Becoming A Tech Tycoon Begins With Regression novel Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Pre-Launch: Knowing The Enemy

The days came and went in a blur, and soon enough, OmniTech Corp was just three days away from launching Sentinel—its first and most anticipated product.

To say things had gotten busy would be a laughable understatement.

The main floor of OmniTech’s office building finally looked like a real company. After all, Lillian had completed the hires.

Employees were constantly walking around. Although most of them were part of the PR team Lillian had hand-selected, they made the company look alive.

For the past few days, the team had been trying to build as much hype as possible around Sentinel with teaser drops, staged "leaks," and exclusive interviews offered to tech blogs. But for some reason, it felt like someone was interfering with the flow.

Lillian had picked up on it first.

She’d noticed odd gaps in scheduled media pushes. Articles that were meant to go live mysteriously vanished from the editors. Tech influencers who had once seemed eager to discuss Sentinel were suddenly radio silent—or worse, skeptical.

"Somebody’s interfering with the launch," she told Ethan just the day before. "And they’re doing it in a way that looks organic."

"Controlled opposition?" Ethan asked, a frown evident on his face.

"Exactly," she said. "It’s subtle. Comments seeded here and there, questions about the company’s legitimacy, and more recently, about Sentinel’s claims."

Ethan had expected one of two things to happen during Sentinel’s launch: either a competitor would try sabotaging it, or a rip-off would be released before Sentinel.

The first was obvious—competitors or enemies trying to disrupt the launch directly, whether through media manipulation or even hacking attempts.

And there was only one competitor that knew about Sentinel and its capabilities—Google.

Ethan had been observing their futile attempts for the past few days, and everything had gone exactly as he’d planned. Google was so obsessed with copying Sentinel that they didn’t have enough time to sabotage the launch, especially since Sentinel hadn’t even been publicly announced until a few days ago.

So that took Google off his list of suspects. Well—not entirely—but Ethan was sure they weren’t directly involved. That meant someone else who knew about Sentinel, probably someone from Google, was behind this.

"Send me a file of all the companies you reached out to for partnership deals," Ethan said calmly. "The ones that showed initial interest... but backed out last minute."

Lillian nodded. "Already compiled it."

A few seconds later, Ethan’s tablet pinged with an incoming file. He opened it, his eyes skimming over the list of companies.

Most were small-time data-handling companies with niche specialties like cloud encryption, firewall architecture, and data security—the kind of startups always hungry for a leg up.

A partnership with OmniTech, even a non-exclusive one, should have been a golden opportunity.

And yet...

One by one, they had ghosted without explanation.

Ethan nodded before turning back to Lillian. "I’ll handle it," he said. "Just continue with the launch as planned."

Lillian gave a short nod, though her eyes lingered on Ethan’s face for a moment longer. "You sure? You don’t want me to push back the schedule or delay the interviews?"

Ethan shook his head. "No. If anything, this pressure confirms we’re on the right path. Whoever’s behind this is scared. Let’s give them a reason to be."

With that, she turned on her heel and left to manage the PR floor, leaving Ethan alone in his office.

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