Chapter 186: A Change In The Future

Tap. Tap. Tap.Ethan continued tapping on the table as he looked at the screen before him. There was a small grin on his face as he looked at the screen before him.

{Hmm...} Athena, who was also on the screen let out.

"What?" Ethan turned to her with a small smile.

{Nothing,} she answered, {I’m just disappointed at how lax the Helix systems are.}

He turned to the data before him and smiled again, she was right, his three moles had successfully gotten Athena into Helix’s system and all the resistance she discovered was just a paper thin excuse of a firewall.

Hence the reasons why she was so disappointed.

"Well," Ethan started, "it’s not like anyone could prepare a way to counteract a tech that’s decades ahead of their time."

{True,} she nodded, {but even by their standards, this is embarrassing. Their intrusion detection softwares are practically decorative.}

"Good," he said as he leaned back on the chair, "that just makes things easier for us."

Carver didn’t know this, but what Ethan did was more than a simple memory erasure. As he said, he was going to make Carver useful and that was exactly what he was doing.

Everything might seem normal with him at the start, but just beneath the surface, his brain had been tweaked a ’little’.

Well, if you’d call turning him into a mole against his own organization little, then that was exactly what it was.

Carver and his two underlings were now Ethan’s puppets, conditioned to activate whenever he desired.

They were his keys to destroying Helix.

He had given them a switch...if you’d call it that, one that would flip the moment they were needed to be useful.

Their first task was getting Athena into Helix’s tech and since Carver was a relatively high ranking mercenary, despite being under probation, this task had been easy enough.

And boy did Ethan discover a couple a couple of interesting things. First thing’s first, the company has been around for far longer than he thought.

They were experts at keeping themselves hidden while still relatively well known for their services to be requested by the rare few.

But despite their impressive longevity, their secrecy and their structure...

Their system was laughably brittle.

Ethan scrolled through the streams of data Athena had already sorted for him. Layers upon layers of Helix’s internal files was presented to him like some kind of picture book.

It contained their financial logs, contract and client lists, mission archives, personnel files, shell corporations.

Shell-shell corporations hidden behind shell-shell-shell corporations, their black budgets, asset disposal records and private surveillance feeds.

It was all in here.

They dared call themselves a top notch mercenary company and yet, their systems remained so unprotected.

Though, that was an unfair judgement towards them since Ethan had Athena and normal hackers would find it almost impossible to get through, but he didn’t care.

The next file was a map.

A very large, very detailed map.

"...Athena."

{Yes.}

"Is this—"

{Yes. Every Helix outpost on U.S. soil. Active and dormant. Down to the square meter.}

The map pulsed as dozens of red points blinked on the screen.

Ethan’s grin sharpened.

What a lovely gift.

"And this," Ethan said, tapping another panel, "this is their internal hierarchy?"

{Mhm,} she nodded, {everything from the probationary recruits up to the nine unidentified executive members, though their identities are masked and is the only mildly secured thing.}

"Nine executives," Ethan muttered before leaning back and asking, "how long will it take you to unmask them?"

{Done,} Athena said.

"..."

Ethan’s lips twitched a bit before he said, "didn’t you say that their identities were secured?"

{Yes, but mildly so,} Athena explained with a chuckle, {their security is still nothing worth noting.}

Ethan stared at her flatly.

Athena’s avatar shrugged.

{They used a triple-encrypted, staggered-ident verification loop, but all three keys were stored on the same local node. It was like locking a vault and taping the password to the door.}

Ethan dragged a hand down his face.

"You’re telling me, these psychopaths run assassinations, coups, black-budget black-ops worldwide... with this level of OPSEC?"

{Evidently.}

He let out a chuckle which soon became an amused laughter.

"Well, I suppose their incompetence makes our lives easier."

{Mhm. And there’s more.}

Athena swiped, and nine profiles neatly organized themselves into rows. Their faces, ages, financial footprints, tied and every private shell company tied to them personally.

Ethan leaned forward, elbows on the table, amused and deadly calm.

"Show me."

The files expanded. The higher ups included,

A senator’s cousin, a former Chinese intelligence operative, private equity tycoon from Dubai, two high-ranking military defectors, a pharmaceutical CEO, an European royal’s black sheep brother, a Silicon Valley ’angel investor,’ and finally someone interesting, one of Irina’s brothers.

Ethan smirked.

"Helix really is a nest of interesting cockroaches."

{They are also broke,} Athena added helpfully.

"...What?"

Their financial data showed a red line and he could see millions of dollars flowing out faster than flowing in.

{Their liquidity is rapidly shrinking. They are funneling funds into an off-grid R&D project, probably something expensive. Something classified even within their upper ranks.}

Ethan tapped his finger against the table again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"I see," he muttered, "can you find out what it is?"

{While possible, it will be a lot harder than when I found out their identities,} Athena explained, {after all, data for this project is not store in the Helix systems.}

Ethan lean back and placed a hand on his chin, summoning his future knowledge... What project in the future was connected to Helix?

Where could they be pouring all their money?

He closed his eyes and thought about it for a while, digging as deep into his memories as he could, which was pretty easy with his multiple minds.

And the answer he came up with?

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

His brows furrowed.

That wasn’t right.

Helix Global, in his timeline, only appeared publicly around 2022. Their rise was pretty quick and obvious.

They became the mercenary company everyone feared, but they never made anything.

They never released tech, never invested in R&D, never unveiled some world-changing project.

They were guns. Purely guns.

They were responsible for handling the dirty job if people in high places, nothing else.

"...Athena."

{Yes?}

"They shouldn’t have an R&D division at all. Not in 2010, not in 2015, not in 2020. Not ever."

{...}

"Helix never poured funds into research in the future. They were mercenaries, nothing more."

Athena tilted her head.

{So either:}

{Your timeline diverged earlier than we thought.}

{Helix did build something, but it never reached the public.}

{Or someone recently joined them and pushed this R&D direction. Someone with enough authority to funnel money into a black-site project.}

Ethan’s eyes narrowed, she was right, either one of those three possibilities was... possible.

Maybe his influence had changed the timeline a lot more than he wanted, which wasn’t unexpected since his moves hadn’t exactly been subtle.

The existence of Athena, Sentinel and VitaBand had changed the future enough, so it wasn’t surprising if some ripples reached organizations like Helix.

But this...?

This wasn’t a ripple.

It was a fork.

Something, or someone, had shoved Helix Global onto a path they were never meant to take.

And it sure as hell wasn’t Irina’s brother.

He was many things, arrogant, cruel, power-hungry, but not visionary enough to spearhead a secret tech black-site.

His financial logs already showed what Ethan expected: embezzlement, laundering, skimming... but nothing remotely tied to forward-thinking innovation.

He was only interested in feeding himself, not the future, besides that, his only other interest was taking his siblings out of the inheritance race, nothing else.

"Athena," Ethan said slowly, "is there any indication that any of the nine executives initiated this R&D project?"

{No, but it seems they only recently started funneling money into this project based on their data} she explained, {as early as two days ago.}

"Is that so, " Ethan placed a hand on his chin as he thought about it.

Two days ago was around the same time his moles successfully granted him access to Helix’s systems.

So that means, when he was targeting them, another set of eyes was on them and Ethan only had one recent person on his list,

"That man," he muttered before he stopped tapping and turned back to Athena, "can you check their comms to see if anyone tried contacting them within the month?"

{Got it,} she confirmed and he closed his eyes as he waited for her results.

A second later, her response came.

{I found something.}

He opened his eyes.

"What did you get?" Thıs text ıs hosted at novel·fiɾe·net

Athena expanded several windows, each containing a timestamped call log.

{Across all nine executives, there are exactly three attempted incoming contacts in the past month.}

Ethan leaned forward.

"Incoming?"

{Yes. All from the same unregistered point of origin. The signal was masked and completely scrambled.} She explained.

{The calls were placed twice, one a few days back... and another two days ago.}

He nodded as he took a thinking pose.

Two days ago.

The same day Helix suddenly began funneling money into a classified project...

Well that confirms his thoughts, there definitely was a third party involved, a dangerous one at that.