Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

"And you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart."

"Wrong." McKenzie seemed not to notice the sarcasm.

"I'm in this for a percentage, which I intend to collect from you and the elves."

"If you're doing the brokering," Skater pointed out, "you should take your cut from them."

"I am. But I'm nicking you for another ten percent they don't know about."

"No."

"No?" The harsh laugh sounded again. "Listen, nitbrain, you don't have a lot of choices at the moment."

"I don't have to sell the files to the elves."

"I guess not. You could hang on to them and keep running till they catch you. And they will, I promise you that, because we've already negotiated a finder's fee if I have to help them. You scan?"

"We've made it this far."

"You've been lucky so far, that's all. And the trouble with luck is that it runs out. You've got the elves after you, the yakuza, Lone Star, and from what I hear, some other small time losers. Do you really want to add me to the list?"

"Maybe you're already there," Skater said.

"I was there," McKenzie promised, "I'd be pissing on your corpse right now."

"How much are the elves offering?"

"Three million nuyen."

"Bump them," Skater said. "Double it."

"Done." McKenzie sounded happy. "I don't mind taking twenty percent of six million nuyen instead of three. They may balk, but they don't really have a choice. My finder's fee would run them more than that. You might have jam enough to stay out of my people's hands for a few days more, but don't count on more than that"

Skater didn't argue.

"But for a percentage both ways," McKenzie said, "and zero sweat involved, I'm willing to be a go-between."

"Why should I believe that you could leverage the elves off me and my team once the deal goes down?"

"You shouldn't," McKenzie said. "Get your nuyen up front and start running like hell."

"Doesn't sound all that enticing."

"Do you have any options here? I was you, that's the way I'd handle it. Face it, you're in way over your heads. And the drek's just getting deeper. I'm offering you a way out."

Skater ignored the comment, trying to regain some momentum of his own in the conversation. Time was running out. "How'd you get my drop number?"

"Let that be a lesson to you," McKenzie said. "I know more about you than you think. So, do we have a deal?"

"I'll call you," Skater replied, "and let you know."

McKenzie gave a dry chuckle. "You've got cojones. I’ll give you that. And you better call me soon. Skater, or don't bother." The connection broke, becoming a steady buzz of static.

"Doesn't sound like he gives a good slot one way or the other," Wheeler commented.

"No, he doesn't." The man left Skater with a chill and a tightness in his stomach that wasn't going to go away. He felt like he was being asked to stick his head into the mouth of a dragon.

"I don't know enough of the science involved to tell if it's a design for a virus," Archangel said. "I got into the files with a couple of homegrown decode utilities I got from a chummer. I've never tried anything like this before, but he said he uses them to reconstruct scrambled files from crashed disks. By cracking the IC with a high-octane deception program that makes me act like a System Access Node and challenges the files as they follow the sleazes, they identify themselves long enough for my browser to log on and reassemble the bits and pieces I get."

Skater was hunkered down beside her, staring hard at the confusion of chemical symbols and esoteric terms that had surfaced from the files they'd taken off the elven freighter. The rest of the team ringed them. With the turn of events, sleep was no longer an option.

"Whatever it really is," Archangel said, "it's a hybrid."

Another image surfaced on the monitor, showing a stylish though modest building deep in the heart of a metropolitan area that had seen better days.

"Portland," Elvis said. "I've done some biz there. Back when the place was a boom town."

"These are the corporate headquarters of NuGene," Arch¬angel told them. "Their primary field of interest, as we've already seen, is in biomed research and development."

"What type of biotech?" Wheeler asked.

"Well," Archangel said over her shoulder, "they started out developing biomed facilities, but after 2052 turned strictly R amp;D. They haven't come out with any major commercial products yet, but basically they specialize in wetware-transplants, gene therapy, tissue tech, and regeneration. Repairing cellular damage. Mostly muscle tissue, tendons. Ultimately, they'd like to induce damaged tissue to renew itself organically." Archangel turned back to the screen. "But no one knows what they've accomplished. They've operated solely in the Tir, never gone beyond its borders."

"Until now." Skater shifted, stretching out the bruises and aches he'd collected over the last two days.

"NuGene teetered on the verge of financial collapse when the Council of Princes switched to Seattle as the Tir's primary port of call in '52." Archangel explained. "Like I said, they were the first to pioneer biomed facilities in Tir Taimgire. Up till the time Portland went bust, they were raking in the nuyen."

"I'll bet that slotted off a lot of shareholders," Trey said.

Archangel nodded. "According to newsfaxes I accessed from Portland's public databanks, the CEO decided to reinvest in his corporation rather than let it go down the tubes. As the stocks dropped in value, he spent a fortune buying them back up, hoping to prevent a takeover. For awhile, Saeder-Krupp seemed to be trying for a buyout, but gradually this guy accumulated ownership of fifty-seven percent of NuGene."

"Brave soul," Trey commented. "Fifty-seven percent of nothing, though, is the equivalent of one percent of nothing. And a drekking lot harder to afford."

"He didn't see it that way. I've read some watered-down versions of his corporate statement and mission plans. If he couldn't compete with Seattle, he'd regain what he'd lost by coming up with a product no one else could provide."

"Did he say what that was?" Wheeler asked.

"No. But he promised if for years."

"Then nobody knows if he was just blowing smoke."

"Torin Silverstaff didn't have that reputation," Archangel said.

The name rang a bell in Skater's mind. "Who?"

The elven decker repeated herself.

"Got a datapic?"

"Yes." Archangel typed in some new commands and the screen shifted to a white-haired elf at some elegant social function, 'This was taken at a ball given in Lugh Surehand's honor three years ago, a year after NuGene almost went belly up. Torin Silverstaff was a reluctant guest according to the reports I've read, but he'd never given up hope of seeing Portland reinstated as the major port city for the Tir."

Torin Silverstaff looked familiar to Skater. The features were classic elven and proud. "Any relation to Tavis Silverstaff?" He suddenly remembered the name from the interview with Perri Twyst.

"Torin was his father."

"Was?" Skater asked.

"Torin was murdered in a mugging in Portland three years ago, shortly after this pic was taken. The killer was never found."

"So his son is the heir apparent."

"Yes. There was rumor of a stipulation in the inheritance. Tavis Silverstaff has three younger sisters, and his mother is still alive. To inherit the controlling interest in NuGene, Silverstaff has to provide for all of them, including their families.”

"Was NuGene generating a profit at this point?" Trey asked.

Archangel shook her head. "It was still being bankrolled by Silverstaff's own nuyen. He never stopped believing that the Council of Princes would see the error of their ways and reinstate Portland."

"Long time to go without a payday," Duran rumbled.