Dean Halloway didn't breathe for a full ten seconds. His eyes were glued to the glowing screen of the handheld scanner. He was a man of science, but what he was looking at felt like sorcery.
"Dr. Aris..." the Dean finally croaked, his voice trembling. "Is he... is he right?"
Dr. Aris, whose hands were shaking as he adjusted his spectacles, nodded slowly. "The resolution... it's sub-millimeter. We don't have anything in the university—hell, I don't think they have anything in the Mayo Clinic—that can map vascular structures this clearly without an MRI contrast. If this is an Angioma, he just saved your life, Dean. Six months from now, it would have been a death sentence."
Xavier tucked the device back into his bag, his expression as unreadable as a slab of obsidian. "The scanner is a prototype. I call it the Vanguard-1. It doesn't just see; it predicts cellular decay based on localized thermal fluctuations."
He leaned over the Dean's desk, pressing his palms onto the mahogany surface. "Now, let's talk about my 'expulsion' and that 'contract' you mentioned."
"Forget the contract!" Halloway stood up abruptly, his fear replaced by a desperate, greedy hope. "Xavier... Mr. Thorne. You need a proper facility. The university can provide—"
"No," Xavier interrupted. "The university will provide three things. First, my academic record is to be marked as 'Indefinite Independent Research.' I don't attend classes, I don't take exams, but I keep my status as a student for tax and legal shielding. Second, I want the deed to the 'Old North Lab'—the one that was condemned after the fire in '22. It has an independent power grid and a basement that isn't on the official blueprints."
The Dean hesitated. "That building is technically slated for demolition..."
"Then save it," Xavier said. "Third, you will personally vouch for my new company, Thorne Dynamics, when I apply for an industrial-grade 'Spectrum License.' I need to broadcast on frequencies that the government currently reserves for the military."
"Military frequencies? That's... that's highly irregular," Dr. Aris whispered.
Xavier glanced at him. "So is dying of a kidney tumor in December. Do we have a deal, Dean?"
Halloway looked at the image of the mass in his kidney one last time. He grabbed a pen. "We have a deal."
The Oracle's Harvest
Two hours later, Xavier was inside the "condemned" North Lab. It was a cavernous, dusty space filled with broken glass and the smell of ozone, but the bones were solid. Most importantly, it was far from the prying eyes of the Sterling family.
He opened his laptop and connected to the high-speed uplink he had just forced the Dean to install.
[ORACLE V1.0]: Master, the 'Void-Tech' window is closing. Current Price: $0.42. Predicted peak in 36 hours: $12.80.
"Execute the buy," Xavier commanded.
He watched as his $110,000 (after expenses) moved into the market. Because he was using a quantum-shuffling algorithm he'd written that morning, the buy orders were broken into thousands of tiny transactions across twelve different offshore exchanges. To the market, it didn't look like a whale was entering; it looked like a million 'retail' investors were suddenly interested in a dying penny stock.
Position: 261,900 shares of Void-Tech.
"Now, we wait for the trigger," Xavier muttered.
The "trigger" was a lawsuit. In his original timeline, Void-Tech was a small company that held a forgotten patent for 'Gallium Nitride' cooling systems. Tomorrow, they would win a massive settlement against a tech giant (Intel's equivalent in this world). The stock wouldn't just rise; it would explode.
The Face of the Empire
"Xavier? Are you in here?"
Claire Vance stepped into the dark lab, her footsteps echoing. She looked around at the shadows and the flickering servers Xavier had already set up.
"This place is creepy," she said, hugging her jacket. "And why did you tell me to come here? The police are looking for you at the dorms!"
"The police aren't looking for me anymore, Claire," Xavier said, turning his chair around. "The Dean has seen to that. But I didn't bring you here to hide. I brought you here to lead."
He pulled up a document on the wall-mounted monitor. It was an incorporation filing for Thorne Dynamics.
CEO: Claire Vance.
Chief Architect: Xavier Thorne.
Claire's jaw dropped. "Me? CEO? Xavier, I'm a junior student! I don't know how to run a company. And why aren't you the CEO?"
"Because the world isn't ready for me yet," Xavier said, his eyes glowing with a cold light. "If I am the face, every tech giant from here to Silicon Valley will try to crush me before I'm ready. They'll see a threat. But if you are the face—a brilliant, young student with a 'miracle' discovery—they'll see an acquisition target. They'll try to buy us, negotiate with us, and underestimate us."
He walked up to her, his voice dropping to a low, intense whisper. "In the future... in the life I remember... you were the best. You just never had the resources. I'm giving you the resources. I'll build the weapons; you just need to point them at the target."
Claire looked at the monitor, then at Xavier. She saw the maturity and the ruthlessness in his eyes—a man who had lived through a war she couldn't even imagine.
"What's the first 'weapon'?" she asked, her voice gaining a hint of resolve.
Xavier smiled. It wasn't a kind smile.
"We're going to release a 'Free' software update for every smartphone in the country. We'll call it 'Battery-Ghost.' It uses an AI-sideband to optimize lithium-ion discharge."
"A free app?" Claire asked. "How does that make us money?"
"It doesn't," Xavier said. "But it makes every other battery-saving app obsolete overnight. And more importantly, it gives us a 'backdoor' into every device in the city. When the Sterling family tries to launch their new 'Titan' phone next week... we're going to show the world that their battery is a ticking time bomb."
Xavier's phone buzzed. It was a notification from the exchange.
Void-Tech Price: $1.20... $2.50... $4.00...
The lawsuit news had leaked early.
"By tomorrow morning, Claire," Xavier said, looking at the soaring chart. "We won't just have a company. We'll have the first three million dollars of our war chest."