The secretary delivered the bad news.
Moments ago, every communications satellite owned by WCN detonated almost simultaneously. The WCN satellite network collapsed in an instant.
Everyone in the boardroom felt their hearts skip.
There was no need to guess who did it.
"Bring the backup comms online. Find out exactly what happened," the chair said, keeping his voice level.
WCN quickly switched to ground infrastructure and restored a temporary patchwork of regional links. Rebuilding a satellite network under these conditions would take far longer.
WCN had spent nearly a century reaching its current scale. It was wiped out overnight.
The damage was not limited to WCN. The entire world felt the shock of the collapse. Any high-bandwidth, high-fidelity communication relied on satellites. Phones, military links, computing, and commercial data all lived on that backbone. As the monopoly provider for satellite services, WCN held almost every major contract.
With the network gone, those activities froze. Deeper losses followed. Every second offline bled money from WCN's customers.
The world slid into confusion that felt uncomfortably close to the last Net Crash. This time, though, there was another path. People had a different network to try: the Ascension Network.
They did not know the full story at WCN, but people everywhere could look up and see chains of explosions across the sky. Combined with the blackout, the picture was clear enough. Hopes that WCN would recover evaporated.
Companies did not waste time comforting WCN. They rushed to test whether Ascension's network could carry them through the outage.
Ascension Technology's user count spiked to an unprecedented level. Unlike before, when most signups were ordinary netizens, this surge came from corporations and governments.
They needed Ascension to keep their communications alive and get stalled military and commercial operations moving again.
As WCN's emergency links stabilized, the company was hit by a flood of complaints, cancellations, and claims for damages. None of it was unexpected, yet facing it all at once was still crushing.
A few isolated claims would be survivable. WCN could usually swat those aside with reach and influence. This time, the scope was global. There was no way to absorb pressure from everyone at once.
The company's long-standing foundation was gone. Former clients could push them into a bottomless pit before any recovery even began. No firm refuses the chance to claw profit out of a falling giant.
Realistically, WCN had no way back.
They still did not understand how Ascension had destroyed their satellites. At this point, the method did not matter.
Everyone could see it. WCN had lost the war and lost the capacity to hit back.
While attention stayed fixed on the satellite disaster, trouble flared inside city networks around the world. Sharp-eyed netrunners noticed something wrong. Rogue AIs began roaming the Net. The usual NetWatch presence had gone quiet.
Netrunners who hated NetWatch started digging into the silence and uncovered a bombshell. NetWatch was entirely tied up responding to a Blackwall event. Even so, the situation was getting worse.
Pushed by the runner community, the secret went public fast. NetWatch tried to suppress the spread, but they had no bandwidth left to chase down every leak. Worse, when they did try, they ran into deliberate resistance.
When NetWatch traced the interference to Arasaka's network division, they knew the situation had spun out of their control. They stopped pretending and issued a statement.
Official confirmation landed: the Blackwall was on the verge of failure.
People had not even processed the satellite collapse when this hit, and the shock rolled them again. Almost everyone had heard what the last Crash was like, whether they lived through it or not. If the Blackwall truly fell, the whole world would face another darkest hour.
No one wanted to learn what waited beyond the wall by living through it.
Ascension's network became the obvious refuge. It was the only network that still worked normally. Previous attempts to restrict or box out Ascension's services fell apart on contact with reality. There were no alternatives.
By striking WCN and riding the Blackwall crisis, Ascension Technology consolidated nearly all global network traffic under its control.
Only then did people understand the size of the company now in view. This was the same newcomer that had beaten a military-tech power in open conflict and built a secure, worldwide network. Their strength was on par with any megacorp and might already surpass them.
That did not mean the public liked them. From the day Ascension launched its network, every move looked like the ruthless rise of another unstoppable giant. The corporate world had no saints left. People equated corporations with exploitation long ago.
WCN's satellites exploding, the Blackwall faltering, and Ascension as the ultimate beneficiary. Say it was not a calculated play to monopolize the Net, and no one would believe you.