Chapter 188: Launch Day

Lillian placed a finger on her chin, completely lost in thought.She might’ve been tired and had her eyes closed but she could clearly hear Aria’s apology.

So why was she so lost in thought? Well, she was thinking of a plan to make her friend feel...less guilty.

Aria’s apology was because she hadn’t been there for Lillian went she got kidnapped.

She blamed herself for not insisting on stopping Lillian that night and even though Lillian had insisted that it wasn’t her fault, Aria hadn’t stopped blaming herself...

Which was unfair.

So she had to come up with a plan to make sure that she’d feel a little less guilty.

"Everything is ready ma’am," her assistant suddenly came up to her and informed.

Well, maybe not right now.

Now was time to launch one of their most anticipated product, Vitaband.

"You ready?" Aria stepped in with a sweet in hand, mostly for Lillian since Ethan had rubbed off her and now, she had developed a sweet tooth.

"Well," Lillian smiled as she took the drink, "as ready as I can be....though I’m still a bit nervous."

"You’ve got this," Aria said, "and even if you don’t, We can just turn off the power and I, your knight in shining armor...."

"Well, knight in stunning dress," Aria corrected herself as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, "will swoop in and save you from the evil gazes of those fogeys with medical degrees."

"Or I can just phone Ethan," Aria added, "I’m sure you’d prefer him instead."

This successfully got a chuckle out of Lillian as she put the half empty glass down. She shook her head as she adjusted her blazer.

"I don’t think Ethan would enjoy storming a stage full of doctors," she muttered.

Aria scoffed, "Please, he’d bulldoze through them if you so much as sneezed wrong."

Lillian blushed lightly but didn’t comment. Instead, she drew in a slow breath as her assistant handed her the final checklist before walking back out.

Unlike Sentinel’s chaotic debut filled with security firms, hackers, tech CEOs, and government vultures...

VitaBand had drawn a calmer, but in many ways more intimidating crowd.

Doctors, surgeons, medical innovators. Pharmaceutical representatives, university researchers.

People who lived and breathed science, they were also people who could spot a flaw from a mile away.

And of course, the media. A lot of media.

OmniTech had announced a revolutionary health-tech product. The world had shown up to see if they could back up those claims.

Lillian exhaled.

"You okay?" Aria asked, nudging her.

"A little overwhelmed," Lillian admitted, "what if I mess this up?"

Aria flicked her forehead.

"Ow—!" Lillian grabbed the spot that was flicked.

"You won’t slip up," Aria said firmly. "You know this product inside out by now, you’ve worked really hard to make sure of that."

Her assistant suddenly returned, "Ma’am, they’re ready for you. You’ll be going on in three minutes."

"Three minutes," Lillian repeated, her heart skipping.

Aria clasped her shoulders and forced her to face the mirror.

"What do you see?"

"...A very nervous woman."

"Wrong," Aria shook her head. "I see Lillian Hayes. OmniTech’s Midas. The woman who convinced the Caldwell hospital board to collaborate with a few months old company, you can do this."

"Yeah," Lillian nodded, "I’ve got this."

She stepped out from backstage as the announcer’s voice carried across the hall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome OmniTech’s Chief Operations Officer... Lillian Hayes."

A wave of camera flashes hit her the moment she stepped on stage.

The hall was packed, journalists in the front rows, medical professionals clustered together, executives from competing health-tech startups watching intently, and scattered among them were Caldwell Hospital’s senior administrators.

She reached the podium, placed the slim black wristband on the display stand, and tapped the mic.

"Good afternoon, everyone."

Her voice came out clearer than she expected.

"Today... OmniTech would like to introduce a product we’ve been developing quietly for months. A product designed to address one of the most fundamental problems in modern healthcare."

The screen behind her lit up with images of the VitaBand, it sleek, matte and modern but most of all, the build looked insanely high quality.

"A device," she continued, "that can detect medical anomalies before they become emergencies. A wearable that monitors heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, glucose levels, and more... in real-time and with medical-grade precision."

A few doctors leaned forward, interested in her words.

Some journalists lifted their pens and immediately started taking notes.

"With the VitaBand," Lillian said, "we can reduce silent heart complications, flag early signs of stroke, identify irregular glucose patterns, and alert medical personnel before a patient even realizes something is wrong."

She pressed a button on the remote.

A new slide appeared.

Caldwell Hospital Clinical Trial, Results

Murmurs rose through the room.

"We ran a month-long closed trial with Caldwell Hospital," Lillian said. "Today, representing Caldwell, we have Mr. Gabriel Caldwell to share the findings."

A tall man in a pale blue suit stood and walked up to the stage. Gabriel Caldwell, the recent owner of Caldwell Hospital and

He shook Lillian’s hand before turning to the mic.

"I know what many of you are thinking," he said, addressing the crowd, "another wearable promising accuracy, another gadget claiming to be life-changing."

A few in the audience snorted under their breath, not buying that promise in the least bit.

After all, this wasn’t the first time a product like this had been released.

"But this one," Gabriel said, lifting the VitaBand from the stand, "actually works."

Silence fell.

"In our trial of 300 patients, the VitaBand detected 17 silent arrhythmias, 12 hypertensive spikes, 4 early signs of stroke, and even flagged unstable glucose levels in patients who had no idea they were entering dangerous territory."

He placed the band back down.

"We confirmed all of it, independently."

The journalists went wild as the cameras continued flashing.

Gabriel stepped aside as Lillian returned to the podium.

"And that," she said with a small smile, "is why we believe VitaBand is the future of emergency prevention."

She barely finished her sentence before,

"Ms. Hayes! Does this mean OmniTech is entering the medical industry?"

"Are you planning full-scale FDA submission?"

"What about patient data? Who controls it?"

"How soon will hospitals integrate VitaBand?"

"What about privacy concerns—?"

"How will this compete with Apple and Samsung’s upcoming wearables?"

"Will insurance companies adopt it?"

The questions hit her like a barrage.

Lillian composed herself, and smiled professionally

One journalist from MedTech Insight raised her hand higher than the rest.

"First question, Ms. Hayes," she said loudly, "what makes VitaBand different from the tens of failed medical wearables in the last decade?"

Lillian took a deep breath before a smile appeared on her face, well, this was the exact moment she was waiting for, her moment.

"The difference," she said confidently, "is quite simple."

"Unlike all other failed promises," she held up the black wristband, "this one works."

Well, that came out cooler than she expected, but it was more than enough of an answer for the journalist as she sat back down and another stood up.

A man in a gray suit stood next, his press badge reading Global Health Review.

"Ms. Hayes," he said, voice sharp but controlled, "medical-grade continuous monitoring raises a major concern among the public: data safety. Who exactly has access to the information collected by VitaBand?"

The room quieted down.

Everyone leaned forward.

This was one of the few questions everyone was curious about.

"Only the user," she answered. "By default, all data is stored within OmniCloud and the device, and it is completely encrypted in a way no one can gain access to."

"OmniTech does not have access to your vitals, your patterns, or your private medical information."

A few eyebrows rose, that was...a bold claim.

Another hand shot up immediately, this time from a woman in a black blazer, representing a privacy advocacy group.

"But surely hospitals need access. Insurance companies will want data. Isn’t that the real goal here, to sell medical information behind closed doors? We’ve seen that pattern a few too many times."

A few murmurs of agreement rippled through the audience.

Lillian kept her smile.

"VitaBand’s data," she said deliberately, "belongs to the person wearing it. Not us, not the hospitals, not even insurance companies."

"But," she continued, raising a finger, "the user can choose to share parts of their health data with their physician or hospital, only if they consent to it. Every feature requiring external access includes mandatory user approval."

"Meaning," she added, "patients decide who sees what."

That didn’t completely satisfy the room.

Another journalist stood up, this one was far more blunt.

"Let’s drop the idealistic talk. Is VitaBand going to be a luxury product? The kind of thing only people in Beverly Hills can afford?"

Ah.

There it was.

The question half the room had been itching to ask.

Some even looked smug, expecting her to stumble, after all, what was the purpose of any company if not the maximum possible profit?

Lillian actually laughed softly.

"No," she said. "VitaBand is designed for everyone, not the privileged few."

Her confidence was evident in her tone.

"Medical care shouldn’t be a luxury. Emergency prevention shouldn’t be limited by wealth. So for hospitals and clinics, VitaBand will be offered under a partnership pricing model, affordable, accessible and scalable."

A wave of surprise went through the audience.

"And for the public," she added, "the retail price will be lower than any existing medical-grade wearable on the market.’

Gasps.

Even Gabriel’s father looked impressed looked impressed, and he already knew the numbers.

Another journalist quickly shouted, "How is OmniTech keeping the cost so low?! This level of tech shouldn’t be cheap,"

Lillian smiled again, just a little mischievously.

"Well," she said lightly, "OmniTech has a group very good engineer."

The crowd chuckled, Lillian had successfully gotten them in the bag.