Agent Phil and the bodies of the fallen special operators suddenly reappeared in a barren wasteland outside New York, transported there in an instant by Ethan Cole's ability. One moment they had been inside Ethan's residence, and the next they were standing beneath an empty sky surrounded by dry earth and scattered debris. The abrupt transition left Phil momentarily disoriented, his mind struggling to catch up with what had just happened.
He stared around in shock, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar surroundings. When his gaze eventually fell upon the corpses lying nearby, his expression immediately darkened. The sight of the dead agents scattered across the ground made his stomach twist, and the realization of how easily Ethan had disposed of them made the situation feel even more unsettling.
Phil took a slow breath and forced himself to calm down.
After a moment, he quickly pulled a communicator from his pocket and activated it. His fingers moved rapidly over the device as he checked the signal and located his current coordinates. Once the system finished calculating the position, he initiated a secure communication channel and contacted the person he needed to report to.
The connection clicked on after a brief delay.
"Director," Phil said immediately, his tone serious and controlled. "The mission has failed. The target killed the CIA special combat team without hesitation, and he clearly didn't care that this was happening on American soil."
He paused briefly before continuing.
"I recommend terminating the current operation for now. The target is extremely dangerous, and the feeling he gave me was… unsettling. He's the type of person who doesn't seem to care about other people's lives at all."
The communicator fell silent for a moment.
A few seconds later, a low and steady voice came through the speaker.
"I'll contact the CIA and tell them to halt any further action," the voice said calmly. "For now, we'll suspend direct operations involving the target."
There was another short pause before the voice continued.
"I'll arrange for someone to establish contact with him again later. As for you, return immediately. We'll evaluate the situation and determine the next course of action once you're back."
"Understood," Phil replied.
The connection ended.
Only then did Agent Phil finally release the tension he had been holding inside his chest. To be honest, he had absolutely no desire to face Ethan again anytime soon. The man had left a deep impression on him, one that went far beyond simple fear.
Even the most violent mutant criminals he had encountered in the past had never made him feel like this.
Ethan had.
Phil tried to find the right way to describe the sensation. After thinking about it for a moment, a strange image formed in his mind.
Ethan was like a massive volcano.
When calm, the volcano was covered in snow and looked almost beautiful, even peaceful. From the outside, it could appear harmless, like an ordinary mountain quietly existing within the landscape.
But beneath that quiet surface, unimaginable destructive power was waiting.
If the volcano erupted, the energy unleashed would be enough to devastate everything around it.
That was the feeling Ethan gave him.
An overwhelming sense that behind the calm exterior was a force capable of shaking the entire world.
Phil trusted that instinct. His subconscious and his sixth sense had saved his life more than once in the past, and he had learned long ago that ignoring those feelings was the fastest way to end up dead.
So he believed what that instinct was telling him now.
Ethan Cole was someone who should never be provoked lightly.
Meanwhile, inside the towering residence in New York, Ethan himself seemed completely unconcerned with what had just happened.
He stood quietly in front of a massive floor-to-ceiling window, gazing down at the flowing traffic far below. The city moved as it always did, cars weaving through the streets and lights flashing across the skyline.
To Ethan, the confrontation from earlier had been nothing more than a minor interruption.
There was no panic in his expression, no lingering tension from the violent encounter. What had just happened was, in his eyes, a trivial matter that required almost no effort at all.
His confidence came from understanding exactly how powerful he truly was.
Even if someone ignored his mutant abilities entirely, the level of wealth he controlled alone was already enough to make most governments treat him carefully.
Publicly, his known net worth was estimated to be over three billion dollars.
But that number was only the visible surface.
Very few people actually knew the full extent of his financial empire. In fact, only one entity truly understood the complete picture.
Svija.
It managed every aspect of Ethan's capital operations and controlled the complex network of investments he had quietly built over the years.
Ethan had never believed in placing all his resources in a single location. On the surface, his declared assets were only a few billion dollars, but behind that carefully constructed façade was something far larger.
Hidden within the stock market were funds more than ten times greater than the amount publicly associated with him.
Almost no one realized that he held equity stakes in many of the largest corporations in the United States. Among the top fifty companies ranked by market value, his financial influence appeared again and again, woven subtly into the ownership structure.
If someone managed to investigate thoroughly enough to uncover the truth, they would arrive at a terrifying conclusion.
Ethan Cole's total capital had already exceeded five hundred billion dollars.
At that level, money itself became a weapon.
If he truly wanted to, he could use financial leverage to shake the American stock market to its core. A carefully executed series of moves could trigger a cascading collapse, pushing the country into one of the worst economic crises it had ever experienced.
Once confidence in the dollar disappeared, the consequences would spread rapidly across the world.
Even if the United States government tried to stabilize the situation by printing more currency, it wouldn't solve the problem. Financial systems depended on trust, and once that trust was broken, recovery became extremely difficult.
Foreign governments would begin dumping U.S. Treasury bonds, triggering a global chain reaction that could devastate the American economy.
And at that point, Ethan wouldn't even need to do anything further.
The collapse would take on a life of its own.
Of course, he had hidden these capabilities carefully. Most people had no idea just how dangerous his financial influence truly was.
But that didn't mean nobody knew.
Some key figures within the Democratic Party were aware of it. Certain leaders within the Republican Party also understood the situation. The current president knew about it, and several individuals expected to run for the presidency in the future had been briefed as well.
Because of that, Ethan had always been someone both political parties tried to win over.
They wanted him as an ally.
Which made the current situation somewhat ironic.
The CIA had clearly been pushed forward to act as a scapegoat for someone else's political maneuvering, and unfortunately for them, they had chosen the worst possible target.
Standing by the window, Ethan finally spoke.
"Svija," he said calmly.
"Yes, sir," the system responded instantly.
"Sell the shares we hold in companies ranked between the thirtieth and fiftieth largest by market capitalization in the United States," Ethan instructed. "Trigger a round of instability in the stock market."
His voice remained steady.
"Consider it a small warning for the people sitting at the top of this country."
"Understood, sir," Svija replied.
The system continued after a brief calculation.
"Among those twenty companies, we currently hold hidden stock assets valued at approximately one hundred and twenty billion dollars. If these shares are sold simultaneously, the resulting shock is expected to destabilize the American stock market for approximately half a month."
Svija paused briefly before presenting the projected impact.
"Based on chain reaction effects, total market losses could exceed six hundred billion dollars, affecting the entire national economy."
Ethan nodded slightly.
"Go ahead and execute the plan," he said calmly. "It's about time we harvested another round of profit."
His tone carried a faint hint of amusement.
"Once the market drops, calculate the optimal timing and prepare to buy everything back at the bottom."
"Understood, sir."
Ethan's goal was simple.
He wanted the people at the top of the United States government to remember exactly how important he was. If anyone thought they could manipulate him or pressure him into submission, they were going to learn a very painful lesson.
To him, one hundred billion dollars was not particularly important.
Even if the entire amount vanished overnight, he wouldn't feel the slightest regret.
The real key to his dominance in the financial world was Svija itself.
To enhance the system's capabilities, Ethan had secretly constructed three supercomputers dedicated solely to supporting its calculations. Each of them possessed processing power strong enough to rank among the ten most powerful supercomputers in existence.
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