“What is it with Vivian now? I thought I was still mostly incognito.”

I looked up at Ben when I asked that, so I could see the amusement flash over his face.

“It did not work, so why try anyway. The US and Nowhere don’t have an extradition treaty, and I would guess the only person who knows what your name means here is me.

And honestly, the way you react to Veronica is so forced that anybody knows it is a false name. Better to just use your first name. You are not the only Vivian in the world, you know.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, taking deep breaths.

“You think Dalgon or Panacea will care about so unimportant things like rules, laws, and treaties? If they find out where I am, there will be a black ops team and that’s it.”

He chuckled, his mirth increasing visibly.

“Ah, but neither Dalgon nor Panacea have access to Nowhere government at the moment. It is all in the hand of Vandermeer.”

“And you think Vandermeer is even an iota better?”

“Yes, I think so. From what I learned, they already know where you are. You are still free, so I don’t think they want to catch you all that hard.”

I felt my mouth fall open, and for a moment I gave a reasonable rendition of a fish out of water.

Ben just held me, while I struggled to understand what he had just told me.

“They… how… ?” I finally managed to force some incoherent words out, and Ben, nice as he was, took that as his cue to continue.

“When I looked into your origin, I found out that yes, they still have a warrant out for you, but it is as a person of interest, not for arrest.

And as soon as I began researching, I was contacted by the officials. They were the ones who gave me the files. They knew who I am, where I am, and most importantly, that I had contact with you.

They actually warned me that it would be bad for my health if something did happen to you.”

“But… how? And why?”

“The how… I would guess that they correlated Veronica Sinclair with you much faster than you thought, and followed her to the grav ship.

From what I understand, they were in the process of planning a raid here to convince Frankel that you are not merchandise when they learned that the building here had a change of ownership.

About the why, well, I guess that while the old man sacrificed you for his principles, he did not write you off.

Regardless of how you think of him, he seems to think of you as his granddaughter.”

I harrumphed at that. If the old bastard wanted to play granddad, he should have thought about that earlier. Still, it was comforting that for the time being I was not yet hunted by the big corps.

“Fine. If he gives me a couple of years for the chaos to die down I can change the records and be done with it.”

Nonetheless, I felt quite a bit grumpy about him lifting my incognito without talking to me about it.

He let go of me and walked towards the table.

“Now, as good as it feels to have you in my arms, I have unfortunately more business we have to talk about.”

He took a seat while he said that, and gestured for me to sit down too. Michael apparently did not need an invitation, as he plumped down beside his father, rather gracelessly if I have to say so.

I on the other hand felt a tiny bit miffed by the casual way Ben commandeered my home, but whatever…

I sat down myself and looked at him with expectation.

“Alright, back to sordid business then. Vince had rather alarming information yesterday. And from what he told us, you were the source of that information.”

I shrugged, as it had been only a matter of time until he decided to prod about it.

“You mean that Panacea uses the executive service as a scam to foist lesser service to unsuspecting people for twice the cost of what they really want?

Yes, I told Vince about it. It should not be all that surprising. They are jerks like that.”

Ben nodded and then gestured towards Michael.

“Yes, but we now we’re in the mess, and we don’t know how much, or even if at all, our heirs are damaged. Or if we are damaged. Hell, some of us even guessed it was just a ploy from you to wheedle some more money out of us.”

Oh, wow. That was unexpected.

“Uhm, how do they think that? The only thing I have that could maybe help you is the virus that Frankel had. And I already offered it to Vincent.

The rest, well, sure, you need nanobots to rewrite the DNA, but with the nanofabs that sprouted out of the ground the last few months, well, yes, I have the best fabs but everybody can build those bots nowadays. And that fast. Frankel used a 2^nd gen one and did just fine with it.

I could probably design and build a genetic resequencer, but honestly, that would be a waste of my time and your money. There are perfectly adequate resequencers commercially available.

For the rest, you need a geneticist to evaluate your DNA and design the fix. Probably a virologist and a biologist to make it work. I can’t help you there. I have, reluctantly learned bio-engineering, and might kludge something together there, but a proper geneticist is mandatory, I fear. ”

“Yes, I know. Vincent said mostly the same thing. Not everybody believed him, but… enough of us did. Now we have to look into getting a geneticist.”

“You can either try to hire one of the smaller genetic design firms or look into the dark web. I would strongly suggest avoiding Panacea. They…”

“Yes, I understand you… dislike them. And honestly, I am coming over to your side. But that is neither here nor now. At this time we are looking into it, but any help or information you can give me would be appreciated.”

I tilted my head, for a bit.

“I could post a request in the Abyss, but other than that… maybe you could ask in the universities in the EU. They might have somebody able to help you who is not yet a slave to some big corp or another. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“That’s what I thought. But any help is better than none. It is just so infuriating, not knowing how damaged we are, if at all.”

“At least functionally you are fine. Over the last two or three months, you have been scanned again and again. If there was something wrong, either Doc Schaeffer or I would have found it already.

We can put Michael into the scanner too if you want. Neither will tell you much about genetic timebombs, but it would show any malformation.”

Both Ben and Michael nodded, and Michael answered:

“Yes, that might actually be a good idea.”

And Ben continued:

“As a start, yes. We still need to have our DNA examined. Vincent said he would look into it, but it won’t break his heart if we look as well.

By the way, breaking his heart, I just learned that you never told him about Falconer. Why not? He was a bit huffy about it.”

“Ask Mr. Cox about it.”

“What do you mean ask Dylan?”

I sighed before I answered:

“I immediately informed him of everything I learned. It was your prerogative to inform the others. You were in a Coma, so it fell to him to do so.

If he decided not to do it, it was his choice.

If on the other hand I had gone around him and informed Vince myself, it would have been an affront too. In this instance, I was a contractor for your organization.

In other words, unless Mr. Cox had decided to give Vince and the others the information I uncovered, there was nothing I could do that would not result in some bad blood.

My only decision was to either do the offense myself or let Mr. Cox do it.”

Michael snorted.

“I told you you should look closer to home. Come on, we knew about it. Fuck, Justin was in the clinic for a few days. So it’s not as if it was a secret.”

Ben nodded sagely.

“Yes, I know that. But we are lucky that it worked out as it had. What if the situation had exploded?”

I shook my head.

“There was literally nothing Vince could have done that he hadn’t done already. He, and your other colleagues, kept the violence down to a minimum. If I had for any moment thought it would be important for him to know about it right then I would have informed him.

Also, I did the only possible thing to spike Falconer’s plan. I sold the info to Ralcon and Enertech. They did the rest.”

Ben looked at me for a moment, before he broke out in loud laughter, quickly followed by Michael.

After some time, the two of them got themselves under control again.

“God, that is glorious. We all wondered why the two divas suddenly became so interested in the violence on the street. Well done, well done indeed. Well, I will tell Vince about that and I will talk to Dylan.”

He chuckled for a few moments longer before he became serious again.

“To change the topic, I have a request for you.”

I shrugged: “Ok, shoot!”

“I want you to take Hunter under your wing.”

I frowned and tilted my head.

“Hunter, you mean Hunter Reid? And what do you mean to take him under my wing?”

“I have… painfully, you understand, realized that my organization has… insufficient computer security. From what you told me, a rookie Jack waltzed straight through everything we have.

That can’t go on. So I need somebody who can work on it. I like Leon, and I trust him, but his work is… just not enough.”

I nodded, more to myself.

“He would not be that bad if he did not deny the advantage of cyberspace. From what I’ve seen, his workmanship is adequate, but he… you have no mindscape. What you have is good to keep out Kings and Jokers, but a Jack or a Queen… we simply ignore most of what you have.”

“Yes, I get that. For that reason, I decided to have Leon keep doing what he prefers to do anyway, namely keeping our hardware and general software up and running, and getting a new cyber security specialist.

And Hunter wants to be a Jack anyway, so I decided to sponsor him and ask you to help him.”

He wanted… he did not trust me to do it? Really? I was completely surprised by the sting of pain I felt running through me. Before I could really react, Ben continued.

“That does not reflect on you. Of course, you could do it. But honestly, that would be a complete waste of your time.

You are much more valuable in other efforts than babysitting our network. I mean, yeah, get the great Seraphim to play guard-dog in our system. Good for us, but completely wasted time for you.”

Still very much insecure, I asked him:

“So it isn’t the point that you don’t trust me?”

He looked at me, dumbfounded.

“God, no! How did you get to that conclusion? No, I would be delighted to have you design our security. The point is, that I want Hunter to be more or less on-call all the time.

So that once you designed our system he can take over the day-to-day grind. For that, he needs a jack, and he needs training.”

“Hm, ok. I can do that. I will even give him the jack at cost. That will cost roughly $60k. For a basic jack, but I generally would suggest that anyway until he is a bit better.

For the board, he can get a decent Kawamoto-clone for around $20k.”

Michael looked a bit confused.

“Why do you say a basic jack and a Kawamoto-clone? I mean, you offer the best jacks and the best boards one can get. So why the lowball?”

“Because he will most likely kill himself with an ultra-bandwidth jack and a Seraphim Mk IV. Just because one has the money to get the best of the best does not mean one has the ability to use it.”

I thought for a moment.

“You can view it like giving a teenager a Ferrari to learn to drive. Sure, it can go well, but the likelihood that he ends up wrapped around a traffic light is high. Not something any sane person will do.

In this case, the basic jack and the cheap board represent the old junker that goes barely up to 70 kph… oh sorry, 45 mph. Still enough to kill himself with, but much less volatile and more important much less prone to make him overconfident.

Another point is that the reason why my boards are usually considered the best is that they are either extremely modular so that the jack can adapt them to their style, or I take several weeks to analyze the style of the jack and tailor the board directly to it.

And as of this time, Hunter doesn’t have a style yet. I could sell you a Seraphim Mk IV for around $8 million if you really want to. But it would be wasted money at this time.

Once he has developed his own style, he can graduate to something like an Mk II. That shouldn’t take more than a couple of months, but these are crucial months for his survival.

Once I am confident that he has it under control, and I can evaluate his style, I can tailor him an Mk IV. Before that, it will likely kill him.”

“Ok, I get that, but why the basic jack? Wouldn’t a better jack be… well  better?”

I let out a long breath.

“Yes and no. The problem is overconfidence again. At the moment, there is exactly one human with something more than a basic jack. That is me.

And… I have seen it often enough. Some new jack gets something new, expensive, before he is ready, and thinks he is invincible.

If there were more ultra-bandwidth jacks in the wild, I would say ok, but at this moment, even the elite of the Abyss uses basic jacks.

Can you, with confidence, say that Hunter would not think that an ultra-bandwidth would give him an advantage here?”

To his credit, Michael thought about it for a bit before he answered:

“No, I think you are right. He… well I like him, but he is a bit reckless.”

“Add in that an ultra-bandwidth jack would cost at least $600k, and that would be at a cost, I think you agree that it is a bit premature for an untried rookie.”

Michael began to cough at that.

“The cost goes up by a factor of ten? How?”

“It is… much more complex, and takes significantly more costly materials to make. To be honest, I advertised the ultra-bandwidth jack at DC 1.3 million. And that is without the adaption with the new process. That is another DC 1 million.

At $600k it would be a steal.”

“I… see. Shit, that stuff is expensive.”

“Think about it, a decent jack can earn that in three to four months. Another couple of months with the new jack, and he can afford a Seraphim Mk IV board as well.

And honestly, if he has to work for it, he will appreciate it all the more.”

Ben had listened to the conversation for some time but now thought to take part again.

“No, the prices are more than reasonable. I looked into what it costs to outfit a jack, and the basic jack alone is usually in the $300k range. A decent board will set you back another $500k. Nothing expensive, just run-of-the-mill decent stuff.

Though, I have to say suggesting a cheap board for $20 k surprises me a bit.”

“He will outgrow his first board in a couple of months. Why pay $500k for something that he only uses for at best a quarter of a year.

After he actually knows his own style, we can look into which board to get him for the rest of the year.

After that, we will see if he has what it takes to master an Mk IV. Of course, by that time, the Mk IV will be most likely outdated.”

“Ok… I think that is alright then. When do you think you can give him his jack then?”

“Give me a couple of hours to make and prepare the jack and we are golden.”

“I will send him over tomorrow or the day after then.”

It was at that moment that my stomach decided it was feeding time.

“Oh, look at the time… Do you want to stay for lunch?”

Michael looked confused.

“Sure, we can, but why? Food is food.”

Ben on the other hand lifted an eyebrow.

“You’ve cooked?”

“Yup, a nice slow-cooked stew.”

“I thought you would not cook every day.”

“In a stew, the most work is the preparation and the androids are pretty adequate in cutting the ingredients and stewing the pot. Sure, I will have to finish the seasoning, but it was mostly a few minutes here, a few minutes there.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining, and of course we will stay.”

Michael looked at his father confused.

“We will?”

“Vivian is not talking about replicator food. Not even high-quality stuff like we have. When she cooks, she uses real ingredients and really cooks.

I know you’ve had some real food when we were in restaurants, but… well you will see.”

With that, he stood up, followed by me, while Michael, still somewhat confused was quite a bit slower.