It wasn’t just that she was beautiful; there was something else about her that I found attractive. She’d only been speaking with me for a minute, but she had this fierce power that radiated from her, and those eyes were distracting.
“It’s good,” I agreed after I took a bite.
“You used to eat here when you were growing up.”
“Is that a question, or a statement?”
“Maybe both?” I glanced up to see her playful smirk. Yes. She was dangerous.
“You seem to know a lot about me,” I said.
“Doesn’t everyone? But I am probably the only one who knows you are here.”
“How did you know I was here?” I asked with some actual interest.
“We have a game we are developing,” she changed the subject, and I tried to quiet my anger.
“I’ve heard this over forty times. You think it is going to be great, but you want me to endorse it, play test it, support it, put my name on it. No. Not interested. You can leave now.” I wasn’t going to let this woman force me to walk out of here without finishing my meal.
“But this is going to be great. This game is like nothing the world has seen.”
“I’ve heard that every time a developer pitches me. Go tell your boss that you tried, and compliment him on hiring you to make the pitch. You are my type, but I’m not interested in playing anything but Astafar Unlimited.”
“Awww, I’m your type? I was worried that my womanly powers would have no effect on you. They say you live like a monk,” she pouted and then took another bite of her onion covered hot dog.
“At first I thought you were smart, but the longer you sit here, the more you change my mind. Please leave,” I said.
“Have you ever heard of Arnacript?” she asked while she chewed.
“No,” I sighed. “Damn it, you win. I’ve beaten the best in the world, but I thought I could just sit here and enjoy my meal while you tried to sell me on your game company. I admit defeat, and now I will give you the table.” I set the second half of my hot dog down and stood halfway.
“We do Alzheimer’s treatment,” she said, and I stopped as if someone had used a stun effect on me.
“We’ve had a sixty-percent reversal rate. Would you like to hear more?” One of her perfectly shaped eyebrows rose, and her lips twisted again into a smirk.
“Sixty percent?” I whispered the question, and I felt my heart hammer into my chest.
“The treatment is somewhat experimental, but it involves the game we are designing,” she continued.
“I’ve never heard of Arnacript, and I know about all the different firms that are working on curing Alzheimer's,” I said.
“We are taking a new approach. It is a combination of pharmaceuticals mixed with full sensory virtual reality immersion.” She gestured back to the table with her right hand and then picked up a slice of pizza with her left.
I sat back in the booth.
“But everyone would be talking about this. No one has a cure. How can you be--”
“We still have a lot of work to do,” she interrupted me with a raised hand. “It wouldn’t be prudent to go public now, but I take it that this topic interests you?” Her full lips smiled to reveal perfectly set teeth.
“You know this topic interests me. Don’t be coy.” I sighed and tried to relax. My nerves were electric, and I had to force my hands to stop shaking on the table.
Sixty percent.
It had been almost six years since my parents had remembered me.
They were in a home. The best care center in the country and I spent most of my wealth on either treating them or donating to companies that were focused on a cure. I visited them every month, but each meeting had become more painful, and the last few had been even more difficult because they couldn’t even remember each other.
They were only in their fifties.
“Why don’t you come visit our facilities? I’ll show you what our current treatment is doing; you can talk to some of the patients, and maybe play a quick game? We are using a new immersion station that you will really enjoy.”
“Let’s say that I am suspicious. Companies have tried all sorts of tactics to get me to come and visit them. They would figure that as soon as they got me on their property, or in a room, they could try to finagle some sort of sponsorship deal.”
“Oh, I know Leo. That is why I came to see you myself. I figured that it would be better if I made the presentation, instead of some lackey.” She wore her smile well, and it made me wonder about the layers of the woman’s intellect. She was definitely charming.
“I’m supposed to be impressed by you? I don’t know who you are. Listen, I’m sorry. I am really busy. Why don’t you reach out to me through my manager once your team publishes their results? I have a team of doctors and scientists that I work with, and I’d like for them to speak with you before I get involved.” A part of me wanted to agree to visit her facility, but I’d been burned too many times in the past, and I guessed that this was another setup.
“Well, that is unfortunate. Perhaps you will change your mind in the next few days. We are upstate, and I can have a jet bring you in a few minutes. We even have some luxury living facilities, and several wonderful chefs, in case you wanted to spend a few nights on holiday. We will take care of everything.” She looked around the diner and smiled again. “Here is my contact info.” The beautiful woman pulled a rectangular piece of paper from inside of her jacket and held it out to me from across the table.
Our fingers made contact when I took the card, and her skin felt as nice as I thought it would. I put the thick piece of paper in my pocket without looking at it, and I could tell that my action annoyed her.
“Thanks. Now if you please. I’d prefer to be alone,” I put my head back down, and then grabbed my ramen fork.
“Of course. I hope to hear from you soon,” she whispered as she stood from the booth.
“Just get your research published and reach out to my manager. I’m sure you know his name and have his number,” I said before I slurped some of the noodles from the still-too-fucking-hot broth.
The woman turned to walk away, and I couldn’t help but gaze at her tight butt and dancer’s legs. That suit did look really great on her, and I wasn’t used to women wearing that type of clothing around me. The diner door opened, and I heard a strange whirring sound from the street.
“Whoa!” the waitress screamed and pointed at the door.
I looked up and almost shouted with the girl.
A jet pod had landed right in front of the restaurant.
They were starting to be a bit more common, but I still hadn’t seen one up close. I knew that the President flew around in one when he needed to get somewhere fast, but the sleek flying vehicles cost more than I made in a year, and the plane was still out of reach for most of the wealthy. This one was white, like the thick robe I wore before my match, and I saw the side hatch of the thing spread open as if it was turning into a bird wing.
The woman extended a long leg into the floating plane, and then she slid her perfect ass into the seat. The parts of the wing closed like an old SLR camera shutter, and then the jet lifted into the sky as easily as I would stand from the booth.
Then it was gone.
“Holy shit! Did you see that?” the waitress yelled to me, even though it was obvious that I had seen the jet pod.
“Yeah.” I tried to sound calm as I spoke, but the scene was impressive. Talk about leaving in style.
I realized that my fingers were digging into my pocket, and they fished the card out before I could actually think about what I was doing.
Zarra S. Zerne
President
Arnacript, INC.
The cardstock was thick, and I noticed that there was a magenta colored layer of paper sandwiched in between the white. Her name, title, and the company were all in a nice black font, but the address and phone number underneath were etched in the odd magenta hue. The address pointed t
o a street named after the company in Albany, New York.
“Who was that woman?” the waitress asked, but then her mouth hung open as she seemed to see me for the first time.
“I’m going to go,” I said with a sigh.
I grabbed the last hot dog off of my plate, slid out of the booth and began to walk toward the door.
“Wait, wait, are you--”
“Have a good night.” I winked to the waitress, and then pushed my way through the door.
I still had Zarra’s card squeezed between my fingertips, and I used the same hand to dig my phone out of my pocket while I finished off my hot dog. A few presses on the device summoned a car to take me to Sal’s party, and I felt a little pang of joy when I thought about handing the card to Sal. My manager was a wizard at getting information. I knew that my clever business partner would be able to get me a ridiculously detailed report of Ms. Zerne’s history, her company, and her ‘cure’ for the disease that had taken my parents from me. Sal had done this before with some of the weird stalkers, and I figured that I would know the grade Zarra had got in her high school freshman math class before we left the Big Apple in a few days.
Sometimes, it did pay to be the world champion.
Chapter 3
“Champ, I couldn’t find anything,” Sal said as he walked into my hotel bedroom without even knocking.
“What do you mean?” I’d just jumped out of the shower and finished putting on a pair of blue jeans.
“Your new girlfriend. This Zarra Zerne. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It’s like she doesn’t exist.” The short Jewish man looked more than a little angry.
“How is that possible? Where did you look?”
“Champ, I did all my usual stuff: I called my people, I called their people, I asked Chip and Dale to call their people, I hired people to call people that could fucking call people that knew other people’s people. Shit, Champ. Short of calling President Efron and asking him if he can give us someone from the FBI, I got nothing.”
“I thought you knew a bunch of Feds?” Garf shouted his question out from the living room of my penthouse suite.
“I know the Feds, the spooks, the men in black, my tribe in Mossad, I even used a fucking magic eight ball. You know what the damn thing said?”
“Ask again later!” Jax yelled from the other room.
“Ask a-fucking-gain later,” Sal spun his arms around in the air as if he was a raging windmill. “I’m gonna scream.”
“Did you try calling the phone number? What about the address?” I asked as I put on a dark purple t-shirt.
“Called the number and got a secretary. ID’d my phone; she knew my name before I said anything, and she asked if they could send a jet pod to pick you up.”
“Dude, I want to take a ride in a jet pod. Let’s go!” Jax yelled from the other room.
“You checked the building out?” I asked as I walked into the bathroom. I’d already put my toiletries in their small case, and I tossed the bag back through the doorway. It landed in my suitcase perfectly, and I did a little fist pump.
“I had people swing by and do some digging. The building is a fortress-looking thing. The corporation owns it outright. It was built ten years ago. All I have are pictures of the place from the outside.” He held up his phone, but I shook my head and grabbed the rest of my clothes from the room.
“What time does our flight leave?” I asked as I put the last of my possessions into the single suitcase.
“An hour. We’ll get there early, which is fine. The client paid for us to have a private jet to Orlando.”
“And we have interviews tonight?” I asked with a sigh. It had been two days since I won the World Championship, and I hadn’t had a chance to do more than visit the hotel gym with Calic.
“Nope, tomorrow afternoon. Calic said he had big plans for you early tomorrow morning, so we need to get settled over there. We’ve been partying for two days. Time to get back to work!” Sal rubbed his hands together with an evil smile, and I laughed.
“How fast do you think one of those jet pods could get from Albany to Orlando?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, probably less than forty minutes,” Sal said.
“Twenty-two minutes!” Garf yelled from the other room.
“Damn, this girl must be stupid hot!” Jax sang out, and Garf started laughing.
“Champ, you can’t go to this place. We’ve got to get settled in Orlando, you’ve got to train tomorrow morning, and then you’ve got the exhibition match. They want you to spend a day at each different park after that.
“She isn’t a girl, she is a woman.” Garf’s voice shifted an octave lower, and Jax started howling.
“Hey, assholes, shut up! I’m trying to work here. You are two grown ass men!” Sal took the three steps back out of my doorway and started yelling at my best friends. It was too late, however, and they were already giggling past the point of no return.
This was probably a dumb idea, but I hadn’t stopped thinking about Zarra’s offer. Perhaps some of it was a desire to see the strange and sexy woman, but I was more interested in finding out about her Alzheimer's cure. If it would only take me a few minutes to get there, and a handful more to get to Orlando, I didn’t see much risk in spending the rest of the day touring Zarra's company. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet.
I wanted her story to be true.
I didn’t care about the game. Astafar Unlimited had the best programming talent in the world backing it, and any other game company was at least ten years behind in technology. No, I just wanted to see if she was actually curing this brain disease.
I dialed her number while Sal was momentarily distracted.
“Hello, Leo,” Zarra’s voice answered after the phone rang twice. Her face appeared on the screen of my device, and I tried to convince myself that this idea was merely for educational purposes.
“Uhh, I didn’t expect you to answer.”
“Why not? You are calling my number.” She smiled and raised her left eyebrow a bit.
“My manager said that--”
“Are you still at your hotel? I will have our jet pod come to get you.”
“Yes, I was wondering if you could give me a ride back to Orlando tomorrow morning,” I felt stupid for asking.
“Of course. We would love for you to spend the night with us. I’ll have your suite ready. Will any of your entourage be joining you?” She looked off screen for a second, and then her attention returned to me.
“No, just me.” I knew Sal would just pester me the entire time; my two friends were super secret Disney fanboys, and I knew they had girlfriends waiting for them in Orlando. I thought about asking Chip or Dale to come, but the two bodyguards had been working overtime for the last two weeks, and I didn’t want to bore them with this quick trip. I doubted I would even need to spend the night. I’d probably find that the woman was lying, and then demand that she return me to this hotel immediately.
“I am excited to show you our research. If you step out to your balcony, the jet pod should arrive in eighty seconds,” Zarra said.
“Wow, that is quick,” I grabbed my suitcase off of my bed, and walked to the other side of the massive room.
“It is only a two-minute flight. I sent it as soon as you told me you were at the hotel.” She winked at me with a violet eye.
“Champ, where you going?” Sal suddenly realized that I was walking away from him.
“I am going to visit Arnacript’s labs, I’ll meet you all in Orlando tomorrow morning,” I said to Sal, and then I turned back to my phone.
“See you soon,” I said to Zarra. She nodded slightly and then my phone cut off.
“Champ, you can’t go. This is really fishy, and we need to be at--”
“I love ya Sal, just let me do this. She promised to show me something unbelievable, and I doubt that she will deliver, so then I’ll come right back. I might only be gone for an hour.”
“She’s gonna show him something un-beeee-lievable!” J
ax yelled from the other room.
“Leo, it is called a vagina, and all girls have one,” Garf said over the sound of Jax laughing.
“But, I hear that if you go to some places in Singapore, girls have both vaginas and di--” Jax choked out through a string of laughter.
“What has gotten into you two this morning?” Sal turned to yell at them, and his face turned purple.
The situation was somewhat comical outside of their teasing. Garf was half a foot shorter than me, but he weighed the same and was made almost entirely out of muscle. The Asian man had once lifted Sal into the air over his head when the much smaller man had told him that he couldn’t return the British team’s trash talk during the World Championships four years ago.
Jax was a hair taller than me, and he looked like he belonged on Hitler's Aryan genetics handbook. He lacked some of my bulk, but he was mostly legs and could run like a cheetah after he did thirty pull ups. He was currently wearing his blond hair in a long ponytail, and it made him look even more like a Viking.
“I’ve got my phone. I’ll call you if I need anything. I think the jet pod is here.”
“Ahhh, Champ, don’t leave. Come on.” Sal turned back to face me, and my two friends jumped into my room.
I opened the doors to the balcony of my suite and saw the jet pod descend from the sky above. It floated a foot above the veranda, and the side opened up like I had seen it do earlier with Zarra.
“Wow!” my three friends shouted behind me, and I carefully set my left foot into the hovering, alien-looking craft.
“I’ll call you if I need you!” I waved to them, and the three men waved back. Then I set my butt in the thick leather seat, and the multipart wing-camera-shutter door irised closed behind me.
The inside of the jet was larger than I expected. There were four seats that faced each other in pairs, but they were spaced out a little bit more than what I would have guessed a helicopter of the same size would have been. It almost felt as if I was inside of a large sedan, and the front two seats were turned around to face the back two seats.
Lion's Quest: Undefeated: A LitRPG Saga Page 4