by Jess C Scott
“Titanium-nano.”
Anya thought Julius might be interested in the safer form Nin spoke of. Maybe they could work together, on something?
Nin was still piecing things together, thinking of the photo he’d seen of Julius and Samuel. “You knew about the tree, before you saw Gilbreth’s parchment, didn’t you?”
Julius relaxed his shoulder muscles. He seemed to accept Nin as being intellectually on par. “My dad and I found that tree. We had our scientists transport some of the roots to our ‘playground lab’.”
At the GI, Nin thought, remembering the scientists they’d seen.
“I thought diamond dust was saints’ bones—Gilbreth has some of those in his underground vaults.”
Vaults—so there’s more than one vault, Anya thought with a shudder.
“But along the way, we discovered the roots had…anti-aging properties.” Julius turned, and held a white jar in front of Nin. timeless, read the all-lowercase label, a popular peppermint-scented anti-aging skincare product marketed by Klum Laboratories.
“Aging is the worst disease,” Julius began, talking like he had a mouth full of poison. “To watch the human body waste away…wouldn’t it be nice if the human body just expired? No illnesses, no pain…immortality, if some people wanted it—those who could afford it…”
Nin hid a smirk at Julius’s obviously shrewd business sense.
“timeless hides some of the signs of aging, to some extent,” Julius continued. “But look at your skin.”
He went up close to Nin’s face, eyeing his flawless, blemish-free complexion. “Your blood is the secret to promoting skin renewal for a smoother, firmer and ever-refined appearance.” Julius was already considering the possibility of breeding elf babies for their blood.
“Looks are not everything,” Nin answered, eye to eye with Julius.
Julius gave a hearty, unrestrained, slightly maniacal laugh.
“You could take our Elven insight,” Nin continued, on a topic Julius spent his life and work obsessing over, “or our Elven wisdom…but you want our longevity, and regenerative properties.”
Julius threw his hands up in exasperation. “People don’t want to be smart—it’s not what you think is best…it’s what people want and are willing to pay for.” He leaned back against the table, a slightly faraway look in his eyes. “People don’t want to be smart,” he repeated. “They are pleasure-seeking animals. That is the basis of why drugs sell—people want their drugs. That is the need. And Xenith supplies the demand.”
Before Nin could reply, Julius brought out his GVMT again. “Xenith will have the world at its feet with GVMT and the upgraded version of timeless—what shall I call it…timeless no. 217?”
“Xenith owns GVMT?” Nin cut in, keeping up with the lightning speed of Julius’s thoughts.
Julius gave a nod, looking like he was enjoying a light conversation over dinner. “GVMT is…my dad’s pet project. He’s passing Xenith on to me—we’re having a friendly competition…to see who can bring in more profits.”
“Entertainment and technology, versus…drugs, health, and beauty?” Nin had summed up the billion-dollar industries that made the world go round.
Julius grinned. “Xenith is one of the four pharmaceutical megacorporations left. Only three left to destroy. With GVMT, and a network line, we’d be able to get governments at our feet too. We’d be able to plant subliminal…”
“Political messages…” Nin added.
“And sponsored corporate messages…plus advertisements to brainwash people into buying things they might not really need, but that they want, at all costs…using our new infra-red nanotechnology—people wouldn’t even know it. It’s in the beta stages right now.”
Nin kept himself still, wondering about the implications, even though the elves had already been on to it.
“I’d have all this…and Leticia, my first lady, beside me.”
Nin looked up at Leticia, who smiled back sweetly.
Anya squirmed as discreetly as she could in her seat, trying to wriggle her way out of the tight ropes around her wrists and ankles.
“timeless isn’t the only product with traces of the tree root, am I right?” Nin said grimly.
Julius nodded. “Basically the same chemicals and products: just repackaged. The root is a versatile ingredient. It makes perfect sense though…that a tree which renews the earth, would work just as well for humankind.”
He turned, reaching for a stapled set of spreadsheets with colored horizontal bars. “The root’s used in all of these.” He ran a thumb down the first couple of pages, reading out some of the product names as he went along. He set the pages down, then lifted one of the vials that held Elven blood, licking his upper lip as he did so. “Who knows what else this could be used for?”
You’re sick, Anya viciously thought. She was disgusted to the point of speechlessness.
“And what does that go in?” Nin said to Julius, in a neutral tone. Aside from the elixir, Nin couldn’t fathom what else Julius had in mind.
Julius shrugged. “Nothing that a little testing won’t find out.” He liked experiments of any kind, particularly when they involved substances that were new and unknown.
“What do you list the tree root as,” Anya asked, unconcerned if Julius chose to pay no attention to her, “on the product label?”
“Hypoallergenic, no animal testing, paraben free, non-comedogenic,” Julius rattled off. “Xenith looks good in the eyes of the public. Our products are proven to work, and customers trust us.”
“All that charity stuff online…” Anya began, her voice dripping with irony. “So, did Leticia help you, with the Spanish website?”
“You just reminded me,” Julius replied, making a note on a piece of paper on the table. “I’ll have to see to that, another day…”
“You mean, the charity stuff, is real,” Anya said flatly.
“Everything is very well balanced,” Julius explained lyrically. “We can afford to be generous because profits are a sure thing.”
“You make sure of that,” Nin said, with a subtle touch of what could be called praise.
“People love their drugs,” Julius continued, unraveling some of the details that constituted the core of the company’s operations. “And we keep them satisfied. It’s already been calculated, so that there’ll always be a certain number of people kept ‘sick’ and ‘dependant’ on the drugs…then you have a market base that never depletes. You never run out of customers.”
“And this is your next step.” Nin gestured with his head, to the vials behind Julius, containing Dresan and Tavia’s blood.
Julius had a gleam in his eyes. “By selling samples of a rejuvenating elixir…along with a breakthrough ‘forever young’ drug…we’d corner the market. And be the company, at the top…Xenith would crush the other three pharmaceutical corporations. It’s survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed.”
Julius went over to the bottle of timeless, picking it up. “The Best Age-Defying Product in the Universe, by Xenith.” He held his other hand out, with an exuberant enthusiasm. He could have been holding the world in the palm of his hand. “Youth is yours, forever. Never see a wrinkle. Skin pure as a newborn baby’s. No more endless botox trips!” He rested an elbow on the tabletop, placing the bottle down again. “Think about it.”
Anya widened her eyes. “You’re obsessed.” She thought for a bit, flabbergasted that this person who qualified as pure evil, had actually been to the place she and Leticia called home, multiple times. “Why did I never see this coming, all the times that I saw you?”
“That’s why Xenith is friends with everyone,” Julius said with a razor-thin smile, and a troubling candidness in his manner. “Including the meticulous people at the XDA, formerly known as the FDA, who are responsible for approving new drugs. We’ve gained everyone’s trust.”
“And you used our friendship”—Anya gestured towards Leticia, as she spoke to Julius—“to extract Elven blood. Nic
e. Maybe you’ve been drugging Leticia all along to get her to be so enamored with you in the first place. Do you have a secret pill for that?”
“I didn’t make her fall in love with me,” Julius said, turning modestly to his side. “That was her choice entirely.”
“He’ll make a good husband. What else could a girl ask for?” Leticia sidled up to Julius, and gave him a kiss, which made Anya feel like retching. Then Leticia seemed to shoot a look at Anya—SHUT UP, I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING—Anya almost heard Leticia say.
Anya noticed a certain amount of tension, in Leticia’s facial muscles. She was going to do something Julius might not approve of. She was going to go against his control-freak authoritarianism.
“The elixir of life isn’t for you, then?” Nin resumed the conversation with Julius.
“It’s for Xenith’s customers—we pride ourselves on being the most customer-centric company in the world.” Julius looked up for a moment. “And it is still a business, at the end of the day, which means we’re focused on profit margins—mega huge profit margins.” Julius emphasized each word carefully, his eyes wild with the expectancy of the accumulated wealth. “Which is why I cannot allow you and your…titanium-nanotechnology, to become mainstream. People have to be kept on their drugs. And to be kept on their drugs, they have to be kept sick. Your titanium-nano would get in the way.”
Both Leticia and Anya made eye contact with each other. The pale, fluorescent light seemed to reveal a horror in Leticia’s face. Was Julius going to wipe the Elven race out, just so he could keep people diseased, with the human version of nanotechnology?
“It’s nothing personal,” Julius said casually to Nin. “Just business.”
Nin bowed his head for a moment. Julius seemed to only be familiar with one side of life—the side where greed was good.
Chapter 16:
“I’m already starting to feel old and tired,” Julius joked. “See this line here?”
He pointed to some fine lines across his forehead, and below his eyes.
“You work too hard, that’s why,” Leticia said softly, with a light kiss.
Julius looked into her eyes, then at her face. “You have nice skin.” He looked at Nin, then at Anya. “You have a little bit of acne…but you wouldn’t need timeless. Yet.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “Take me as I am,” she wanted to snap at Julius, but held her tongue, and showed him the finger instead, behind her back.
Anya kept her eyes fixed on Julius, as he dragged a chair to sit in front of them, because she thought it was the safer thing to do. Leticia was quietly switching the blood vials—replacing the tray with the vials of Elven blood. She lifted the trays quietly and steadily.
“What do you know of the poem?” Nin asked Julius. “What’s your interpretation?”
“It’s pretty straight-forward, isn’t it?” Julius took out a piece of paper from his pocket. “The first is of the tree with magical properties, the second part tells of an elixir that grants immortality, the third refers to…elves and humans.”
“We call it Bloodstar—the Tree of Life,” Nin said. “The tree sustains all forms of life. If you destroy it, everything on earth will be annihilated, also.”
Anya forced herself to keep her gaze on Julius, though she noticed Leticia turning around from the corner of her eye.
“That can’t be true. You and I are still alive,” Julius said, keeping his steely gaze on Nin.
Nin shifted a little in his seat.
“My dad and a team are at the tree, right now,” Julius continued. He reached for his wallet in his jeans’ pocket. He showed Nin a photo of the fig tree. “We’re more than halfway with excavating practically half of the roots. Our products are in high demand, you do understand.”
Nin kept a steady gaze on Julius, on his light gray eyes. “What you’re doing, essentially, is removing the life force of the planet.”
“We don’t intend to destroy the tree completely…” Julius said, almost benevolently. “We’ll make transplants, figure out something. After all, we’d need a steady supply of the roots.”
“Those roots hold the center of the earth,” Nin said, in earnest.
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Julius sounded dubious. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought, after all.”
Nin didn’t answer.
Julius rested the side of his head on an outstretched arm. “What about the other two?” Julius looked at the piece of paper. He had scribbled down some of what Nin had said, on the tape recording.
“Eternal life. Not necessarily only for humans…and the third…” Nin reflected on it, on not neglecting the other side of life. “It could mean several things, I think.”
“Elven and human!” Julius said, with a clap of his hands. “We both bleed the same color of blood, by the way. Interesting, no?”
Nin nodded. “Or life and death, perhaps.”
Julius shrugged. “Then it makes good sense. Whether you’re human, or Elven—if you don’t want to die, here’s the, ‘Tree of Life,’ as you call it, and the ingredients to make an elixir of everlasting life.”
Nin leaned back, with a knowing smile.
“Something you don’t approve of?” Julius inquired.
“There’s no convincing you,” said Nin. “Your single-minded world view is based on…”
“Money, yes, it’s true,” Julius finished for him, though Nin had been intending to use the word ‘greed.’ “Money is the root of all evil. Money makes the world go round. Money lasts forever. I’ve heard it all. What I know is that money buys power. And more power buys more money.”
Anya thought she saw a wave of compassion flow out from Nin, to Julius. She did a double take. She couldn’t believe that anyone could be empathetic towards someone who clearly was apathetic, and a full-fledged sociopath. That lack of empathy, coupled with corporate greed, made for a first-rate madman. Anya was willing to lay down her life to stop Julius, Xenith, and greed (if she could), if it came to such a situation.
“You. What do you care about?” Julius asked Nin.
Nin had nothing to hide, which he thought was peculiar. Perhaps he was more comfortable with his philosophical nature, when death seemed to be a real possibility. “You, me, and everybody else,” he answered simply. “I think it was a mistake for the Elven and human worlds to lose touch with each other…we do exist, as much as you do. I think both sides have things to learn from each other.”
When Julius laughed, Anya thought her blood had turned to ice. “Oh…you’re so idealistic.” He shook his head slowly at Nin, disapprovingly. “Don’t you realize that humans are never going to change? I don’t know about elves, but mankind hasn’t changed much, over the centuries. People have only become busier, not wiser. Technology advances. This”—Julius pointed to his brain—“this doesn’t.”
Nin and Julius were in the same zone, Anya realized. Intellect was the common ground amidst their extremely opposite natures. One was optimistic, the other was negative. One believed, while the other doubted. One was devilishly charming, while the other was the devil himself.
Nin gave a nod. “I know that to be a fact,” he said. “It’s in the Elven code to keep things in balance. I think humans forgot that, when the Elven and human races decided not to live side-by-side, anymore.”
Julius shook his head again, then stood up. “You’re wasting your time, caring.”
“The love you take is equal to the love you make.” Nin just lifted an eyebrow slightly. He didn’t want Julius to mistake a smile as cockiness.
Julius gave a half-laugh, and shrugged. He looked upon Nin, with a touch of pity. In his view, Nin was fighting a lost cause.
“We have to go,” Leticia said to Julius, handing him a set of keys.
“Where to?” Anya asked. She looked at Leticia, and almost saw right through her. For a moment, Anya wasn’t sure of anything or anyone.
“The...tree of life,” Julius said tentatively, like the words didn’t sit wel
l in his mouth. They tasted too simple for his mind. “I’m out of tree roots. I’m heading there to get a bunch, then I’ll get back here to make a range of samples to test out.” He stood up, and stretched his arms out in front of him. “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”
“Why does she have to go with you?” Anya gestured towards Leticia. They’d heard from some of Julius’s exes that he had a possessive streak. Anya was sure none of them knew he’d go this far, in his pursuit of what he called success.
“Because I wouldn’t trust leaving her here! I’d have a bodacious babe for company too.” He gave Leticia a hug, as he picked up the square blue box of vials which he presumed contained the vials of Elven blood. “Traveling alone is boring.” He faced Nin. “How do you travel? By magic?”
Nin cocked his head. “I guess so.” He hoped Julius didn’t know about The Velvet Underground.
“Magic buses and castles in the sky…” Julius recited what sounded like a nursery rhyme, before throwing a hand up in the air, like he was scattering a handful of pixie dust.
“How’re you getting there?” asked Nin. “Jet plane?”
Julius nodded. “Halo Intersceptor.”
The Halo Intersceptor was an interchangeable vehicle—a super car, personal jet, and a great sea boat. It was a stunning icon of extreme sports, fun leisure, and business travel.
Julius twirled the set of keys Leticia had handed to him. “Jet plane and a jeep, all in one. I’ll be there before sunrise.”
“Why am I still here?” Anya asked.
“I need to keep you alive,” Julius answered unperturbedly. “To test a PTSD-drug—you know what that stands for, don’t you?”
“Post traumatic stress order,” Anya mouthed the words out clearly, defiantly. “I’m not brainless.”
“Ah, but not resistant to drugs…” Julius said, almost lost in his own thoughts. He looked at Anya, then gestured with his eyes to the Elven trio. “You’ll be watching them die, slowly. After that traumatic event, I’d like to see how you take to one of our new products.”