"They're baiting you," Stephen warned, not looking up from his drafting. "They want a hysterical denial. They want you to get on social media and scream."
"I don't scream," Juno said. He opened a new window on his laptop. "I demonstrate."
He navigated to a secure server. A folder sat there, waiting.Thesis_Performance_Archive_Encrypted.
It contained three years of raw data. Every campaign Juno had run. Every crisis he had managed. Every dollar he had generated for his clients, cross-referenced against the Alpha consultants who claimed to be the "industry standard." It included timestamps, email chains, strategy drafts, anything he was legally allowed to share, all of it proving that while the industry was busy discounting him, he was outperforming them by a margin of three to one.
"I’m not releasing a statement," Juno said, his finger hovering over the execute command. "I’m releasing the receipts. Daily. One year of data per day."
He looked at me, a wicked glint in his amber eyes.
"Let’s see how they like the math."
He hitEnter.
The first data packet hit the public drive. Links were auto-posted to theAnchorfeed, to the Substack, and emailed to Sarah Jenkins.
"Attached methodology notes and source documentation," Juno narrated coolly. "Cross-referenced against Warson’s own consulting firm performance. Oops. Looks like I outperformed his best Alpha strategist for six consecutive quarters while running on half a lungful of suppressants."
"That’s going to leave a mark," Mateo noted.
"The attack is the proof," Juno said, leaning back, watching the download counter tick upward. "They asked if an Omega could do the work. I just showed them the work."
Across the table, Stephen went rigid. His posture, usually relaxed into a deceptive slouch, snapped into the upright, locked-in tension of a viper about to strike.
"The freeze is active," Stephen announced.
I stopped typing. "The consumer protection complaint?"
"Filed. Received. Triggered." Stephen turned his screen so we could see.
It was a notification from the regulatory body.
Investigation Initiated: Vance Global Portfolio Assets. Status: FROZEN PENDING REVIEW.
It was the nuclear option, the one Stephen had spent weeks building in the dark. By filing under Consumer Protection rather than labor law, we bypassed the arbitration clauses. We triggered an automatic, mandatory freeze on the "defective product", which, in this case, was Vance’s entire liquidity.
"His accounts are locked," Stephen said, his voice smooth with satisfaction. "He can't move money. He can’t pay his legal team. He can’t pay the bot farms."
Then, he pointed to a secondary window, a news ticker.
BREAKING: Board Member resignation at Vance Global. Sir Richard Harliss cites 'personal reasons.'
"And there goes the first rat," Stephen noted.
BREAKING: Second resignation. Elena Cross steps down effectively immediately.
"The board doesn't care about Omega rights," Stephen said, typing a follow-up complaint. "They don't care about ethics. They care about liability. I just made Julian Vance a toxic asset. If they stay on the board, they are personally liable for the consumer fraud."
He watched the ticker with the cold, dead eyes of a shark.
"Distance yourselves," he whispered to the screen. "Run away. Leave him alone in the room."
He hitSendon three more complaints. Jurisdiction shopping. If London didn't kill him, New York and Berlin would.
"He's bleeding out," Stephen said. "Financially, he is a dead man walking."
"He knows it," Mateo rumbled.
