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Rennick’s about as warm as January in this frozen-ass state. Unemotional. Driven by prestige first and money second.

I know exactly how this meeting will go down, but I don’t have other options.

I turn my chair to face the wall. The portrait of Papa hanging on the wall scowls down at me in a way that says, Don’t screw this up, kid.

Jimmy pops the entire chicken bone into his mouth and gnaws it clean. I sit up and place my palms flat on my desk.

“Tell Rennick’s people I’ll be there soon. We’ll see just how bad the damage is.”

The Henry Building is a soaring castle in this city of squat, bland skyscrapers.

Baroque, you might call it, decked out with sphinxes and grim-faced giants holding shields, but I think the real term is art deco.

The high dark tower looms over the rest of Everhart’s medical campus, quiet as a dungeon after most of its chief researchers leave for the day.

Even with Jimmy waiting outside as backup, there’s a restlessness in the air I don’t like.

Normally it wouldn’t faze me, but with Dr. Rennick, you never know what to expect.

That fuck is an AI android wrapped in a skin suit. More unpredictable than anyone I’ve ever met and twice as unreadable.

Like me, he knows how to intimidate people.

The usual tried-and-true Ferrazzo charm doesn’t work on him.

Unlike me, he has a fuckton of money and institutional workhorses at his disposal. The man doesn’t need to recruit kids with balls of steel and a thirst for money and girls when he can hire former combat veterans for security.

He puts his guys on real payroll with company benefits and gym passes.

I walk through the near-empty lobby.

The building reeks of gold and high class, tiled from floor to ceiling in this lush green marble that makes me feel like I’ve stepped into the jungle.

Everything in this palace is made to make you feel small.

Old-world chandeliers with a thousand points of light, more statues of famous doctors and scientists with eyes like hawks, paintings large enough to walk into. This place looks less like a research building and more like a Roman villa.

All the aura of a bat cave crossed with an art gallery.

I’m jealous.

I press the button for the gold-lined elevators and step inside. It shoots me up to the top floor, which holds Rennick’s massive office.

The receptionist on graveyard shift waves me into his lair without a wait.

Of course, he’s been expecting me.

“Finally. I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t show tonight, Ferrazzo.” Dr. Daniel Rennick coldly examines me from behind his wiry spectacles.

He’s nothing special to look at.

Mid-forties, I think. Fit and lean for his age. Total ottery poindexter.

The spitting image of the guy you’d want on your case when your kid comes down with a rare cancer.

Only, he doesn’t do that, pulling miracles out of thin air.

Rennick wields his Ivy League credentials and endless residencies like a god with the power to break a thousand hearts.