“You’ll be glad to know that your friends are worried about you.” Lit from below, the man’s face looked more sinister than it did in the publicity photos Patrick had seen, but still recognizable as Martin Zotovic, the founder of Parasol. He waggled the phone in front of his face. “I took the liberty of logging in with your thumbprint while you were unconscious. Just wanted to do a little digging around, you understand.”
Zotovic put the phone on the waist-high table, screen facing up and still lit.
“You and your friends have had a busy week, haven’t you?”
Patrick felt queasy, his head spinning. He remembered the sensation down in the subbasement of the warehouse a few nights before, when a horde of Ridden had attacked them. The feeling of wrongness that gripped him now was even stronger than he’d experienced then. But there were no blots on Zotovic’s face or arms, and dressed in a plain black t-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, with a faint shadow of stubble on his sharp chin, he looked like any other young tech millionaire. Even so, Patrick thought he could see something lurking behind the man’s eyes, and couldn’t escape the sense that he and Zotovic weren’t the only people in the room. There was something else in here with them. Or rather, something else in them.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Patrick’s voice croaked in his ears as he spoke, the first words he’d uttered since he regained consciousness. “Ridden.”
A humorless smile creased Zotovic’s face, flashing white teeth.
“‘Ridden,’ huh? That’s old school. I prefer to refer to those of us who have willingly taken part in the Merger as ‘Shareholders.’” The smile widened as he tapped his chest. “With me being the Majority Shareholder, of course.”
Zotovic talked more like the tech mogul that the media portrayed him as being than as someone being controlled by an inhuman intelligence, Patrick thought. But was it Zotovic who was looking out at him through those eyes?
“What do you intend to do with me?” Patrick asked through clenched teeth.
The smile on Zotovic’s face turned down into a frown.
“That’s up to you, really,” he said. “There are several options on the table.”
Zotovic leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced together.
“When you and your friends first came onto my radar the other day, my first thought was that I should just take you off the board. Your friend Agent Lefevre managed to avoid getting run over, but I knew it was just a matter of time before you slipped up. That was before I discovered the full extent of what you’ve been up to. Of how deep you’ve been digging.”
Zotovic raised his hands, and rested his steepled fingers against his chin.
“Your captain over at the 10th Precinct thinks that you’ve got a screw loose, did you know that? The mayor was pressuring him for an update on your ‘Ink’ investigation, and the captain mentioned the toll that the detail as taking on his officers. Specifically, the mental strain on a respected lieutenant, judging by what he written on a dry erase board in the station house.”
Patrick’s eyes widened involuntarily. So the captain had been in the community room, and had seen the work that he and Izzie had been doing. But how did Zotovic know that?
“I don’t have a line on internal police communications yet,” Zotovic went on, “but I’ve been able to read every email that passes through the mayor’s inbox for the past year. Most of it is useless nonsense, but it’s amazing what you can find if you dig through garbage long enough.”
Zotovic tapped his fingertips against his chin for a moment, regarding Patrick.
“I realized that I couldn’t eliminate you until I found out how much you knew and, more importantly, who else you’ve told. I’ve been working on this rollout way too long for someone to come along and throw a monkey wrench into the works at the eleventh hour.”
‘Rollout?’ Patrick wondered.
“So I sent some minority shareholders down to your place last night, to bring you here for a little chat. It was tricky getting in there, with all of those damned squiggles all over the place, but I didn’t build a multibillion dollar company from nothing without learning a thing or two about persistence. And then at the last minute Agent Lefevre pulled that nasty trick with the ring of salt?” Zotovic shook his head, tongue tsking. “That was bad sportsmanship, friend. I had them dead to rights.”
Zotovic sucked a sharp breath in through his teeth.
“That stuff hurts.” He unlaced his fingers and waved one hand by the side of his head. “Messes with me, in here. It jacks up the Merger. And that can’t be allowed.”
Patrick could see the muscles in Zotovic’s jaw tightening, a brief flash of anger passing across his face, before his features settled back into a semblance of calm good humor an instant later. It was as though just remembering that moment had caused Zotovic to feel it again, if only for the briefest moment. But he was talking about something that had happened to the shambling Ridden in the alley behind Patrick’s house the night before, when Zotovic himself hadn’t been nearby.
“You cops are getting too close to the operation as it is,” Zotovic went on. “The trials are just about through and we should be ready for the rollout soon, but if you jokers keep stumbling through my manufacturing sites and locking up my distributors, we might have to delay the launch date, and that is not happening. Not again.”
Patrick remembered the intercepted emails that they had read, Parasol employees who were part of the Ink trade discussing a coming “launch date” and product testing. Part of him burned to ask Zotovic what the hell he was talking about, but it seemed that part of the reason that he was even still alive was that Zotovic wasn’t sure how much he knew, and tipping his hand at this point might not be
