The grey light of dawn had barely begun to bleed through the floor to ceiling glass when Aryan Spencer took his place behind the mahogany desk. Routine was the only armor he possessed in a world where gods and monsters were beginning to stir. It was a form of control, a ritual that anchored his soul against the chaotic pull of the shifting fog.
He noticed the cup before he noticed the person. It sat on the polished edge of his desk, a dark ceramic vessel emitting a delicate wisp of steam. Black. No sugar. Just as the memory of his grandfather's tea had dictated.
"I didn't order this," he said, his voice echoing in the office.
From the periphery, Sharon Carter looked up from her tablet. Her silhouette was framed by the burgeoning light, making her look like a figure from a Renaissance painting, a watcher at the edge of the world. "I know."
He glanced at her, a flicker of cold annoyance in his eyes. "You're persistent."
She offered a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "And you're predictable."
Aryan paused, the word landing like a stone in the silent room. A sliver of genuine irritation flared within him. "Predictable?"
"Your schedule," she said, ticking off points on her fingers as if they were mission objectives. "You arrive at precisely 7:40 AM. You skip breakfast. You consume caffeine before you ever touch a piece of paperwork. It's an efficient loop."
"Observation," he replied, sitting down and taking a sip of the bitter liquid. The taste was a sharp jolt. "Not friendship."
"Friendship starts with observation, Aryan," she said easily, her tone light.
She remained by his desk, her presence like a persistent hum in a quiet room. He watched her for a moment, the way she feigned interest in the files on her tablet while clearly waiting for him to acknowledge her further.
"Sit," he said.
She blinked, the perfect mask of the efficient secretary slipping for a fleeting second. "Excuse me?"
"You're hovering. It's a distraction. Sit."
She pulled out one of the visitor's chairs, her posture perfect as she settled into it, the coiled readiness of a predator who had spent years operating in the field.
"I have a task for you," Aryan said, leaning back in his own chair, the movement slow. "One that requires more than just administrative skill. I want you to search for companies, startups, research firms, anything that would be working on large scale search engines. Crawlers, ranking algorithms, and data aggregation."
Her brow furrowed slightly, a genuine intellectual curiosity replacing her guarded watchfulness. "Search engines? At that scale? The technology is fragmented, Aryan. There's no unified logic for it. It doesn't truly exist yet."
"Exactly," he said, his voice dropping to a low register that seemed to absorb the light in the room. "Which is why I want it."
He saw the spark of intrigue in her eyes, the moment where the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent recognized the sheer scale of the ambition before her.
"This isn't exactly Umbrella's current field," she noted, testing him.
"It will be," he stated as a fact. "It will be the foundation of everything we are to become."
Three days passed in a fever of data. On the fourth morning, Sharon entered his office with the silent grace of a ghost, placing a leather bound folder on his desk. There was a look of professional satisfaction in her eyes.
"I found seven," she said, her voice crisp.
She began to dissect them with surgical precision. "Three are collapsing under venture capital debt. Two are technologically stagnant, run by men who fear the future. One is a government puppet, choked by political friction and bureaucracy. But the last one..."
She slid a single document toward him. The logo was simple: Atlas Search Systems.
"Prototype crawler algorithms," she explained, her voice sharp with focus. "Early-stage ranking logic based on relational linking. They're brilliant, but they're bleeding money. The CEO is an idealist, refused to implement an advertising model. His investors fled. They're forty million dollars in debt and drowning."
"Perfect," Aryan said, a cold smile touching his lips.
She looked at him sharply. "Perfect? They're bankrupt in all but name, Aryan. Acquiring them won't be a clean transaction. Their code is likely their only real asset."
"I don't need clean. I need ownership," he replied, his gaze fixed on the document. "They are drowning, Sharon. I am offering them air. I want controlling interest. Full intellectual property rights. A quiet acquisition."
She leaned forward. "You're planning something much bigger than a company. This is just a brick, isn't it?"
"It is the corner stone," he replied, meeting her eyes.
"Alright," she exhaled, a faint smile playing on her lips. "I'll handle the negotiations."
The contract was signed in the dead of night, a digital transaction that moved forty million dollars from a private Spencer account into the void. A pittance for the keys to the world's information.
When Sharon returned to his office with the finalized documents, she looked personally triumphant. She leaned against his desk, folding her arms. "It's done. Full IP transfer. No outstanding liabilities. Atlas is yours."
"Good work," Aryan said, barely looking up from the lines of code flowing across his screen.
She waited. The silence in the vast office stretched. "That's it?" she asked, a note of amusement in her voice. "No celebration? No 'evil laugh'? This was your first major strike."
"I don't celebrate inevitabilities, Sharon."
"You're hard to talk to," she said, but her smile didn't fade. She studied him for a long moment, the warmth returning to her gaze. "You know, you don't have to treat me like a threat all the time. You keep everyone at arm's length. It's a lonely way to build an empire."
"And yet you keep stepping closer," he countered, finally looking her in the eyes, the blue of his own as cold and deep as a winter lake.
"Because I don't think you're dangerous," she said softly, the words a quiet challenge. "I think you're exhausted. I think you haven't slept properly since the funeral. I'm not here to spy on you, Aryan. At least… not officially."
A faint smirk touched his lips. "Prepare the rebranding."
She straightened instantly, the professional returning. "Rebranding? What's the new name?"
"Google," he said.
She blinked. "Google? Why? It sounds… nonsensical."
"It comes from googol," he explained, the weight of his previous life's knowledge fueling the words, giving them an almost prophetic gravity. "A mathematical term. The digit one, followed by a hundred zeros. It represents an impossible quantity, information beyond human scale. That is what we will organize. That is what we will own."
She let out a low breath, the full scope of his vision finally hitting her. "You really are planning to change the world, aren't you?"
"No," he replied, turning back to the glowing screen where the nascent code of his new empire lay waiting. "I'm planning to own how people see it."
She sat back down, pulling her chair closer without asking, her previous mission forgotten, replaced by a new one. "What's the next step?"
"Scale," he said. "Refining the algorithms to predict human intent before it's even fully formed. Integrating an advertising model that feels like a service. We will make them trust us first."
She watched him. "You talk like someone who has already seen the future."
"Perhaps I have," he whispered, more to himself than to her.
She stood to leave, pausing at the door. "Someone has to make sure you don't turn into a full blown supervillain, Aryan. It's a lot of power for one man to hold."
"Don't worry," he said, a genuine smile crossing his face for the first time that morning. "If I ever do... you'd never see it coming."
She laughed, a warm sound, shaking her head as she stepped out into the hall.