Jason stood on the balcony of a luxury high-rise penthouse overlooking the Bay Bridge, his phone pressed to his ear.
"Five percent," he said coldly. "That's all I need."
On the other end of the line, Lucien Dane, CEO of TrendIQ, hesitated. "Jason, you're asking for a strategic stake. That's not a small favor. My board will want to know why we'd ever give that up."
Jason didn't blink. "Because I know your user base better than you do. And if we plug your real-time trends directly into PulseCast's AI feed system, both platforms explode. It'll make Twitter look like the fax machine era."
Lucien laughed nervously. "You're serious."
"Deadly."
Jason hung up without waiting for a response.
---
Back at PulseCast HQ, Naomi intercepted him the moment he walked in.
"You just made a demand from a company valued at two billion," she said. "With no paperwork. No offer."
"I gave him a whisper," Jason replied. "The market will scream the rest."
She followed him to the elevator. "And what if he doesn't play ball?"
Jason hit the button for the executive floor.
"Then I'll build a clone, crush his metrics, and buy the ruins for half price."
---
While the market buzzed over PulseCast's user growth, Jason's real attention was on acquisitions.
He had dispatched covert scouts to quietly approach key mid-tier AI startups—companies focused on personalization, speech analysis, and predictive emotion tracking. Most were too small for Valkyrie Capital to notice… but they wouldn't stay small for long.
That afternoon, a young scout named Linh walked into his office, her hands shaking with excitement.
"We found one," she said. "Company out of Portland. Two founders, no VC backing yet, but their algorithm reads tone and subtext in video better than anyone."
Jason's eyes lit up.
"That's the final piece," he murmured. "We're not just going to predict what people want to watch…"
He looked out the window, grinning.
"…we'll predict what they'll want to buy before they know it."
---
By week's end, PulseCast's valuation had quietly crossed $3.2 billion.
But Jason didn't celebrate.
Because something else had arrived in his inbox.
An unmarked envelope.
Inside: a flash drive.
Encrypted.
When decrypted, it revealed surveillance footage.
Of Jason.
At a private dinner in Palo Alto.
Two weeks ago.
He hadn't told anyone about that meeting.
And yet, here it was—crystal clear.
Every word. Every gesture. Every deal discussed.
Naomi, watching the footage beside him, swallowed hard. "Someone's inside our walls."
Jason's voice was low.
"Not someone," he said. "Several someones."