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.
