Chapter 4: Expensive Hobby

The morning sun cast long shadows across the polished glass and steel of the financial district.

At exactly eight-forty-five, a sleek chauffeured town car pulled up to the curb of the Vanguard Building. Julius stepped out, dressed in a tailored charcoal suit he had ordered via the hotel concierge earlier that morning. Under his arm, he carried his leather planner.

Inside the building’s top floor, the atmosphere was frantic. When Julius stepped out of the private elevator, two receptionists snapped to their feet and bowed with practiced deference.

"Mr. Vance, Mr. Jacobs is waiting for you in the boardroom," one of them said quickly, her eyes widening as she took in his youthful appearance.

Julius gave a curt nod and walked down the wide hallway.

The boardroom doors opened to reveal a lavish space lined with dark walnut wood. Behind an immense marble table stood Arthur Jacobs. The man had dark circles beneath his eyes, gray hair slightly disheveled, and an empty cup of black espresso sitting next to a massive stack of stamped legal folders. He hadn’t slept a wink, but the sight of Julius made him stand bolt upright.

"Mr. Vance!" Jacobs hurried around the table, extending a trembling hand. "Welcome. Everything is prepared. Exactly as you requested."

Julius shook his hand firmly, took a seat at the head of the table, and leaned back. "Let’s see the paperwork."

Jacobs quickly slid several thick folders across the marble. "The international maritime commission, the sovereign deed registry, and the full mineral, subterranean, and airspace rights. The forty-eight-hour process was condensed into six hours, courtesy of the extra capital. Once you sign these seven documents, St. Jude’s Spire belongs entirely to you. You are, for all legal and geopolitical intents, an independent sovereign entity on that rock."

Julius flipped through the pages. The language was airtight, validated by international treaties and stamped with embossed wax seals. He took out his black pen and signed each document with clean, deliberate strokes.

When the last signature dried, Jacobs let out a breath he seemed to have held since the night before. But as he organized the papers, his curious gaze lingered on Julius. He hesitated, rubbing his chin, unable to hold his tongue any longer.

"Mr. Vance... if you’ll indulge an old broker’s curiosity," Jacobs began, his tone a mix of sheer awe and bewilderment. "I’ve handled territory sales for thirty years. Royalty, oil tycoons, tech moguls. But no one—literally no one—has ever dropped four hundred and twenty million dollars on an uninhabited arctic rock overnight, without even an on-site survey."

Jacobs leaned in slightly, his brow furrowed. "Why the rush? Why St. Jude’s Spire?"

Julius set his pen down on the marble with a soft click. "Because of its basalt density and natural elevation."

"Its... density?" Jacobs blinked.

"Yes," Julius replied calmly, steepling his fingers. "I’m going to carve that island hollow. I want an underground fortress built hundreds of meters into the bedrock. Blast doors made of reinforced titanium-tungsten alloys. Air filtration systems that can scrub radioactive fallout, biological toxins, and volcanic ash. Geothermal plants running deep beneath the sea bed, hydro-farming bays, automated defense grids, and enough preserved supplies to sustain human life for decades."

He locked eyes with the broker, his voice utterly flat. "I’m turning that island into a bunker capable of surviving every possible apocalypse scenario known to mankind. Cosmic impacts, nuclear winter, global plagues, super-hurricanes, or catastrophic geological collapse. If the world ends, that rock will remain standing."

Jacobs stared at him. The room fell dead silent, save for the faint hum of the air conditioner.

The broker’s jaw hung open for several seconds. He looked at the paperwork, then back at Julius, his face a blend of shock and utter disbelief. He was waiting for the punchline, but Julius’s expression didn’t even twitch.

"An... an apocalypse bunker?" Jacobs stammered, adjusting his glasses with a shaking finger. "Sir, with all due respect... are you serious? An apocalyptic event? The world is completely stable. There are no impending wars, no rogue asteroids. Why would you spend billions of dollars preparing for the end of the world?"

Julius offered a small, amused smile.

"Why? For fun," Julius said smoothly, resting his chin on his knuckles. "I have more money than I could ever spend in ten lifetimes. Some billionaires buy sports teams. Some build rockets to touch outer space for three minutes. I build doomsday bunkers. Is there a rule against that?"

Jacobs opened his mouth, then closed it. "Well... no, but—"

"Money is meant to be used, Mr. Jacobs," Julius cut him off, his voice laced with cold confidence. "You got a twenty-million-dollar bonus just for working the night shift, didn’t you? Do you not want to earn more?"

That single sentence shattered whatever skepticism Jacobs had left. The color rushed back to the broker’s face, and he swallowed hard.

"I... I apologize, Mr. Vance. It’s not my place to question a client’s hobbies," Jacobs said hastily, straightening his tie. "Money is money, and your capital is the purest I have ever seen."

"Good," Julius said, leaning forward and resting his forearms against the table. "Now, where is what I actually asked for?"

Jacobs immediately nodded, eager to prove his worth. He reached into his leather briefcase on the floor and pulled out a sleek, black dossier stamped with a red seal marked CONFIDENTIAL.

"Right here, Mr. Vance," Jacobs said, sliding the file across the table with both hands. "As requested, the absolute best in the business."

Julius opened the black dossier.

Inside were three distinct profiles, each separated by color-coded tabs. Attached were blueprints, engineering schematics, and lists of past projects stamped with declassified government clearances.

"I contacted our discreet channels as soon as the wire hit our holding account last night," Jacobs explained, leaning over the table. "Normal civil contractors build bridges, tunnels, and skyscrapers. They deal with municipal codes and environmental impact boards. That’s not what you need. These three firms handle subterranean defense, deep-bore mining, and black-budget government installations. If a country needs to bury a command center under a mountain to survive a nuclear barrage, they hire one of these three."

Julius turned to the first file under the blue tab.

[Atlas Heavy Infrastructure — Zurich / Frankfurt]

Specialty: High-precision Alpine tunneling, deep-strata concrete pouring, structural reinforcement.

Notable Projects: Gotthard Base Tunnel extensions, underground strategic fuel reserves across Northern Europe, three classified continuity-of-government bunkers in the Swiss Alps.

Assessment: Masters of stone and concrete. Extremely reliable, with the best subterranean logistics fleet in Europe.

Julius read through their specs carefully, absorbing every metric before flipping past the blue divider to the second file under the red tab.

[Ares Deepworks — Houston / Dubai]

Specialty: Rapid trenching, sub-oceanic heavy drilling, automated industrial excavation.

Notable Projects: Ultra-deep offshore drilling platforms in the North Sea, subterranean storage shafts across the Gulf States.

Assessment: Masters of brute-force speed. They possess the largest fleet of automated tunnel-boring machines and heavy sea transport rigs on the planet.

"Ares has raw speed and heavy machinery," Julius observed, his eyes scanning their fleet manifests. "They can tear through rock faster than anyone else alive."

He turned to the final file, marked with an amber tab.

[Titan Subterranean Dynamics — Colorado Springs / London]

Specialty: Military-grade deep underground command facilities, nuclear-fallout life support, sealed biospheres.

Notable Projects: Modernization of Cheyenne Mountain, classified hardened bunkers for defense ministries, closed-loop atmospheric scrubbers.

Assessment: Unrivaled in survival architecture. They design self-sustaining, airtight subterranean worlds meant to outlast global extinction events.

Jacobs leaned over the marble, preparing to guide his client through the standard procurement process. "Normally, a client weighs their priorities here, Mr. Vance. If you want structural durability, you choose Atlas. If you need sheer excavation velocity, you pick Ares. If your priority is self-contained survival systems, Titan is the clear choice. Which one would you like me to contact for an official bid?"

Julius closed the black folder with a sharp, resonant slap that echoed off the mahogany walls.

He leaned back in his leather chair, a cold, dry smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"Which one?" Julius repeated, raising an eyebrow. "You misunderstand me, Mr. Jacobs. Three isn’t nearly enough. I need twenty."

Jacobs froze, blinking rapidly as if his ears had malfunctioned. "Twenty? Sir, twenty... what? Twenty engineers?"

"Twenty full-scale international conglomerates," Julius said, his voice flat and absolute. "Three firms cannot pull off what I need in seven hundred and twenty-nine days. An eighteen-square-kilometer volcanic rock must be completely gutted, re-engineered, and transformed into an unbreachable subterranean citadel. Under normal conditions, that takes fifteen years. I don’t have fifteen years. I have two."

Jacobs stared at him, the remaining color draining from his face. "Twenty tier-one industrial contractors? Mr. Vance, that is insane! Coordinating that many corporate giants is a bureaucratic nightmare. The port authority, heavy logistics, maritime shipping lanes, conflicting patents, proprietary tech—it would cost tens of billions of dollars within the first few months alone!"

"Then let it cost tens of billions," Julius replied without blinking. "I don’t care about their logistics headaches, and I care even less about the price. I want every single aspect of that island worked on in parallel, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year."

Julius stood up, leaned forward over the marble table, and pinned the trembling broker with an unyielding stare.

"Ares Deepworks brings their boring fleet, but hire three more excavation empires alongside them. I want fifty industrial tunnel-boring machines chewing through the basalt plateau simultaneously from five different angles.

"Atlas Heavy Infrastructure handles the blast-proof concrete, but pair them with the top seismic engineering syndicates from Japan and Germany. I want shock-dampening honeycombs, lead-lined radiation vaults, and multi-layered armor plating poured as fast as the rock is hollowed out.

"Titan Subterranean Dynamics designs the survival architecture, but bring in specialized aerospace biospheres for closed-loop air scrubbers. Hire naval submarine manufacturers from Britain and the States to build the hermetic seals, emergency escape airlocks, and waterproof bulkheads.

"Contract private defense firms to lay early subsurface sensor nets and automated perimeter grids. Hire deep-sea geothermal drilling groups from Iceland to tap the volcanic vent and guarantee endless subterranean power. Add commercial vertical-farming tech giants, mass-desalination developers, and automated rail-logistics teams to connect every quadrant beneath the rock."

Julius tapped his black titanium card against his open leather planner.

"Twenty firms. Each given a single, non-competing objective with unlimited funding. If they need to build temporary docks in the freezing Atlantic, they build ten docks. If they need cargo ships, they charter entire merchant fleets. If a machine breaks down, they don’t fix it—they push it into the ocean and crane in a brand-new replacement within six hours. I am not buying labor, Jacobs. I am buying time."

Jacobs stood frozen, his chest heaving as beads of cold sweat broke out along his hairline. The raw scale of the mobilization Julius was outlining wasn’t a construction project. It was an industrial war effort on par with a superpower mobilizing for an extinction event.

"Twenty mega-firms..." Jacobs swallowed dryly, his pen shaking against his notepad. "To lock down exclusivity, bypass legal delays, and force twenty rival giants to mobilize instantly... the upfront retainers alone would run twenty to thirty billion dollars."

"Offer each contractor two billion dollars just to sign the non-disclosure agreement and mobilize their fleets this week," Julius said calmly. "Add a one-billion-dollar completion bonus for hitting milestones ahead of schedule. Triple the wages of every single worker who sets foot on that island, down to the dockhands and cooks."

He tilted his head, his gaze boring into the broker.

"Can you assemble the list and summon their executives, or should I find a broker who won’t flinch at large numbers?"

The question snapped Jacobs out of his trance. The sheer magnitude of a twenty-billion-dollar procurement meant commissions beyond anything human history had ever recorded.

"I can do it, Mr. Vance! I swear I can do it!" Jacobs blurted, bowing his head repeatedly as he clutched his pen. "I will activate our global legal network immediately. By this evening, the heads of all twenty syndicates will have contracts in their hands and charter jets bound for this city."

"Good," Julius said, picking up his planner and slipping the black titanium card back into his tailored coat.