When he returned to his high-rise apartment in Queens, the air inside was thick with the faint scent of industrial silicone.
The gap on the living room balcony that Joanne had shattered the night before had already been repaired by an emergency crew sent by the home services company.
In its place was a brand-new panel of military-grade, one-way bulletproof glass.
It was three times thicker than the original, yet its light transmission was superb.
The afternoon sun penetrated the pristine glass, casting a sharp line of light and shadow across the carpet.
Zack Vance took off his deep blue bespoke suit jacket, hung it casually on the coat rack in the foyer, and loosened his tie.
He walked straight to the spare bedroom, which he rarely used.
In the past two days, this room of less than twenty square meters had been completely overhauled by an independent technical team he had hired at great expense.
The curtains had been replaced with thick, spy-proof, electromagnetic-shielding drapes, and a wide, black standing desk sat in the center.
On the desk, three thirty-inch ultra-clear monitors arranged in a curve sat in sleep mode.
The PC tower emitted a faint blue glow from its water-cooling system, humming with a barely audible low-frequency whir in the dimly lit room.
Zack sat in his ergonomic black mesh chair and tapped his fingers on the keyboard.
The screens instantly lit up.
Complex chart trends, real-time global financial news feeds, and highly encrypted independent trading software windows quickly filled every corner of the three displays.
On the left screen was an anonymous, encrypted chatroom routed through multiple proxies.
Five minutes ago, the temporary trader code-named “Gatekeeper,” whom Sterling Partners had recommended, had accessed this frequency via a dark web node along with his four algorithm engineers.
[Great Wall-01: Funding channels have been tested.
All fourteen offshore shell company accounts in the Cayman Islands are active, and the funds have been split.]
[Great Wall-01: Boss, we are ten minutes from the Wall Street afternoon market open.
Target: VHT (Vought International).
Please issue final instructions.]
Zack’s gaze fell on the middle screen.
It displayed the real-time order book data for Vought International (VHT).
As a behemoth monopolizing multiple core sectors including global superhero security, pharmaceuticals, and film and television entertainment, Vought International boasted a staggering market capitalization.
The daily volume of its publicly traded shares ran into billions of dollars.
Trying to tear a chunk of flesh from such a giant in a head-on confrontation was nothing short of an ant trying to shake a giant tree.
Zack picked up the cold, half-empty glass of water on his desk and took a sip, wetting his dry throat.
He placed both hands on the mechanical keyboard, feeling the cool touch of the keycaps on his fingertips.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he typed a command.
[Execute the “Leech” protocol.
Paramount directive: Secrecy above all else.]
[Command confirmed.]
The green characters on the black background flashed rapidly across the screen: [Algorithm slicing initiated.]
At 1:30 PM, the Nasdaq trading system entered its active afternoon session right on time.
Zack stared intently at the waterfalls of data representing the flow of funds.
He felt his heart rate pick up slightly—not from the despairing dread of facing superhuman strength, but from the sheer exhilaration of participating in turning the gears that shaped the world’s rules.
He knew that on this seemingly tranquil afternoon, his hundred-plus million dollars were dissolving into countless invisible data fragments, slipping into Vought International’s massive capital pool like tiny leeches.
The funds weren’t concentrated in a single account.
Instead, the algorithm split them into hundreds, even thousands, of tiny buy orders worth tens or hundreds of dollars.
They masqueraded as a farmer in Kansas trading with his pension, a college student in Brooklyn trying to swing trade for grocery money, and countless other average retail investors drifting in the market’s currents.
Under the cover of Vought International’s block trades, which easily ran into the tens of millions, these fragmented buy orders couldn’t whip up a single ripple, nor would they trigger even the lowest-level data alarms in Vought’s risk management department.
Buy, hold, go silent.
The numbers on the screen continued to tick upward.
5 million, 10 million, 30 million…
With this heavy influx of cold cash, the volume of Vought’s outstanding shares held under Zack’s name steadily accumulated with quiet resolve.
What he wanted was a “dead man’s switch.”
In the capital markets, once a person held a sufficient number of chips in a company—even if it was only 1% or 0.1%—it could act as a detonation charge to trigger an avalanche under specific, extreme circumstances.
Zack stared at Vought International’s red candlestick charts on the screen, representing prosperity and unmatched hubris.
His eyes were chillingly deep.
If Madelyn ever found a way to isolate Joanne and tried to completely wipe him, the “untouchable,” off the board…
Then, at the exact second a major public relations crisis broke out for Vought—such as Translucent going missing or A-Train’s drug abuse scandal being exposed—he could use these offshore accounts to dump all his accumulated Vought shares onto the market at rock-bottom prices.
Combined with a media frenzy, this unannounced, highly concentrated sell-off would trigger a panic-driven stampede in the market, wiping out tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars from Vought International’s valuation in a matter of hours.
These were the chips that belonged to an ordinary man.
If you won’t let me live, I’ll slash your main artery.
Time slipped by in the dry scrolling of data.
The light in the room gradually dimmed as the late afternoon sun was blocked by the heavy, spy-proof curtains.
Only the cold glow of the three monitors lit up the spare bedroom, reflecting off Zack’s focused, weary face.
At 4:00 PM sharp, the closing bell rang in distant Wall Street.
The Vought International candlestick chart on the middle screen froze.
In the encrypted chatroom on the right, the daily summary popped up right on schedule.
[Great Wall-01: Closing liquidation complete.
Today we accumulated VHT outstanding shares amounting to 4.2% of our total target.
The average position cost was kept below the floating benchmark.
The entire process did not trigger any institutional anomaly monitoring radars.]
[Great Wall-01: Boss, we are like a new school of sardines in the Pacific.
No one has noticed us.]
Reading this report, the tension finally drained from Zack’s back.
He sank completely back into his mesh chair, raising his hands to rub his sore eyes and aching temples.
Directing a capital operation of this magnitude for the first time was no less mentally exhausting than dancing on the edge of Black Noir’s blade.
“Great work.
Tomorrow at the same time, proceed as planned.”
Zack typed out his reply, immediately disconnected from the network, and logged out of all encrypted systems.
The screens went dark, plunging the spare bedroom into brief obscurity.
Zack stood up, stretched his stiff neck and shoulders, pushed open the door to the spare bedroom, and walked back into the spacious living room.
In the living room, the setting sun was as red as blood.
The orange-red sunset shone through the newly installed bulletproof glass, bathing the hardwood floor in a warm, golden hue.
Zack glanced at the wall clock.
It was 5:30 PM.
This meant that the female Homelander, who had grown accustomed to treating this place as her safe harbor, could rip through the clouds and land on his balcony at any moment, demanding dinner.
Zack walked to the open kitchen and pulled open the double-door refrigerator.
Aside from a few bottles of sparkling water and half a leftover tomato from yesterday, the fridge was completely bare.
The mastermind who had just been manipulating millions of dollars in the spare bedroom could only sigh helplessly at the empty fridge.
No matter how thrilling the high-stakes game of capital was, it couldn’t fill the stomach of a girl who might fly into a rage over food at any second.
He closed the refrigerator door, grabbed his car keys from the kitchen island, and turned toward the foyer.