Ryan grabbed a sandwich from room service, forced himself to eat despite having no appetite, and settled back in front of his laptop.
1:30 PM.
The London Metal Exchange afternoon session opened.
And the market completely lost its mind.
There was no hesitation, no pullback, no moment of rational evaluation.
The nickel price just exploded upward like someone had launched it from a cannon.
$60,000 per ton $75,000 $80,000 Financial news channels were losing their collective shit.
Ryan could see it on the muted TV in his suite—talking heads gesturing frantically, red “BREAKING NEWS” banners, charts showing the vertical price movement that looked more like a technical glitch than actual trading data.
“WITNESSING HISTORY” scrolled across CNBC.
“NICKEL MARKETS IN COMPLETE CHAOS” from Bloomberg.
“UNPRECEDENTED SQUEEZE DESTROYS SHORT SELLERS” from the Financial Times.
They had no idea.
None of them knew that a 25-year-old kid in a hotel room was quietly siphoning billions of dollars out of the carnage, using knowledge from a timeline that didn’t exist yet.
Ryan’s account balance blew past the billion-dollar mark like it was nothing.
$1.1 billion $1.4 billion $1.7 billion $2.0 billion Every tick upward represented someone else’s catastrophic loss.
Short sellers getting liquidated.
Hedge funds blowing up.
Risk managers getting fired in real-time.
Ryan felt nothing but cold satisfaction.
$2.1 billion $2.2 billion $2.3 billion He knew he was approaching the peak.
His memory from the previous timeline told him that nickel would hit around $100,000 per ton before the manipulators started taking profits and the whole thing collapsed.
If he got greedy and held too long, he’d get caught in the reversal.
He’d seen it happen to other traders in his previous life—made fortunes on the way up, then lost everything when they didn’t exit in time and the price crashed.
Greed killed more traders than bad analysis ever did.
2:45 PM—fifteen minutes before the market close.
The price was hovering around $101,000 per ton, showing the first signs of exhaustion.
This was it.
Ryan moved his cursor to the “Close Position” button.
SELL ALL He clicked.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then his massive position—over $2.3 billion worth of long nickel contracts—hit the market as a single enormous sell order.
It was like dropping a depth charge into boiling water.
The order executed almost instantly, absorbed by the still-frenzied buying.
In the scope of the entire global nickel market, even Ryan’s massive position was just another wave in the tsunami.
The transaction completed.
Ryan’s futures account showed his final balance: $2,234,720,000 Two point two billion dollars.
Ryan immediately initiated the withdrawal—moved every penny out of the futures account and into his main banking account before anything could go wrong.
His phone chimed.
DEPOSIT CONFIRMED: $2,234,720,000.00 Ryan stared at the notification for a long moment.
He’d started the day with $103 million.
He was ending it with over $2.2 billion.
In less than six hours.
But Ryan felt no euphoria, no excitement, no urge to celebrate.
This wasn’t a victory.
It was just ammunition.
Money was a tool, nothing more.
A resource he needed to build his fortress, stock his supplies, arm his defenses.
In six days, these billions would become as worthless as Monopoly money.
What mattered was what he could buy with them before the world ended.
Ryan pulled up his supply order spreadsheet and started reviewing the list: Food.
Water.
Medicine.
Generators.
Tools.
Weapons.
Everything he’d need to survive.
He picked up his phone and pulled up Victor’s number.
The arms dealer answered on the first ring.
“Yeah?” “It’s me,” Ryan said simply.
A pause.
Then that gravelly voice: “You got the deposit ready?” “Check your account.” Ryan didn’t hang up.
He just opened his banking app and initiated a wire transfer while Victor listened to the silence.
RECIPIENT: [encrypted account number] AMOUNT: $6,600,000.00 But Ryan’s finger paused over the confirm button.
$6.6 million was the agreed price.
One million deposit, the rest on delivery.
Ryan changed the amount.
$6,600,000.00 Full payment.
Everything up front.
He hit confirm.
TRANSFER SUCCESSFUL: $6,600,000.00 On the other end of the phone, Victor made a choking sound.
Dead silence for about thirty seconds.
Then: “What the fuck are you doing?” Victor’s voice had gone from professional to genuinely wary.
“That’s the full amount.
That’s not how this works.
We don’t do full payment up front—it’s not safe for either of us.
Deposit secures the deal, final payment guarantees delivery.
You just broke the entire protocol.” “Yeah, I know,” Ryan said calmly.
“So what, you testing me?
Seeing if I’ll just take the money and run?” “Honestly?
A little,” Ryan admitted.
“But mostly I’m showing you that I’m serious.
I’ve got money.
A lot of it.
And this isn’t going to be our last deal.
If you want to burn that bridge over six million dollars, that’s your choice.
But it would be pretty fucking stupid.” More silence.
Ryan pressed on.
“What’s the difference between an arms dealer who can handle major volume and one who’s just playing in the minor leagues?
The minor-league guy takes the money and runs when he sees a big score.
The major-league guy takes the money and builds a relationship worth ten times that much.” “So which one are you, Victor?” Ryan could hear Victor’s breathing getting heavier on the other end.
“You got balls, kid.
I’ll give you that.” Victor’s voice was tight, like he was grinding his teeth.
“Fine.
Western Industrial Park, the old one in Yonkers.
Seven PM tonight.
Come alone.
You bring anyone—cops, backup, friends—and the deal’s off and you can kiss that six million goodbye.
Clear?” “Crystal.” Ryan hung up.
He checked the time: 3:47 PM.
Three hours until the weapons pickup.
But first, he needed to deal with something else.
His phone started vibrating—incoming call from Marcus at Hudson Valley Cold Storage.
Before he could answer, it went to voicemail.
Immediately, another call came in—this one from Big Tony at the wholesale center.
Then the water bottling plant manager.
Then the pharmaceutical company.
His phone was lighting up like a Christmas tree, every supplier he’d contacted in the past two days trying to reach him simultaneously.
Ryan knew what this meant.
The deliveries were starting.
He changed into jeans and a hoodie, grabbed his car keys, and headed out.
The drive from White Plains to the warehouse address Ryan had given all his suppliers should have taken fifteen minutes.
It took over an hour.
Because three miles from the warehouse, traffic came to a complete standstill.
Ryan sat in his BMW, engine idling, staring at the scene ahead with something approaching disbelief.
The entire road—hell, all the roads for at least a two-mile radius—were completely gridlocked with delivery trucks.
Massive refrigerated semis with “HUDSON VALLEY COLD STORAGE” painted on the sides, lined up bumper-to-bumper for what looked like half a mile.
Flatbed trucks loaded with pallets of bottled water, stacked so high they looked ready to topple.
Industrial tanker trucks.
Shipping containers on eighteen-wheelers.
Panel vans.
Box trucks.
Hundreds of vehicles, creating a traffic jam that looked like an evacuation scene from a disaster movie.
Drivers were standing outside their trucks, smoking, arguing with each other, honking horns in futile frustration.
This wasn’t just a delivery.
This was Ryan single-handedly breaking the entire city’s logistics network.
Ryan parked on the shoulder, got out, and started walking toward the epicenter of the chaos.
“MR.
MATTHEWS!” Marcus appeared, running toward him like Ryan was the messiah.
The big man was sweating through his flannel shirt despite the mild weather, his face flushed.
Behind him came a parade of other suppliers Ryan recognized—Big Tony, the water plant manager, the pharmaceutical director, the outdoor gear store owner, all of them looking simultaneously excited and panicked.
“Thank God you’re here!” Marcus reached him first, breathing hard.
“Boss, the first shipment is here—thirty million pounds of meat, exactly like you ordered—but we can’t get the trucks to the warehouse!
The road’s completely blocked!” “Mr.
Matthews, my generator trucks are stuck three miles back!” the hardware store owner shouted over the noise.
“I’ve got forty diesel generators sitting on flatbeds and nowhere to put them!” “Our water delivery is gridlocked behind a convoy of grain trucks!” the plant manager added, waving his arms.
“Two point five million gallons, just sitting there!” “My pharmaceutical shipment is temperature-sensitive!” Dr.
Chen from Apex Pharmaceuticals looked genuinely distressed.
“We’ve got insulin and vaccines that need to be refrigerated—if we don’t get them into proper storage soon, we’ll lose the entire load!” Big Tony pushed through the crowd, red-faced and sweating.
“Kid—Mr.
Matthews—I got rice.
So much fucking rice.
Ten thousand tons of it, spread across two hundred trucks.
But there’s no way to organize this clusterfuck!
We need a traffic controller, we need—” “Everyone SHUT UP for a second,” Ryan said, his voice cutting through the chaos.
Silence fell.
Ryan pulled out his phone and called Marcus from Sentinel Defense.
“Marcus?
It’s Ryan Matthews.
I need you to send me someone who knows logistics.
Traffic flow, warehouse management, the whole thing.
Someone who can organize a massive delivery operation.” “Uh…
yeah, we’ve got a guy.
Former Army logistics officer.
He’s currently managing our material deliveries for your fortress.” “Send him to these coordinates immediately.
And send some of your crew to help direct traffic.
I’ve got about three hundred delivery trucks that need to be processed.” “On it, boss.
We’ll have people there in twenty minutes.” Ryan hung up and looked at the crowd of suppliers.
If you are interested can check it out.