PROLOGUE — DEATH ON WALL STREET
2029 — Wall Street, New York
Headlines screamed across the financial world. "Will Japan's Lost Decades Be Repeated in the US?" asked the Washington Post. "Black Wednesday: A Drop Exceeding the Great Depression," declared the New York Times. "Chaotic Wall Street Forecasts Massive Restructuring," warned the Wall Street Journal. Scrolling through his phone in search of the latest news about the AI bubble, Raghav Sharma watched report after report flood his screen. On X and across countless comment sections, thousands of users vented their anger, despair, and indignation over the staggering losses. *This is absolutely insane*, one of them had written, and Raghav found he couldn't disagree. Since the sharp decline had begun on Wednesday, the New York stock market had lost nearly forty percent of its total value in just three days — a plunge so severe that comparisons to the Great Depression already dominated the news. The entire United States, or more precisely its financial capital, was gripped by panic.
Even Raghav Sharma, a Wall Street veteran with twenty years of experience, had been laid off that very morning from the hedge fund where he'd worked. His heart felt unbearably heavy. He had known for years that a bubble was forming — even some of the world's most famous investors had warned about it. The only question had ever been when it would burst. If it had continued inflating for another year or two, Raghav might have been sitting in a Manhattan apartment right now, deciding which luxury property to buy with his bonus. Instead he'd been kicked out of his job, and his luck had truly hit rock bottom. With a return of negative twenty percent, he supposed there wasn't much more to say about being let go.
The project had been enormous. Raghav and managers from several other departments at the fund had spent years meticulously preparing a railway company for its long-awaited listing on the New York Stock Exchange. They had done everything possible — extracted dividends, sold off unnecessary real estate, cut costs, restructured operations from the ground up — and after years of grinding work, they had finally turned the company around. Everything had been ready. They'd been waiting for the perfect moment to announce the restructuring and push ahead with the listing. Then the market crashed. Who could have imagined the company's stock would plunge sixty percent almost overnight? Its total market capitalization had been cut nearly in half, and Raghav's career had gone down with it. It was, he thought, like it never rains but it pours. He looked up at the sky and asked it, only half joking, to just strike him down with lightning already. The heavens, predictably, did not answer.
But Wall Street had taught Raghav one thing above all else: never give up while there is still something left to exploit. Driven by the survival instincts honed over two decades in the brutal world of finance, he opened his contacts out of pure reflex. The names of everyone he'd met throughout his career filled the screen — from his early days at Morgan Stanley to his meteoric rise at the hedge fund, twenty years of networking condensed into a scrolling list. Morgan Stanley. Goldman Sachs. Quantum Fund. Barclays. He sighed in relief; at least those twenty years hadn't been a complete waste. But when his eyes landed on one particular name, his expression turned complicated. Morgan Stanley — the first company that had hired him after he graduated from Harvard. Almost like a benefactor, he thought, and smiled bitterly before dialing his old boss's number.
The line rang twice, then clicked over. *The number you have dialed is currently busy. Please leave a message after the tone—* Raghav hung up before it finished. He'd half expected the call wouldn't go through; Morgan Stanley was probably in just as much chaos as everywhere else. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and walked out of the hedge fund's headquarters, carrying a cardboard box of the few belongings he'd quietly packed from his office. The moment he stepped outside, the sound of breaking glass rang through the street and he froze mid-stride.
A few days earlier, the protesters gathering around Wall Street had mostly worn masks and carried signs. Now things had changed — the protests had curdled into something closer to riots. Some demonstrators carried baseball bats. Others wielded iron pipes. Several were already smashing the windows of financial institutions up and down the block. Raghav looked toward the Morgan Stanley building and saw its lobby windows shattered, glass glittering across the sidewalk. So that was why the call hadn't gone through — they weren't too busy to answer. They were busy trying to survive. He laughed, bitter and quiet. This was America: the land of Wall Street, billionaires, freedom, and, apparently, chaos.
Then came the sirens — a whole contingent of NYPD officers pouring into the street behind riot shields, batons drawn, shouting for the crowd to disperse. The rioters scattered in every direction as the police charged. Raghav watched the chaos unfold with a grim expression. The investment banks had suffered catastrophic losses, and the politicians of New York were almost certainly having the worst week of their careers. But he had a far more immediate problem: every route across the street seemed blocked, and in his expensive suit he stood out like a neon sign. To the angry crowd surrounding him, he looked exactly like what they hated most — a Wall Street elite.
He had no intention of spending the night sleeping in a bank lobby, and even less desire to be dragged into an alley and have his suit torn off his back along with whatever else they decided to take. But the streets were full, and he had no choice. He took a breath and started moving.
"Help!"
Raghav froze. His eyes met those of a burly man standing in the middle of the crowd, and the man's expression shifted the instant their gazes locked. *It's you.* Raghav's stomach dropped. The man pointed straight at him and shouted, and several rioters turned and charged. He spun to run, expecting the shelter of a lobby behind him, and instead found himself staring at a cold metal security shutter, pulled down and locked tight. He pounded on it anyway, cursing, but it didn't so much as rattle. The rioters kept closing.
Some part of him wondered, absurdly, if these people actually meant to kill him — and that was enough to snap his instincts fully awake. He turned and ran, ducking into a narrow alley and sprinting as fast as his legs would carry him, shouts of "Stop!" chasing him the whole way. When he glanced back they were still coming, so he hurled the cardboard box at them without thinking — heard it crash against the pavement and winced at the thought of his brand-new MacBook shattering inside it. There was no time to mourn it. He kept running.
A hand closed around the back of his suit jacket and yanked him backward so hard his whole body jerked. His heart nearly stopped. One thought filled his mind with total clarity: *I'm going to die.* He pictured being dragged into the alley, beaten, maybe worse, and the man's grip tightened around the back of his neck like an iron vice — Raghav was no match for him, a helpless chick against something enormous. "Let go!" he shouted, struggling uselessly, and then his hand found something in his suit pocket. A fountain pen. He pulled it free and uncapped it with his teeth, gripping it in a reverse fist. Twenty years on Wall Street had taught him how fast a situation could turn deadly, and this wasn't a protest anymore — it was a riot, in a country where guns were so common, and if he got dragged off there was no guarantee he'd come back from it. He made his decision, twisted his body, and thrust the pen backward into the man's arm.
The man screamed. Raghav stabbed again, and again, until the grip finally broke — and then, with a furious roar, the man grabbed him and hurled him aside like garbage. Raghav's body flew through the air and slammed into the ground, and for a moment everything went silent. When he lifted his head, his eyes widened. He wasn't on the sidewalk. He'd landed in the middle of the road.
And there, headlights blinding, a massive truck was bearing down on him at full speed.
Time seemed to slow. Raghav stared at the truck. The driver stared back. Both of them understood, in the same fraction of a second, exactly what was about to happen. Raghav had just enough time to raise one hand and flip the bird before the impact hit — a single instant of pain exploding through his body, and then nothing. The world disappeared.
The fifty-two-year-old Raghav Sharma had died on Wall Street. His twenty years of experience. His Harvard degree. His career. His wealth. His connections. Everything he had spent his entire life building — gone, in a single moment.
Raghav Sharma, aged fifty-two. His life ended here.
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