The Blueprint (The Upgrade Book 1) (5 page)

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of paperwork, biometric scans and catching up on her team’s research.

Rachel’s team consisted of six scientists and their main and only priority was project AL-3.1. As the name suggested, it was a third incarnation of the device and so far the most promising. They had been working on this model for almost a year and, as her new boss pointed out, were inching ever closer to human trials. Their progress has been meticulously documented, and the first thing Rachel would have to do was familiarize herself with the work that had been done and the problems that still lay ahead.

At eight in the evening Rachel felt that her brain was refusing to take in any more new information. She felt exhausted. She called for the company car, and allowed herself to sink back into the soft leather of the back seat and relax. The driver, the same cheerless man who picked her up in the morning, was quiet and, as she was sitting in a barely moving traffic, Rachel found herself thinking about what her husband said back at the restaurant in Fort Lauderdale few days ago.

Jason, of course, was right. Life did change for the worse in the last few years. They were still kids when the process had begun. Slow at first, as the world recovered after the biggest economic contraction since the Great Depression. For some time the life even seemed to get better, but those who paid attention knew better.

The signs were there. There would be an article, written by a renowned venture capitalist, which would call the existence of middle class a “post world war two fluke.” There would be a study, completed by an economics professor, calling the ever-widening social gap “the biggest problem of this century.” Before long, she didn’t need to read a fancy paper to know the world was going to a dark place; all she needed to do was to look outside of her window. She was lucky, that she still had a window to look out of.

A serious fit of cough interrupted Rachel’s thoughts.

“Are you okay, miss?” The cheerless driver looked back but no real concern registered in his voice.

“I’m fine, thank you.” That came out hoarsely. Her chest felt heavy, and there was a dull ache that somehow radiated through her shoulders. She clearly wasn’t taking the change in climate very well, but as far as she was concerned it was a small price to pay for the opportunity she got. Rachel took a few deep breaths and the pain finally seemed to go away. She made a mental note to make an appointment for a check-up. The last thing she needed right now was to go down with pneumonia.

Jeremy Sykes parked in the underground garage of his building and turned off the ignition.
What a crappy day,
he thought.
The series of un-freaking-fortunate events.
He impatiently waited as his two bodyguards got out of the car and scanned the area. Once he got the “all clear” he got out as well, locked the Mercedes, and started walking toward the elevator. The two guards flanked him on either side, matching his stride. They squeezed into the elevator, and Jeremy stretched his hand to press the button, but stopped in his tracks. He’d been in this line of work far too long to know when something was off.

“Something wrong, boss?” Said one of his guards, placing his hand on a firearm.

Jeremy didn’t answer. He drew his own gun, a compact SIG Sauer P229, and cautiously stepped out of the elevator. In his back pocket his cell phone vibrated as it received a text message, sending a jolt through Jeremy’s already tense body, but it wasn’t time to check messages.

“Back to the car,” he commanded the guards in a hoarse whisper, somehow sensing that it would be the safest course of action. The parking lot was dim, and the light from the still open elevator was making them a perfect target. He felt that whoever was lurking in this garage was far more dangerous than some opportunistic mugger. Jeremy needed a cover.

The sounds came unexpectedly from behind and before he knew what they meant Jeremy was in action. His training was taking over, commanding his body into a series of well-rehearsed moves. He dropped onto the cold concrete and rolled, squeezing two shots in the direction from where the sounds had come. Once on the ground, he continued to roll until he was under the cover of a huge front wheel of a red pickup truck. He froze on his stomach, pistol at the ready, straining his ears for any sounds. The underground garage was eerily quiet. From his cover Jeremy could see two pairs of feet lying at an awkward angle.

Shit.

This was quickly turning out to be an ugly situation. With both guards dead, he only had a few seconds before his temporary cover would become a deathtrap. He risked a quick peek around the wheel trying to see if anyone was approaching.

One bullet struck the tire and another hit the side of the car, missing his shoulder by a quarter of an inch.

“What do you want?” he yelled, crawling backward as quickly as he could as he tried to put some distance between himself and the invisible shooter. No answer came, and as Jeremy’s feet touched the rear wheel of the pick-up truck, he decided to make a run for it. He rolled out from underneath the car and sprinted to his Mercedes, keeping his head low.

One bullet hit his calf, grazing the bone and breaking his stride, and another struck him in the back, right under his left shoulder blade. The reinforced body armor implant stopped the bullet, but the brute force of the impact lifted Jeremy off the ground and slammed him face-first against the front of his Mercedes. Ignoring the pain, he turned around, the barrel of his gun swaying left and right, looking for a target, but the garage was quiet again.

“C’mon, don’t be shy. We can talk, you and I,” Jeremy yelled in frustration, this time not hoping for an answer. He thought he saw some movement with the corner of his left eye and emptied the entire magazine in that direction. He dropped the spent cartridge, and with an ease of a man who’s done it many times, clicked the other one in.

Another bullet came out of nowhere and hit him in the right shoulder, sending Jeremy tumbling over the hood of the Mercedes and knocking the gun out of his hand. Like before, his armor implant stopped the slug, but that didn’t help with the sting. He forced himself to turn on his back and squinted through the pain. He saw a tall dark-haired man casually strolling toward him. Jeremy tried to get up, but the man covered the remaining distance and, without breaking his stride, kicked Sykes in the throbbing shoulder. Jeremy found himself on his back again, reeling in agony.

The man squatted next to him looking him up and down. A silenced handgun was now tucked into a holster under the man’s arm.

“Cocky,” managed Jeremy though gritted teeth.

“Rough day, huh? Sorry, buddy,” Said the man and flashed a row of perfect teeth in a smile that Jeremy didn’t like one bit. With a quick practiced move, the man brought a fist to Jeremy’s face.

•     •     •

When Rachel finally got home, she found Max and Jason in the living room drinking Macallan and talking in hushed tones. When she walked in, both stopped and looked up at her with guilty expressions.

“Why do you look like kids caught stealing candies?”

“How was your first day?” Jason stood and helped her out of her coat. “Is it what you expected?”

“Yes and then some. I wish I could tell you what I’m working on, but I can’t. I asked you a question first.”

“Max dug up some disturbing information.”

“Well.” Max shifted on the couch uncomfortably. “I didn’t actually find something tangible, and that troubles me more than anything else.”

“Spit it out, Max.”

“Alright. I think you were attacked by the men who work for GA.”

“GA as in General Armament? This is ludicrous.
The
General Armaments Corporation hired people to kill us? Why?”

“Not both of you. Just you, Rach. As I said, I can’t prove it to you, but I think GA is trying to wipe out the competition.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

The idea seemed so preposterous that for a moment Rachel thought it was a joke. A bad joke that Max and Jason cooked up to lighten her mood, but looking at their gloom faces without any trace of humor she realized that they weren’t joking. Until now she couldn’t think of the incident on the highway in real terms. Her mind involuntarily cycled through dozens of plausible explanations that didn’t involve her or Jason. After all, it
couldn’t have been her
they were shooting at, but now, hearing Max saying the words somehow made what had happened on the bridge real.

“Holy shit.” She said. “You’re not joking.”

She never thought of herself as a brave woman, but she never was afraid of anything either. She was, of course, aware of everyday dangers. After all people got hit by cars, mugged, and murdered every day, but this was different. Corporations waging war on one another was something she read about in papers. This was something completely out of her control. For the first time in her life Rachel felt scared. Scared and tired.

No, not tired. Exhausted.

For the longest time she’d been running so hard to get what she wanted, to be where she wanted.

She never took Jason’s money for granted. A lot of people in her situation would settle for a quiet and comfortable life with a wealthy husband, but that wasn’t her.

A native Floridian, after graduating from Florida State on top of her class, she went on to have a career that wasn’t built on connections, but her incredible intellect and even more incredible determination. There wasn’t a person in her lab, nor at any job that she’d ever had, who worked half as hard as she did. Getting hired by a company like Asclepius was harder than winning a lottery.

She deserved this lucky ticket, but it seemed that somebody forgot to inform her that this lucky ticket was troubled. It was so troubled in fact it could have been radioactive. General Armaments, once a dominant player in cutting-edge weapons, was facing stiff competition from the one-time peaceful pharmaceutical giant Guardian Manufacturing.

Guardian joined the weapons race later than many, but drawing on its almost limitless resources it quickly became the dominant player in the field, but companies like GA and others like them still fought on. Sometimes with mergers and acquisitions. Sometimes with bribes.

Sometimes with murder.

The implications that she was being targeted by somebody like GA were sinking in and making her dizzy, but now Rachel realized that something else was happening as well. She could see Max’s lips moving as he was telling her something else. She saw Jason watching her in concern.

The world was slowing down. She coughed into her hand. Bright specks of different colors appeared in her vision. Rachel thought they were pretty.

She coughed into her hand again and somehow it made her hand wet. Jason was saying something now as well. She thought that he was handsome, even though he gained some weight and still wore his hair much longer than she’d prefer.

Everything went black.

The view always helped him think. The snow was flying past the huge floor-to-ceiling windows in long white sheets. Alexander could see it accumulate on the steep elegant slopes of the green roof of the Sherry Netherland Hotel across the street, then slowly roll down and plunge into the dark void of the night only to be picked up by the wind and whisked somewhere in the direction of Central Park.

It was past ten at night but the headquarters of Guardian Manufacturing were bustling with life. The cubicles of the main floor looked like a disturbed beehive, filled with sounds of urgent conversations, ringing telephones, and buzzing printers spitting out paper covered with numbers and diagrams.

The only island of calmness was his corner office, protected from the chaos by thick soundproof doors. The job was done, after six months and eight billion dollars all he had to do was wait for the stock market to open tomorrow morning and the biggest hostile takeover of the year would be complete.

The buzzing office was just double and triple checking their work, making sure that there were no land mines that could spoil the deal at the last second, but Alexander knew the deal was flawless. He was still in the office for a different reason. Alexander was waiting for a phone call and when his intercom came to life he asked the secretary to put the caller through without asking who it was.

He took a last look at the scene outside of his office window, then slowly sat in a leather chair in front of a massive mahogany desk.

Moments like these were the only things that excited him in life. He felt like a wolf, that had been running down his prey for a long time and finally it was in front of him wounded and vulnerable, panting. Defiant, but completely helpless; waiting for the death blow. He slowly picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Engel.” The voice on the other side was surprisingly level, matter-of-fact. It didn’t have the overtones of desperation nor fear that Alexander had heard many times throughout his life. “I’m sure you know who I am, so I won’t waste your time introducing myself.”

“If you’re calling me to tell me a story about your son and that you see the company as his legacy it won’t change my mind. This is just business,” said Alexander.

The line went silent for a few moments, and when the person finally answered, his voice sounded strained, as if he was trying to contain his anger.

“I know your reputation, Mr. Engel, and I’m perfectly aware that my dead son won’t change anything. What I would like to propose is a business deal. You save eight billion dollars and still get 40% of my company. First—”

“I am not interested,” Alexander interrupted the speaker, “in 40% of your company. Nor am I interested in saving money. As I said, it’s not personal. This is just business, and as of tomorrow I’ll control your company in its entirety. The board will be forced out, but I’ll allow you to resign as the company’s CEO with a nice compensation package.”

The line went quiet again, this time for a long time, and when the person spoke again he sounded as if he was deep in thought.

“And the workforce? I have almost twenty thousand employees.”