“Fuck! How did that leak? I want to know who did it and I want to know now!” Kevin shouted out of his office as he stood up and stormed out in to the half dozen cubicals in the main area.
He quickly moved through them to his head of security’s office on the other side of the office and threw the door open.
“I’m already on it Boss.” David replied before Kevin could even say anything.
“Fucking almost a decade of quiet, under the radar work and it’s going to be all raised to the ground because of one stupid social media post!” Keven said, lowering his voice only slightly.
“I know Boss. I’ve already got Gary working on a disinformation blast from the Russian bot farm, and Tom is backtracking the video to who posted it. Shouldn’t be long before we know exactly where it came from.”
Kevin stewed for a moment before replying, “Fine! Just keep me up to date as soon as you hear anything.”
Then he walked out of David’s office and slammed the door behind him before stomping across the office and doing the same with his own door.
Kevin sat back down in his chair and shook his head. He’d been running the business successfully for so long that he’d almost convinced himself that nothing would ever go wrong. But complacency can be the enemy and obviously it had bitten him in the ass this time.
He thought back to when he’d acquired his first super, a stupid fluke of dumb luck and being in the right place. The B tier hero, Silver Sword, wasn’t well known, but it didn’t matter, when he’d found her dumped in a back alley, her mind mostly burned out, his mind had raced with ideas.
A year later, he’d earned enough from her Internet stream and “private” shows to up his game and actually acquire a super. That time it had been a villain, Ruby Rattler?, if he remembered right. He figured it would be a safer way to go, no one would likely noticed a low level villain disappearing.
Things moved quickly after that, until he’d finally starting acquiring real A list supers as well.
Things had gone well since then, a few minor incidents, but a leaked video was his worst nightmare… ok, well, not the worst. The worst would be another super finding out about his business and paying him a visit to “forcefully” shut him down.
But leaked video was a close second, his business depended on keeping everything private. His staff, his clients, and most importantly, his girls.
Kevin’s phone rang and he picked it up, “Yeah…”
“Got it Boss, it was Carlson.”
“That old geezer? He doesn’t know how to upload a video to social media!”
“It wasn’t him directly, he got hacked. Dumb ass ransomware gang, I’ve already reached out to our Russian contact and should be in touch with the hackers within the hour.”
“How’s that going to help us?”
“Easy Boss, I’ll have the hacker group release the statement and video we’re already working on to show how they ‘deep faked’ the video as an attempt to troll the stupid American media.”
“You think that will work?”
“I’ve already been seeding the idea that it’s a deepfake through the spam bots. I’m seeing good traction on it with all of the target demographics.”
“Alright, good. I’ll give Carlson a call and tell him he’s banned for a year.”
“Ouch, he might not last that long at his age…”
Kevin thought about it for a moment and David was right, Carlson was too good of client to waste an entire year of profits on.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll just tell him he owes us for the cost of cleaning this mess up and then double it as a penalty.”
“Sounds good Boss. Good luck.”
Kevin hangup the phone and then opened up his contact list to find Carlson’s number. This was going to be expensive for him, but the billionaire could surely afford it and if he knew his client as well as he thought he did, he’d have another private show for the Witch as well.
