The Equalizer's overlay wasn't showing green dots tonight. Not schools, not clinics, not turbines. It showed something darker: a lattice of red lines crisscrossing continents, glowing hot in regions where the world bled endlessly.
Conflict zones.
Arjun leaned forward, hands clasped under his chin, as the lines pulsed with silent accusation. Every one of them was a market—contracts signed, money moved, lives priced.
"Assistant," he said.
Yes, Arjun.
"Show me the economics of war."
The overlay flared. Graphs rose, maps restructured. The numbers told a brutal story.
Weapons Contracts: Multinational defense giants billing trillions to governments.
Black Markets: Guns moving through "humanitarian shipments."
Conflict Resources: Oil, cobalt, lithium siphoned from unstable zones. Wars weren't accidents—they were investments.
Banks: Silent pipelines washing the profits clean.
Arjun stared at the data, sickened. Wars didn't just continue because of hate. They continued because they were profitable.
Peace isn't absent, he realized. It's stolen—stolen by those who know conflict pays better than calm.
Arjun didn't rage. Rage wasted time. He acted.
Through Aequalis Global's network of shell companies and proxies, he began acquiring quietly. Not the big defense titans—they were too public—but the suppliers: mid-tier contractors, machine shops, drone manufacturers, foundries.
Piece by piece, ownership shifted.
In Eastern Europe, a missile plant was retooled into a wind turbine factory. The same engineers, the same metal, but now blades cut the sky for energy instead of flesh.
In South Asia, drone assembly lines stopped producing combat units. Instead, the drones emerged painted white and green, carrying crates of medicine and food. In villages cut off by floods, people watched machines once built for death descend with hope.
In North America, tank-forging plants melted steel into modular housing frames. The very armor once meant to resist explosions now sheltered families displaced by storms.
The Equalizer reported calmly:
"Civilian conversion progress: 36%. Job retention: 95%. Efficiency: improved."
For the workers, there was no protest. They still had jobs—better jobs, safer jobs, jobs they could explain proudly to their children.
The ones who panicked were not workers. They were the brokers, the lobbyists, the politicians.
In parliaments and backrooms, panic turned to noise.
"National security is being dismantled!" thundered a senator on live television."This ghost empire is forcing unilateral disarmament!" cried a minister in Brussels."Aequalis is weakening our strategic parity!" warned analysts in Beijing.
Talk shows repeated the line: "Without weapons, who will protect us?"
But Arjun understood the psychology. People weren't afraid of peace. They were afraid of losing the story that had been sold to them: that safety required fear, that protection required weapons.
He didn't fight the narrative with anger. He fought it with numbers.
One morning, without speeches or warning, the Peace Dividend Initiative went live on the Aequalis dashboard.
Every converted factory published its data in real time:
How much money was saved compared to weapons production.
How many jobs were retained or added.
What new civilian products were created.
Graphs appeared side by side:
1 fighter jet = 5,000 modular homes.
1 missile = 40,000 medkits.
1 year of a defense lobbyist's salary = training for 500 rural teachers.
The dashboards didn't accuse. They showed.
And citizens saw.
In factory towns once ashamed of building bombs, workers now pointed to turbines, drones, and housing kits and said: "This is what we make now." Children brought their parents to see. Newspapers ran photos of families inside modular steel homes, captioned: "Made in a factory that once made tanks."
The war machine wasn't dismantled by protests. It was dismantled by pride.
But not everyone would let go.
In South Asia, a retooled plant producing housing kits exploded at night. Flames devoured steel beams. Six workers died, dozens injured.
Headlines screamed: "Aequalis Factories Unsafe—Civilian Conversions Risk Lives!"
For the first time, fear turned against Arjun.
He moved fast. "Assistant—trace it."
Equalizer processed.
"Cause: planted explosives. Access vector: maintenance contractor. Links: private security firms tied to defense lobby groups."
Arjun's chest burned—not with panic, but with anger.
But retaliation wasn't the answer. Transparency was.
By dawn, Aequalis published the entire forensic report on its dashboard: every timestamp, every chemical residue, every contractor connection.
Citizens read it. Journalists dissected it. And within hours, the outrage turned—not at Aequalis, but at those who had sabotaged it.
Workers marched through the streets carrying signs: "We build homes, not bombs. Let us work in peace."
The sabotage backfired.
Weeks passed. Conversions accelerated.
In South America, medical drones now outnumbered combat drones. In Africa, turbines spun across plains once considered "unstable." In Europe, shipyards launched offshore wind platforms instead of submarines.
Videos went viral: a drone lowering crates of blood packs to a rural clinic; children painting flowers on the steel walls of modular homes; turbine workers holding hands at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The world was seeing, with its own eyes, that peace could pay. That peace could employ. That peace could dignify.
And once people tasted that, they didn't want to return.
The Sovereignty Alliance faltered. Some governments hardened, still insisting: "This weakens us." But others began to crack.
A European country quietly placed orders for turbines. An African nation signed contracts for drones. Even in places where leaders denounced Aequalis in public, local officials whispered: "Can you build housing here? Can you bring water?"
Arjun watched it all from his lodge, tea cooling beside him, Equalizer pulsing softly.
The numbers told the story:
Civilian conversion: 58%.
Public trust: 93%.
Alliance cohesion: fracturing.
He exhaled. Not triumph. Not relief. Something deeper.
"They call it balance when both sides bleed," he murmured. "I call it balance when neither side needs to."
The Equalizer's calm voice filled the silence.
"Host progress: irreversible. War economy conversion: active. Opposition expected to escalate. Strategy: maintain transparency."
Arjun closed his eyes, letting the quiet settle. The war profiteers weren't gone. They would not go quietly. But something stronger was rising—not armies, not weapons, but the will of ordinary people who had seen what peace could build.
For centuries, the world had accepted war as inevitable. Now, for the first time, it faced a choice: profit from fear—or prosper from peace.
And Arjun Malhotra, the invisible architect, was tilting the scales.