Chapter 102 - The Geneva Extradition
Marcus Brandt sat at our scarred pine kitchen table as if he were occupying the head seat of a board room on the Bahnhofstrasse. He had declined Clara’s offer of tap water and instead placed his aluminum case flat on the wood, resting two manicured thumbs on the dual biometric fingerprint scanners flanking the clasps.
*Click. Hiss.*
The case depressurized with a sharp pneumatic sigh. Inside, resting in laser-cut high-density foam, was not a pile of bearer bonds or stacks of currency, but an ultra-thin carbon-fiber tablet, three glass vials containing amber liquid labeled with barcoded cryo-tags, and a thick, leather-bound dossier stamped with the crest of the Canton of Geneva.
"Before we discuss genetics, Julian, we must discuss liquidity," Brandt began, sliding the tablet across the table toward me. "Because that is the language you speak."
I didn't touch the tablet. "Talk."
"Twenty-eight years ago, Margaret Sterling was the sole heir to Sterling-Holt Pharma-Chemical, a holding company with deep ties to European biomedical research," Brandt said, his voice measured, devoid of sentiment. "Margaret did not marry. She did not intend to produce natural heirs through conventional means. The board required succession protocols to prevent the hostile nationalization of her patent portfolio upon her death. Thus, Project Elgin was funded."
Clara leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed, the firearm concealed beneath her oversized wool sweater. "Project Elgin was the name on the terminal. Specimen 02."
"Indeed," Brandt acknowledged, giving Clara an appreciative nod. "Margaret Sterling provided the ovum. But the paternal DNA was provided by Arthur Sterling-Holt—her half-brother and the chief architect of the consortium's sovereign wealth network. To bypass Swiss inheritance tribunals and federal bioethics commissions, the embryos were distributed to private trusts abroad. One embryo was carried to term by Eleanor Vance in an Elgin, Illinois private clinic."
The room seemed to shrink. The silence stretched so taut that the faint crackle of our living room woodstove sounded like gunshots.
"Eleanor was paid to carry me," I stated. It wasn't a question; it was the arithmetic snapping into alignment. "That's why she hated me. That's why Beatrice was the princess who received every dime, every car, every bailout, while I was handed an account ledger at fourteen and told that my survival depended on my own sweat."
"Eleanor is a small, weak-willed woman," Brandt said coldly. "When Arthur Sterling-Holt suffered his first vascular collapse in Zurich seven years ago, the Vance trust was supposed to remain liquid and dormant until the recovery protocol was initiated. But Thomas Vance was an addict. He gambled on commercial real estate. Eleanor indulged Beatrice's insatiable vanity. They began embezzling from the Elgin contingency reserves."
Brandt leaned forward, his frameless glasses catching the yellow incandescent light.
"Your wedding day, Julian. When Beatrice smashed your wedding cake because you refused to purchase that condominium in Lincoln Park... she didn't do it simply because she was spoiled. She did it because she had discovered an email on Thomas’s private server. She knew that seventy-two thousand dollars was the exact amount Thomas had skimmed from the contingency fund that week. She thought she was entitled to the spoils of a dynasty she knew nothing about."
I closed my eyes for a single second. The memory of that Saturday afternoon—the sugar tiers collapsing onto the floor, the champagne soaking into Clara’s white train, my mother screaming at me that I was heartless, that I had always been an ungrateful parasite who owed everything to this family.
All of it had been an orchestrated distraction. A family of petty grifters squabbling over table crumbs while sitting on top of a dormant bio-conglomerate.
"And Specimen 02?" Clara asked, stepping into the light. Her voice was steel. "Who is the boy in the tank?"
"Not a boy, Mrs. Vance," Brandt said softly. "His name is Julian as well. Or rather, Julian-B. Kept in cellular stasis at minus one hundred and sixty degrees Celsius in our facility beneath Mount Salève. Arthur Sterling-Holt’s cellular degeneration is accelerating. He requires an allogeneic stem-cell and organ transplant from a genetically identical, non-degraded donor within forty-eight hours."
Brandt looked directly into my eyes.
"Arthur does not want Specimen 02. The pod suffered a cryo-containment failure six hours ago during the terminal reboot you inadvertently triggered when you breached Thomas’s LaSalle server. Specimen 02 is terminal. You, Julian... are the only living, viable specimen remaining."
A cold, mocking chuckle rose in my throat. I looked at the man from Geneva, then down at the aluminum case.
"You didn't come here to rescue me, Mr. Brandt," I said. "You came here to harvest me."
May you like
Outside, the synchronized clicks of four rifle bolts echoed through the thin walls of the porch.
***
