Eileen Hayes was, by all appearances, an ordinary woman—beautiful, brilliant, but unmistakably human. Yet somehow, she'd done what no one else could: she'd made Arthur Hayes settle down.
To understand how this happened and how Arthur Hayes, one of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on Earth, ended up standing in a suburban driveway holding bags of toys while his wife smiled at him from their modest front door, we need to go back. Back to the beginning of it all. Back to 2001, when the foundations of that future were first laid.
— February 2001, Manhattan —
Arthur Hayes, or more precisely, one of his clones, sat in a modest fifteenth-floor office inside a nondescript Manhattan high-rise, skimming through quarterly reports from London.
They confirmed what he already knew: the Phoenix Group was thriving.
The dot-com bubble had burst a few months ago. Companies worth millions were now worthless. Investors had lost fortunes. The market was in freefall.
Phoenix Group, however, had profited enormously and Arthur who owned 70% of it was now worth billions.
Arthur had sold at the peak, then shorted on the way down. The time-turner had made it straightforward - send a clone forward, check movements, return and adjust. He'd been careful not to make perfect trades, only capturing eighty to ninety percent of maximum profit. Still enormous, and it looked like brilliant analysis rather than impossible foreknowledge.
Arthur set the papers aside and glanced around the room. The office was deliberately unremarkable - a desk, two chairs, a window overlooking the city. No art, no trophies, no signs of the billions flowing through his accounts.
This was Phoenix Group's U.S. arm. A modest operation for local banking, deal flow, and maintaining a legal American footprint. The real company, the profit engine, remained firmly in London where Daniel Wang managed it with ruthless efficiency.
On paper, Arthur Hayes was merely the manager of this minor New York branch. Almost no one knew he owned seventy percent of the parent company and could, with a signature, purchase small nations.
A knock interrupted his reading.
"Yes?"
An employee opened the door. "Sir, someone is here to see you."
Arthur frowned. He never had visitors. His calendar was permanently blocked. "Did he give a name?"
"He said you'd know who he was."
Arthur sighed. Of course.
"Send him in."
Nick Fury walked in, eye patch in place, and sat down without invitation.
"Hayes," Fury said, studying the sparse office with his good eye. "You know, when Coulson told me one of the richest men on the planet was working out of a glorified closet in midtown Manhattan, I didn't believe him."
"Someone's been tracking me closely, as always," Arthur replied. "Did you follow my moves and make similar gains?"
"Why would I gamble with you?"
"Because you're smart."
Fury's expression didn't change. "Well, yes. I made decent gains. Not as much as you."
Arthur shrugged. "I didn't make any gains. Phoenix Group did. On paper, I'm actually quite poor."
Fury gave him a dead-eyed stare. "Someone's learned the fine art of legal tax evasion."
Arthur's mouth twitched. "Not as much as you. I don't even bother with offshore accounts. Everything stays clean, compliant, boringly aboveboard."
Becoming rich had taught Arthur things he'd never expected to learn. He used to think wealth was about numbers—profits, losses, balance sheets. But true wealth wasn't about having money. It was about controlling it without ever appearing to.
Phoenix Group owned everything. Arthur Hayes owned nothing. That was deliberate.
If he ever withdrew the billions sitting in its accounts, half would vanish overnight into taxes. No sane person would do that.
The real rich never did. They didn't take salaries. They borrowed from themselves, flew in company jets, and called penthouses 'executive residences.'
Arthur hadn't studied finance and seeing it up close, the elegant fraud of it all, was eye-opening. Almost beautiful, in its way.
Maybe the old Arthur, the poor one from a lifetime ago, would have called all of this illegal, immoral even.
But the man he was now couldn't. Who in their right mind would hand half their wealth to the government for nothing? In his case, that "half" meant billions.
Phoenix Group already paid its corporate dues; there was no reason to pay more on top of that. If he was going to give money away, he'd rather donate it to causes that actually mattered than let it vanish into bureaucratic black holes.
Arthur finally looked up from his desk. "So, what brings you to my humble office, Fury? Don't tell me you came all this way to brag about your stock portfolio."
"To check up on you. Figure out your next moves."
"Don't you have better things to do?"
"The strongest wizard in the world—maybe the universe—needs special attention." Fury said, his voice dropping. "If anything makes you go dark, I need to be ready."
"As if your agents could do anything against me."
"I could try. And more importantly, I'll ensure things don't go that way." Fury pulled out a small notebook. "Speaking of attention, have you met with the magical community here?"
Arthur's smile was thin. "They came to me when I first settled in. My reputation in Britain made them nervous about me staying permanently in America."
"And?"
"Some idiots in their group wanted me to leave. Go back to Britain." Arthur's smile widened. "That led to a beat-down they'll remember for the rest of their lives."
Fury leaned forward. "So the rumors are true? You single-handedly played with three full squadrons while not even breaking a sweat?"
"Memorable evening," Arthur confirmed. "After that, they changed their tune. Started bringing me rare books I'd been seeking for decades as 'peace offerings.'"
"My director wanted them to help monitor you. They refused. Said they'd rather poke a sleeping dragon."
"Smart of them."
Fury studied him for a long moment. "So... Hayes, what's your endgame? You're richer than anyone I know, powerful enough to make magical governments wet themselves, and you're sitting in this tiny office pushing papers. What are you doing?"
Arthur was quiet for a moment. "I achieved my childhood dream. Get rich, get powerful, be able to keep me and mine safe."
"And?"
"And now I watch. Wait. See what happens next."
He didn't add the rest. Lately, the thought had been gnawing at him. Was he really just waiting? Living for the occasional thrill? Playing god in small doses, saving a few lives, nudging a few fates, and calling that purpose?
Fury stood, his tone softer than usual. "Let me give you some advice, Hayes. Find something that matters. Not money. Not power. Something real. Because if you don't, all this—" he gestured around the sterile office "—is never going to feel like enough."
"Wisdom from Nick Fury?" Arthur raised an eyebrow. "What's next, relationship advice? Speaking of which, when are you marrying Varra?"
Fury was already at the door. "Get a life, Hayes. Before it's too late."
The door clicked shut.
Arthur sat in the quiet, staring through the window at the dull red bricks across the street. Fury's words lingered longer than he wanted to admit.
He'd achieved everything he'd wanted. He was winning.
So why did victory feel so hollow?
— Spring 2001 —
The months that followed blurred together in a haze of obsessive work.
Arthur had no interest in examining the emptiness Fury had so casually laid bare. Reflection was a luxury; obsession was easier. So he buried himself in creation.
He split himself, literally, across a dozen projects. A clone managed Phoenix Group's expansion, acquiring undervalued tech companies that would define the next decade. Others worked in his hidden laboratory, pushing the boundaries of what was possible.
Arthur dove into Kree technology, upgrading his lab piece by piece. He dissected alien systems, reverse-engineered components, and adapted the alien technology to function alongside magic.
It was during those sleepless weeks that he created her.
Eve came online in April 2001, his first true artificial intelligence. Elegant, adaptable, and self-learning, she could interface seamlessly with both technological and magical systems. Compared to her, the future J.A.R.V.I.S. would seem almost quaint.
When she first spoke, "Good evening, Master", he smiled.
One project complete. Dozens more waiting.
—
Ancient magic and alchemy consumed what time remained.
Arthur could control ancient magic now, bend it, shape it, but mastery was another matter. There were no teachers, no manuals, no curriculum to follow. Every discovery was carved out through failure, instinct, and sheer stubbornness.
Some experiments collapsed spectacularly. Others hinted at brilliance.
Bit by bit, he was turning a forgotten art into something structured, something usable. A weapon of precision rather than chaos.
Alchemy, too, called to him. Among the half-finished projects from his school days was one he'd never quite abandoned: synthetic Vibranium.
It was time to try again. Actually experiment. But first, he needed samples. Real ones.
He knew the British Museum held several pieces, ancient weapons from Wakanda that curators had misidentified as ceremonial artifacts from other African kingdoms.
And so, one quiet night in May 2001, the museum was breached. No alarms. No witnesses. No signs of entry. Only a handful of obscure artifacts gone missing by morning.
The incident barely made the news. The museum quietly tightened security and moved on.
In his underground laboratory, Arthur's clone spent days analyzing the vibranium samples, running tests, comparing molecular structures. The goal was ambitious: not just to understand the metal, but to synthesize it using magical alchemy.
—
During all his training and projects, he consumed resources at an astonishing rate. Money didn't matter. Phoenix Group was generating wealth faster than he could spend it. But there were some things that couldn't be bought at any price. Some resources were rare beyond measure.
One of those was phoenix tears.