Becoming A Tech Tycoon Begins With Regression novel Chapter 186

Chapter 186: A Change In The Future

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Ethan continued tapping on the table as he looked at the screen before him. There was a small grin on his face as he looked at the screen before him.

{Hmm...} Athena, who was also on the screen let out.

"What?" Ethan turned to her with a small smile.

{Nothing,} she answered, {I’m just disappointed at how lax the Helix systems are.}

He turned to the data before him and smiled again, she was right, his three moles had successfully gotten Athena into Helix’s system and all the resistance she discovered was just a paper thin excuse of a firewall.

Hence the reasons why she was so disappointed.

"Well," Ethan started, "it’s not like anyone could prepare a way to counteract a tech that’s decades ahead of their time."

{True,} she nodded, {but even by their standards, this is embarrassing. Their intrusion detection softwares are practically decorative.}

"Good," he said as he leaned back on the chair, "that just makes things easier for us."

Carver didn’t know this, but what Ethan did was more than a simple memory erasure. As he said, he was going to make Carver useful and that was exactly what he was doing.

Everything might seem normal with him at the start, but just beneath the surface, his brain had been tweaked a ’little’.

Well, if you’d call turning him into a mole against his own organization little, then that was exactly what it was.

Carver and his two underlings were now Ethan’s puppets, conditioned to activate whenever he desired.

They were his keys to destroying Helix.

He had given them a switch...if you’d call it that, one that would flip the moment they were needed to be useful.

Their first task was getting Athena into Helix’s tech and since Carver was a relatively high ranking mercenary, despite being under probation, this task had been easy enough.

And boy did Ethan discover a couple a couple of interesting things. First thing’s first, the company has been around for far longer than he thought.

They were experts at keeping themselves hidden while still relatively well known for their services to be requested by the rare few.

But despite their impressive longevity, their secrecy and their structure...

Their system was laughably brittle.

Ethan scrolled through the streams of data Athena had already sorted for him. Layers upon layers of Helix’s internal files was presented to him like some kind of picture book.

It contained their financial logs, contract and client lists, mission archives, personnel files, shell corporations.

Shell-shell corporations hidden behind shell-shell-shell corporations, their black budgets, asset disposal records and private surveillance feeds.

It was all in here.

They dared call themselves a top notch mercenary company and yet, their systems remained so unprotected.

Though, that was an unfair judgement towards them since Ethan had Athena and normal hackers would find it almost impossible to get through, but he didn’t care.

The next file was a map.

A very large, very detailed map.

"...Athena."

{Yes.}

"Is this—"

{Yes. Every Helix outpost on U.S. soil. Active and dormant. Down to the square meter.}

The map pulsed as dozens of red points blinked on the screen.

Ethan’s grin sharpened.

What a lovely gift.

"And this," Ethan said, tapping another panel, "this is their internal hierarchy?"

{Mhm,} she nodded, {everything from the probationary recruits up to the nine unidentified executive members, though their identities are masked and is the only mildly secured thing.}

"Nine executives," Ethan muttered before leaning back and asking, "how long will it take you to unmask them?"

{Done,} Athena said.

"..."

Ethan’s lips twitched a bit before he said, "didn’t you say that their identities were secured?"

{Yes, but mildly so,} Athena explained with a chuckle, {their security is still nothing worth noting.}

Ethan stared at her flatly.

Athena’s avatar shrugged.

{They used a triple-encrypted, staggered-ident verification loop, but all three keys were stored on the same local node. It was like locking a vault and taping the password to the door.}

Ethan dragged a hand down his face.

"You’re telling me, these psychopaths run assassinations, coups, black-budget black-ops worldwide... with this level of OPSEC?"

{Evidently.}

He let out a chuckle which soon became an amused laughter.

"Well, I suppose their incompetence makes our lives easier."

{Mhm. And there’s more.}

Athena swiped, and nine profiles neatly organized themselves into rows. Their faces, ages, financial footprints, tied and every private shell company tied to them personally.

Ethan leaned forward, elbows on the table, amused and deadly calm.

"Show me."

The files expanded. The higher ups included,

A senator’s cousin, a former Chinese intelligence operative, private equity tycoon from Dubai, two high-ranking military defectors, a pharmaceutical CEO, an European royal’s black sheep brother, a Silicon Valley ’angel investor,’ and finally someone interesting, one of Irina’s brothers.

Ethan smirked.

"Helix really is a nest of interesting cockroaches."

{They are also broke,} Athena added helpfully.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

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