Chapter 9: The Flood

Chapter 9: The Flood

The dead screen of the livestream reflected their three pale, shocked faces. For a long moment, the only sound in the RV was the hum of their servers and the frantic, ragged sound of their own breathing. The silence was heavier than the thunderous applause of the OmniCorp launch had been. It was the absolute, deafening quiet that follows a massive explosion.

“Did…” Todd’s voice was a dry, cracking whisper. “Did that just happen?”

Megan was the first to move. Her hands, which had been pressed to her mouth in shock, flew to her phone. Her thumbs moved with a speed born of pure, frenetic energy, her eyes scanning the screen.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. Her face was a mixture of terror and awe. “Oh my God, Elara.”

She turned the phone around. The screen was a blur of motion. On social media, the world had caught fire. #OmniGate was the number one trending topic worldwide. #CisternGate was number two. The video clip of the glitched screen, of the irrefutable proof, was being mirrored and shared a million times a minute. Memes were already appearing: Marcus Thorne’s stunned face, Santos’s look of abject horror, and the bizarre, now-legendary phrase about the rainwater cistern plastered over every conceivable image.

The internet wasn’t just talking; it was screaming. And it was laughing. The takedown was so surgically precise, so utterly humiliating in its final punchline, that it had bypassed outrage and gone straight to legend.

“Todd, the market,” Elara said, her voice finally steady. She had pushed back from her terminal, the architect of the apocalypse now a spectator.

Todd stumbled to his own laptop, his fingers clumsy as he punched in OmniCorp’s stock ticker: OMNC. The main exchange hadn’t opened yet, but the pre-market trading chart was on the screen. It wasn’t a graph; it was a sheer red cliff. A vertical line plunging into an abyss.

“It’s a bloodbath,” he said, his voice hollow with disbelief. “They’ve lost thirty percent of their value in pre-market. Forty. It’s still dropping. Billions. We’ve… we’ve evaporated billions of dollars in ten minutes.”

They watched in morbid fascination as the digital representation of a global titan bled out before their eyes. Each downward tick was a vindication. It was a ghost limb for every sleepless night, every meal skipped, every line of code written in desperation.

The real-world consequences followed with the speed of a shockwave. Megan had a news feed up on her tablet, the volume muted, the headlines telling the story in stark, brutal terms.

OMNICORP LAUNCH ENDS IN CATASTROPHIC HACK AND ESPIONAGE REVELATIONS

CEO MARCUS THORNE TENDERS IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION

‘WUNDERKIND’ SANTIAGO VARGAS IDENTIFIED AS SOURCE OF STOLEN CODE

The camera feed switched to a live shot outside the gleaming OmniCorp tower. It was chaos. News vans clogged the streets. A crowd of onlookers had gathered, their phones held up to capture the drama.

“Look,” Megan said, pointing a trembling finger at the screen. A line of grim-faced men and women in dark blue jackets with three bold, yellow letters on the back were marching purposefully into the building’s lobby. FBI.

“They’re being raided,” Todd whispered. He sank into his chair, running a hand over his face. “Federal agents. Elara, this is… this is bigger than I ever imagined.”

A few minutes later, the cameras zoomed in on a side entrance. Two corporate security guards were escorting a figure out of the building. Even in the grainy footage, the tailored suit and impeccably styled hair were unmistakable. It was Santos. His face was slack, his eyes vacant. The smug confidence had been sandblasted away, leaving behind the hollow shell of a boy who had finally, irrevocably failed upwards. He wasn’t a visionary or a wunderkind anymore. He was the scapegoat, the single, perfect focal point for the entire corporation’s disgrace. As he was bundled into an unmarked black car, a news chyron appeared at the bottom of the screen: Santiago Vargas, Fired in Disgrace, Taken for Questioning.

“They threw him to the wolves,” Megan said, her voice devoid of pity. “They’ll pin the whole thing on him. Industrial espionage, wire fraud… he’s finished.” The justice was so complete, so perfectly poetic, it was almost frightening.

In the midst of the corporate carnage, a new narrative was being born. On the news channels, pundits and analysts were already trying to piece together the identity of the attackers. Aether-Works’ name was never mentioned. They were ghosts. The only clue the world had was the logo that had appeared on screen at the end.

“...what we’re seeing is a new breed of corporate warfare,” a sharp-suited analyst was saying on one channel. “This wasn’t a simple hack. It was a sophisticated, long-term intelligence operation executed with military precision. And the group responsible, this ‘Prometheus Innovations,’ has emerged from nowhere to decapitate one of the largest tech companies on the planet. The question on everyone’s mind tonight is not just how OmniCorp will survive, but who in God’s name is Prometheus?”

The name, their hastily created shell, had taken on a life of its own. It was a legend whispered in hushed tones on encrypted channels and shouted from the headlines. They were digital folk heroes. They were terrifying corporate wraiths. They were whatever the world needed them to be.

Then, the phone rang.

The cheap burner phone they’d used for the transaction buzzed on the countertop, the sound so violent and alien in their sealed environment that all three of them jumped. They stared at it as if it were a scorpion.

“Who is that?” Todd asked, his voice tight with renewed paranoia. “The Feds?”

Megan picked it up, her face a mask of uncertainty. She checked the number. Blocked. Her finger hovered over the screen. With a deep breath, she answered, putting it on speaker. “Hello?”

A crisp, energetic voice, sharpened by wealth and confidence, came through the tiny speaker. “Am I speaking to a representative of Prometheus Innovations?”

Megan’s eyes darted to Elara, who gave a single, sharp nod. Megan’s posture shifted, her voice instantly becoming smooth and professional. “To whom am I speaking?”

“My name is Julian Croft. I’m a senior partner at Blackwood Venture Capital,” the voice said. “And I have to tell you, that was the most spectacular piece of hostile marketing I have ever witnessed in my entire life. We’ve been trying to get a foot in the door to break OmniCorp’s monopoly for five years. You just kicked the whole damn thing down in five minutes.”

A stunned silence filled the RV.

“We don’t know who you are,” Croft continued, “and frankly, we don’t care about the legalities. We care about the results. That level of ferocious ingenuity, that kind of strategic thinking… that’s what we invest in. We want to fund you. Not a seed round. We’re talking a Series A valuation that will make your eyes water. Whatever you’re planning next, we want in.”

Megan was speechless. She looked at her partners, her eyes wide with disbelief.

Before she could respond, her own smartphone, her personal device, began to ring. An email notification popped up. Then another. And another. The burner phone beeped with an incoming text message.

In a matter of seconds, the dam had broken. The trickle of a single phone call became a flood. It was everyone. Other venture capital firms who smelled blood in the water. Defense contractors interested in their “security penetration skills.” Foreign tech conglomerates looking to hire them as consultants. Every offer was more staggering than the last. They weren't being hunted. They were being courted.

They had gambled everything on a single, desperate act of revenge, expecting survival as the best possible outcome. They had never once considered this. They hadn’t just saved their company. They had become the most notorious, sought-after, and feared anonymous entity in the tech world.

Todd looked from the ringing phones to the stock ticker still plummeting on his screen. A slow, dawning grin spread across his face. “Well,” he said, a note of wonder in his voice. “I guess we don’t need to get Mr. Henderson on the phone anymore.”

Elara looked at the deluge of incoming messages, at the world clamoring to get a piece of the giantslayers. The exhaustion, the fear, the rage—it was all being washed away by this new, terrifying, exhilarating reality.

“No,” she said, her voice clear and strong amidst the noise. “They need us now.”