Ryan’s eyes hardened with determination.
He wasn’t a gambler chasing the next high.
He was a survivor.
A planner.
Someone who’d already died once and learned the hard way that greed was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
He wouldn’t risk a total wipeout chasing imaginary gains that might never materialize.
Time to get out.
Ryan moved his cursor to the sell button.
No hesitation.
No second-guessing.
SELL ALL But he didn’t dump everything at once—that would crater the price and kill his own exit.
He sold in controlled batches, the same way he’d bought in.
Each order was like throwing a bucket of cold water onto a grease fire.
It couldn’t stop the blaze, but it created moments of hesitation, brief pauses in the relentless upward climb.
SELL: 50,000 coins SELL: 75,000 coins SELL: 100,000 coins The green candlesticks on the chart stuttered slightly with each sale, but the buying pressure was still overwhelming.
Retail investors and institutional funds were piling in so fast that Ryan’s exit barely registered as a blip.
He kept selling, methodically, emotionlessly, until the last Deep Space Coin in his account had been converted back to US dollars.
The final number appeared on his screen: Account Balance: $24,538,000,000 Twenty-four point five billion dollars.
Ryan exhaled—a long, shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding—and slumped back in his chair.
His forehead was slick with cold sweat.
His hands were trembling slightly.
He’d just made over twenty-three billion dollars in less than six hours.
On the screen, the price of Deep Space Coin was still climbing.
$63 $67 $71 For a brief moment, Ryan felt the sharp sting of regret.
If I’d held for just another hour…
But then the chart changed.
The relentless green candlesticks—that seemingly unstoppable vertical climb—suddenly froze.
For about three seconds, the price just…
stopped moving.
Then a massive red candle appeared.
Not a normal pullback.
Not a healthy correction.
A collapse.
$71 → $65 $65 → $52 $52 → $38 The market was imploding.
Panic spread like wildfire.
Stop-losses triggered in cascading waves.
Margin calls forced liquidations.
Exchange servers started lagging under the volume.
Everyone who’d bought in at $50, $60, $70—all of them were now underwater and scrambling for the exits simultaneously.
But there were no exits.
No buyers.
Just an endless wall of sell orders and no one willing to catch the falling knife.
$38 → $23 $23 → $11 $11 → $4 Ryan watched the carnage with cold detachment.
Somewhere out there, people were losing their life savings in real-time.
Families getting wiped out.
Retirement accounts going to zero.
Some people would probably kill themselves over this.
But Ryan felt nothing.
He’d warned no one.
Saved no one.
Because in four days, money wouldn’t matter anyway.
They were all going to die in the apocalypse unless they’d prepared.
At least this way, some of them would go broke quickly instead of freezing to death slowly.
One hour after Ryan’s exit, Deep Space Coin had completed its round trip: $0.01 Right back where it started.
Tens of billions of dollars in market cap had simply…
evaporated.
Ryan stared at the chart—that perfect parabola of greed and destruction—and felt a chill run down his spine.
That was close.
Way too close.
If he’d held for even thirty more minutes, he would’ve been caught in the collapse.
Watching his billions evaporate in real-time while the exchanges froze and prevented him from selling.
What Ryan didn’t know was that in a corner office on Wall Street, the tech billionaire who’d orchestrated this entire pump-and-dump scheme was having a very different reaction.
The man—call him Marcus—had been sipping a $3,000 bottle of Château Margaux and watching the price climb with pure satisfaction.
The plan was perfect.
He and his insider cronies would ride the wave to $100, then dump their holdings and walk away with $40 billion in profit.
But then, at 1:52 PM, one of his analysts burst into the office.
“Sir!
We have a problem!
Someone’s selling—huge volume, systematic liquidation, multiple exchanges simultaneously.
It’s—” Marcus waved dismissively.
“Some paper hands getting scared.
Ignore it.
The momentum will—” “Sir, it’s $13 billion worth of coins.
They’re dumping everything.” Marcus’s wine glass paused halfway to his lips.
$13 billion?
That was…
that was enough volume to derail the entire pump.
“Who?” Marcus demanded.
“Who the fuck is selling?” “We don’t know.
The transactions are distributed across multiple wallets, routed through privacy exchanges.
Whoever it is, they’re sophisticated and they don’t want to be traced.” Marcus watched his own screens as the price began to stutter, the relentless climb losing momentum.
If they didn’t sell now—immediately—they’d get caught in the cascade.
“Fuck!” Marcus hurled his wine glass across the room, where it shattered against a wall.
“SELL!
Sell everything!
All of it!
NOW!” His team scrambled to execute.
The resulting double-wave of selling—first Ryan’s exit, then Marcus’s panicked dump—created the cliff-dive that destroyed the market.
Marcus ended up cashing out at an average of $58 per coin instead of the $100 he’d been targeting.
Still a fortune.
Still billions in profit.
But someone else—some ghost he couldn’t identify—had gotten out first and gotten out clean.
And Marcus hated not knowing who’d beaten him at his own game.
Back in his hotel room, Ryan picked up his phone and dialed David.
The call connected immediately.
“Ryan?
Jesus Christ, are you okay?
I’ve been watching the news about this Deep Space Coin thing and—” “David, I need to convert currency again.” Silence.
“Again?
Ryan, how much did you—” “Twenty-four point five billion dollars,” Ryan said calmly.
“I need it converted to Chinese yuan than convert it into Dollar and wired to my offshore account.
Use whatever channels you need.
I don’t care about fees, I just need it done safely and quickly.” The silence on the other end stretched so long that Ryan checked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
Finally, David’s voice came back—quiet, shaky, like he’d just witnessed something that broke his understanding of reality.
“Did you just say…
twenty-four point five…
billion?” “Yes.” “Dollars?” “Yes.” “That’s…
Ryan, that’s not possible.
That’s not—how did you—” “David.” Ryan kept his voice level.
“Can you handle the conversion or do I need to find someone else?” Another pause.
Then David’s voice, now filled with a mix of awe and terror: “I’ll handle it.
It’ll take some time—moving that much money through legitimate channels, avoiding flags from Treasury and FinCEN, the exchange rate losses alone will be massive—but I’ll get it done.” “How long?” “Two, maybe three hours if I pull out every stop.” “Do it.
And David?” “Yeah?” “After this is done, I want you to pull half a billion out in cash.
Physical bills.
Have it delivered to the estate in armored trucks.
Can you arrange that?” “Cash?
Ryan, why would you possibly need—” “Can you do it or not?” “…Yes.
Yes, I can do it.
But it’s going to raise questions.
Banks don’t just hand out $500 million in physical currency without—” “I’ll pay whatever fees and bribes are necessary.
Just make it happen.” Ryan hung up.
He knew the conversion was going to be expensive.
Moving $24.5 billion across borders, through multiple banks, converting currencies—the fees would be astronomical.
But it was worth it.
Money was only safe when it was in his account, ready to be deployed.
Two hours and seventeen minutes later, Ryan’s phone chimed.
He grabbed it, pulse quickening.
After fees and exchange rate losses—probably close to $3 billion burned just on transaction costs—he’d still cleared over 23 billion.
It was done.
He was one of the richest people on the planet.
And in four days, when the world ended, that money would become the most powerful resource on Earth—because he was the only one who knew how to use it.
Ryan checked the time: 3:47 PM.
He pulled up his contacts and dialed Marcus at Sentinel Defense.
The call connected after one ring.
“Mr.
Matthews!
I was just about to send you the daily progress report!
The excavation is—” “Give me your company account number,” Ryan interrupted.
Marcus paused.
“My…
company account?
Sure, but the payment schedule we agreed on doesn’t call for another installment until—” “Just send me the account number.” “Uh, okay.
Give me one second.” Ryan’s phone buzzed with an incoming text—a bank account number and routing information for Sentinel Defense Solutions LLC.
“Got it,” Marcus said.
“Can I ask what this is for?
The contract terms—” “One billion,” Ryan said simply.
Silence.
Complete, utter silence.
Ryan could actually hear Marcus’s breathing stop—like the man’s autonomic functions had just shut down from shock.
Five full seconds passed.
Then a violent coughing fit erupted from the phone speaker.
“Cough—cough—COUGH!” Marcus sounded like he was choking.
“Mr.—cough—Mr.
Matthews, did you—cough—did you just say—” His voice had gone up an octave and cracked in the middle, sounding nothing like the gruff construction veteran Ryan had been dealing with.
“How much?!” “About one point four billion US dollars.
I need your team to accelerate the construction timeline.
Whatever resources you need—more workers, better equipment, premium materials, overtime pay—just get it.
I want the fortress completed ahead of schedule.” Ryan could hear Marcus trying to swallow.
It sounded painful.
“That’s…
Mr.
Matthews, that’s more than our entire company’s annual revenue.
That’s…
you’re not building a bunker anymore, you’re funding a military installation!
I don’t—we can’t possibly—” Ding.
Marcus’s phone notification chimed in the background.
“Hold on,” Marcus said, his voice suddenly uncertain.
“I’m getting a call from our financial director, she sounds—” “Check your company account,” Ryan said.
“I just wired the money.” At Sentinel Defense Solutions headquarters in New Jersey, the company’s CFO—a normally composed woman in her fifties named Patricia—burst into Marcus’s office without knocking.
Her face was ghost-white.
Her hands were shaking.
She was holding her phone like it might explode.
“Marcus!
The company account!
We just—someone just—there’s—” She couldn’t form a complete sentence.
Just kept gesturing wildly with her phone, her mouth opening and closing.
Marcus put Ryan on speaker.
“Patricia, what’s wrong?” “one point four billion!” she finally screamed.
“Someone just wired us one point four billion!
That’s—that’s—” “That’s one point four billion US dollars??
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