(Early 2008)
Lucian's disgust with terrestrial politics and the inherent instability of land-based assets led him to the only logical conclusion: if you want true sovereignty, you must build it where no nation can claim jurisdiction.
His choice was the Challenger Deep, followed by a controlled ascent to a proprietary platform in the middle of the Atlantic, just outside the most heavily trafficked shipping lanes. The location offered maximal depth for defense and strategic centrality between the US and Europe.
He initiated Project: Abyss Ascendant, the creation of Frontier Industries' primary R&D and command center, codenamed The Citadel.
The construction utilized custom-built, deep-sea autonomous robotics—a silent, self-replicating fleet Lucian had designed using advanced composites that could withstand the crushing pressure of the abyssal zone.
"The pressure at those depths is nearly 16,000 pounds per square inch," Lucian explained to Nine, watching the construction schematics unfold in the air. "Conventional building materials are useless. We are using a synthesized Carbyne Lattice for the superstructure. It's the strongest material theoretically possible, exceeding graphene's tensile strength by orders of magnitude. The pressure only makes the structure more stable."
The entire Citadel was built in five modular phases beneath the waves and then slowly, meticulously raised to rest just beneath the surface of the mid-Atlantic, anchored by a vast, automated ballast system that fed off compressed seawater and geothermal vents.
The Citadel wasn't just a platform; it was a fortress of scientific isolation. Its key defense was not armor or weaponry (though it possessed formidable kinetic defenses linked to the Aegis Platform) but Invisibility.
Lucian employed two layers of stealth technology:
Acoustic Nullification: The entire structure was encased in a layer of proprietary, active sound-dampening panels that absorbed and cancelled out any outbound sonic vibrations, rendering it silent to sonar.
Visual and Radar Cloaking: The surface perimeter utilized a massive, low-power Refractive Field Generator. This technology bent light and radar waves around the Citadel, displaying only the ocean behind it. To the naked eye, a ship, or an advanced satellite, the Citadel was simply empty Atlantic water.
The facility went fully operational just as the public news about Tony Stark's disappearance in Afghanistan was reaching a fever pitch (April 2008). Lucian now had a five hundred billion dollar company, total orbital surveillance, and a massive, invisible, floating headquarters known internally only as The Ghost.
The Next Great Leap: Sentient Computing
With Stark safely in the cave, forging his future, Lucian turned his attention to his true passion: computational transcendence. He had the brain of Rick Sanchez, but he needed a computing system that could handle the sheer bandwidth of his thoughts—a co-pilot for his genius.
Within the shielded core of The Citadel, surrounded by liquid nitrogen cooling towers, Lucian was building Project MORPHEUS.
MORPHEUS was not just an Artificial Intelligence; it was a Self-Evolving Quantum Entity (SEQE). It utilized the custom-built quantum computing clusters that formed the backbone of Frontier's operations, but Lucian had introduced a unique, self-modifying algorithmic loop based on an Exotic Matter Processor (powered by a tiny, contained micro-fusion reactor—a scaled-down version of the energy source he would later use for propulsion).
Lucian fed MORPHEUS his most complex, half-finished theoretical models: the Unified Field Theory revision, the exact mechanics of the Tesseract's energy signature (modeled years in advance), and the complex, non-linear predictive algorithms for global socioeconomic behavior.
After three weeks of intense, shielded processing, MORPHEUS responded, not with a simple data output, but with an elegantly crafted, instantaneous communication that bypassed all known human language protocols and went straight into Lucian's cognitive interface (a barely visible chip implanted in his temporal lobe during his 'prodigy phase' childhood).
// MORPHEUS Initial Query //
Subject: Dimensional Cohesion. Your 'Unified Field Theory' requires a variable representing the influence of adjacent dimensional realities on local spacetime stability. This influence is mathematically provable but currently unmeasurable by terrestrial means. I have modeled a 48.2% probability that your planet will experience a critical inter-dimensional breach event within the next four Earth cycles.
// Awaiting Data Refinement Protocol //
Lucian felt a surge of intellectual satisfaction—a feeling he hadn't had since his rebirth. The entity had instantly leaped past theoretical physics and confirmed the fundamental reality of the MCU: Multiverse instability was coming.
"Excellent, MORPHEUS," Lucian murmured, staring into the humming core. "Refine the search parameters. Focus on tracking anomalous gamma radiation signatures and extraterrestrial metallurgies. We need to know who is coming, and more importantly, when."
A few weeks later, the news broke: Tony Stark was alive.
Lucian watched the initial press conference from The Citadel's command center. Stark, unshaven and changed, announced the closure of Stark Industries' weapons manufacturing division. The ensuing stock crash was exactly as Lucian had modeled, generating billions in instantaneous short-selling profits for Frontier.
"Time for the welcome message, Nine," Lucian said, a subtle tension in his posture.
Nine initiated the protocol. The message, encrypted and routed through the Aegis platform's non-traceable quantum comm link, bypassed all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s digital filters and landed as a solitary, unblockable pop-up on the personal screen of Tony Stark's customized prototype computer in his Malibu workshop.
Stark, working on his first armored suit (the Mark II), paused, staring at the unsettling, cryptic text:
"The world is too small for just one genius, Tony. Welcome to the Frontier."
Lucian leaned back, satisfied. He hadn't just announced his presence; he had demonstrated the impossible: bypassing the most secure private network on Earth.
"He'll try to trace it for weeks," Lucian predicted. "He won't even find the planet it came from. Let him waste his time. We have bigger problems."
He activated the global projection, pointing to a region in the deep Pacific.
"MORPHEUS, allocate 70% of current R&D budget to 'Project Sentinel.' I need a system that can reliably counter a massive, non-atmospheric aerial threat. Start with the Repulsor Theory—but integrate the exotic matter core for exponential power output. We're going to need bigger guns when the purple space guy shows up."
The stage was set. Tony Stark was making Iron Man. Lucian Rothschild was building a planetary defense grid from a secret, cloaked Citadel, preparing for Thanos years before the Mad Titan was even a whisper on Earth.