"My associates have compiled similar files for seventeen other unregistered dumping sites across five continents," Wesley said calmly, his voice carrying easily in the quiet morning air. "The environmental damage is... extensive. The Federation's EPA has a new mandate for 'crimes against the planet.' The penalties are severe. They would make an example of you, Mr. Thorne. A very public and a very permanent example."
Thorne stared at the screen, the proof of his crimes laid bare in incontrovertible detail.
His entire life's work, his reputation for ruthless efficiency, was about to become the cornerstone of the biggest environmental trial in history.
He looked at Wesley, his face a mask of fury and dawning horror. "What's the price?"
"A well managed retirement fund," Wesley said, his tone unchanging. "Five percent of your stock, per day. Starting now. You will tell your colleagues you've received a generous offer to head a private global logistics consultancy. A chance to be your own boss. You are a proud man. They will believe it."
Each meeting, conducted in the target's own world, ended the same way. With a quiet whisper of defeat. Five percent a day. A perfectly coordinated bleed, orchestrated by an unseen hand, draining the lifeblood from a dying giant, one drop at a time.
At first, it was barely a tremor on the market. A few minor sales from executives. Business reporters noted it as an oddity, perhaps a sign of internal restructuring.
But as the days went on, the pattern became undeniable. A persistent sell off by the company's entire senior leadership.
The market grew nervous. Whispers of a sinking ship began to circulate in the financial world. Roxxon's stock began to drop a few points each day as investor confidence started to erode.
With the market primed and jittery, Amon gave Fisk the signal for the next phase.
The weapon was an entity called the "Planetary Guardians Foundation," a legitimate looking non profit Fisk had established years ago.
It had a professional website, a board of respected (bribed) environmental scientists and a history of publishing well researched papers on corporate pollution. It was a credible front.
The data file, uploaded anonymously by "Planetary Guardians Foundation," hit the global network with the force of a tectonic event.
It was a massive archive of raw data: geological surveys, internal Roxxon reports, chemical analyses and most damningly, years of high resolution satellite imagery.
It was a meticulously compiled, undeniable chronicle of a systematic crime against the planet.
For the first few hours, there was a stunned silence as news agencies and Federation watchdogs scrambled to verify the information.
They didn't have to scramble for long. The GPS coordinates were perfect. The internal reports matched the satellite photos with horrifying accuracy. This was a prosecution's entire case, delivered on a silver platter.
The news broke like a global air raid siren.
Live streamed footage from every major news network dominated the screens in every home, every office, every public square on the planet.
The images were apocalyptic.
In the heart of the Amazon, Federation EPA drones, guided by the provided coordinates, hovered over a dead zone where the vibrant rainforest gave way to a black wound in the earth.
Robotic teams in bright yellow hazmat suits were pulling thousands of corroded barrels from the poisoned soil, the iconic red Roxxon logo on each one a visceral symbol of corporate evil.
The streams cut to other locations from the file: a desolate coastline in Nigeria where the sand was stained with a black tide, a Siberian tundra where melting permafrost was revealing pits filled with decaying chemical containers, a tributary of the Ganges where the water ran a toxic rainbow.
It was a global tapestry of ecocide, all meticulously documented, all tracing back to one company.
The public reaction was visceral. This was not the world of fragmented nations and cynical populations from a few years ago. This was the world of the Earth Federation, a populace that had been educated on the fragility of their shared home.
They had been taught about Asgard's protection, the potential threat of alien empires and their own responsibility as a unified planetary civilization.
The concept of "crimes against the planet" was a core tenet of their new global identity.
The outrage was furious.
Protests, organized in minutes on the global social networks, erupted in every major city.
Outside Roxxon Tower in New York, a sea of thousands of enraged citizens gathered, their faces a mixture of anger and betrayal.
Similar scenes played out in London, Tokyo, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. They were protesting a fundamental violation of the new global contract.
The Federation government, led by the Leader, acted with a swiftness and decisiveness that the old world's fragmented political bodies could have never mustered.
Within six hours of the data drop, the Federation's High Chancellor appeared in a global broadcast. His face was grim, his voice filled with a controlled fury that mirrored the public's own.
He announced a top down investigation with the full weight of the Federation's authority. Effective immediately, all of Roxxon Oil's global assets were frozen.
Their operating licenses were suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Their board members and senior executives were placed on a no fly list, their personal assets frozen as well.
The message was clear: there was no corner of the planet where they could hide, no corporate loophole that could protect them.
For the global financial markets, it was a death sentence.
Roxxon's stock didn't just fall off a cliff. The cliff itself was dynamited and the ground beneath it collapsed into a bottomless abyss.
The moment the markets opened, the stock ticker for RXN became a waterfall of red. Automated trading systems, programmed to dump assets linked to catastrophic legal or environmental risk, began selling millions of shares per second.
Panicked hedge funds, pension managers and entire national investment portfolios tried to offload their holdings, but there were no buyers. No one wanted to touch an asset that was now synonymous with planetary poison.
The stock price plummeted by fifty, then seventy, then eighty percent in a matter of minutes.
Trading was halted, but it was a futile gesture. When it resumed, the sell off continued, a cascade failure of historic proportions.
In a single day of trading, Roxxon Oil, a titan of the 20th century, a company that had once dictated the policy of nations, lost over ninety percent of its value.
It became functionally worthless, a penny stock, a ghost of its former self, kept on the exchange only as a grim reminder of the price of hubris in the new world order.
And as the world was consumed by the spectacle of Roxxon's public immolation, the silent phase of the plan went into effect.
From the shadows, Wilson Fisk began to buy. Using the untraceable funds of his newly organized underworld, channeled through a hundred different shell corporations and investment firms from Geneva to Singapore, he began acquiring the worthless stock.
He bought from panicked hedge funds, from desperate banks trying to offload the toxic asset, from the board members who were now frantically selling off their remaining shares.
He was buying infrastructure, oil fields, refineries, a global fleet of supertankers, patents for advanced drilling technology. Amon wanted to absorb its global reach and repurpose it for his own ends.
It was a corporate execution, conducted with the precision of a master strategist and the brutality of a crime lord.
Roxxon, a titan of the old world, had been bled, gutted and consumed. All that remained was a corporate shell, waiting for its new master to step inside.
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