CHAPTER 41: LAUNCH DAY: CHECKMATE

Ethan wasn’t the only one watching Sentinel’s launch unfold through the livestream.

Back in the city of California, inside Google’s HQ, Amelia, her team and a couple of other executives sat in the secured R&D wing, watching the live stream of Sentinel’s launch.

Amelia Rhodes had a visible frown on her face as she looked at the screen. She knew this was coming and OmniTech had given them a chance at first bite but they had gotten greedy.

Back then, OmniTech was just an unknown individual with an unknown software, a software that cut through Google’s firewalls like butter, a software that had identified vulnerabilities their team of experts had missed.

It was a software offered to them on a silver platter— all they had to do was negotiate a deal with OmniTech, and they would’ve secured a lead over the competition for years, thanks to whatever exclusivity window they could’ve negotiated.

But no?

Thanks to that detestable Nathaniel Langley, Amelia’s chance of convincing the board was squandered and now, they’ve lost the chance of shooting ahead of everyone.

It’ll only be a matter of time before competitors like Apple got interested and once they did, Sentinel would become worth a lot more than whatever OmniTech would’ve asked from Google.

"Is it too late to reach back out?" one of the executives finally asked, his voice hesitant.

Amelia didn’t even look at him.

"They offered us first bite and we tried to copy his software, a task we spectacularly failed at. Now, they’re on stage with a full crowd, trending online, and probably getting a dozen meeting requests by the hour," she said bitterly. "So yes, It might too late."

No one spoke after that.

Alex, by Amelia’s side, could see exactly how annoyed she was at the turn out of this and the cause of all this—well, at least the one she blamed anyway—wasn’t even in the room with them.

Across the city, in an exclusive high-rise suite overlooking the bay, Nathaniel Langley sat in a leather armchair, a glass of wine in one hand and the livestream of Sentinel’s launch playing on a massive screen before him.

Behind him stood Marcus, the same bodyguard who had pulled the trigger that ended Ethan’s last life, and another equally buff man.

They both stood without the least bit of emotion, their eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses despite the dim lighting in the suite.

Though they stood completely still, like statues, their awareness covered the entire room with no movement, no matter how small, going unnoticed by them.

In the suite with the three was Dmitri, seated near the window with a tablet in hand, idly scrolling through news updates and early social media reactions to Sentinel’s launch. The light from the tablet screen reflected faintly in his cold eyes.

Everything was going just as planned, the group of hackers he hired had successfully broken into Sentinel, copied the code and planted the kill switch.

Now all they had to do was wait, wait for the hype around Sentinel to reach its peak. Wait, for most of the tech world to have their eyes on this launch before Nathaniel would order the switch to be pressed.

And waiting was exactly what Nathaniel was currently doing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Lillian Hayes, Chief Operations Officer of OmniTech," the announcer’s voice came through the speakers of his monitor.

Soon enough, a black haired woman walked up the stage, her face was completely calm and her green eyes were filled with determination as she calmly walked towards the mic.

Dmitri briefly looked up from his tablet before looking back down on his tablet. Tapping on it, a file containing the image of Lillian popped up.

"Lillian Hayes," Dmitri said aloud, just loud enough for Nathaniel to hear. "Age twenty-three. Bachelor’s in Business Administration, attends Georgia State University and was a best buy part-timer until a few weeks ago.

This made Nathaniel let out an amused chuckle.

"A Bestbuy girl turned COO in under a month," he said, swirling the wine in his glass. "Either OmniTech is desperate... or there’s something special about her."

His eyes narrowed slightly as he leaned forward, watching Lillian take the stage with surprising poise. She didn’t carry herself like someone who’d just left a retail job—in fact, she looked like someone who had been doing this her whole life.

"Pull everything on her," he said, voice calm but laced with command. "I want to know where she lives, who she is, her past, and anything you can find on her. Also, cross-check every connection she’s made in the last ninety days."

"On it," Dmitri answered before he stood up, walking out of the Suite and leaving Nathaniel with his bodyguards.

Nathaniel continued watching the Livestream while taking occasional sips of his wine.

The stage was set, the performers in place, and the climax drawing near.

_________

Back in Atlanta, in the Thomas B. Murphy ballroom, Lillian calmly took the mic as he started.

"Good afternoon," she began, her voice was steadier than even she expected. "Thank you for being here today, and welcome to the future of cybersecurity."

She waited for her words to settle as the crowd quieted down, wondering what she’ll say next to support her first words, to support all the expectations built up around this launch.

"Today, we introduce Sentinel to the world," she continued. "A system designed not only to detect and respond to threats in real time, but to anticipate them—learning, adapting, and evolving faster than the ones who seek to breach it."

She tapped the small remote in her hand. Behind her, the massive screen shifted, displaying Sentinel’s logo.

"Sentinel isn’t just reactive," Lillian added . "It’s both predictive and adaptive. It doesn’t wait for a firewall to be breached, it predicts all possible entry points and immediately closes them and even if it is successfully breached, it immediately adapts."

Her words caused a wave of murmurs to rise across the ballroom some were of curiosity and others skepticism.

But no matter the reaction, both sides wanted to see if the claims really were true, because in the world of cybersecurity, bold claims were common; real proof, however, was rare.

Seeing their reaction, Lillian paced gently to the side of the stage as the screen behind her changed again—this time revealing a split interface labeled "LIVE DEMO."

On the left side: Without Sentinel.

On the right side: With Sentinel.

"The best way to prove what Sentinel can do," she said, "is to show you."

A quiet murmur swept through the ballroom as a pair of individuals seated at a smaller table near the front were introduced on-screen.

"These are two ethical hackers from Northbridge Cyber Solutions," Lillian explained. "They’ve been given permission to simulate intrusion attempts against our systems—first on a standard modern system and then on the same system, but this time, protected by Sentinel."

Northbridge was a relatively well known company consisted of white hat hackers with a reputation for exposing vulnerabilities even in Fortune 500 firms. The mere mention of their name added weight to the demonstration and that was precisely why Lillian hired them.

Lillian continued, "Each hacker has been given identical objectives: breach the target server, exfiltrate dummy data, and plant a basic payload. Their attack vectors, tools, and time windows are identical. The only difference between the two systems... is Sentinel."

The screen on the left, showcasing the system without Sentinel, turned on.

Almost immediately, the crowd watched as the hackers began typing. Strings of code scrolling across the screen as they launched their intrusion tools and pinged the firewalls.

Within thirty seconds, a port was exploited and a minute later, a pathway opened.

The audience murmured as the interface lit up in red:

[Firewall Breached]

[Data Packet Extracted]

[Payload Injected]

Lillian’s face had no reaction, she simply let the silence and discomfort at how fast the hackers had hacked into the system settle.

Then she tapped the remote again, and the right screen, with Sentinel, came to life.

But before the hackers or Lillian could do anything, the screen suddenly froze and the Sentinel logo suddenly started glitching.

The image distorted and started flickering like a corrupted file. The right-side monitor—meant to showcase Sentinel’s prowess—now looked compromised.

Whispers turned into murmurs of concern. Had Sentinel... failed?

Somewhere in the audience, an older cybersecurity analyst leaned toward his colleague and whispered, "Was this part of the demo?"

His colleague gave a skeptical shake of the head. "I don’t think so..."

Back in California, inside the Google R&D wing, Amelia leaned forward slightly. Her frown deepened, she knew this wasn’t supposed to happen after all, she knew what this software was capable of from its demo.

It wasn’t something that would just freeze during boot up.

"...That’s not good," Alex muttered behind her.

"I guess this is for the best," Mr. Grayson commented as he watched the situation unfold.

Everyone in this room knew the capabilities of Sentinel’s demo, so if it’s launch went wrong, then that meant one thing.

They now had a chance to acquire it.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel Langley sat a little straighter in his chair inside his luxury suite. His lips curled upward into a slow, smug smile as he raised the glass of wine to his lips.

"Checkmate."