“Really?” Amber said. “Because Nick and I have given you…” She looked at a sheet of paper. “Seventeen different ideas and you’ve shot every one of them down because the FDA might come down too hard on us. If that’s what you’re afraid of, you need to back down. If not…” She stood, braced her hands on the table, and met his gaze. “Then get over it. This is the last time I’m asking. Do you want to back down? You’re the one facing jail time and I gave you my word fourteen hours ago that if you wanted to call this off, I’d back you. Nick said the same. Give us an answer.”
Jacob stared at her. “No,” he said finally. “Fuck them. I won’t back down.”
“Then the time for trying to stay away from downsides is over,” she stated. “We have two objectives. The first is to keep Justin on this course of treatment without interruption, and the second is to make this treatment available to more people. Keeping the FDA from getting mad at us in the short term is not one of the objectives.”
The two partners locked gazes until he nodded.
“Now,” she said as if the prior confrontation had not occurred, “we do have an option. None of us will be particularly happy, but we do have it. We approach one of COMPANY X’s competitors and give them a deal. We leak what’s been going on with Justin, that the treatment got blacklisted by an FDA official who took a cushy position at COMPANY X, and we let their competitor swoop in and buy the rights to the treatment. They go to bat at the FDA and their lawyers take the heat. We’ll probably be blacklisted but the treatment will survive.”
Jacob and Nick—who had remained silent thus far—looked at each other. Jacob could tell the thought was as much of a gut punch to the other man as it was to him but one look showed that Amber wasn’t taking it well, either.
“We said that we got into this to help people,” she told them. “I don’t know about you, but for me? It partly meant that I wanted to be known as someone who helped people. I don’t want to have my reputation smeared, but if it’s a choice between that and this treatment not getting out…I think the choice is clear.”
He rubbed his face to try to move past the feeling that he couldn’t think anymore, having been awake too long.
The phone rang and everyone at the table jumped. He shook his head and pushed it to Amber, who sighed before she answered.
“Hello? Hello, Senator.”
The two men now straightened.
“One moment,” she said. “I’ll put you on speakerphone…there. It’s only the three of us here. Your wife is grocery shopping and DuBois went to take a shower.’
“About time,” Nick said and shuddered.
“I’m glad I caught you alone,” Tad told them. “We don’t have much time left, so here’s the deal. Our mystery donor is Anna Price of Diatek Industries. She has offered to fund the project and smooth out any FDA wrinkles by folding PIVOT into Diatek.”
The three of them fell silent.
“I assume from your silence that either the call has dropped or you feel much the same way I did,” he said. “It’s too good to be true, so there must be a catch, right?”
“Right.” Amber’s face said she knew what the catch would be.
“I’ve had my aides dig up every damned thing I can about Anna Price and Diatek,” he said. “Much of their work is sealed, unfortunately, as it’s for the Department of Defense. But with that said, she told me one story that I have fact-checked and found to be completely honest. When she and her husband were postgrads, their daughter was involved in a car accident, became comatose, and had to be taken off life support because they ran out of money. She started Diatek soon after, allegedly to make sure no other family had to go through that. A few years later, her husband killed himself. His death certificate officially says unknown causes, but we’ve dug up obituaries and news coverage from the time that make it very clear it was known to be a suicide and it was about Mina’s death.”
Jacob felt the hair stand up on his arms. All three of them stared at the phone on the table, unable to look away.
“We’ve found paper trails that, as far as we can tell—and we’re not engineers or doctors but we’ll send you what we can—suggest she’s being honest about where Diatek’s profits go,” Tad continued. “She never took it public, so she has no shareholders to answer to, and that means many details can fly under the radar. However, she doesn’t have any extra properties we can find, she doesn’t have massive investment accounts, and her C-suite team doesn’t seem to live the high life either. And…I don’t know if I have to say this, but Department of Defense contracts are lucrative. The woman should have money.”
A long pause followed before Amber blew a breath out.
“PIVOT isn’t my company,” the senator said finally, “so this isn’t my choice.”
“No, but Justin’s care is.” Jacob found a reserve of energy he hadn’t been able to access on his own account. “What is your opinion, sir?”
Tad took his time before he answered. “I want him to stay on this program,” he said finally. “I know I’m not a doctor, but I can’t see how only sleeping with no brain engagement would be better for him than this. Mary tells me he’s not only recovering, but he’s also actually…growing up. He’s making moral choices. Would I rather have him in a hospital bed, sleeping for months? No. But I don’t know how to get there. Whatever other ideas you have, I’ll let you think about them. Call me when you’ve done that.”
“Yes, sir.” Jacob ended the call and looked around at the other two. “So, what now?”
“Hmm?” DuBois entered the room. He smelled much better but his hair somehow looked exponentially worse.
Jacob decided to chalk that up to his sleep deprivation. He outlined Diatek’s offer quickly for the doctor, who took a seat and laced his hands over his stomach. He seemed deep in thought, not yet inclined to speak.
“I’m not sure we want to do this,” Nick said finally. He held a hand up to stave off argument from either of his partners. “No, listen to me. A private company that comes out of nowhere to get a ton of Department of Defense contracts?” He held his phone screen out. “Their first contract came within two years, and it was a big one. That’s absurd. They’ve basically been bankrolled by the military and intelligence ever since, and it isn’t even clear what they’re paid to do. Which…well, we know what that means.”
“We think we know what that means,” Jacob said. “The military is also working on stuff like regrowing limbs so it’s not like everything they do is bad.” He sighed. “Okay, yes, it’s probably bad.”
“Either she’s lying about the research on comatose patients or she’s telling the truth, and I don’t think we’ll do a better job of researching that than his aides did,” Amber said. “I say we start there. If we think she’s lying, there’s zero reason to trust her and we say no. That’s only my opinion. If we think she’s telling the truth, we have a judgment call to make, right? Because then, it’s a greater-good kind of thing, and I’ll be honest, I never liked those thought experiments.”
“Neither did I.” Jacob groaned again. “On the other hand, this is exactly what you were advising we do, only now, we don’t have to persuade anyone. The deal is already made.” He shook his head. “But I don’t want to answer to someone I’ve never met. I need to know this won’t be shut down and buried.”
“If we don’t work with Diatek, it will be shut down and buried,” DuBois pointed out. “We can keep moving the lab but they’ll keep finding us, and I don’t think any of us have deep enough pockets to fight the legal battle indefinitely.”
Down the hall, the door opened and the quick, light sound of Mary’s footsteps followed. When she arrived in the kitchenette, she studied their expressions with laser focus. “I wondered why you were so quiet,” she said. “Trouble?”
“Less than before,” Amber told her. With a stab of humor, she added, “Although that’s a low bar. Do you want my chair?”
“No. Sit.” The woman looked at them expectantly until they ex
plained Tad’s offer.
“What do you think?” Nick asked her. “I think he wants us to choose.”
“I think he does,” she said slowly after a moment. “He’s right that PIVOT is your company. He and I can’t choose for you. But I will say that although Tad is maybe too quick to fall on his sword when it comes to his conscience, he doesn’t like to force other people into bad decisions. What I’ve worried about for the past day is that he would sell out to the lobbyists to make this problem go away, but that’s something he would never ask anyone else to do.” She sighed. “I guess what I’m saying is that if he thought this was a real deal with the devil, he would either have rejected it outright or he would have made it himself rather than put it on your conscience. Him putting the ball in your court is his way to show that he thinks it’s a good deal.”
A surprised silence followed.
“Really?” Jacob asked finally.
“He…thinks we should team up with someone who’s helping black ops?” Nick asked skeptically.
Mary raised her shoulders. “Apparently, yes. Whoever this woman is, he believes her story.”
Everyone looked at Jacob. “Oh, I have to make the final call?”
“You’re the CEO,” Amber said, “and you’re the one out on bail right now. I’d say yes.”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. One moment.” He wandered into the other room, tore up a piece of paper, and scribbled some instructions. “All of you, color in one of these bubbles. I won’t look to see who does what, and I’ll cast my vote in there.”
They shrugged and he left them with the tiny makeshift ballots and went into the other room to think. Justin’s pod hummed in the corner and the lights flickered on the side. The monitor showed that he was in a conversation with his two party members.
Jacob remembered Mary’s expression when she came out of the pod the day before—oddly calm and confident. He remembered the hints that she and Tad had been disappointed in their son. They weren’t anymore. The senator was right. This treatment wasn’t only giving Justin a chance to return to how he had been. It was giving him a chance to try being someone new.
It was important.
He returned to his team, picked the ballots up, and scrolled through them with a smile.
“It seems we’re in agreement,” he said. He picked the phone up, dialed, and waited until he heard Tad’s voice on the other end of the line. “Senator. Yes. We’ve decided that we’d like to accept Diatek’s offer. How do we proceed from here?”
Chapter Fifty-One
Lyle had stopped arguing by the time the group circled to the witch’s hut, but his disapproval was clear. As far as Justin could tell, he didn’t trust anyone who tried to hire killers, which gave him a wonderful mental image of the dwarf operating as the world’s best and worst assassin—someone who would always get the job done, only to come back and kill his client as well.
He, however, still held out hope that one side of this argument would emerge as the reasonable one, and he’d secured promises from both his teammates not to attack the witch right off the bat.
The door to the hut still stood open as they approached, and he decided to go in first. He was the one who asked them not to attack, after all, so should take the most risk.
From the darkness, the witch surveyed them calmly. “Are the wolves dead?”
“Tell me more about what happened between you,” Justin said. “It sounds like you fought over the ruins. I’m interested as to why.”
She tilted her head to the side and folded her arms. “Are they dead, adventurer, or aren’t they?”
“Some witch you are,” Zaara said, “if you can’t tell.” She raised an eyebrow. The group had decided that, even if they went with his plan, it would be way too suspicious for all of them to behave nicely.
“I can tell the forest is not regenerating,” the witch said, “and I can smell a potion on you that I know is meant for me. However, I also felt an extraordinarily strong bolt of death magic in the ruins, and the three of you smell of that as well. What am I to make of these facts?”
Justin had the urge to tell her the absolute truth. The death magic had come from a relatively untrained sorceress who had been imbued with her powers by an all-powerful god and let loose to kill a single larger spider.
He couldn’t allow the conversation to be dragged sideways like that, but it would be worth it to see the witch’s face.
“I could ask the same thing,” he said. “I’ve heard three stories now, all different and all pointing fingers. I’ve heard the people in those ruins did nothing to anyone except take the ruins when you wanted them—and that they weren’t even ruins two months ago. I’ve heard, from yet another of the wolves, that they were bandits who crossed you and stole something of yours, only to receive a disproportionate punishment. And I’ve heard from you that they’re thieves and murderers whose very existence is causing the world to die, although you won’t explain how they became werewolves in the first place. What I want to know is—”
“So you didn’t kill them,” she interrupted. “They’re still there. Their presence still taints the forest. Their pack still hunts the villagers and their flocks. Not only that, but you also came back with the means to kill me.”
She raised a hand as casually as if she might shoo them away, but what came from her fingertips was a bolt of lightning.
Justin swung his sword up in time and the bolt of magic ricocheted off the blade to punch through the ceiling with a sizzle. He stared at her and disappointment twisted in his chest.
“You couldn’t answer a simple question,” he said, thoroughly angry now. “You know, when you tell someone to commit mass murder, it’s polite to tell them why.”
That was the signal. On the word “polite,” Zaara flicked the lid of the potion open and flung a few drops at their opponent. The woman gasped, curled her hand around her forearm where the liquid had splattered, and looked at Justin with venom in her eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. I ask questions. I don’t come in with my weapons drawn. But I’m not stupid either. Go!”
His teammates swept into motion. Lyle charged and tackled the witch into the back wall and Zaara circled behind Justin using a nearby chair to vault into the air and descend on the witch from above. Two blades, one steel and one silver, slashed and their enemy screamed. She lashed out toward the young woman and ripped her belt pouch away.
Thankfully, Zaara didn’t have the potion any longer.
Justin saw the decision form in her head, and he lunged, his blade out to catch the bolt of magic that arrowed directly toward his partner’s chest. He had no idea what it was but he did know he didn’t want it hitting any of them. When the witch crumpled in a daze, he realized it had been a stun spell of some kind.
Lyle flicked a few more drops of the potion on the woman before he threw the potion toward Justin and Zaara. Had the dwarf been the kind of person who hesitated before launching into battle, he might have been moved to pity by the sight of a lone woman swaying on the ground, defenseless.
Luckily, he wasn’t one of those people. He delivered a strong kick and followed it up with a hammer strike on the witch’s head.
“Ha!” he yelled. “You can’t shoot firebolts if ye can’t see straight, can ye?”
“The man has a point,” Justin called to Zaara. He waited for Lyle to dodge before he sliced down with his sword.
The witch, however, had somehow managed to activate some defenses. Where blunt force had partially powered through, Justin’s blade was stopped by a weakly-flickering shield half an inch above the witch’s head. She looked at him with a smile.
Fire burst from her hands where they were planted on the floor.
The house was barely standing as it was and this would bring it down within minutes. He swore and dodged a line of flames on the floor before he drove the pommel of his sword down on the witch’s head. It didn’t strike but the shield flickered and died, whi
ch was something.
Zaara danced in and one blade inflicted a long gash down the witch’s back. As she slid out of range, a death bolt like the one his mother had thrown launched to follow her. He lunged and realized too late that he didn’t need to worry about whether he stepped on the witch or not. He caught the spell with the tip of his sword and batted it away.
“Take that, worst batting average in little league!” His spare hand shook the vial over the woman’s head and the potion made contact with an unmistakable hissing sound.
“Oh, that is gross!” Zaara yelled.
Justin stumbled toward a fiery wall but took time to find a place to plant his feet. He looked back to see the witch’s form melt into something green, tentacled, and terrifying.
“Oh, good,” he said. “Medusa and Cthulhu had a baby. This is good.”
“It can still be punched!” Lyle shouted triumphantly and delivered a kick as he raced past her and managed to land it squarely in her groin. When she doubled over, he punched her in the face.
“I didn’t know that hurt for women.” Justin slashed at a tentacle that snaked toward him and followed it up with several quick swipes as others tried to circle. “Jesus, do these things ever stop growing? Zaara, does it hurt when women get kicked in the groin or is that only a man?”
“It hurts when Lyle kicks you anywhere,” she responded.
“Damned right it does,” the dwarf agreed.
“Sure.” He looked around. The smoke had begun to cloud the air and he could barely see the door. “Okay, last attack—all in.”
“Are you sure?” she called.
“Very sure. Zaara first.”
This had been part of the plan as well. The creature swayed on its feet and turned to look at her, but the woman had vanished out what was left of the doorway with Lyle at her heels.
By the time it looked for Justin, it was too late. It took the last of the potion full in the face and chest and a truly terrible scream ended in a gurgle when he ran it through with his sword. The monster’s face flickered between forms as it collapsed, and he punched out a side wall without even looking for the door.
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