Chương 132: 131. The Most Valuable Discovery

Haider just offered bad news.

"Oh, I know that expression," Kelly said. Her voice was dry, almost calm. She leaned back, crossing her arms.

"You're about to destroy our moods with day-ruining news. You'll use the dullest tone possible and you'll have that suspiciously satisfied look on your face the whole time. Like you're announcing a funeral for your enemies."

"You know me well, Kelly," Dr. Haider replied, his voice flat. He turned to address the others.

"There will be no change to the east grid operation. If extradimensional portal tech does arrive, GeneCorp will ally with any necessary parties, government or otherwise, to retrieve it. In fact, given the foreknowledge, I suspect they will spearhead the operation." Kelly didn't sigh. Sighing was for people who thought corporate greed was a surprise. She just noted the information, mentally storing it under 'Inevitabilities.' But Manuel, she noticed, did not take it well. His reaction drew her in like a storm.

Manuel's eyes widened. Pure, unfiltered fury—the first time Kelly had ever seen him lose his cool.

"After she gave them proof of it taking out half of the city? Millions will die! And they're just—what? —going to let it happen!"

"Manuel, I understand how you feel, but—""I'll quit." Manuel's enhanced voice shook the room. The air vibrated. A few people dropped equipment. Kelly felt her already reinforced organs shift softly, a uncomfortable internal lurch like a car accelerating too fast and hitting a hard corner. It was just his voice. His heavily augmented, weaponized voice.

"I swear to God, I'll stop them myself." Kelly watched the color drain from Haider's face, which was interesting because she'd assumed his face had already drained of most things. Manuel had just announced he was quitting, which meant he was also announcing he was about to do something monumentally stupid. Silence stretched. Kelly's eyes didn't leave Manuel. Heat poured off Manuel's arms. His palms and forearms glowed with a soft, persistent light.

Something inside his chest clicked and whirred, the sound of machinery trying to hold something down. Deep in his chest, the sound built—a mechanical grinding, something straining against its own housing. Rage had a distinct sound on Manuel. It sounded like a thing trying very hard not to become something else. Stop them himself? Kelly raised an eyebrow.

Unless Manuel had enough directed-energy weapons hidden on him to host a music festival, unless he'd stuffed orbital cannons or quantum artillery into his jacket, his odds of stopping those monsters were roughly somewhere beneath absolute zero. He had as much chance as a houseplant in orbit. Less, actually. At least a houseplant could spin out into the void. Manuel would just be a red smear on the sidewalk, and red smears were bad decor.

Kelly had seen enhanced soldiers before—people whose entire bodies had been rebuilt into weapons. But she'd never seen one reach the point where his own body was becoming a problem he had to manage. Manuel's rage wasn't directed at anyone in the room. It was directed at the fact that the room existed at all, that decisions were being made, that people were going to die, and he was supposed to just accept that because someone higher up had signed paperwork. The declaration hung in the air, bold and stupid.

Kelly kept her face neutral. She appreciated the spirit, but spirit didn't stop demigods. Telling him he'd get himself killed wouldn't help. It was also probably true, and truth in the wrong hands, was often useless.

"Believe me," Dr. Haider said. His voice was calm, a professional dam holding back pressure, but you could hear it in the seams.

"I fully share your frustration. However, I do not have the luxury to act on it, and neither do you. The order comes straight from the Secretary of Defence, as well as the Federal Executive himself, and will likely be echoed by Gideon, Lucian, and the others. Of course any other party that catches wind of any potential to acquire portal technology will join. It has been the goal for weeks, ever since the portals first appeared."

Stacy's grip on the wolf cub tightened until it made a noise like a small furry complaint.

"The Fed? The actual president? Why would he—" She stopped, reconsidering the logistics of that sentence.

"That's... wild. It's basically a rumour with nothing behind it. Would he really get involved? Him and the other big guys?" Kelly watched the cub gnaw on Stacy's sleeve. The thing was going to shred that jacket. Dr Haider settled into a sigh that suggested he'd already explained this to people who weren't listening.

"They're afraid," Dr. Haider said, his face tired.

"A lack of collaboration creates a gap. A gap is an invitation. Someone else fills it—a foreign rival, a domestic agent. Collaboration lets you control the outcome. Or at least monitor it while it happens." Dr Haider rubbed his temples as though the gesture might reorganize his thoughts into something less exhausting.

"Ren, The Fed, and Venus… they don't want to invite retaliation from Gideon by moving without him." He sighed, the sound heavy in the cavernous space of the assembling lab.

"Venus is anticipating turbulence. Especially if we achieve what you claim today. A collection of a thousand magic code—" Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

"Runes," Kelly corrected, her voice flat. She snapped her fingers, and a brief, tiny localized gravity spike that none felt, made a loose bolt roll in a perfect circle on the floor before stopping. The cub's ears perked up.

"—beyond the few currently in global circulation," Dr. Haider finished, gesturing vaguely at the structured chaos around them. Technicians bolted plating to reinforced shelves.

"It changes the board." He gestured at the lab assembling itself around them like furniture gradually accepting its purpose.

"Genecorp has a much higher stake," he continued.

"Fifty percent. More than double Gideon's claim. Venus believes another direct conflict with a major power would cost us more than a fine and a silenced burial for the incident. Especially once our other major partner is revealed to be Gideon's direct competitor. Having all of us on the board, having Venus in the room, gives The Fed a sense of control. But." Dr. Haider paused, looking at each of them.

"If we destabilize the markets too much, if we give too much power to his enemies, we may convince the master to get down from his mountain and wipe the board clean. Again. It'll be another Manhattan Protocol." Kelly's mind supplied the data. The Manhattan Protocol was a rumor executives told each other in secure vaults. A historic incident where the leading execs from nearly every major corp, along with their families, were erased. Much more than killed. Executed.

Then every backup, every spare synth-body, every incubating clone from their subscription immortality services was traced and burned out of its Manhattan facility vat. Permanent death. A warning carved into the bedrock of the industry. It was publicly blamed on the Artificial Alliance, painting them as the big bad terrorists of industry. Dr. Haider's statement heavily implied a different history. Maybe the scary AI overlords didn't kill Vaughn's competition. Maybe the competition was just removed.

"What's happenning today isn't conflict at all." Stacy pointed out, the cub gnawing at her collar.

"Everyone gains from it. Can't he just buy a bigger stake?" Suzan pointed out.

"Can't Venus talk her dad out of this? I mean, twenty percent's not bad?"

"Apparently it is bad. Worse than we thought," Dr. Haider said.

"Venus tried. We called Ren. Nothing changed his mind." He shifted his weight.

"They cracked the smaller cubes in Cuba and Tanzania an hour ago. They were just amplifiers. Receivers. Terraforming at a smaller scale." He tapped a display, pulling up a planetary map with faint, pulsating markers.

"The belief is that the cube in the East Grid… it's different. It's theorized to be a central hub. A nexus for all the lesser cubes on the planet."

"So everything else feeds into it," Kelly surmized, curious. Dr Haider simply nodded. Dr. Joe Haider sighed.

"It would have been a different story if we had something more valuable to offer. Since we do not have something more valuable than what—if Kelly's intel is accurate—will be the only magical power source on the globe, we will be allowed to leave with only our share." He met each person's gaze.

"There will be aggressive takeover attempts. Aggressive buyout 'offers.' It is fortunate that we have Venus. Her father has ignored us thus far. But if Kelly succeeds and we have something he wants, Gideon will, hopefully, view Venus's partnership as an extension of his ownership, and consider all of us, one of his." Kelly finally understood. She saw in that instant why Venus had been made a partner. She suspected Dr. Haider had arranged it as a form of insurance against the big bad 'G' man in the sky. Dr.

Joe Haider looked at each of them, his expression flat.

"Now that you're all informed, if any of you get a stupid urge to play hero and interfere with the operation in the East Grid today, that's a declaration of war. Don't expect protection." Dr. Haider straightened his cufflinks with the care of a man who'd learned that small gestures of composure were cheaper than bodyguards.

"Heroism," he said, glancing at Manuel with the mild interest one might reserve for a houseplant that had started whispering, "is a luxury item. We don't stock it here. And we certainly won't be extending credit to anyone foolish enough to try playing the part today." He checked the expensive relic on his wrist; his watch—not because he was busy, but because the gesture itself was a form of punctuation.

"The east grid operation proceeds. Anyone with ideas about stopping it should understand that we'll respond with the same enthusiasm you'd show a fire in your home. We'll put it out. Thoroughly." Manuel's jaw tightened. Haider noticed. He usually did. Manuel closed his eyes, breathing in the recycled air of a room that smelled like ambition and poor ventilation.

"This can't keep happening, Joe. It has to stop."

"It will, but not today," Haider said, the word emerging like a prescription he'd already written out a hundred times.

"We're building something. We will fix everything. Change it all. You just have to wait while we build it."

"You've been saying that for years," he pointed out.

"And I may say that for more years if it prevents another Manhatten." Kelly leaned against a lab console.

"Huh? What's Manhattan got to do with this?" Kelly asked, her voice carrying the particular frustration of someone who'd spent months listening to rumors that tasted true but refused to crystallize into facts. She'd heard the stories. Wild whispers, conspiracy rants from drunks in sealed internet bars. She wanted to hear it from a mouth that wasn't hidden behind a thousand miles and a screen.

"Exactly what and who you think," Dr Joe replied dryly, checking a message on his palm as the last element of the lab was finally set in place.

"Kelly, let's begin with the crystal experiments. You'll transfer the details of the 'Runes' you've stored into that machine." He gestured to a senior technician who had been hovering near a diagnostic panel.

"Karl here will guide you." The senior technician, Karl, stepped forward. He was nervous, but his jaw was set. A name badge was clipped to his coat. It probably listed a doctorate and his favorite brand of shoes. Kelly didn't read it.

"At least he stopped using that awful name," she said, to no one in particular. Karl guided Kelly to a machine that looked like a cross between an MRI scanner and a diamond-tipped drill press.

"Neural interface is on the left, that plug there. The system is set for a data-dump. Whenever your ready." Kelly connected nuerally to the machine that looked like a cross between an MRI scanner and a diamond-tipped drill press—a process that felt like inviting someone into her skull for coffee—and began uploading runes in clusters, watching them flow into the thing like water finding cracks.