Becoming A Tech Tycoon Begins With Regression novel Chapter 228

Exactly a week.

That was all it took for Helix Aegis to crumble, just as Athena had predicted.

At first, it was subtle enough to be dismissed, isolated failures, "edge-case anomalies," systems that stalled for a fraction of a second too long.

Helix Global released statements blaming configuration errors, promising swift patches and full transparency.

Then the failures stopped being isolated.

Corporate networks protected by Helix Aegis began reporting simultaneous breaches.

Not catastrophic ones, not at first, but they were humiliating intrusions, whoever was doing this seemed to only be doing it as a way to mess with Helix.

They renamed encrypted files, rearranged internal memos, and rewrote access logs in ways that made no sense.

And the worse part was, the person wasn't even brute forcing their way into the systems, instead they calmly trutted in.

Inside Helix Tech's main operations floor, the air was thick with sweat and panic.

Engineers hadn't slept properly in days. Whiteboards were filled, erased, and filled again with theories that went nowhere.

Servers hummed under unsustainable loads as emergency patches were pushed, rolled back, and pushed again.

"It doesn't follow a pattern," one engineer shouted over the noise, "every time we lock it down, the attack vector changes."

"That's not possible," another snapped. "Unless they're predicting our responses."

The room fell silent.

That implication was a knife twist.

Helix Aegis was supposed to be the one predicting.

And yet, someone else was always one step ahead.

By day four, the media had caught the scent of blood.

"HELIX AEGIS SECURITY PROMISES UNDER FIRE."

"CUSTOMERS REPORT BREACHES DESPITE 'PREDICTIVE' DEFENSE."

"IS HELIX AEGIS ALL HYPE?"

Helix Global's stock began to slide, slow at first, then faster.

And looming over all of it was a single, recurring signature.

An unknown hacker group.

No, it wasn't exactly an unknown hacker group, after all, as far as the world knew, they were supposed to have died in a fire.

The Vigilants.

But their symbols had suddenly been appearing every single time Helix failed, so that led the public to speculate.

Either they didn't actually die in that fire or a new group of hackers were impersonating them.

Either way, everyone knew this was bad for Helix Global.

By the end of the week, emergency meetings were called. Contracts were frozen.

Governments quietly reverted to Sentinel-based systems under the table, unwilling to wait for Helix Global to "figure it out."

In a private boardroom, voices were raised.

"We need to shut it down," one executive hissed. "Pull the product before this gets worse."

"And admit failure?" another shot back. "That would destroy us."

From the corner of the room, the Collector finally spoke.

"No," he said calmly. "You don't shut it down."

They turned to him.

"You let it fail."

Silence followed.

"Publicly," he continued. "Spectacularly. Then you blame the hackers and you blame OmniTech. You blame anyone but yourselves."

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