CHAPTER 188: YOUTUBE?

Lukas Martin stepped into the headquarters of his newest venture—an emerging social platform still known internally as The Facebook Project. His sleek Italian shoes echoed against the polished concrete floors. The early sunlight streamed through massive industrial windows, cutting bright lines across polished desks and unused workstations. The staff wouldn’t arrive for another hour. Lukas had planned it this way.

Silence was fuel. It gave space for structure.

He set his briefcase down beside his glass-walled corner office and removed his coat with practiced ease. The building was still raw. Half of the upper floors weren’t even furnished. But the blueprint was here—and this time, he would follow it with precision.

The walls were plastered with mockups, paper drafts, and code diagrams. But one whiteboard stood out, its surface nearly untouched. Lukas walked to it and picked up a marker.

His thoughts were already moving ahead. Facebook was only one part of it—connection, identity, and social verification. But video was the other piece. The future of engagement. Real stories, direct content, fast consumption.

"Everyone’s chasing forums and newsfeeds," he muttered, drawing a clean square across the board. "But no one’s seeing what matters most: the screen."

He wrote one word in the center of the square, then smirked to himself: YouTube.

He let out a quiet laugh. "Doesn’t exist yet," he said under his breath, the irony of the moment not lost on him.

There was a knock. A soft voice followed. "Lukas, Yaho Nakayama’s here."

He welcomed her into the office. Yaho Nakayama, the CEO of Yahoo, was elegant and focused, her presence grounded in technical insight few executives could match. She walked over to the whiteboard, tilting her head as she read the word.

"YouTube?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Lukas said casually. "I want to build a global video-sharing platform. Upload, watch, and comment. Think of it as television, but without the networks."

Yaho studied the board, then looked back at him. "The idea is solid. Very solid. But the tech isn’t there yet. We’re talking slow internet, expensive hosting, and limited codecs. Video on the web is crawling."

"I know," Lukas said, leaning back against the desk. "But if we can’t build it now, we can prepare the groundwork. Subdomains and some prototype community pages. Start shaping the idea before anyone else catches on."

Yaho nodded slowly. "We can prepare some websites under our dev resources. A framework to evolve as the tech does."

"That’s all I need," Lukas said. "Just the front of the wave. Let everyone else wipe out chasing it."

He picked up the marker again and drew a branching line beneath YouTube: forums, channels, live streams—he already knew what came next.

Outside, the city pulsed on. Inside Lukas Martin’s office, a quiet blueprint was unfolding. Not just for Facebook, not just for a website. For the next global addiction.

After the meeting, Lukas finally let himself relax. The negotiation had been long, the conversation cautious but promising. Still, the mental effort left him drained.

He returned to the Four Seasons Hotel, the familiar luxury offering some comfort. He loosened his tie as he stepped inside the suite.

Bella and Annie were already packed.

"You’re heading out?" He asked, dropping his keys on the side table.

Annie turned to him with a gentle nod. "We’re going to Princeton. I need to end my apartment lease and clean out a few things. Bella’s coming with me."

Lukas looked at her for a moment, quiet. Then he walked over and touched her hand gently.

"Are you sure you want to do that now?"

"I’m one month in, Lukas," Annie said with a soft smile, her fingers resting on her small bag. "It’s not showing yet, but it will be soon. I don’t want to keep anything in that apartment anymore. It doesn’t feel like home."

Bella chimed in from the doorway, "We’ll be back by tomorrow night. You don’t need to worry."

"I always worry," Lukas muttered but smiled faintly. He leaned down and kissed Annie on the forehead. "Drive safe."

As they left, Lukas stood alone in the silence of the hotel room. The noise of the day still rang faintly in his mind. But now, it was just quiet. The kind he liked.

The sunlight was bright over the Delaware River when Lukas Martin finally stepped out of the Four Seasons again. The day was already heating up, but Lukas, in a plain black hoodie, gray joggers, and sneakers, looked calm as ever. He stood beside the sleek 2000 Mercedes S600—gloss black with dark tints—that waited by the curb.

Jay was behind the wheel. Roy, built like a steel door in motion, stood near the backseat, keeping a practiced eye on the surroundings.

"The practice field’s ready. Henry said they cleared it. Private. Media doesn’t know," Jay said through the window.

Lukas gave a quiet nod, sliding into the back.

"They will know soon," Lukas said, voice even. "They always do."

The drive was short, but the atmosphere shifted as soon as they reached the sports complex just outside downtown. Word had leaked. Again.

Jay muttered something under his breath as they approached the gate. Roy’s eyes narrowed.

There were crowds. Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands.

What had started as a closed-door training session had turned into a public phenomenon. Police had already been dispatched. Barricades were up. Helicopters hovered.

When Lukas had first signed onto the team, 3 million had poured into the streets just to catch a glimpse. This was bigger.

Fans had swarmed the perimeter in such numbers that organizers had started calling it a ’preseason riot.’

Roy stepped out first, shielding the back door. "Not ideal," he said simply.

Lukas pushed open the door anyway.

"Let them see," he said with a shrug, adjusting the sleeves on his hoodie. "They’ve waited long enough."

The moment his foot hit the pavement, the eruption was deafening. Cheers, shouts, and chants—"LU-KAS! LU-KAS!"—echoed "like an anthem through the compound.

He didn’t wave. He didn’t smile. He simply walked—calm, focused—through the tunnel of noise.

The private practice field wasn’t so private anymore. But the team had still secured the space. Henry stood on the turf, clipboard in hand, brow furrowed but not surprised.

"I told you we should’ve used the backup location," Henry said, giving Lukas a look.

"You told me I’d pull a crowd," Lukas replied, arching a brow. "You were right."

The warm-up started. Quiet at first. Then sharper. Lukas moved like he had something to prove but nothing to chase. Controlled. Efficient. Dangerous.

It was just drills, but everything he did had weight. Whether it was a sprint or a pass, there was no wasted motion.

Camera lenses peeked through fences. Commentators speculated from rooftops. Rumors spread like wildfire.

Is he coming back full-time? Has he recovered? Why now?

None of them had answers. But they had one fact: Lukas Martin was back on the field.

And that was enough to shake the city.

By the time training wrapped, the sun had dipped lower in the sky. Lukas towel-dried his face, nodded once to Henry, and made his way back to the car where Roy was waiting.

Jay cracked the door from the driver’s side.

"Where to next, boss?"

Lukas looked out at the crowd, still lingering, still shouting his name.

"Let’s go somewhere quiet," he said.

Roy chuckled. "Good luck with that."

They slid back into the Mercedes. Doors shut. The crowd roared louder as the engine rolled away.

Lukas leaned his head back, eyes on the roof. The sound still followed them.

He didn’t mind it. He just hoped the world would be ready for what came next.

Lukas didn’t go straight back to the hotel.

He told Jay to drive, no location. Just move. Get out of that field, out of the noise, and out of the heat. Roy didn’t ask questions. Jay didn’t even look back.

The city rolled past in quiet frames—row houses, old brick walls, cracked pavement catching the light like scars. Lukas sat back, hoodie drawn halfway over his face, elbows on knees. The towel still hung around his neck.

He was still sweating. Not from the drills. From what was next.

He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen. Notifications piled like bricks: sports networks, journalists, and people he didn’t know pretending they always did.

He didn’t care about any of them. Just one name.

He tapped open a chat. Bella.

Typing... then deleting. Typing again.

"Back from Princeton yet?" he finally sent.

No reply. Not yet.

Jay turned left at a light without asking. Lukas caught a flash of something in the window—himself, looking like a ghost. He pulled the towel off and dropped it beside him. His legs bounced. He needed air, but he didn’t want the world to see him just yet.

"Pull over," Lukas said finally.

Jay slowed down by a low wall near Penn’s Landing. Nothing fancy. Just space. Lukas stepped out, Roy following behind automatically.

It was quiet here. River breeze, a few joggers in the distance, but otherwise nothing. Lukas walked to the edge and leaned both hands on the stone rail.

He looked out at the water.

Still no reply from Bella.

He didn’t blame her. She had a life. But this part—this sliver of calm before everything exploded again—he hated doing it alone.

His phone buzzed. A different number.

Henry.

"You’re not seriously thinking of skipping tomorrow’s presser?"

"I’m not skipping," Lukas said. "I just haven’t decided if I’ll show up yet."

"You already showed up today. You think you can half-ass media after that?"

Lukas didn’t answer.

Henry sighed through the line. "Just show up. Say three words. Smile fake. Done. Don’t make this harder."

"I’m not worried about hard."

"You should be. The moment you stepped back on that field, everything changed."

Lukas hung up.

Roy didn’t speak. He stood a few steps behind, always watching. Lukas liked that. He didn’t need more words right now.

He needed the city to stay quiet for five more minutes.

But his phone buzzed again. This time, the name made him pause.

Bella.

Just one line: "Heading back now. You okay?"

He stared at the words.

Then replied, "Getting there."

He slipped the phone into his pocket and looked back at the river. The water didn’t move much. But something underneath always did.

Same as him.

The apartment door clicked shut with a hollow finality.

Annie exhaled slowly, keys in her hand, as she looked around the now-empty space that had been her safe corner of the world for the last few years. Bella stood beside her, a large rolling suitcase at her side and a soft sadness on her face.

"Doesn’t feel like we ever lived here," Bella said, running her fingers along the faint dent in the wall from a night of indoor badminton.

"I thought it would be harder," Annie whispered. "But it’s not. I’m ready."