Ariadne stiffened, and then started to tremble. "Yes," she said in a faltering voice, the tears welling up, "We told him I was sterile and that was why we were looking for a surrogate mother. We never intended for him to know, but he's a clever man, cleverer than we thought. He found out somehow.”
"Did he threaten you with what he'd found out?"
"No." Tears streamed down Ariadne's face. "But with me being human, we couldn't take the chance of conceiving a child of our own. The chances are fifty-fifty that it would have been born human, and then everyone would know Tavis had married outside the elves."
"And that would destroy him in the Tir," Archangel said.
Ariadne nodded. "Elves aren't the most tolerant of races." She wiped at her eyes. "After I had the cosmetic surgeries, I emigrated into the elflands hoping to find a better life. I found it wasn't that much different really. There were castles and princes, but none of them were mine. But I did find Tavis, and we love each other so. When he asked me to marry him, I told him the truth, but it didn't make any difference to him."
"But it does now," Duran said.
"Not to Tavis," Ariadne answered. "But we married when he thought his father was going to see NuGene through the hard times. With his death, all that responsibility fell to Tavis. I don't know how much longer either of us can handle the pressure.”
"You had no problem taking the baby." Skater looked at her, wanting a full read on her answer.
"We were told the mother needed the money and had no interest in keeping the child. We knew we could give the baby a lot of love and a good home."
Skater crossed the room to Archangel and her deck. "McKenzie might not be blackmailing your husband outright, but he sure as drek is running him up the river. We stole the files from the freighter, but they were already trashed."
"Then how did they show up in Seattle?" Ariadne's brow furrowed. "Those are the same files we downloaded into our mainframes at ReGEN."
"My guess is that McKenzie had someone working for him aboard the freighter," Skater said. "He had them load the corrupted files into the ship's system, while the actual files came across on another ship. One that McKenzie controlled. The switch was made sometime before the download could be processed."
"You're talking about a conspiracy within NuGene."
"At the very least," Skater agreed. "What you don't know is mat the tip I got on the freighter came from the baby's mother before she was killed. She heard a man named Synclair Tone talking about it-a man also on McKenzie's payroll-but it was all a setup. They intended for her to hear. They also tipped the yakuza that night, probably through a third party, so that everything that happened on the Sapphire Seahawk would be even more confusing. Covering up McKenzie all nice and pretty."
"But why would he do that?" Ariadne asked.
Skater pointed to the display as Archangel booted up the files she had waiting. "These are the figures for the ReGEN stock as they went on sale." He tapped the columns. "On the surface, it looks as though a lot of buyers are picking up the stock."
Ariadne glanced at the spinning digital numbers, her rapt attention showing she knew enough of the inner workings of NuGene's finances to understand what she was seeing. "The stocks were selling much more quickly than we'd imagined. Until the media coverage broke."
"Now we begin to break it down," Skater said. "We set up a controlled buy on the stocks, knowing that once NuGene brought the new tech to the market, it would probably go through the roof."
On the screen, a portion of the stocks slid in one direction, then renamed themselves Wayfarer, the gathering place for all stocks purchased through Lofwyr's Ocean Tiller Exports in Seattle. The corporation specialized in exotic trans-Pacific shipping and overseas investments in textile and food futures.
"Ultimately, these stocks became ours, under different holding names and fronts," Skater said.
Ariadne shook her head slowly as she watched the screen. "But how?"
"We brought in a backer," Skater said. "Someone with really deep pockets and an interest already developed in NuGene."
"Who?" Ariadne's tone became defensive and demanding.
"I'm not at liberty to say." Skater pointed to the display. "As you can see, we're currently holding about nineteen percent of ReGEN, even after the stock shutdown. Our representatives are still buying outstanding shares. But we've definitely got competition."
The screen shimmered again. The name McKenzie formed, then shares started flocking toward it like lemmings going over a cliff.
"McKenzie has been buying ReGEN stock since day one," Skater said as the screen continued to show stock certificates flowing into McKenzie's name. "As of the last hour, he controls thirty-nine percent of ReGEN. And he's gotten it cheap."
"I recognize some of those buyers' names," Ariadne said. "But I don't understand."
Skater turned to face her. "NuGene had to put this deal together. The company's survival depended on it. McKenzie cut himself in for a piece by agreeing to help set it up, but he got greedy. He staged the raid on the biotech files so your husband would have to rush into production to protect the research.”
"He could have sold it to someone else if he had it," Ariadne said.
"Again," Skater replied, "McKenzie got greedy. He's been making noises about retiring. But in order to do that now, he'd have to forego a considerable amount of his cash flow. NuGene provided him an opportunity to get around that-as long as he could buy up enough of the stock and use it to help him launder other little nest eggs he's socked away. If he sold the files to someone else, all he'd get would be a one-time fee, and having two corps out marketing the same product would lessen the price cap. Competition kills the profit margin."
"So he leaked the story to the trid?" Ariadne asked.
"We did," Skater said. "To get a jump on the competition."
Ariadne slumped back in her chair. "Tavis doesn't know any of this."
"He's suckling a serpent to his breast," Trey said. He handed her a glass of water.
"What are you going to do?" she asked Skater, looking up at him.
"We're going to defang the serpent," Skater said, "then cut off its head."
34
"Do you realize the kind of risk you're asking Lofwyr to take?”
Skater looked at Elschen's dark image on the telecom screen. The sasquatch leaned forward, her fangs visible at the corners of her mouth. He suddenly remembered the dragon's taloned claw snapping shut in front of his face.
"Yes, but there's no other way to handle this."
He was in the living room of the suite, pacing, working off the nervous energy.
"If it were up to me," the sasquatch said, "you'd be dead just for daring to ask him to do this."
Skater didn't say anything, not wanting to antagonize her further.
"He'll do it, though, because he concedes there's some worth in the venture. But if you're wrong, human, I'll take care of you myself. And death won't be merciful." Elschen's image dissolved with a quick disconnect.
“Well,” Trey said from the other side of the room, "that apparently went well."
Skater let out a tense breath. He couldn't wait to return to some semblance of his life before the raid on the Sapphire Seahawk. He clicked on the trid, which was set to NewsNet's financial reporting channel.
"Did he go for it?" Wheeler asked, looking up from a steering dog-brain he was working on.
"Yeah." Skater studied the stock quotes running across the bottom of the screen.