Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1)

by A. G. Riddle

  Desmond periodically ran database reports for management, identifying their largest clients—organizations they should call on and keep happy. Some were companies he’d never heard of: Rapture Therapeutics, Rook Quantum Sciences, and Prometheus Technologies.

  “These three companies are each buying more than Livermore. Stanford even,” he said. “And it’s all kinds of stuff. They’re either just stocking up, or they’re running the largest-scale experiments in the world.”

  SciNet’s CEO was in his early thirties, had an MBA from Harvard, and was all business.

  “I fail to see a problem with any of that.”

  “Well,” Desmond said, “the issue is that Rapture and Rook, in particular, aren’t paying for their equipment. I can see the credit card transactions on the back end. They’re using cards and bank accounts tied to two companies: Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities.”

  The CEO was getting annoyed. “So?”

  “So, we have two third-party companies buying massive amounts of scientific equipment and shipping it to these legitimate private research firms.”

  “Again, how is that a problem?”

  “I’m not sure it is, but I think we ought to look into it. We’ve created something new here. What if someone’s taking advantage of it? What if SciNet is being used to launder money somehow? Like Mexican drug cartels, the Mafia—”

  “Okay, Desmond. I think you’ve been watching too much TV. We’ve got what we need here.”

  Management was in no hurry to question their best clients. The company needed the transaction volume, and Citium Holdings and Invisible Sun Securities were providing plenty of it.

  But Desmond couldn’t contain his curiosity. He looked the companies up. Both were dead ends. They didn’t seem to exist beyond a few corporate records. There were no offices, no websites, not even phone numbers. They were like shells with seemingly endless amounts of cash.

  Another mystery, closer to home, did get solved: Peyton was going to attend Stanford Medical School. She told him at her apartment one night, over dinner—lasagna she had cooked that was the best meal he had eaten in some time.

  “That’s great,” he said. “It’s nearly impossible to get in.”

  “I was worried, honestly.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

  “I know you will. It’s why I wanted to stay here in the area. I don’t want us to be apart. We have to start thinking about the future.”

  The words we and us hung there in the air, present but unacknowledged.

  Peyton used those words more often after that. She talked about the future more frequently. She asked whether he wanted to have kids. Where he wanted to live: in the city, a suburb, or the country, as he had done growing up. What sort of life he wanted his children to have. What he thought work-life balance should be for people with kids. Whether he wanted to travel if they had the chance.

  Desmond found himself utterly unable to answer her questions. As the months went by, she began to apply more pressure, subtle at first, then more directly. Desmond’s answer was always the same: that he was so focused on work at the moment that it was hard for him to imagine these scenarios.

  “It’s like a train in a tunnel. You don’t know what’s on the other side. How can you say what you’ll do when you come out?”

  That set her off. “You’re not a train in a tunnel, Desmond! We’re real people. It’s not hard to imagine.”

  But for Desmond it was impossible. Throughout his entire life he’d always been at the mercy of someone, or something, else. The fire. Orville. Silicon Valley. And now he wanted independence. Freedom. That meant money, and once he had it he believed he could sort his life out. Then he could answer Peyton’s questions, which haunted him more and more.

  With each month, he saw the prospect of financial freedom slipping away. Four more companies he owned options in folded. SciNet’s rate of growth slowed. The initial rush was over; those storage closets full of old equipment had been cleaned out, and now the users were spending less per month. Management came up with several ideas: expanding to Europe and using the platform to help industrial companies buy and sell equipment. Both presented new challenges.

  Then, in the summer of ’98, everything changed. A company Desmond owned options in went public. He only held 13,400 options, but they were worth $21 at the IPO price—which meant all told, they were worth a quarter of a million dollars.

  He checked the stock price about a thousand times the day it debuted, fearing the worst—a crash or some freak accident. But just the opposite happened: the stock soared. By the end of the first day of trading, his options were worth $38.23 each. $512,282. The sum was nearly unimaginable to him. A fortune. Freedom.

  He raced to Wallace’s office. The attorney connected him with an investment bank that would help him unload the options, ensuring the profits were taxed at long-term capital gains rates.

  “Are you sure you want to sell all of it, Desmond?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Desmond had come up with a rubric for deciding whether to keep or sell a stock: if he was willing to buy the stock at its current price, he would keep it. Otherwise, he would sell. He wanted the cash.

  The transaction went through the next day, netting him just over four hundred thousand dollars after taxes and fees.

  He again sat in Wallace’s office.

  “I need you to draw up some other agreements. Personal contracts.”

  He told the man exactly what he wanted.

  “She’ll have to sign them, Desmond.”

  “I know. It won’t be a problem.”

  “You’re a brilliant young man, but I think you’ve got a lot to learn about women.”

  Desmond’s will was the easiest part. In classic Orville Hughes fashion, it read:

  To Peyton Adelaide Shaw, I leave everything.

  The other forms were a series of assignment agreements that gave Peyton ownership of half of all the options and securities he owned.

  That night they celebrated the IPO with a dinner out. After dessert, Desmond showed her the will, which, to his surprise, sort of freaked her out.

  “I just want you to be taken care of,” he said. “What if I fell over dead? Got hit by a car?”

  “Don’t say that, Desmond.”

  “It’s true. You’re all I’ve got, Peyton. You’re the only person in my life I’m really close to.”

  “Really close to? Is that how you’d describe us?” She chugged the rest of her wine.

  This conversation hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. He had thought she’d be relieved.

  At her apartment, he showed her the assignment agreements that gave her half of all his stock and options.

  “It’s what’s fair,” he said. “You saved me, Peyton—when I wanted to put it all in xTV. You introduced me to the first people I bought options from. You’ve been the only constant in my life since I’ve been in California. You practically supported me after xTV, kept me from starving. You’ve been my partner in this whole thing, and you should have half.”

  She exploded. “Your partner? Is that what we are? Business associates? Is that all this is?”

  “No, Peyton—”

  “Then what are we?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “You know exactly what I want.”

  He did know. It wasn’t stock options or any written agreement. It was three words he couldn’t seem to say. After a few months she had stopped saying them, but he could tell when she wanted to. That hurt him too.

  “Will you please sign them?” he said.

  “Get out.”

  “Peyton.”

  “You heard me. And take all your… legal documents with you.”

  Peyton didn’t return his calls or emails for two weeks. They were the longest weeks of Desmond’s life.

  He also had problems at work. SciNet was nearly out of money. They arrived at a seemingly counterintuitive solution: go public. The IPO
, if successful, would raise over fifty million dollars for the company. It would also make Desmond rich.

  He watched in wonder as the finance department dressed up the books. Management asked him for endless reports, cutting and shuffling the data for the road show. There were all sorts of disclosures and disclaimers in the prospectus, verbiage about the risks to their business and things outside their control. But those dense sections weren’t what investors saw. They stared at the graphs on the projection screen that showed rapid growth and read the parts that described a company with massive profit potential.

  SciNet entered its quiet period and waited. Every person in the company was on edge. To Desmond it felt like being trapped in a submarine at war, knowing there were mines floating everywhere in the water around them, the entire crew holding its breath, waiting to see if they would hit one and sink or if they would make it out, to freedom, as heroes.

  Every day, Desmond wrote another email to Peyton.

  When she didn’t reply, he camped out at her front door. He was nervous that the neighbors would call the police, but they must have had some sense of what was going on. They looked at him with sympathy as they passed. One guy said, “Good luck, buddy.”

  When Peyton opened the door that morning, she tried to slam it in his face, but he held it open.

  “Please, just talk to me.”

  “You talk, I’ll listen.”

  She stood in the living room, hands on her hips.

  “I want you to try to imagine things from my perspective.”

  She was a statue.

  “There is something broken inside me. Deep down inside. In a place I never knew existed before I met you. I never needed it before, because anyone who ever loved me was ripped out of my life before I could love them back.

  “I watched my family burn to death. I was raised by one of the meanest guys I’ve ever known. He never loved me. I don’t think he could, or maybe he couldn’t show it. I never knew love as a child. I’ve never known it before. Until I met you. I don’t know what to do or how to feel, because this is completely new to me. I care about you more than anything I’ve ever cared about in this world. You’re my whole life, Peyton. But you need to know that I’m not a whole person. I’m not the person you want me to be.”

  The tears began streaming down her face. She put her arms around him, pulled him close, and pressed her body tightly into his. He could feel the tension drain out of his body. The release. The void filled with a desperate hunger. His body reacted. So did hers. His hands moved across her body as they kissed. They were naked a few seconds later, her walking backwards into her bedroom as they kissed, sloppy, hungry kisses.

  They lost track of time. She never mentioned class, and he didn’t say a word about work. In the living room, he could hear his Nokia cell phone ringing. He wouldn’t have answered it if the world was ending.

  When they were spent, they lay in bed, staring at the ceiling the same way they had that first night.

  Her voice was soft, barely over a whisper. “I thought you were pushing me away.”

  That confused him. He propped himself up on an elbow.

  She continued, still staring at the ceiling. “I figured you had what you wanted—the money, the stock that would make you rich. You wanted to give me my share so you could walk away with a clear conscience that you had done the right thing.”

  The attorney had been right: Desmond really did have a lot to learn about women.

  “That’s the last thing I want,” he said. “I want to take care of you no matter what, no matter what happens to us, or to me. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  He was terrified that he would hurt her again. He feared that this was the first of what would be recurring missteps.

  “I meant what I said: I’m not a whole person, Peyton. Your friends, the couples we go to dinner with—those guys are what you want. Someone normal.”

  “I’ll be the judge of what I want. And it’s not normal. Plus, I’ve got news, Des. Nobody on this earth is really normal. Everyone is faking it to some degree. Especially around here. Lot of freak flags flying on the inside.”

  They got dressed then. Neither said a word, but there was a serenity in the air he’d never experienced.

  Before he left for work, he asked her again if she’d sign the documents.

  “I need to know you’re taken care of. Please.”

  “Okay.” She took his face in her hands. “If it’s what you want.”

  She signed her name in beautiful cursive letters, and Desmond kissed her before he left.

  She asked him again to come to Christmas at her mother’s house that year. This time, he accepted, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. He still didn’t feel comfortable around her family. But things had changed for him. He was a success now, with one IPO behind him and another looming.

  Her sister’s husband treated him differently, though he suspected he knew the series of events that had led to that: Peyton had prevailed upon her sister, who had then spoken with her husband. Derrick quizzed him about SciNet and his other investments with the zeal of a kid trying to glean clues about his gifts under the tree.

  Their family was tight, Desmond could see that, and Peyton had told him the reason: the death of their father had brought them closer. Her brother’s passing seven years before had also strengthened their bond. Peyton said it had made them more thankful for each other and every year they had together. The tragedies were a reminder to them of what was truly important.

  Her entire family couldn’t have been nicer to him. He still felt out of place, like an actor in a role that was wrong for him. “Fraud” was the word that kept running through his mind. He told himself that there was simply a wall inside of him, that the emotions were there, behind it, waiting to come through. When it came down, everything would be fine.

  He would soon learn the truth.

  Chapter 73

  Desmond felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He opened his eyes. Avery loomed over him, her pale skin and slender face like a ghost in the green glow of the plane’s safety lights.

  Peyton lay in a sleeping bag beside him, fast asleep. Avery hadn’t woken her and apparently didn’t want to. Her voice was barely over a whisper.

  “You okay?”

  He felt feverish and achy, he assumed from the memory, but he didn’t want to give her any indication that he had recalled anything. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Avery studied him. “You were feverish earlier. Anyway, we have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “The life-or-death kind.”

  Avery informed him that they were about to leave Africa, cross over the Mediterranean, then into European airspace on their way to Scotland.

  “And?”

  “And,” Avery said, stretching the word out, “if the Europeans have sealed their borders like the US, like they did in Kenya, they might shoot us down.”

  That was a problem.

  “Can we go around?”

  “Not enough fuel.”

  “Refueling—”

  “Is a bad idea,” Avery said. “Every time we land, we take a risk. If we land at an airport, the host nation will probably take the plane and throw us in a cordon zone. That’s best case.”

  Avery motioned toward Peyton. “Want me to wake Sleeping Beauty?”

  “No,” Desmond said quickly. “And don’t call her that. She’s tougher than you think.”

  Avery seemed annoyed. “It’s not her toughness I have a problem with.”

  “She was just protecting her people on the ship, same as you would have done.”

  Avery ignored him. “What do you want to do?”

  “Who’s the most likely to shoot us down?”

  “What? I have no idea.”

  “Who has the biggest air force?”

  “I don’t know. The UK. Germany. France. Italy.”

  “What about Spain?”

  Avery thought a moment. “They’ve got the
planes but not enough money to repair them and keep them flight-ready. Their economy has been in crisis for years.” She nodded. “So we fly over Spain, roll the dice, try to get to Shetland.”

  “Speaking of which, what happens then? Surely they’ll shoot us down.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  Before he could ask, she stood and made her way back to the cockpit.

  Desmond adjusted the rolled-up blanket under Peyton’s head and watched her sleep for a moment.

  He closed his eyes, trying to remember his past.

  The SciNet IPO was a turning point in Desmond’s life, in ways he never anticipated. The stock soared. On paper, his stake, a little less than one percent of the company, was worth 3.29 million dollars. In reality, all of his options were subject to an employee lockup provision that prevented him from selling shares or exercising options for six months after the IPO. They were the longest six months of his life, and everyone else’s at SciNet.

  Going public changed the company. The management team now constantly obsessed over the stock price and investor relations. Quarterly earnings became the only events that really mattered. They issued press releases all the time, hoping to garner more media attention.

  Where they had thought strategically before, taken risks, and tried to build the business for the long term, now they played it safe, trying to hit their growth and revenue numbers (there were still no profits to report). It was the beginning of the end, and Desmond knew it. When the lockup period expired in August, the stock had drifted higher. A rising tide in 1999 had lifted all boats, most of all shares of hot dot-com companies. His shares were worth $7,840,000. He sold every one of them and resigned. Including the proceeds from his stock options in two other companies that had gone public, and one that had been acquired, he had netted just over nine million dollars in the last year.

  Peyton had insisted that whatever he did with his shares in the companies, she would do too. He sold everything and put the proceeds in two separate bank accounts.