CHAPTER 193: TAKING LOAN FOR THE FIRST TIME.

"No," he muttered. "Not them."

"Then what?" Yaho asked. "We don’t have time for miracles."

Lukas turned, eyes sharper now. "We might not. But I’ll figure something out. Delay the next hardware request by 12 hours. I want to make some calls. And if we need to patch things manually to slow user load, do it."

Yaho hesitated. "It won’t hold."

"It’ll hold long enough," Lukas said. "Just get me that time."

Outside, the world scrolled faster than it ever had before.

And Lukas Martin had twelve hours to find twenty-four million dollars.

The walls of the Four Seasons suite remained dimly lit, with the early evening sun painting golden lines across the floor. Lukas Martin sat alone on the couch, the glowing laptop before him casting a pale blue light on his face. The screen showed an upward surge in traffic—users flooding the newly launched Facebook platform at an alarming rate.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this fast.

He blinked slowly, digesting the sharp spike in active sessions, load demands, and database errors. The site was straining under the weight. Yaho Nakayama had just left after the urgent meeting, her words still fresh in the air: "We need to expand immediately. Not next week. Now."

He had asked her the unit cost. "For servers?"

"Yes," Yaho had nodded. "We’ll be using systems from Japan again. Best quality and immediate ship-out. They run $2,000 per unit."

Lukas did the math fast.

"And for scalability?" he asked.

"If we want to support a billion users," she said, tapping her tablet, "we’ll need at least 100,000 of them in the next month. That’s a $200 million spend, minimum."

Lukas sat very still. "I have 76 million in cash."

Yaho gave a small nod. "I figured. That buys you 38,000 machines. Enough for two weeks. Maybe."

Two weeks to fix the world, Lukas thought bitterly.

The room was quiet again. Annie and Bella were still upstairs. The weight was on him now. He stared at the laptop. The number on the dashboard ticked higher again.

75 million users. 76. 77.

Every second, it grew. Every second, he needed more infrastructure.

Without moving from the couch, Lukas grabbed his phone and hit a number he hadn’t used in a while.

"This is John Terry," came the smooth voice on the other end. "Private accounts division, Princeton branch."

"Jhon, it’s Lukas. I need to ask something serious."

A pause. Then recognition. "Mr. Martin. What can I help with?"

"How much can I put on credit right now?"

"Without raising flags or incurring immediate interest penalties? I’d say $50 million is accessible via staggered credit facilities, short-term debt instruments, and backed risk. Two months to maneuver."

Lukas didn’t blink. "Can you activate it tonight?"

"Yes. But I’ll need your signature and board nod for the larger pool. We can send someone over now."

"Do it. I need the cash flow live before midnight."

"Understood. Expect a visit in 30 minutes."

Lukas ended the call, exhaled through his nose, and leaned back. The weight wasn’t gone, but it was shifting. From panic to planning.

He looked again at the live user count. 78 million.

"Let’s see what it costs to own the future," he muttered to himself.

The year was 2001, and the world hadn’t yet awakened to the seismic shift that the internet would soon bring. But within the raw, buzzing nerve center of a half-finished Philadelphia warehouse, something monumental was already beginning.

Facebook had just survived its first major crash.

Lukas Martin stood tall before the glowing terminals, the room still humming with residual tension. The spike in traffic hadn’t just broken their backend architecture—it had shattered expectations. What began as a soft internal launch had turned into a digital stampede. Ten thousand signups per minute. Two days ago, no one knew what TheFacebook.com was. Now, it was inescapable.

By the time dawn lit the skyline, they had topped two million accounts. All organic. All real. Most driven by word-of-mouth and viral ripples from Lukas’ opening match. His jersey had trended in three countries. The photos. The headlines. The chants. "LU-KAS." It was no longer just his name. It was a brand.

Yaho Nakayama walked in with two folders tucked under her arm and an unshakable look of calculated excitement.

"You’re not going to believe this," she said, handing him the first folder.

Inside was a thick stack of faxes and formal requests—from Coca-Cola, Motorola, Adidas, and even McDonald’s. Each one offering brand partnership, advertising slots, or co-branded landing pages. In just the last twelve hours.

"Sponsors," she said plainly. "Everyone wants in. Banner placements, homepage integrations, even merchandise crossovers."

Lukas flipped through the paperwork. Some were offering direct ad payments. Others wanted partial ownership of ad space for the next five years. It wasn’t just money. It was legacy companies trying to grab a foothold in the future.

"How much revenue are we talking?" Lukas asked, eyes scanning rapidly.

Yaho opened the second folder. "Conservative projection? 28 to 30 million in year one, if we stay selective. If we open floodgates, it could scale toward 70M+."

"That doesn’t even count IPO years, or when we introduce business accounts," she added.

Lukas nodded slowly. It was surreal. Yesterday, he was fighting to cover a million-dollar infrastructure cost. Now brands were knocking like he owned the future. Maybe he did.

But he kept his tone grounded.

"We don’t need to sell our soul yet. Prioritize brands that enhance user trust. Big names. Safe associations."

Yaho agreed. "Coca-Cola is ready to do a year-long youth awareness campaign. They want to host digital scavenger hunts on Facebook."

He leaned back, processing. "Sign them. Not just the ad slots. Let’s collaborate with their campaign team. And for Adidas—I want them involved in university athlete pages. Early. Before the NCAA starts watching."

Yaho paused. "We also have small brands. Local banks. Phone companies. Want them too?"

Lukas thought for a moment. "Bundle them. Create a sponsor tier. Limit their exposure, but give them space. They’ll become our long-term base."

He looked around the room. Bella was half-asleep in the hotel lobby upstairs. Annie was still updating feedback logs from early testers. His world wasn’t just digital—it was becoming a network of people, belief, and velocity.

The internet wasn’t ready for him. But that was fine.

Because he wasn’t waiting.

It was the first true chill of fall when the black S600 glided into New Bedford.

The engine hummed low as it pulled up to the curb. The scent of sea salt mixed with dying leaves filled the air, a unique kind of small-town perfume that couldn’t be recreated in New York or Philadelphia. Lukas stepped out first, hoodie zipped up, jaw tight from the cold—or maybe nerves.

The house stood quiet, old but freshly painted. The yard had been trimmed recently, probably Henry’s doing. Everything was as it should be.

The back door opened, and out stepped his mother.

She wore her usual: a sweater two sizes too large and hair tied back in a bun that had survived the 80s, 90s, and now this new decade. Her eyes scanned him for injuries, failures, or growth. They always did.

"You’re late," she said.

"You said three; it’s two-fifty-eight."

She let the door swing open. "Then you’re early. Come in."

He smiled, just a little. Home had a way of shrinking you and lifting you at the same time. Bella and Annie followed close behind, their coats tucked over their arms, carrying wrapped gifts and pastries they’d picked up in Philadelphia.

Inside, the house smelled like cinnamon, leather-bound books, and old family tension.

His mother gave Annie a quick, approving nod. She’d never say it, but it was the kindest gesture she’d ever given a woman Lukas brought home. Bella received a warm hug—she was still young enough to be unthreatening.

"I heard you’re working again," she said to Lukas as they set the table.

He just nodded. There wasn’t a name for what he was doing. Not really. Not yet.

But back in Philadelphia, Facebook had detonated.

It started the night of the match. When he came back, bloodied and smiling from a win that had everyone screaming his name, he didn’t expect the numbers to hit so soon.

By morning, the website had over 1.2 million users.

By noon, Yahoo’s servers were overloaded again.

By nightfall, Facebook was trending across every blog, forum, and campus portal that even slightly resembled the tech world. Nobody even realized it had launched quietly. They only knew Lukas Martin was behind it. That made it gospel.

A week later, Facebook’s backend had scaled up servers in Japan, Taiwan, and San Francisco.

Then came the big call.

NASDAQ.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in 2001. Not with the dot-com dust still settling. But Facebook wasn’t a dot-com. It was an organism. Breathing, growing, and now, attracting sponsors at a rate Lukas hadn’t even dreamed of.

IPO talks happened fast. Faster than Yahoo had predicted. Faster than the bankers could file.

Facebook hit the market with a hammer blow.

Initial valuation: $3 billion.

It made no sense. It made all the sense in the world. There were no ads, no real monetization yet, and barely a legal structure.

But there was Lukas.

And Lukas, for better or worse, was a gravity well.

As they sat around the table in New Bedford, bowls steaming with stew, laughter soft and real, Lukas’s mind wandered. Not to the billions. Not to the brand deals still sitting in Henry’s inbox.

But to the old bedroom upstairs, the one with the creaky door, where he first wrote his name in permanent marker across a broken Commodore keyboard.

Before Princeton. Before the money. Before tomorrow.

He excused himself after dessert and stepped outside with a mug of black coffee. The stars above New Bedford blinked dimly. His phone buzzed.

Henry.

He answered.

"They want you on CNBC tomorrow morning. Live. From Wall Street."

Lukas sipped. "Tell them I’ll be there."

"And Lukas?"

"Yeah?"

"Congratulations. You’re officially the youngest billionaire in the country."

Lukas didn’t smile. Didn’t blink.

He just stared out at the dark water past the yard and whispered, "Game’s not over yet."

They didn’t see it coming.

In the polished glass towers of Palo Alto and the coffee-laced basements of Menlo Park, the so-called kings of Silicon Valley sat back in stunned silence. Every VC firm, every startup founder, every tech newsletter editor—jaw clenched, eyes wide.

Facebook? From Philadelphia?

This wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

Dot-com failures were still being swept off the floor. Giants had just collapsed. IPOs were whispered about like forbidden relics. Yet here it was—something new, something alive—and it wasn’t born in a garage off Sand Hill Road.

It came from a mansion in Philly. Led by a fighter. A college dropout. A ghost of Wall Street who’d reappeared with a billion-dollar punch.