entire nuclear industry.

Adam was sitting at a worn-out lab bench, screwdriver in hand, trying to repair a mass spectrometer manufactured in the 1970s.

He was wearing a faded plaid shirt with a pilled old sweater over it.

His face was gaunt, his hair disheveled, but the eyes behind his black-framed glasses were fixed on the broken-down machine as if staring down an enemy.

He was only making two thousand US dollars a month from his adjunct teaching position, living on the cheapest instant noodles.

Leo put down the reports.

“So, who’s it going to be?” Ethan asked, looking at Leo.

After a moment’s thought, Leo’s finger tapped the photograph in the third report.

“He’s the one.”

“Adam Halt.”

“But why me?”

In the temporary office, Adam pushed up his black-framed glasses and voiced the question on his mind.

“Mr. Mayor, there are plenty of people in the nuclear field with more technical expertise than me. Any one of the experts Ms. Evelyn has recruited from across the country is more qualified than I am.”

Leo didn’t answer directly. Instead, he countered with a question of his own: “Adam, in your opinion, what kind of agency should the Pennsylvania Energy Administration be?”