Chapter 41

The creaks of real leather as the executives shifted in their chairs. All of them were nervous - the last time a full board meeting had been called, the company had recalled five of their lines. It'd been expensive, messy ... and bad publicity. Those in the upper echelon expected to be warned if CISH was going to make a fuss.

Nic sat at the far end of the table, in a seat that had been brought out of storage. He doubted it'd ever graced the surface of a living creature. More likely, it'd been brewed in a lab somewhere, designed to be a perfect copy of animal hide... better than a replica, with fewer imperfections and the best traits.

Synthetic.

Sweat coated his back, though he knew the shirt would take care of it. As long as they don't see the stuff on my forehead, he thought. Fuck.

He knew why they were all here, although they didn't know his reason. Lowly designers were never invited to the elite board meetings. Presentations were all bundled at the end of each year, and any of the shareholders could witness those.

Mr. Lichte - a man Nic could never address as Neal, despite his insistence - cleared his throat, and the buzz of electronics died.

"Thank you for coming," Lichte announced. He met every persons' eyes, somehow, an 'interpersonal' trick that Nic wished he could pull off. "Please open the file. Tell me what you see."

The men and women exchanged looks as they reached for the access points.

Nic waved his hand near the terminal, downloaded and pulled up the document he'd examined over a hundred times. Hell, half of it had been written by him, although most of that was the early data.

He could have cleared his own throat, if he were brave, and explained every bit of it. Probably in words that wouldn't send them scrambling for their jargon translators.

But Nic didn't consider himself brave. Mr. Lichte had asked him to come because he knew the most about the project, had designed every piece - and that made him the most culpable. He'd shut up, answer the questions they asked him ... and maybe keep his job.

A suited executive, a few seats to Lichte's right, refocused on the room. Barely a minute had passed.

Must have analyzed the data with a program, thought Nic, with a pang of envy. Only the upgraded tranceivers had enough memory for those feats, and he'd never be able to afford one at his salary.

"Custom model," said the suit. "A common twelve base. Personality is typical."

The designer gritted his teeth at the last bit. The personality wasn't typical, not even in the beginning. And it was messed up now, but not through any fault of his. Despite the fact that all of 33F's synapses and chemicals had been within the acceptable ranges, if you compared them to the image her nanos were supposed to maintain ... every one was outside the set parameters.

Which had nothing to do with Nic. Manufacturing errors weren't his responsibility.

But the original design was, and it shouldn't have mutated so drastically, even with failed equipment. He should never have gotten creative with the base.

And the results of the changes...

"The buyer was killed?" asked a woman. "Says here it was a sex purchase, not a suicidal one."

The related field brightened in Nic's sight.

"Like we've never seen the deviants off themselves after a buy," muttered an older man, in the seat next to Nic. Half of the people glared at him, but he sat unfazed. "Why're we here, Neal? Buyer's remorse doesn't warrant a meeting."

The leader of MT Manufacturing frowned at his colleague, peeved about steering his routine off the tracks, then nodded. "If you read further, Rueben, you'd see that we never recovered the synthetic. It disappeared."

The old man shrugged. "Happened before. He probably had a friend collect it after the deed. Saved on taxes."

"And I'd have been inclined to agree with you, in light of the circumstance," said Lichte. "But there's been another one."

The grisly scene popped onto everyone's sight, drawing a collection of gasps and winces.

Cheap trick. Supposed to grab everyone's attention, thought Nic.

It worked.

Nic flinched at the sudden appearance, but the sight itself no longer made his stomach turn.

A body lay in a puddle of blood, face gouged to anonymity. The whole picture could've been lifted from a horror flick; it'd take more than a corpse to shock him.