David dismissed his lieutenants, the half-billion dollars worth of capital expenditure now officially underway. The collapse of Titan Energy had bought him time and space to build the Aero Corp facility, but the sudden, violent nature of the takedown had not gone unnoticed.
He returned to his penthouse sanctuary, his thoughts immediately fixed on the new prize.
"System," David commanded, his voice barely a whisper in the opulent quiet. "Display specifications for the Personal Cloaking Device Blueprint."
[DING! Displaying: Personal Cloaking Device Blueprint. Tier: Security/Espionage. Requires advanced metamaterials fabrication and real-time light refraction calculation.]
The schematics—complex, multi-layered, and utilizing principles of physics that wouldn't be discovered for another century—flooded his Perfect Recall mind. David instantly understood the technology. It wasn't simple camouflage; it was a flexible suit woven with photonic fibers and embedded with microscopic light-bending lenses. The device didn't merely reflect light; it channeled ambient light and heat energy around the wearer, rendering the user utterly invisible to the naked eye, thermal cameras, and standard radar.
This is not for corporate espionage, this is for national espionage, David mused, analyzing the power consumption graphs. The System is telling me that the threat is now kinetic, not just financial.
He immediately called Marcus Cole for a security update. Marcus, now fully operational and reveling in his role as David's executioner, confirmed David's fears.
"Mr. David, the Titan crash is the biggest story on Wall Street. But the pressure isn't coming from rivals anymore. We're seeing chatter that the FTIC (Federal Trade and Industrial Commission) is opening a discreet investigation into 'unnatural market volatility.' More concerningly, the Department of Energy is asking about our quick acquisition of the Phoenix site. I'm also getting strange pings from known intelligence servers—foreign and domestic—poking at our network perimeter."
"They're not interested in the stock manipulation, Marcus. They're interested in how a bankrupt factory suddenly acquired $\$500$ million in capital and a world-class scientist in 48 hours," David deduced. "They want the technology. They're coming for us, not our money."
"I've hired the best security firm money can buy, Mr. David, but they can't stop the government," Marcus admitted, his voice tight with professional worry.
"They won't have to. You worry about the financials. I'll handle the shadows."
Fabrication and Trial Run
Within the secured confines of the Phoenix complex's deepest laboratory, David—personally overseeing Vivian—began the immediate fabrication of the Cloaking Device. The blueprint utilized materials that were exotic but obtainable with David's budget: ultra-pure silicon carbide and large quantities of synthetic diamond dust for the refraction lenses.
Vivian, despite her genius, struggled to keep up with the complexity of the schematics David was dictating entirely from memory.
"Mr. David, the lattice structure for the photonic fabric must be grown under zero-G conditions for true efficiency," Vivian protested, rubbing her temples. "That's practically impossible on Earth without billions in investment."
"Wrong," David corrected instantly, pulling up a highly niche, perfectly recalled academic paper from a small university in Sweden. "The paper details a method using acoustic levitation and controlled molecular deposition. It's cheap, effective, and was immediately dismissed by Titan for being 'too unconventional.' Use that protocol. Build it perfectly."
Under David's unwavering direction, the first prototype—a sleek, tightly woven graphite bodysuit—was completed within five hours.
David zipped the suit on. It was tight, conforming to his every muscle.
"Initial test. Protocol Theta-One," David commanded.
Vivian activated the power supply. A soft, humming noise filled the lab. The suit drew power, and the air around David shimmered for a fraction of a second, like a heat haze above asphalt. Then, David simply vanished.
The only sign he was there was the slight displacement of air as he moved, and the faint, almost imperceptible warmth his body radiated. Vivian's jaw dropped. She activated the thermal camera. Nothing.
"Mr. David... it's perfect," Vivian whispered in awe, her scientific skepticism utterly shattered. "It's total light and thermal absorption. You are a ghost."
"I am security," the disembodied voice replied.
Infiltration: The Eyes of the State
The urgency was not theoretical. David needed actionable intelligence on who, specifically, was hunting him. He targeted the local field office of the FTIC—the agency Marcus mentioned—knowing they would have digitized records of every inquiry and subpoena related to Aero Corp and the Titan crash.
Wearing the Cloaking Device, David slipped out of the factory complex after dark. He ignored the hired security firm guarding the perimeter; they couldn't see him anyway. The world was now a transparent landscape of obstacles he could simply walk through.
He drove the Lamborghini Sian to a parking garage several blocks from the heavily secured FTIC headquarters, moving the suit's power consumption to maximum efficiency.
He approached the FTIC building. Security was tight: high fences, biometric scanners, and heavily armed guards patrolling the perimeter. All of it was irrelevant.
David walked straight through the main entrance. The guards looked straight ahead, oblivious to the invisible man passing inches from their faces. He located the main server room on the seventh floor, effortlessly bypassing the keyed doors and laser grids, which registered nothing. The suit's passive electromagnetic dampeners ensured he didn't even set off proximity sensors.
Inside the server room, David connected a small, specialized data siphon he had Vivian build—again, directed by his Perfect Recall—to the main data hub.
He pulled thousands of gigabytes of information: all current inquiries, all inter-agency communication regarding the Titan crash, and crucially, all personnel records related to the lead investigators.
The information stream was terrifying. The FTIC investigation was merely the tip of the iceberg. A separate, highly classified folder—labeled "Project Chimera"—detailed a joint task force between the CIA's Economic Warfare Division and a major defense contractor, Blackguard Industries. They weren't interested in market fraud; they suspected David had access to unapproved, non-terrestrial technology.
They're not investigating me; they're preparing to liquidate me and confiscate the blueprints.
David pulled the siphon, the mission completed. He left the server room, his heart rate steady despite the monumental risk. He had faced down corporate predators; now he was facing the deep state. The stakes had been raised to global survival.
As he walked past the oblivious security guards and slipped back into the night, the System chimed softly in his mind.
[DING! High-Risk Action Completed. Host earned $10,000,000 via Asset Information Valuation.]
[Current accumulated spending: $20,750,000. Current Balance: $625,000,023.90.]
[Next Spending Milestone: Total accumulated spending of $50,000,000 to unlock Tier 3 Technology: Self-Repairing Nanobots Blueprint.]
David smiled into the darkness. Self-Repairing Nanobots. The perfect countermeasure to a government that planned to make him vanish.
He had $\$ 30$ million left to spend before he acquired his next technological marvel. The conflict was no longer about money; it was about ensuring he was physically invincible before the government came knocking.