Lauren and Riley were surprised by where I brought them.
"Where are we?" Lauren asked.
"My place," I said, unloading items from the trunk. "Can you help me with these?"
They both helped carry everything inside.
My mother was standing at the door, watching us.
"I didn't give you permission to take my car," she said, eyeing me.
"Yeah, I needed it," I replied casually. "Mom, this is Lauren Blaine and Riley Blaine. And this is Daphne Grace Vale."
I didn't wait for a response. I walked straight past them and headed to the basement with the items.
When I came back up, I noticed some of the remaining bags were still by the door. Lauren and Riley were now in the living room with my mother and grandmother. My mother must've told them to leave the rest.
My grandmother was 54 and retired. My mother had also stopped working after I gave her money.
I carried the remaining items to the basement, then headed to the living room.
My mother and grandmother were making small talk when I walked in. I sat down next to Riley, who was beside her mother.
"You're probably wondering why you're here," my mother said, looking at Lauren.
"Yes. I've been wondering that since I met Felix," Lauren replied.
"To be honest, I don't know why he brought you here," my mother said.
That caught everyone off guard, except my grandmother.
They all looked at me, waiting for an explanation. I just shrugged.
"We want to help you," my mother continued, turning back to Lauren.
She explained everything: how we met Rick at the club, how things escalated into a fight before he ran off, and how he left Lauren drowning in debt while continuing to borrow money from loan sharks just to gamble it away.
One thing she didn't explain was how she knew Rick. Not yet.
"Can I tell you why we want to help you?" my mother asked.
Lauren nodded.
"Riley and Felix are siblings."
Silence.
Lauren looked between Riley and me. Then it clicked why Rick approached us in the first place.
We talked for a while after that.
Eventually, my mother looked at me.
"You should probably take them home. It's getting late."
I took the same car and drove them home.
While we were on the road, Lauren tried to make small talk.
She noticed my mother looked around her age and asked how old I was.
"I turned 17 last night," I said. "My mom's two years younger than you."
She did the math.
Sixteen.
That's when she realized my mother had me at sixteen, and Rick never paid child support.
She went quiet for a while.
"Do you hate him?" she finally asked, looking at me.
I took a moment before answering.
"I don't feel anything toward him," I said, my eyes still on the road.
"How can you feel nothing? He's your father," she said, surprised.
"If I feel hate toward him, that means I care about him. Hate and love ain't that different. You can't hate someone who was never in your life to begin with. If I hate him, that means I wanted him to be in my life, which I don't."
I paused.
"What I do hate… is what he did last night. But him? Nothing."
After that, the car went quiet.
We reached her house.
They said their goodbyes and went inside.
Apparently, Rick hadn't been home for six to nine days.
When I got back, I went straight to the basement.
That's when something random hit me. I missed Chapter 1 of One Piece last month. I hadn't even read Romance Dawn or Wanted!.
I'd been so focused on work, I'd basically checked out of everything else.
Then I noticed something else: no Rockstar.
That didn't make sense. Then it did. It probably hadn't been founded yet.
I searched for Take-Two Interactive and found BMG Interactive connected to it. Apparently, Grand Theft Auto was set to release in December.
Figures. GTA is always "about to release," no matter the timeline.
I decided to invest in them and a few other companies while I was at it.
Then I checked for Monopoly... nothing.
That's when it really clicked.
Some people are inspired by what they read or by the people around them. So, if those people die, then there's no inspiration or creation.
No inspiration, no creation.
Simple as that.
I'm not about to recreate everything myself.
...Or maybe I should.
Start my own gaming company. Maybe more.
It's weird that DC went out of business, but it's not weird because it doesn't have rivals like Jack Kirby or Stan Lee.
It makes sense.
Crazy how much changes when just a few key pieces are missing.
For the past few days, I'd been scouting locations for Oseong Corporation's headquarters.
At the same time, I kept visiting Lauren and Riley.
Maria decided to enlist in the U.S. military right after finishing high school. That led to the first real fight we ever had.
And somehow… we ended up laughing.
I didn't even know why I laughed. I think I laughed because she did.
When I asked her, she said, "Because I realized you actually care about me."
A tear slipped down her face when she said it.
That's when it hit me…
I'd been so focused on the future that I completely ignored the present.
We'd never gone to the cinema.
Never to the theater.
Not the park. Not the beach.
Every time we spent time together, it was the same thing: cuddling or sex.
Whenever she suggested going out, we'd just end up at the mall, buying things I needed, then heading back home.
Nothing meaningful.
Nothing memorable.
I found a location for my company and hired people to start construction.
Then, one weekend, I decided to do something different.
I took Maria out… properly.
We went to the mall, but this time it wasn't about me. We walked around, talked, and took our time.
We even stepped into a photo booth and took pictures together.
For once…
it felt real.
We decided to play one of those claw machines where you pick up dolls, and I'm terrible at it. We did almost everything that couples do.
Then something happened...
Something no one expected.
We didn't do anything after our date. Neither of us wanted to.
We just… enjoyed something simple for once.
I started going to school less and less. Some days I'd leave halfway through. Other days, I wouldn't show up at all.
Alan stopped going completely.
I decided to visit him, but he wasn't home. That was strange; we still talked on the phone a couple of times a week. But the house felt abandoned, like no one had been there in months.
I called him. He picked up.
He said he got a part-time job and was staying near it.
I didn't question it. I just let it go.
Later, I checked online and saw that Darren Cross had been chosen by Hank Pym to lead Pym Technologies that year.
The following weekend, in mid-September, Maria and I stayed home and binged TV.
Then everything changed.
A live broadcast cut in.
Magneto was attacking a hospital in Detroit with the Brotherhood of Mutants.
And standing beside him...
was Alan.
We both froze.
I turned up the volume.
[We are live in Detroit. The well-known mutant Magneto is attacking a private hospital with his Brotherhood of Mutants. Police have surrounded the building-]
The reporter kept talking, his voice shaking.
[He's coming out... he's bringing patients with him.... Wait, he just lifted all the police cars-!]
Gunfire. Chaos.
[Police have opened fire. Three mutants are down. Magneto is retreating with the injured...]
The screen cut between flashing lights and panic.
We just sat there.
Staring.
Trying to process it.
When did Alan meet Magneto?
How long had he been part of them?
Why did he join?
No answers.
Just silence.
A few days later, Maria went to check on him.
She found him dead.
Alone.
In his bed.
His parents had abandoned him when they found out he was a mutant. They moved to another city and just sent money. Nothing else.
Since we were kids, he was like a brother to me. He used to sleep over all the time.
Somewhere along the way… we drifted.
I don't know when it started.
Maybe when we got older.
Maybe when we got distracted—with relationships, with life.
Maybe something else entirely.
No one had the answer.
We buried him a few days later.
The funeral was small, just my family, Maria, and her mother.
That was the first time I understood what loss actually felt like.
A few days after that, I looked into why Magneto attacked that hospital.
It was funded by Essex Corp.
That told me everything I needed to know.
Mutant experimentation.
Then I dug deeper into Alan's history.
That attack?
It wasn't his first.
He'd been involved in four others with Magneto.
That's when it hit me...
I didn't know him at all.
Not really.
I remembered that my mother once said, "I'm too focused on the future that I forgot the present."
I fell into a depression for a while. I stopped going to school for weeks. I blamed myself for not paying attention to the people around me, too focused on building everything on my own.
I didn't visit Lauren and Riley during that time.
I didn't go out with Maria either.
Everyone tried to cheer me up, and somehow… it helped.
I got over it after exams. By December, construction was finished, and the building turned out great.
Project Cosmic had already been completed by the end of August. I had even forgotten about it.
"What would happen if I take the serum?"
«I don't know, sir.»
"Okay. What about the Soldier Serum?"
«There's a 50% chance you'll die, a 48% chance you'll stop being human, and a 2% chance it will work.»
"What?! I thought the serum was 100% safe."
«No serum is 100% safe, sir.»
"But you recreated it exactly like that doctor did, right?"
«The serum itself is fine, sir. It's the process that matters.»
"What are you talking about?"
«Without the chamber, there's only a 2% chance it will work.»
"Oh… I forgot about that. I'm not taking that risk. Besides, I'm not in a rush."
I put that aside. Project Peak and Project Cosmic were finished. I needed to focus on my tech.
I stopped building anything after the funeral, but I eventually got back to it. I upgraded my smart glasses and, by the end of the afternoon, I finished building a smart ring.
The smart glasses now had 510-megapixel sensors installed. The smart ring functioned as a health monitor. I designed it that way.
Then I asked myself, "Why did I even create a smart ring when the glasses can already do that through SPACE?"
Too late now. It's already built. Might as well use it.
I decided to look for a factory to mass-produce my devices. I found an old one for sale and bought it.
It was about 30,000 m² and surprisingly cheap, just $8 million. I chose it because it had multiple sections. I wasn't planning to focus on phones alone.
I renovated the factory to make it presentable. The upgrades cost around $7 million, including labor.
So, in total, $15 million for the factory. Not bad.
While that was happening, I talked to Maria about learning how to use guns. She agreed. I brought out the weapons I had bought from a dealer some time ago.
We drove out to a nearby forest and set up targets before we started shooting.
At first, we struggled with recoil and stability, but we got the hang of it. We practiced all day.
Maria turned out to be good. Really good.
After three days, handguns felt like second nature to her, except revolvers. She couldn't handle those. The same went for rifles and heavy machine guns.
By the fourth day, I started calling her "Commander Maria Christina Hill."
At first, she thought it was ridiculous and told me to stop. I didn't.
She could hit targets up to 30 meters away. Within 15 meters, she was nearly perfect. Beyond that, she still landed her shots on the target.
While I was practicing, I kept in touch with any news happening that had something to do with anything, and SPACE categorized it.