Chapter 33
Talos Tower - Office of Sheridan Fortesque and Edward Carson
The office was silent this morning. The phone hadn't rung once yet, and the only appointment in the book on the secretaries desk had been one placed by Anton Kinkaid, presumable as a front to keep up appearances until after the truth had presented itself.
Edward sat alone, with only the song of a passing blue whale outside the office window for company. He hadn't opened any of his ledgers, his business diary, or touched his morning coffee. He was sat with an elbow on the desk, and watched himself flick a flame on and off between his thumb and his forefinger. He mindlessley watched the first little sign of a scorch made by the ignition against his skin, before the ADAM flowing through his veins quickly healed the damage.
He hadn't slept at all through the night, but had done more or less the same whilst sat up in bed, waiting for Sheridan to return from Persephone, which he hadn't done. He wondered if Kinkaid had perhaps died finally, and Sheridan and Sinclair were deep into plotting a cover-up. He knew that if that was the case he should bear his share of the burden and be there with them, but for some reason, the longer he'd had this ADAM in his system, the less punctual he'd been about reacting to his emotions - a part of his old self still conscious beneath the effect of the ADAM hoped this was merely a temporary side effect of the initial ingestion.
He stopped playing with fire, and put his aching arm down across the desk to rest. He couldn't avoid looking at the scale model replica of an Austen Bathysphere that stood against one of the office walls beneath its own display lamp. He supposed, with Sheridan dealing with the fallout of last nights incident, and also having taken on much of the dealings with Sinclair, it was only right that Edward should take upon himself the task of restructuring their Transport division in the absence of Anton Kinkaid.
He pulled across a blank piece of paper, with their Capital Investment logo stamped on the top, and began jotting down his plan of action. First of all, he would employ again the services of Booker Dewitt, to deduce whether Kinkaid had left a will - they ran the initial risk of having Anton's 50% of the Bathysphere company either left to some anonymous heir, or floating around unprotected, open to the quickest predator currently hunting in the open market. Secondly, they needed to establish a plan to counteract that damned pretentious Bathysphere DeLuxe of Fontaine's. Agressive expansion with their own showroom perhaps, there was some vacant space in the mid-section of Talos tower they could easily convert - the problem was finding a designer of Anton's calibre.
Edward smiled suddenly, when he realised that without Anton, Fontaine's extravagant designs may very quickly find themselves fault-ridden and their development stalled. It would be down to him and Sheridan to be ready to step back in to the frame. He was suddenly very please with himself, reclining back and kicking out his feet, grinning at the ceiling as he revised his plan.
The daze of pride was wonderful, but short-lived. Edward quickly came back down to earth, and could feel himself reverting from a strange state of delusion. As he looked again at his forward planning, he reminded himself what this was all riding on the back of - a near murder, a violent attack on an unarmed man, during which he had willingly set the man on fire. He shuddered as he remembered the screams.
The sensation of flitting between the guilt of what he had done, and the peculiar state of immunity to those emotions, gave Edward cause for concern regarding the Plasmids. Had it been that same side affect that had pushed him to set Anton on fire? An action he would have otherwise considered beyond him? One he could barely recall without bursting into tears? If that was so - perhaps these Plasmids were a danger to the public. Afterall, all Plasmids and ADAM products currently on the market were exclusively produced by Fontaine, and there was no telling what safety measures or tests had been in place before putting them on sale.
His first thoughts were to stop Sheridan now, convince him that Plasmids were dangerous, and to launch some sort of protest against their distribution. But of course any sort of protest would be up against Fontaine, and indeed anyone that stood to profit from ADAM, such as Steinman, one of the most influential men in the scientific community, or that Dr Yi Suchong chap who was working alongside Tenenbaum, but also had several other business interests, all using ADAM in their medical treatments. No, the best way to tackle the problem, may perhaps to be an encouragement of Ryan Industries development of rival products. Sheridan, Sinclair and Ryan could be relied upon to release safely tested Plasmids, afterall that was the point of the testing program they planned for Persephone inmates. If Their Plasmids could be marketed as being safer and without side affects than Fontaine's, then that would be their crowning glory!
Edward felt slightly better again. If something could be learnt and used for good after Anton's injuries, then he could live with that. At least he was pretty sure he could. He'd speak with Sheridan the moment he could. Until then, he had the Austen Bathysphere to sort out, and whilst the Bathysphere DeLuxe showroom would undoubtedly be a thorn in their side for some time, he could think of an opportunity it may well present in the near future.