"And now,"
Fuyumi Irisu continued. Her cheeks flushed red with humiliation, but her voice grew only colder. "This laboratory now belongs to you. I recommend immediately announcing the laboratory's research has failed, and proactively triggering the Wagering Agreement."
"Oh?" Seiji Fujiwara asked with interest. "Hand over patents worth a fortune to him?"
"No." Fuyumi shook her head.
She shifted her hips, one small precise adjustment, taking him at the angle that let her keep her breathing level, the way she would re-route a supply chain around a damaged node. The recalibration was for the report. Everything was for the report.
"Among the patents this laboratory holds is one of the underlying patents on CRISPR Gene Editing technology. The moment we transfer it to him, under Article 102 of the EU's antitrust act, any single entity holding that underlying patent whose market share exceeds 40% will be deemed a monopoly. Anderson's alliance happens to hold a 41% share."
"We will proactively file an antitrust suit with the European Commission, and unite every European pharmaceutical firm he has crushed. At that point, his core trust fund will be frozen immediately, and he will face astronomical fines. His cash flow will snap in an instant."
A look of appreciation appeared in Seiji's eyes.
What an exquisite move. Cut off the fuel, and the fire dies on its own.
That she could, in a single moment, dig the most lethal blade out of a vast pile of forgotten records.
"And on the public-opinion front?" Seiji asked, and drove up into her harder on the question, as though the question and the thrust were one instrument.
Fuyumi's whole body shuddered around him. She bit down on her lower lip until it went white, holding the sound behind her teeth, because the sound was not in the plan, and the plan was the only thing she still owned.
"Anderson's rise was built in Eastern Europe in the late nineties. Irisu Logistics, which we just took over, has a newspaper archive over there that's about to go bankrupt. I will immediately send people to find every old report related to Anderson from those years, on 'factory pollution,' 'workers' rights protests,' and 'disappeared journalists.'"
"We will repackage these old cases and, using the global social media matrix you control, within twenty-four hours we will paint him as a cold-blooded capitalist."
"Hands soaked in blood, growing fat on the blood of the dead… we will turn the stories of those vanished journalists into tear-jerking scripts."
"We will find the old workers who contracted pneumoconiosis and have them weep into the cameras. We will turn him, in the eyes of every white liberal elite and ordinary citizen alike, into a genuine devil."
Her plan was vicious, precise, and efficient.
"Last one, the political layer," Seiji asked, and his rhythm finally broke its own discipline, hard and fast and out of patience, as if he meant to drive the last layer of the plan out of her by force.
Fuyumi could no longer hold the textbook cadence. It went out from under her like a floor giving way. Her voice came apart on the words, the tremor in it no longer something she could file or bury, and the unbearable thing, the thing she registered even now with the cold clear part of her that never stopped running, was that the breaking voice and the flawless plan were leaving her in the same breath. He was getting both at once. There was no longer any line left inside her between the strategist and the thing she was being used as.
"Anderson… Anderson is a major donor to the Republican Party in the Midwestern agricultural states. Through political contributions, he has tightly bound three senators to himself… and one of them, his son… has a serious… drug addiction and… particular sexual proclivities…"
"We… one of our entertainment companies, in Los Angeles… has channels that handle this kind of 'dirty work'… within forty-eight hours, we can manufacture a… scandal his son cannot escape, one that cannot be argued away… and provide it anonymously to the Democratic Party's media outlets…"
"At that point… Anderson will not only lose his most important political shelter… he will also be opened to an FBI investigation for obstruction of justice…"
He finished the way he had done everything else to her that evening, thoroughly and on his own schedule, using her through the last of it while the plan still hung cooling in the air, and she let him, because a tool does not flinch from the hand that holds it.
Fuyumi's mind went blank.
In that moment, all of her confusion, her pain, her unwillingness, dissolved into nothing.
What remained was the absolute calm and acceptance of being a "tool."
In the very instant she fully accepted this "tool" identity…
[Ding!]
A crisp system notification rang directly in Seiji's mind.
[Congratulations, Host, on conquering 'Fuyumi Irisu' and completing the final stage of transformation.]
[Received Stage Three Reward: "Eye of Odin" global financial market real-time monitoring and prediction system!]
In an instant, in the air above the study, an enormous single-eye design flickered into being.
It was formed of countless golden data streams.
The eye slowly opened.
In its pale-gold pupil was reflected a miniature of the entire Earth. Countless flow-lines wove through it, colliding and evolving, representing capital, information, and power.
The past, the present, and millions of possible futures were laid out clearly before Seiji at this moment.
Seiji looked at this eye that symbolized omniscience and omnipotence, then looked at the Fuyumi in his arms.
The young woman had already lost consciousness, tears still beading on her lashes.
Seiji's lips curved into a smile.
He activated the "Eye of Odin" and locked the target onto "Richard Anderson."
Instantly, everything about Anderson surfaced on the screen. Every flow of his capital, the real-time surveillance feed of his trading floor, every secret call he'd had with politicians… everything about him laid bare.
Seiji's gaze settled on one of the most hidden, most critical capital flows. It was exactly the trust fund in Switzerland that Fuyumi had just mentioned.
…
…
New York, Manhattan, Fifth Avenue.
Richard Anderson's penthouse trading room was steeped in a euphoria of victory.
Outside the great curved floor-to-ceiling windows stood the Empire State Building.
It symbolized the summit of the world.
But at this moment, no one was paying attention to the view outside. Inside the room, every gaze was fixed on the man standing at the center. A man like a god.
Richard Anderson.
He had just personally directed a feast of capital.
The Wall Street Journal called it "Hunt of the Century."
The ancient Japanese conglomerate, the Irisu Group, had collapsed within forty-eight hours under his precise and brutal offensive.
The cork popped from a bottle of Romanee-Conti. It was worth tens of thousands of dollars. Beneath the crystal chandelier, the golden champagne foamed up out of the bottle. That foam was the symbol of wealth and victory.
"Gentlemen!" Anderson raised his glass.
His weathered face brimmed with the conqueror's satisfaction and arrogance. "To Wall Street, to the will of capital, cheers!"
"To Mr. Anderson, cheers!"
"Cheers!!"
Thunderous cheers erupted in the room.
Several dozen top traders, financial elites who normally looked down on everyone, were now gazing at their boss with fervent, almost worshipful eyes.
In their eyes, Anderson was the embodiment of capital, the undefeated god of Wall Street.
He turned his gaze toward the giant electronic screen.
On the screen, the Japanese stock market was a sea of mourning. News about the "Fujiwara conglomerate" taking over the "Irisu Group" was rolling across the headlines.
"Fujiwara conglomerate… Seiji Fujiwara…"
Anderson murmured the name. A flicker of greedy, cold light passed through his eyes. "I've heard this is a mysterious force that has risen recently in Japan. They have some nerve, daring to take on the Irisu Family's rotten mess at a time like this."
"Director, would you like us to immediately launch an investigation and preliminary attack on the Fujiwara conglomerate?" the head trader asked, awaiting orders.
"No, no rush."
Anderson waved his hand. A cat-and-mouse smirk played across his face. "He thinks he's swallowed a corpse, but he doesn't know that corpse is coated in lethal poison. He's saved us the trouble of cleaning up the battlefield by consolidating all the valuable assets into a single package."
In Anderson's view, the Fujiwara conglomerate's move was the height of stupidity.
This was nothing more than a game of big fish eating small fish.
And he, Richard Anderson, was the only shark in this ocean. Seiji Fujiwara, at best, was just a slightly larger tuna.
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