Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

"Done."

"Elvis, is that a trideo I see in that back office?"

The troll looked, then nodded.

"Scan headline news and see if we're anywhere near the top of the hit parade. Faces, names, or SINs."

"You got it." The troll lumbered off.

"Duran, security's yours until Wheeler brings the systems on-line."

"Right." The ork slipped back out into the alley and closed the door behind him without making a sound.

"Good news already," Trey reported from the other end of the office. "Place has fairly spacious washroom. No shower, but we can clean up a bit when there's time."

"We'll make time," Skater replied. Feeling clean meant feeling confident. He wasn't going to forego that easily accomplished weapon in his arsenal. "We'll go in shifts." He walked to the front windows and avoided skylining himself for anyone outside the building to see.

The street was mostly empty, and dark. None of the street lights worked, and there were none of the beautiful spires for which elven architecture had become famous. Along two of the thoroughfares he could see, there were huge cans of fire with transients gathered around them. It was the same kind of gutter scene you'd find in any of the darker comers of the sprawl. Skater figured that those pockets of humanity were the common denominator beyond all racial, political, or religious fervor. The problem was, that that common denominator stayed hungry, and compassion had generally been leeched out of them.

As he looked out over the unfamiliar city and recognized some of the familiar riffs, he had to admit he'd never been more afraid in his life. He'd led the team here, and he'd endangered them. And now he didn't have a clue how to get them back out again.

Archangel had most of the files she'd stolen from NuGene deciphered less than two hours later. She'd had to run a sample of them by a chummer in Seattle who specialized in biomed datasteals, and he'd given her a utility designed to get through the file encryption and archiving. It also had a special UnZip utility on it that she hadn't seen before. She'd handled that on her own.

When all that was done and the file open to them, the laborious reading gave Skater a headache.

"This could be worth millions," Archangel said, looking at the information. "Provided the research is on the money."

The files contained reports and documentation concerning new organic tissue implants that would end the need for immuno-suppressive drugs that caused almost as many problems for transplant patients as they solved. Skater didn't understand it all, but the gist was that NuGene had discovered a means of over-writing the DNA in the patient and in vat-grown donor tissue to create a hybrid that allowed the co-existence of both systems.

Usually, a transplant patient lived the rest of his or her life with some sort of immuno-suppressive drug, such as cyclosporine that prevented the granulocytes within the patient's body from attacking the new organs or tissues and in effect cannibalizing itself. However, that lowering of the body's defenses often resulted in reactions that could be just as life-threatening in the long run.

NuGene's new tissue was independently and singularly DNA-encoded to be absorbed by the host body. It wasn't a simple process, because the body's natural response to reject the new organic material as invasive wasn't easy to mute. The new organic material was recognized as antigens, and the granulocytes ingested it and killed it. But the research, including a bout of radiology to reorganize the tissue DNA, allowed the T-lymphocytes to rewrite the tissue as acceptable through phagocytization, altering the destruction of the new material to one of accepting.

"Okay." Skater said, looking at the material, "say a shadow team has this biotech in their hands. Why haven't they sold it to someone else?"

"No reason not to." Elvis said. "I'd have done it and gotten the hell out of there."

"Yeah, but this wasn't a simple run," Skater said. "We were set up to take the fall on this. It means there was a specific target in mind before the run. If NuGene can actually produce this new tissue, what's it going to mean for them in profits?" "Through the fragging roof," Archangel said.

"Right. But what if these runners simply sold it to another corp?"

"Simple math," Duran said. "The profits get divided even if NuGene and the other corp don't try to cutthroat each other by lowering the prices."

Skater grinned to himself, feeling it now, knowing he was somewhere close to the target zone. "Right. If this was a simple shadowrun, the runners would have already fenced the files and pocketed whatever they could make on them, but the person behind this is in it for more than just the onetime score."

"How?" Duran asked.

Archangel paused at her deck and looked up at him, a puzzled look on her face.

"We agree that a corp's profits go down if it can’t control the output of its product, right?"

Archangel and Duran agreed.

"Where are a corporation's profits shown? What are they put back into?"

"The company," Duran answered.

'The stocks." Archangel said.

Skater could tell by the look on her face that she'd followed him. "Dividends, yeah. Big money if this tissue replacement tech is really wiz."

"But it wouldn't make sense for one of the shareholders to arrange something like this," Archangel said. "The profits were already theirs."

"What if news leaked out that NuGene just lost its little gold mine?" Skater asked. "How about this scenario: everyone who's been holding onto their shares for sentimental reasons or because they like backing a dark horse decides to dump them on the market. Whoever has arranged to steal the files, or even only give the impression that they've been stolen-which is a wiz little curve in the scheme of things all by itself-can then go and buy up the stock at cheap prices, then return the files to NuGene and watch the returns go through the roof."

"Frag, kid, do you know how risky that would be?" Duran asked.

"For the profit potential we're talking about, do you think anyone in a position to do this would think more than twice?

We hit the Sapphire Seahawk hoping the tip would pan Whoever did this would have a lock."

"But we can always fade the heat," Duran said. "If they own the stock, their name is going to be written down somewhere in black and white."

"You have to know to look for them first. If you play for high stakes, you've got to be willing to stick your neck out. And remember, most of the time they've had our necks stuck out there."

A silence followed, and Skater knew they were thinking it over. Now that he'd said it out loud and fought for it, he felt more secure about it. The stolen files hadn't been about a simple datasteal; it had been a vicious and nasty play, thought out from the very first.

"At this point," Skater said, "everything NuGene's done so far indicates they thought we stole their tech. So now they think they're behind in the game and that someone sold them up the river. They might decide to rush their new discovery onto the market. To do that they're going to have to raise some capital."

"New stocks," Archangel said.

"Maybe." Skater stopped packing and looked at her. "We'll need to check that out."

She nodded. "Telecom's ready when you are."

He crossed the room and used it, accessing one of Kestrel's drops. Archangel was already working her deck with a vengeance. After Skater left a message for Kestrel to call him here at The Chipped Pachyderm, he walked into the office with Elvis. The troll had been waving to him.

The office showed an old pride. Documents and holopics lined the walls, as well as downloaded newsfaxes concerning deals the firm had made in the past. Most of them were more than five years old. The seat behind the desk was worn and comfortable, even though it was too small for the troll, who was perched on the edge of the desk.