34. The Black Knight
34
The Black Knight
From Barry Wright’s manifesto:
A satellite commonly known as the Black Knight has been orbiting Earth for thirteen thousand years, ever since it was launched by extraterrestrial beings.
TESSA
F ucking Harry.
It took me hours to gain some perspective on the whole shit show. But eventually, I realized that a social media post, one obviously planted by my ex, about how I was sleeping with my coworker wasn’t nearly as bad as what had happened to my employees after I sold Red Rover. And despite what the post implied, I’d never let that happen here.
So what if Maya was upset? According to West, our relationship wasn’t a violation of HR policy, so she couldn’t fire me over it. Suddenly, I realized I desperately wanted to stay. I loved working at Discovery because of the important and creative work we did. I loved working with Oliver, too, though I wasn’t ready to delve too deeply into the reasons why.
When I finally got over myself and emerged from my office, Oliver wasn’t in the lab. I knew exactly where to find him.
Still, I was surprised when I entered the game room and he wasn’t staring moodily at Simon’s framed photo. Instead, he was playing Galaxian, a true classic and far rarer than its successor, Galaga. I’d played it for hours on the ancient machine at the gas station where I worked in the tiny town where we lived when I was fifteen. He didn’t turn as I approached—probably couldn’t hear me over the hum of the spaceship and the bleeps of the alien attacks.
He played with his whole body, yanking the joystick like he was furious at it. Finally, when he was hit and there was a muffled explosion, he smacked his hand on the console and shouted, “Fuck!”
I crossed my arms. “Annoying little buggers, aren’t they?”
He whirled to face me. His skin was pale, and his brown eyes were wild and naked with his glasses tucked into his shirt pocket. “What—hi.”
“Hi.” I stepped closer. Now that everyone knew about us, how intimate we’d become, I could stand as close as I wanted. I whispered, “What’s wrong?”
Gently, he clasped my hand. “I’m sorry. The trial is fucked.”
“Are you serious?” A tiny part of me suspected he was catastrophizing, but I said, “Tell me.”
He was right to worry. As he told me about the mix-up, my skin went clammy and pale. All that work, all those promising results wasted over a mistake anyone could have made. When he finished, I wrenched my hand out of his. “You can’t seriously mean that our entire trial is ruined over a few missing results.”
“Yujun checked. The study coordinator can’t get us replacement samples for another month. And no one in the whole state has the kind of samples we need to finish it by the deadline. We’re going to miss it. All our hard work has gone to shit.”
“That’s just…just…ridiculous,” I sputtered. “We can fix anything with time and money.”
His voice went softer. “That’s exactly what we don’t have. We’re out of money. And time.”
That was why they’d brought me on, because they were dangerously low on resources. And in the end, I hadn’t been able to fix it. But this couldn’t be the end. We could think our way out of this mess.
“I shouldn’t have gone away last weekend. Not when the trial was on the line.” He was spiraling.
“It’s not your fault. There was no way for you to anticipate a mistake like this.” The words sounded hollow, even to me. I’d been a company founder. I’d made disastrous mistakes. Every one had been my fault.
“I was getting a goddamn massage while our company was swirling into the toilet! And now we’re—” He clutched at his hair.
I checked that we were still alone. Then, I gently disentangled his fingers from his hair and held his hand. “We’re going to fix this.”
When he looked at me, his eyes were glassy. “Can we?”
“Of course we can.” I hadn’t been able to save my employees, not after I’d made the tragic mistake of selling to people who didn’t care about other humans, but I was older and wiser now. We’d find a way.
And that was exactly what we did. Oliver and I sat at the table where people sometimes played Settlers of Catan and reached out to every contact we had, trying to rescue the project.
Half an hour later, my phone buzzed. I didn’t have to look to know what it meant. “It’s time for my weekly meeting with Maya. Come with me. She’s pissed, but we’ll show her we’re professionals. That we have ideas to fix this. We’ll figure it out together.”
I didn’t think it was possible for him to get paler, but he managed it. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need a snack?”
“I think we should devise a more concrete strategy before we take this to Dr. Perrell,” he said. “Otherwise?—”
“Who founded this company? You or her?”
“I did. Well, Simon and I did.”
“Don’t give away your power. I wish someone had told me that when I was your age.” I squeezed his hand, then released it. “Come on.”
Upstairs in Maya’s office, she greeted us with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t realize we were meeting with Oliver today. Or do you two go everywhere together now?”
Okay. She was still pissed. I shut the door. “We’ve encountered a complication with the clinical trials and wanted you to be aware.”
“A complication?” Her eyebrows rose.
I sat in the chair on the other side of her desk and waited for Oliver to take his seat beside me. “The clinical trial ran into a snag, but we have a solution. You’re the expert, Oliver. Why don’t you tell her what happened?”
Haltingly, he explained the mix-up with the samples. Maya immediately understood the implications, and she scowled. Her intelligent eyes went unfocused, like she was calculating whether this year’s bonus would cover her daughters’ weddings. And I regretted that it might not, even if we did our best.
“But we have a solution,” I said. I told her about the Indian supplier we’d reached out to. They could ship us samples that would allow us to complete the trial.
“Unfortunately,” Oliver said, “it’s possible they’ll be delayed in customs for up to a week, maybe longer if we’re unlucky, so we won’t meet our end-of-month goal.” He watched Maya’s expression. It went from angry to resigned.
“It’ll be close enough,” I added.
Maya’s jaw tightened. “There’s no such thing as ‘close enough.’ This will delay the regulatory approvals, which, as you know, are public information. Greenwich will find out.”
“Greenwich?” I repeated. “Greenwich Biomedical? Why the hell do we care about them?”
“The company will be worth less to them if we don’t have a product on track to release to the market.”
My heart stopped, then skipped. “Worth…less? What are you talking about?” I glanced at Oliver. He sucked in a breath and grasped my hand, despite our boss’s judgmental gaze.
“We’re in talks for a merger with Greenwich,” she said. “The board is very enthusiastic about the potential return on investment, but we need the ovarian cancer test to be on track for approvals to maximize the company’s value.”
I knew what all those words meant, but together, they didn’t make sense. “You’re selling the company?” When the CEO didn’t deny it, I turned to Oliver. “Did you know this?”
“I did.” He stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “But I thought we could avoid it.”
I ripped my hand away. Of course he knew. He’d get a significant payout for his founder’s shares.
“You’ve been sleeping together,” Maya said, leaning forward, “and he didn’t tell you?”
“You made me promise not to!” he yelped.
Ice washed through me.
“Tessa.” He turned pleading eyes on me. “I wanted to, but?—”
“Shit!” I rocketed to my feet. How had I let this happen again ? How had I not seen what was happening? “Shit!”
“Calm down, Tessa,” Maya said. “It’s simply business. You’ll get your equity share as outlined in your contract.”
“Fuck my contract.” My blood turned to lava, and my face burned with it. “And fuck you.”
Maya stood. “There’s no cause for unprofessionalism?—”
I spoke over her. “Oliver, I trusted you.”
He launched to his feet. “I didn’t think it would come to this. I thought with the cancer test, we’d earn enough to keep the company independent.”
My anger cooled to chilly realization. “It seems that the board doesn’t agree.” I glanced at Maya, who pursed her lips. “They’re looking for an exit strategy.”
“Something you should know all about,” she said.
“Unfortunately, I do. And I don’t want any part of this one. Consider my contract terminated.” Oliver slumped into the chair like he’d been hit with a sorcerer’s enervation spell. I towered over him. “I never want to see you again.”
He jerked his head up, his eyes creased with a plea.
The caresses, the kind words, even the sex, had all been fake, exactly like Harry. He and Maya had used me. After I’d sworn never to be used again, I’d fallen for the same tricks.
Disgusted with myself, I stormed out.
I stopped in my former office to pick up my bag and keys, but I left everything else. They could keep the cardigan I wore when the office was too cold. The prickly cactus Sadie and the rest of the endometriosis team had given me as a gift when we sent the test to trials. Even my favorite coffee mug with a drawing of a black cat on it. I could replace all those things.
What I couldn’t replace was my integrity, which I’d lost without even knowing it this time. How could I have missed the signs that Discovery was headed for a buyout? That Maya and Oliver were simply marking time until the tests were on the way to market and a buyer could swoop in, scoop up all the assets, and skip away, leaving destroyed lives behind like an old-fashioned game of jacks?
I slunk downstairs, bypassing the lab. I couldn’t look any of those people in the eye, knowing they were headed for a future where they had to train their replacements before they were laid off with a severance package that wouldn’t begin to cover the lengthy job searches ahead of them.
I kept my head down and gave Ramla, the security guard, one last pained smile as I slapped my badge on her desk. Then I walked out of the building into what I knew would be a lonely, uncertain future. Because I’d been here before.