Meanwhile, while the world was still trying to find answers to their questions, two groups besides the world's governments were not only asking questions but also panicking.

The first group was the companies that on the news.

***

Toulouse – Airbus HQ

The finance floor at Airbus felt suddenly too small. Airbus was experiencing the same dilemma that McLaren had experienced last week when Liam drove the P1 LM-X around LA.

Screens that had been quietly scrolling manufacturing dashboards and supplier KPIs now pulsed with the same viral footage everyone else had seen — the black A380 lifting off from LAX, the registry bannered across every news tickers. A dozen phones rang at once and analysts stopped typing.

"Is — is that one of ours?" a junior accountant whispered, voice trembling as he dragged the live feed onto the monitor beside his SAP session.

The room went very still. Within seconds the CFO, who has his hair mussed and tie loosened, had moved from his office, boots striking the tile as he crossed the open-plan floor. He keyed his way into the ERP, fingers jittering.

"Project code? Contract number? Procurement — pull anything with 'special project' or 'private config' in the last 7 years," he barked into his headset. "Trace journal entries. Now."

People obeyed like troops and search boxes filled with wild queries. The procurement team dove into purchase orders. Program managers scanned engineering change orders. Someone in vendor relations pinged Rolls-Royce and Safran's liaison for confirmation.

Ten minutes passed like an hour.

"Found something," a procurement lead said. He threw the screen to the front: an internal project file, buried under layers of NDAs — Project: FLYING_PALACE. Contract attached. Signed — last year. Value: €482,000,000. Status: Closed. Final invoice: PAID.

The CFO's face emptied when he saw this. He couldn't believe it.

"Show bank remittance. Show the clearing."

Another analyst had already pivoted to the treasury portal. He pulled up the SWIFT confirmations and the corporate bank ledger: the exact tranche amounts hit Airbus's designated account on precisely the dates the invoices specified. The reference fields matched the contract numbers down to the last digit.

"Wire confirmations," he said, as if reading a lifeline. "BNP Paribas. Funds cleared. Beneficiary reference matches FLYING_PALACE invoice series."

Phones erupted again, with procurement calling cabin-fit teams, who in turn were in contact with Lufthansa Technik and Zodiac.

One by one the subcontractors logged in to confirm. Each ERP echoing the same truth: invoices issued, invoices settled. Rolls-Royce's engine-supply invoice shows a credit entry; Safran's avionics invoice shows payment; the upholsterer's small PO for handcrafted leather panels is stamped PAID.

An internal compliance analyst swallowed and said the word that made half the room go quiet: "AML checks — I've got the KYC files. Trust vehicles listed as payors. Offshore entity names. But the documents are in order. All due diligence workflows were completed and archived."

"Audit," the CFO said, voice hoarse, and the word had the force of command.

An auditor from the external firm — someone flown in on an emergency call immediately the video of the video of the plane taking off hit the internet — skimmed the trail and spoke slowly. "You asked me if the project exists in your records. It does. Contracts, POs, change orders, certificates of completion, delivery receipts for interior modules… all logged. Payments cleared. Bank confirmations. Our spot tests reconcile. If we load a sample into the general ledger, it balances."

"But how?" murmured the treasury head. "We were never briefed. No board memo. No RFP on Procurement. How did this bypass executive oversight?"

"Look for signatories," someone said, pulling up the contract metadata. The signatory blocks — names and digital certificates — were signed by a Delaware trust entity. The digital signatures verified. The NDA clause was ironclad: punitive penalty clauses, confidentiality, breach fines in the billions, arbitration in Amsterdam. The legal stamp was immaculate.

Legal counsel, summoned and pale, leaned in. "They paid exactly what was due. The contracts were structured under a Special Projects Cover. All subcontractor agreements include the same confidentiality appendices and liquidated-damages clauses. Breach the NDA and you don't just pay damages — you forfeit global contracts. The penalties are structured to keep mouths shut."

Someone in cyber ops, suddenly present at the table, raised his head. "We checked the origination of the wires. The trail runs through an elaborate chain of nominee accounts and trust vehicles — Cayman, Singapore, Luxembourg — all the usual jurisdictions. But every intermediary's paperwork reconciles. SWIFT messages, beneficiary confirmations, correspondent bank logs — they all show green."

The CFO sat back hard, causing the chair to squeak in protest. For the first time since the footage hit the feeds, a different understanding settled over the room: this was not a paper illusion someone had dreamed up. The money was on the ledgers, and the ledgers matched the banks. The auditors had signed off — at least on what existed inside the system.

A senior VP whispered slowly and thoughtfully, "If someone sank billions into this and hid the source, they took the trouble to make it untouchable. Whoever's behind the pay-out covered every legal and accounting box."

"Then what do we tell the board?" the CFO asked, though the question was rhetorical. He looked at the chain of paid invoices again, the archived delivery receipts, the stamped acceptance that closed the procurement cycle.

"We present the facts. Contracts exist. Work completed. Payments reconciled. And we enforce the NDAs."

Someone in procurement added, "And if a regulator comes knocking?"

Legal's response was measured, practiced. "We produce the documentation. We show the compliance checks. We assert confidentiality where contractually permitted. Any attempt to publicly break the NDAs triggers the liquidated damages clauses. It's a financial deterrent so steep that any vendor will think twice before speaking."

Outside the room, the news ticker scrolled new allegations, theories, speculation. Inside, Airbus's finance and legal teams continued their forensic calm: reconciling entries, preserving chain-of-custody for internal records, copying SWIFT confirmations to secure servers, and preparing an executive summary for the board that would say, plainly and unavoidably:

The project exists in our books. The work was performed. The invoices were paid. The payments cleared. All external auditors and banks report reconciled accounts. All contractual safeguards and NDAs are in force.

In the silence that followed, the hard reality settled like a physical weight — not an absence of proof, but an embarrassment of it. The company had been paid and the receipts were clean.

The only mystery left was the beneficiary name on the other end of the trust chain: a teenager whose name, when searched in registries, fit awkwardly beside the magnitude of the transfers.

"Track those trust beneficiaries," the CFO ordered finally. "Full trace to beneficial owners. Compliance, Treasury — find who took delivery of the funds. And Legal — prepare the NDA enforcement package. If anyone so much as whispers, we sue."

Outside, the world shouted. Inside, Airbus had only numbers and signatures — and the dawning, uncomfortable knowledge that some mechanism — legal, financial, or otherwise — had made a half-billion look exactly as tidy as any other corporate transaction.

***

This was also the same for Mercedes-Maybach.

At Mercedes-Benz HQ in Stuttgart, the design studio floor was chaos. Engineers and executives crowded around a monitor showing live footage of the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 Cabriolet rolling out of LAX, roadworthy and flawless.

"That's impossible," one of the lead designers muttered. "The prototypes never left our vault."

Legal and finance were already digging. Within minutes, procurement pulled up an archived file: Special Commission – One-Off Roadworthy Variant.

The digital signatures were authentic, stamped with ironclad NDAs. Payment records matched down to the euro — tranches routed through Daimler's accounts, cleared and confirmed.

"It's in the books," the CFO said grimly, sliding the ledger across the table. "Paid in full. Delivered under sealed contract. Every subcontractor signed. Breach penalties in the billions."

The room fell silent as realization settled. This wasn't theft, nor reverse-engineering. The car had been theirs to build. It was quietly authorized, perfectly paid for, and legally bound in secrecy.

"Then," one executive whispered, staring at the screen, "someone just drove our future fantasy onto the streets of Los Angeles… and we can't say a word."

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