Daniel's legs burned with every stride as he pushed through the final stretch of his morning run. The early morning air hung damp and heavy with the scent of wet pavement, and mist clung to the edges of the sidewalk like fading memories. Sprinklers ticked in the distance, their rhythm a counterpoint to the steady slap of his sneakers on concrete. The street was quiet—Chicago holding its breath before the world stirred.
He welcomed the pain. It distracted him. Focused him.
Fifteen days of obsessive trading had left him physically imbalanced—his upper body was sculpted like a Greek statue, but his legs lagged behind. Claude had noticed.
"You look like an animation glitch from a '90s cartoon," she'd teased during yesterday's workout. "Like Captain Upperbody and a human-sized Twiglet got merged in post."
He hadn't argued. She was right.
Now, drenched in sweat, muscles screaming, Daniel stumbled back into the modest apartment his parents still called home. He peeled off his soaked shirt and collapsed onto the living room carpet, gasping. The ceiling above him spun slightly, but for the first time in days, there was no tremor of anxiety running through him.
The markets wouldn't open for another two hours.
His heart rate began to settle. He lay still, feeling the beat of it in his chest, the primal rhythm of a hunter before the kill.
He sat up. Time to work.
The Compaq Presario on his desk shrieked awake, fans wheezing as the ancient tower booted. He powered up AOL, listening to the static wails and hisses of the dial-up connection locking into place.
Claude groaned. "This connection is a war crime. I feel like I'm being tortured in binary."
Daniel grinned as the screen flickered to life.
"We make do."
She sighed. "You're a billionaire in a potato factory."
He cracked his knuckles, pulled up the E*TRADE dashboard, and checked the account balance.
Haizen Holdings LLC: $1,029,370.71
Good. But not nearly enough.
Today was August 21, 2001.
He had exactly two weeks before the world changed. And in that time, he needed to prepare his war chest—$70 million minimum, ideally more. He couldn't afford to miss the window. The moment the towers fell, the market would crater like a dead star. If he wasn't already positioned, he wouldn't just lose money—he'd lose the future.
The first domino was Enron.
He pulled up the live quote. $40.12. Still absurd. Still floating on a cloud of lies, fraud, and false narratives. The company had been rotting from the inside out since '99, but the market hadn't caught on yet.
His puts were already in place—$700,000 of them, deep out-of-the-money contracts expiring mid-September.
But Daniel didn't just want to profit. He wanted to accelerate the collapse.
"We need a crack in the story," he muttered. "Just one."
Claude paused. "We're not forging anything."
"We don't have to," he said, already typing. "The truth is more dangerous anyway."
He dove into archived files, SEC statements, hidden footnotes in earnings calls, reports buried behind layers of PR spin. Claude filtered through them, highlighting connections, feeding him ammunition.
He began writing.
Forum Post #1 – Yahoo Finance – 10:42 AM
Hey, I might be missing something, but has anyone looked into Enron's Chewco and Jedi partnerships? Their debt ratios don't match GAAP reports.
Forum Post #2 – RagingBull – 11:07 AM
Is it normal for a company to have -$1B in cash flow and still post record earnings? I know it's Enron, but... just asking.
He kept the tone inquisitive, not accusatory. The posts spread like embers. By mid-afternoon, responses had started trickling in. Most dismissed him. Some mocked. But a few people asked questions.
And those were the people he needed.
By the next day, August 22, a minor finance blog reposted one of his breakdowns. It wasn't viral, but it seeded doubt. Enron dropped slightly, to $38.70. Nothing major. But Claude saw the volume spike.
"Crack in the facade," she whispered.
Daniel smiled. "Now we hammer it."
He emailed a professor—a man he knew would one day publish a scathing takedown of Enron in the original timeline. Using a burner email and posing as a nervous MBA student, he sent him a question:
I'm researching off-balance sheet entities. Found some weird stuff in Enron's filings. Ever heard of Jedi or Chewco?
Three hours later, the professor replied with cautious interest.
By August 24, another blog post had gone live. The headline:
"Too Perfect? Investigating the Numbers Behind Enron's Accounting"
It didn't accuse. It didn't need to. It merely asked questions. Dangerous ones.
Enron dropped to $34.75.
By August 25, Claude was tracking option premiums. Daniel's puts, worth maybe $1.25 per contract earlier that week, were now trading above $40.
"You're already up 60x," Claude said. "Sell now, and you walk away with $42 million."
Daniel shook his head. "Not yet."
The dam wasn't broken. Not fully.
He planted another whisper.
A journalist at Financial Times—again, one he remembered from the future—got a nudge. An anonymous tip. No lies. Just breadcrumbs.
By August 28, the headline was real:
"When Earnings Are Too Perfect: The Hidden Web in Enron's Accounting"
It cited the professor. It quoted the forums. It asked one question that stopped everything:
"Is Enron profiting from partnerships that don't exist on its own books?"
Enron collapsed 8% in a single trading session.
Claude pinged him. "We just crossed $58 million in unrealized gains."
Daniel checked the quotes. Puts were now over $90 each.
Enron closed at $28.90.
He leaned back. Exhaled.
But the nail came on August 30.
An internal email leaked. A real whistleblower. A memo questioning the company's balance sheets. It hit CNN Money just after lunch.
Enron fell 12% in hours. Closed at $22.75.
Options went supernova. Bid/ask spreads turned into Grand Canyons.
Claude spoke quietly. "Your $700,000 position is worth $70.2 million. If you wanted to sell... now would be the time."
Daniel stared at the screen. His hands were calm. His pulse, steady.
He did sell.
After that, he stood, walked to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and drank slowly. His reflection in the microwave door didn't look 17. It looked like something else entirely.
Labor Day weekend came. Markets closed. Daniel tried to act normal.
His mom talked about a coworker's wedding. His dad rambled about the Bears.
Daniel nodded, smiled, said the right things. But his brain kept drifting.
Airlines. Banks. Travel stocks. Hotels.
He needed to be in position. By the time the world caught fire, he needed to already be holding the matches.
On Saturday morning, he rolled out of bed at dawn. Claude was already running simulations.
"Airlines are over-leveraged," she said. "Margins are thin. If something happens to global travel, they're toast."
Daniel opened his notebook and began mapping it out: American Airlines, United, Delta. He checked short interest. Picked the weakest.
Later that night, in the darkness of his room, Claude whispered: "All positions ready. Exposure balanced. If the world burns tomorrow, you're the phoenix."
Daniel stared at the blinking terminal light in the corner of his screen. The glow bathed his face in soft pulses, like a heartbeat echoing from the future. Claude remained silent, letting the weight of her words settle over him.
Finally, he spoke.
"We need to cover our tracks."
"I thought you'd never say it," she replied. "Let's start with the shell companies. I've already drafted three: Helix Alpha Ltd. in the Cayman Islands, Borealis Holdings in Liechtenstein, and Daedalus Fund in Panama. We'll run mirrored positions across all of them. None will carry more than $25 million."
"And the directors?"
"Synthetic identities," Claude said. "All built from deepfakes, old census records, and obfuscated digital trails. The Cayman firm will be run by a Belgian tech consultant with a fondness for classic cinema. Totally fabricated."
Daniel nodded. "We need international brokers too. U.S. exposure is a liability."
"Already done. Accounts opened via Estonia, Luxembourg, and Hong Kong. All route through encrypted VPN chains. We'll make the SEC play whack-a-mole just trying to trace us."
"And the options themselves?"
Claude's digital voice lowered, like a secret. "Structured. Some are long puts. Others are synthetic shorts, swap contracts, even volatility spreads. We'll scatter strike prices and expiries to mask intention. Half of them look like market hedges. The rest? Derivatives that only someone with serious quant chops would recognize."
Daniel leaned back, exhaling through his nose. He was seventeen, with $70 million and the weight of prophetic insight. And now, he would become invisible.
"We don't short airlines directly," he added. "Not American or United. Too obvious."
"Agreed," Claude said. "Instead, we're using travel ETFs, index derivatives, and sector-specific volatility plays. I've already seeded backdated trades into their logs."
"What about defense longs?"
"Bought through a 'strategic innovation' trust based in Singapore. No red flags. No overlap."
Daniel's eyes flicked toward the calendar. September was days away.
"And the narrative?"
"We are a young quant firm. New. Secretive. Using a black-box AI model trained on emerging macroeconomic instability. The outside world will believe Haizen Holdings just... got lucky."
"Too lucky, and we'll get investigated."
Claude chimed softly, "Then we don't look like winners. Not yet."
Daniel's lips curled. "We act like we hedged. Played scared. Made some good moves but didn't expect the full collapse."
"Exactly. And we leak just enough afterward to build the legend. Algorithmic timing. Gut feeling. Not insider knowledge."
The silence that followed was electric.
Daniel stood and walked to the window. The city lights flickered like fireflies trapped in glass. Somewhere out there, the world was still innocent. But not for long.
He wasn't just planning for tomorrow. He was laying the foundation for a future empire.
And no one would ever trace it back to him.