Chapter 7 - The Broadcast
At exactly 11:55 PM, the massive digital screens erected around the dark infinity pool suddenly flared to life. The Wi-Fi routers at the party rebooted, immediately pushing a live video feed to every single smartphone on the premises.
The panicked influencers stopped screaming. Hundreds of glowing screens illuminated their faces as they stared at the video playing simultaneously across all their devices.
It wasn't a promotional video for Aura. It was a live feed of Sterling Croft, sitting in his office, looking pale, sweating, and utterly defeated.
"My name is Sterling Croft," his voice echoed over the outdoor speakers, trembling violently. "And I am issuing this statement to the SEC, the FBI, and my investors."
Marcus sat just off-camera, his finger resting lightly on the Enter key, a silent executioner watching his sentence be carried out.
"Three years ago," Croft read from the prompter, tears cutting tracks through his expensive cologne, "I stole the foundational architecture of the Aura network from my partner, Marcus Vance. I fabricated digital evidence to frame him for a cyber-crime he did not commit, sending an innocent man to prison."
Gasps rippled through the crowd outside. The venture capitalists who were just toasting Croft now stared at their phones in absolute horror.
"Furthermore," Croft continued, his voice cracking, "Aura is not secure. I intentionally engineered a backdoor into the system to illegally sell classified user data to foreign buyers. The IPO is a fraud."
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The broadcast wasn't just playing at the party. Marcus had routed it to Wall Street, to the major news networks, and to millions of online users awaiting the launch.
Sterling Croft had just committed corporate and social suicide on the largest stage in the world.
