Chapter 436: Chapter 204: Iron Man
He had to change his approach.
He had to attack the man’s spirit.
"Mr. Wallace."
Cole folded his hands on the table, his tone softening.
"We’ve been sitting here for seventeen hours."
"I’m looking at you, and I can see your exhaustion."
"And I can’t help but wonder—and I think I speak for everyone here, as well as the viewers at home when I ask this..."
Cole’s gaze locked onto Leo.
"What is it you’re really after, fighting so desperately like this?"
"You’re only in your thirties. You could be on Wall Street making a fortune, or you could be a respected professor at a university."
"But instead, you’re sitting here, enduring our questions, enduring this inhuman torment."
"Is it for your own political ambition?"
"Are you using Pittsburgh as a stepping stone to land some cushy job in Washington, or maybe even to take my seat one day?"
"Or is it just to satisfy some vain desire to play the hero?"
It was a question aimed straight at the heart.
It stripped away the veneer of policy and questioned Leo’s motives directly.
Leo slowly lifted his head, his neck emitting a faint CRACK.
He looked at Cole, then glanced at the glass of water on the table.
Only a single swallow of water remained in the paper cup, poured five hours ago.
Leo reached out and picked up the cup.
He tilted his head back and drank the cold water in one gulp.
His Adam’s apple bobbed.
Leo set the cup down.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned his head and glanced at the camera behind and to his side.
Behind that black, gaping lens, countless fiber-optic cables connected him to Pittsburgh, to all those familiar faces.
"Senator."
Leo’s voice was hoarse and rough, like two sheets of sandpaper grating against each other.
"You ask what it is I’m really after."
"To be honest, there’s only one thing I want right now."
"I want to go home."
"I want to lie down in my bed, which isn’t even that soft, and just sleep. I want to sleep until I wake up on my own, then go to the corner bakery and buy a hot croissant."
The corner of Leo’s mouth twitched.
"That’s all I’m thinking about right now."
Cole watched Leo coldly, waiting for him to finish.
"But..."
Leo’s tone shifted. The haze in his eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by two dark flames burning in their depths.
"I can’t."
"Because I know that at this very moment in Pittsburgh..."
"In the low-income housing of the South District, in the workers’ sheds on the North Shore..."
"There are thirty thousand fathers who can’t sleep tonight either."
"They’re staring at their ceilings, wondering where breakfast will come from tomorrow. They’re looking at their sleeping children, worrying if they’ll be able to afford tuition next semester."
"They’re waiting."
Leo’s fingers tapped lightly on the table.
"They’re waiting for this bill."
"They’re waiting for those two billion US Dollars to turn into factory orders, into cranes at the port, into actual, tangible paychecks in their hands."
"They’re waiting for a reason to support their families without having to leave home, without having to drift from town to town."
Leo looked at Cole, his gaze like a torch.
"Senator, do you think this is ambition?"
"If wanting a man who has worked diligently his entire life to retire with dignity is ambition..."
"If wanting a sick child to be able to afford a doctor is ambition..."
"If wanting to bring a dying city back to life is ambition..."
"Then, yes."
Leo straightened his spine.
"I have ambition."
"My ambition is huge."
"My ambition is to let the workers of this country live like human beings."
"Not like numbers you can write off on a spreadsheet, ready to be sacrificed at a moment’s notice."
Leo’s voice wasn’t loud. There was no roaring, no soaring rhetoric.
It was the plain, direct statement, the exhaustion and perseverance that seeped from his very bones, that struck Cole like a physical blow.
The hearing room fell into a dead silence.
However, Cole did not succumb to the moral pressure as everyone had anticipated.
This veteran politician, who had survived for decades in the meat grinder of Washington, didn’t show even a flicker of guilt on his face.
He simply stared coldly at Leo.
"A very moving speech, Mr. Wallace."
Cole calmly adjusted his cuffs.
"But are the fathers of Pittsburgh the only ones in the United States losing sleep tonight?"
"Can the auto workers in Detroit sleep soundly? What about the miners in Kentucky, their lungs blackened with coal dust? Can they?"
"This country is filled with broken families and people in need of help."
"We are sitting here to allocate a limited Federation budget, not to hold a contest for who has the saddest story."
Cole rapped his knuckles on the table, the sound a cold TAP, TAP.
"You ask if this is ambition? I say it is. It’s the ambition to plunder the nation’s resources through emotional blackmail."
"You’re trying to tell us that Pittsburgh’s pain is the only pain that matters, that only your voters deserve to be saved. That isn’t justice. It’s selfishness."
"So, Mr. Wallace, spare us your cheap guilt trip."
Cole turned to a new page in his file, his gaze returning to the cold, hard data.
"We are conducting a routine budget inquiry. Please return to the professional matters at hand."
"Now, next question."
"Regarding the land acquisition compensation standards mentioned in Appendix Three of the bill, I don’t believe they comply with Federation procurement regulations..."
The hearing continued.
There was no climax, no reversal, no tearful confession.
Only the endless, tedious, back-and-forth of questions and answers, like a saw grinding away.
Leo felt his consciousness beginning to fade.
The concept of time had completely vanished in the windowless room.
He didn’t know how many more questions he answered.
’A hundred? Two hundred?’
His lips moved, his vocal cords vibrated, his brain mechanically retrieving prepared responses and spitting them out like a cash machine dispensing bills.
He felt like he had become a machine.
A machine forced to run for the sake of those two billion US Dollars.
Until—
BANG.
The dull thud of a wooden gavel, sounding as if it came from a distant horizon.
"Due to time constraints, this hearing is hereby concluded."
’It’s over?’
Leo sat there, unmoving.
He felt as if his soul had left his body, which was now just a heavy, empty shell.
The crowd began to disperse. Reporters packed up their equipment. The senators left through a side door without giving him so much as a second glance.
This was Washington.
No flowers, no applause, only the cold sight of their retreating backs.
Murphy walked over, reaching out to support him.
"Don’t touch me," Leo said in a low voice.
He braced himself on the table and, inch by inch, pulled himself to his feet.
His legs were trembling, but he stood firm.
He smoothed down his hopelessly wrinkled suit and fastened the buttons.
He turned around.
He took a step.
He pushed open the heavy door and walked down the long corridor.
The moment Leo walked out of the Senate Office Building...
...the early morning sun stabbed at his eyes.
The light was so bright it instantly brought involuntary tears to his eyes.
He raised a hand to shield his eyes.
The sun had risen over Washington.
The roar of traffic flooded his ears—the sound of the real world.
He was still alive.
And he hadn’t fallen.
He had survived.
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