Chapter 222: Book 4 Chapter 4.3: The Money Trap

“That was a spectacular failure,” Helena said. Elizah had stepped away to answer a phone call, giving them a little time to strategize.

“Goldie ruined everything, that’s hardly my fault,” Alex said.

“It was a conceptually bad idea,” Helena said. “Your department pumps out random esoteric bullshit that only turns a profit every few years. People like Elizah want money. Easy money.”

“Plebeians,” Alex muttered.

“Predictable plebeians,” Helena said. “We need to show her a flashy new phone or some new motor for sports cars, the kind of thing that sells quickly and easily.”

“This is an institute of higher learning, not a tech expo,” Alex protested.

“People like her don’t see it that way,” Helena chided. “If you want to get anywhere, you need to learn to tell them what they want to hear.”

“I’ll leave the blatant manipulation to you,” Alex said.

“Good, you’d be terrible at it anyway,” Helena said. “Follow me and keep your mouth shut.”

Helena led the way -at her own pace. She wasn’t exactly a sprinter. Or a power walker. Or a regular walker. Elizah got sick of following along after a few minutes.

“I don’t want to be rude, but can we pick up the pace a little?”

“Bad news: that was rude,” Helena said. “More bad news: no. I’m sorry that I’m a bit slow, but the thing is my skeleton isn’t shaped right. Do you want to take my word for that, or do I need to show you an x-ray?”

Elizah got quiet after that, and Helena recognized the look of someone calculating a potential disability lawsuit. Apparently the math on whatever ableist comment she wanted to make didn’t add up, and Elizah decided not to risk it. She followed behind in taciturn silence as Helena stomped her way across campus. Eventually, they arrived at the communications building, and made their way to the lab where new cell phones were being built.

The arrival of unexpected guests did not cause much of a ripple in the lab, except for one of its residents: Hawke Hughes. He stopped what he was doing and tried to shuffle over to Helena and Alex inconspicuously. He failed.

“What are you guys doing here? Do you need something?”

“I know this is a herculean task for you, Hawke, but stop worrying,” Helena said. “I’m just showing Ms. Song here our latest innovations in communications tech, the kind of things that will end up in the next iPhone.”

“Oh. Yeah, we’re working on something like that,” Hawke said. “It’s not exactly a big flashy technology, or anything-”

“I spent ten minutes walking here,” Elizah said. “Show me what I came to see.”

“Ho boy,” Hawke said. “I suppose we could set up a test run. You guys ready?”

Hawke turned to his compatriots in the comms department, who were already making preparations. The other students brought out two test phones that lacked cases, exposing the circuity and wiring within, and hooked them up to two matching monitors across the room. Eliza stood between them and turned to look at both the monitors in turn.

“Alright, this data transfer should let us move multiple terabytes in a matter of seconds,” Hawke said. Elizah nodded. She didn’t know how much a terabyte actually was, but she knew it was big, so that sounded impressive.

“We’re ready to go in three, two, one…”

Another student counted down, and a third student flipped a switch. A massive pdf file appeared on the first monitor, then jumped to the second monitor almost instantly, and the student who’d done the countdown started scrolling through it.

“Looks like...we lost some data in the transfer,” she said. “That’s weird.”

“That is weird,” Hawke said. “We shouldn’t be seeing any loss.”

Elizah rolled her eyes and took a seat at the side of the room while Hawke’s fellow students tried to untangle the situation.

“Run it again, maybe it’s an equipment malfunction.”

The experiment repeated, and this time every bit of data was transferred without incident. Hawke scrolled through a data log and tried to identify a point of failure in the first experiment, but could not find anything.

“Hmm. Might have to take this for a few rounds of testing,” Hawke said. “I wonder what changed…”

“Well, Elizah wasn’t standing between your computers, for one thing,” Helena said.

She’d meant it as a joke. No one looked amused, Elizah least of all.

“What are you implying?”

“We haven’t actually tested this new kind of transfer on hu- on, uh, physical interference yet,” Hawke said. “Lots of materials can interrupt, muffle, or intercept certain frequencies and-”

“Are you implying that some of your data is stuck inside me?”

“No, no, that’s not feasible,” Hawke said. “It’s much more likely you just muffled the frequency, like soundproof foam. It doesn’t capture and store the sound, just helps lower the frequency and-”

One of the other comms students walked up and pressed a phone into the side of Elizah’s stomach. The phone made a beeping noise.

“Yeah, it was inside her.”

“Inside- get it out,” Elizah demanded.

“Relax, I just did.”

“Where was it?”

“Kidney, somehow,” the student said with a shrug. “That’s going to be a puzzler for the biology department. Apparently a kidney can store at least three point one gigabytes.”

“That’s horrifying!”

“Are you kidding me?” Another student added. “We just figured out a way to encode and transmit information via human tissue. With a little research, this could be a Nobel Prize contender.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. We better get started,” the student said. “I wonder if I could download a movie directly to my brain.”

“Going to need something with a little more storage space for that one, bud.”

“Right, we should upload it up your ass.”

The students started laughing among themselves, and got back to work while Elizah fumed on the sidelines. She poked herself in the kidney once or twice, to check for anything unhealthy, and then stormed out of the room.

“Excellent work, Helena,” Alex whispered as they left the room.

“How the hell was I supposed to know that would happen?” Helena grunted. “Your ‘peers’ have a pattern of idiotic behavior you should’ve predicted, that was completely random!”

“Vell says you should always expect the unexpected on this campus.”

“Oh, of course, Vell Harlan, the one person everyone on this campus is so obsessed with, he-”

Helena stopped mid-sentence. She let out a low groan and a deep sigh.

“Vell Harlan,” she said.

----------------------------------------

Vell read the texts from Hawke, then put his phone down and got back to carving a rune. Apparently their plan was not going quite so well as they had hoped. Vell just wanted to get his homework done before it got any worse. Luckily he carved fast, because things were also getting worse fast.

Vell stood up to answer a knock at his door, and stared blankly at Helena, Alex, and Eliza.

“Can I help you?” Vell said, through gritted teeth.

“Well, we just wanted to introduce Ms. Song here to one of the school’s most valued students,” Helena said. Elizah barely let her get through the introduction before shoving herself to the front of the trio and all the way through Vell’s barely-open door.

“Hi, Elizah Song, I’m a financial auditor for the Einstein-Odinson Board of Directors, I would love to talk to you for a minute,” she said. She did a very poor job of hiding the desperation in her voice. Vell glared at the two new loopers for a second, but relented. From what they had said, the attempt to convince Elizah of the school’s value was going poorly. Now they expected Vell to salvage it. The Board of Directors wanted money, but what they wanted above all else was immortality, a way to escape the inevitability of death, and Vell could possibly provide that.

“I can talk,” Vell said. “A little.”

“Great, where would you say you’re at on the whole rune research, Quenay’s riddle, meaning of life sort of thing?”

“I’m not really making much headway on it,” Vell said.

“Oh, why not, any particular obstacles?”

“The fact that I’m not working on it much, for starters,” Vell said.

“Oh, I understand if you want to keep your methodology under wraps,” Elizah said.

“I’m telling the truth,” Vell said. “I don’t really plan on working on it until I’m out of school.”

Elizah looked shellshocked. Helena looked about ready to club him with a crutch. Alex retained her usual look of disinterest, as she did not really care about any of this.

“You have the key to the world’s most important scientific breakthrough on your back and you’re procrastinating?”

“I’m prioritizing,” Vell said. “I still have to finish my classes here, you know, I want to get a degree.”

“You could be a billionaire!”

“I don’t want to be a billionaire, I want to be a scientist,” Vell said. “Besides, I could be a billionaire later too. Quenay never specified a time limit.”

“Some of us might be working on a deadline,” Helena said, injecting some extra venom into the word “dead”. Vell looked remorseful for a second, but swallowed the regret.

“Well, there’s a lot of reasons putting it off is the right decision,” Vell said. “Among other things, this school is a public facility, so people keep invading my privacy.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Vell looked very pointedly at the three intruders in his dorm. None of them got the point.

“Look, kid, there’s a thirty-million dollar bounty just for getting a status update on your work,” Elizah said. “I could retire with just a rumor about your work, and you’re not even doing it? Do you realize how much money you’re missing out on?”

“I know exactly how much money I’m missing, I had to block a lot of emails and phone numbers from your bosses about it,” Vell said.

Elizah grit her teeth. She kept trying to bring up money, and money kept not working. Thanks to her corporate position, it had been about twenty years since she’d interacted with anybody who wouldn’t sell their children for the right price. She had no idea how to appeal to a person who still had a soul.

“Hold on, give me a second,” Elizah said. Vell was perfectly happy to let her not talk for a while. The temporary delay even provided a much-needed distraction in the form of Skye wandering into Vell’s dorm.

“Hey Vell, could you help me open a jar? I wouldn’t normally ask, but you see-”

Skye looked up and saw the three non-Vell occupants of Vell’s dorm. She waved hello.

“Oh. Hi. Didn’t know you had guests.”

The three “guests” stared right back at Skye, and specifically the arm she was using to wave at them.

“Skye,” Vell began. “Why do you have a crab claw?”

Skye was waving at them with a brown, chitinous appendage where a human forearm should’ve been. She looked down at her mutated arm, clicked the pincer once, and then shrugged.

“Because I turned it into one,” Skye said nonchalantly. “What, you think this kind of stable mutation happens on accident?”

“Well…”

“That was one time,” Skye said. “This was on purpose, and it is perfectly safe. It’s super inconvenient for opening jars, though, so come on, help a girl out. I really want a pickle.”

Vell took the jar and popped it open with a minimal amount of effort, and considered that a win for his masculinity. Skye happily pincered a pickle and chowed down on it with visible delight.

“So, I’m done interrupting,” Skye said. She waved a pickle juice covered crab claw at the three intruders. “I’ll let you get back to your whatever it was.”

“Why on earth did you give yourself a crab claw?” Elizah asked.

“I wanted to see if I could,” Skye said.

“You mutated yourself just to see if you could?”

“Well, obviously, who else was I supposed to mutate?”

Skye used the claw to grab another pickle and take a bite out of it. Elizah stared at her.

“Is that permanent?”

“No, it’ll molt off in a few hours,” Skye said.

“Molt? As in fall off?”

“It’s mostly painless,” Skye said. “I had to pop an ibuprofen or two for the first couple mutations, but nowadays I barely feel it.”

“You’ve- before-”

Elizah clutched at her chest and leaned against the nearest wall. She let out a strained groan of distress so severe that Vell actually started to worry she was having a heart attack. The groan ended, and Elizah shambled over to Alex and Helena with a dead-eyed glare.

“The two of you have dragged me to three different places,” Elizah said. “And in three different places, everyone I’ve seen has been dangerous, idiotic, and, worst of all, fiscally irresponsible!”

Vell felt like one of those things was not like the other, but Eliza seemed like she wasn’t in the mood for color commentary.

“This place doesn’t just need its budget cut, it needs to be wiped off the face of the earth,” Elizah snapped. “And god willing, all you psychopaths will go with it.”

Elizah stormed out and slammed the door shut so hard the guitar leaning against Vell’s wall rattled. He made sure the guitar was safe and then glared at his two new comrades.

“Good job, guys,” Vell said.

“She’s all talk,” Alex said. “She couldn’t actually get this school shut down. It’s too valuable.”

“She’s the person in charge of saying how valuable it is, you fucking idiot,” Helena said. “If she tells the Board this place is a money pit, they might believe her.”

“They won’t shut down the world’s most prestigious school overnight because of one whining woman,” Alex said.

“No, but they’ll sure as hell slash our budget to oblivion,” Vell said. “And that means experiments getting canceled, professors losing jobs, students getting expelled, you name it.”

The idea of students getting expelled did seem to sting Alex, if only because she was well aware she’d be one of the first on the chopping block.

“Just get out of my dorm,” Vell said. He pulled out his phone and started frantically texting Hawke. “Maybe if we block her phone we can pull off a hail mary before she leaves the island. Skye, can you tell Kim to start grabbing people? We need some good examples.”

“Try not to bring Freddy or his crew,” Helena said. “We-”

“I know,” Vell said. He turned his back on the duo and kept texting while Skye started sending messages as well. After a few seconds of being ignored, the two young loopers got the picture and walked out together.

“Excellent work, Helena,” Alex said.

“Shut it. This was Vell’s plan,” Helena said. “Luckily for us, I have something more...effective, in mind.”

Helena walked away with a smile on her face. Alex briefly considered going back into the dorm to warn Vell, but decided against it. Vell was the leader of the team, it was his job to keep his followers in line. If he failed to do so, that was his own fault.

----------------------------------------

Vell had a lot of literal followers this time, though he was keeping them in more of a mob than a line. Kim had assembled their smartest, and more importantly, safest students for one final show of force to Elizah Song. Hopefully some life saving medicines and therapeutic techniques would sway her opinion back in the right direction.

“Okay, you all just stay here and stand still,” Vell said. “Nobody make any sudden moves, she might, uh, still be a little tense.”

The surgeons at the front of the group nodded. Of all people, Vell trusted them to have steady nerves.

“I’m going to go talk to Elizah,” Vell said. “You guys stay here, at a safe distance.”

They were a few dozen yards away from the teleportation center, and Vell could see Eliza waiting for the transit portal to re-open. She seemed agitated just by the sight of the large crowd of students, and Vell didn’t want to alarm her any further. He approached alone and made sure to keep his hands in sight as Elizah put her back against a wall.

“Stay away from me,” she demanded. “I’m not putting up with one more second of this nonsense.”

“I know, I know, you kind of got off on the wrong foot with this campus,” Vell said. “And I won’t lie, there is the occasional bit of weird, dangerous stuff around here. But I promise you, for every odd experiment there’s a dozen more that help, and heal, and improve people’s lives.”

“I don’t care,” Elizah said. “This island is full of psychopaths, and it’s a miracle it hasn’t destroyed itself yet.”

“Well, that's, uh,” Vell stammered. “We have surprisingly good safety protocols.”

“The safest thing this school can do is stop existing,” Eliza said. “And I’m going to- oh hell.”

Vell looked over his shoulder to check on the crowd of followers, and saw that everyone he’d brought along was behaving. Unfortunately, someone he’d deliberately not brought along was there too. Helena was walking up to Elizah and Vell with a determined glare in her bright blue eyes.

“Helena, what are you doing?”

“Just talking,” Helena said. “Hello again, Elizah.”

“What is it this time?” Elizah snapped. “You have someone who can pull my heart out of my chest and show it to me?”

“We do, actually, but she’s not here right now,” Helena said. “I just wanted to come to you and be honest with you about this school. Because frankly, I agree with you.”

Vell and Elizah both looked at her with confusion. Helena let go of one of her crutches and leaned against the wall.

“This school is full of dangerous, unhinged lunatics,” Helena said. “You are one hundred percent right about that. You’re even mostly right that it might be better off getting shut down. Except for the part where you’re not thinking about what comes next.”

Elizah narrowed her eyes suspiciously and waited for Helena to continue.

“For starters, this school has had only one truly life-threatening incident in the past few decades, and that incident was caused by a principal abducting Vell, not by one of the students,” Helena said. “So clearly, despite their inherent danger, something about the structure of this facility is keeping those potential threats in check. In the event of a school shutdown, or even just a budget reduction, all of these unhinged lunatics are going to keep being unhinged lunatics, but you risk removing whatever structure is keeping them at least mostly contained.”

Elizah curiously scanned what little she could see of the island, and the crowd arrayed in front of her. Helena had a point about general safety. While there was occasional minor injury or property destruction, no one had ever gotten seriously hurt at the Einstein-Odinson. That she knew of, at least.

“Oh, and the second thing you’re failing to consider, and perhaps the more important part,” Helena said. “All these people, they’re going to be dangerous and unhinged no matter where they are, we’ve established that, yes?”

“Yes,” Elizah said, somewhat fearfully.

“So let’s say you shut down the school, or even just get a few of them expelled,” Helena continued. “The thing is, they’re not going to have anywhere to go. Or anything to do. But they are going to have someone to blame.”

Helena stood next to Elizah and waved her free hand in the direction of the crowd outside. They could see dozens of students, and Eliza could see dozens of potential threats.

“Imagine all those dangerous people, knowing that their future, their dreams, have been ripped away from them,” Helena said. “And imagine that all of them know it’s all your fault.”

For the second time today, Vell worried that Elizah’s heart had stopped. The auditor froze on the spot as her face went pale, and she broke into a cold sweat. Helena gave her a pat on the shoulder, retrieved her crutch, and started to walk away as the portal came to life behind Elizah.

“So, uh,” Vell began. “There’s also a guy pioneering new heart surgery techniques, if you-”

Elizah turned on her heel and walked directly through the portal without a word.

“Okay, bye,” Vell mumbled.

----------------------------------------

“Well, I must congratulate you,” Dean Lichman said. “I just got word that the school’s budget has actually been increased.”

“Well, uh, it was nothing, you know,” Vell said. “Helena and Alex did all the legwork.”

The two of them beamed with entirely unearned pride. Vell didn’t want to give them credit, considering how badly things had gone off the rails, but he also could not tell the Dean that Helena had essentially threatened the auditor into complying. The school was still funded, and that was what mattered, no matter how many implied death threats it took to get there.

“And your friends even managed to disarm that basement full of traps. Which is as relieving as it is frustrating,” Dean Lichman said. “Here I am trying to scrape together sufficient funds, and some past dean had enough budget lying around to order several thousand battle axes and bear traps.”

“And a few eels,” Hawke added.

“Well eels are surprisingly cheap,” Dean Lichman said, without elaborating how or why he knew that. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should direct this funding to some school services. Thank you again, and enjoy the rest of your day.”

Dean Lichman trod off to attend to some much needed refinancing, leaving the loopers to their own devices yet again. Vell breathed a sigh of relief.

“Alright, last minute success is still a success,” Vell said. “Even if it was a little…”

“Unorthodox?”

“I was going to say unethical, actually,” Vell said. “Like, uh, flagrantly. I’m pretty sure what you did is actually illegal in some places, Helena.”

“But not in this place,” Helena said. “Benefits of international waters.”

“So you just know that, offhand,” Samson said. “Was that the first thing you looked up here? What all you can get away with?”

“It wasn’t the first thing, but obviously I studied the local laws,” Helena said. “When in Rome.”

Samson looked like he had another comment ready, but Vell cut him off by raising a hand.

“Why don’t the rest of you go finish disarming the booby traps and getting the components somewhere safe,” Vell said. “I’ll have a talk with Helena.”

The rest of the loopers shuffled off, leaving Vell and Helena alone. She didn’t even wait for him to start talking before rolling her eyes.

“Lord spare me from sanctimonious lectures,” Helena said.

“It’s not a lecture-”

“It’s always a lecture, Vell.”

“If it’s a lecture, it’s deserved,” Vell said. “You threatened a mostly innocent woman!”

“Oh, you have no idea what she’s guilty of,” Helena said. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m terminally ill, in a way that is very expensive to treat. I was eight years old the first time someone told me my life was worth less than a stack of paper, and every few months since then, I have had to persuade, manipulate, guilt-trip, and yes, occasionally threaten, some greedy corporate whore, just like Elizah, who wants a new boat more than they want me to be alive.”

“Uh…”

“And besides, you got what you wanted, right?” Helena continued. “Me and Alex scared off the bitch. Mission accomplished.”

“That, uh, was not the plan,” Vell stammered.

“Vell, I’m not an idiot, you didn’t put me on the frontlines for my winning personality,” Helena said. “Even if I was dumb enough to believe that, nobody’s fucking stupid enough to think Alex would be part of the charm squad.”

“That wasn’t the, uh, the whole picture, you-”

“Jesus christ, how did Joan not figure out you were the guy with the rune sooner,” Helena said, looking more disgusted with every word. “You can’t lie to save your ass.”

“I lie to save lots of asses literally every day!”

“So why aren’t you any good at it?” Helena scoffed. “Look, Vell, I don’t make a habit of threatening people. You spare me the lecture, I won’t tell Alex you used her as outrage bait. Can you imagine how insufferable it’d be if she knew?”

“Aren’t you threatening me right now?”

“No, this is a deal, not a threat,” Helena said.

“But your side of the deal is that you won’t do something threatening to me,” Vell said.

“God, be pedantic about it if you want, is it a deal or not?”

“Fine. It’s a deal.”

“Excellent. Hope we’ve all learned a valuable lesson today,” Helena said, as she stood to leave.

“And that lesson is?”

Helena pivoted on her crutches to glare in Vell’s direction.

“That I’m smarter than my sister, Vell,” Helena said. “You can’t fool me.”

She walked out and slammed the door behind her. Vell rolled his eyes, packed up his things, and headed for the basement where the remnants of the traps were located. As he had predicted, Alex had not stuck around to help, leaving him some room to talk freely.

“Bad news, everyone,” Vell said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Helena figured out our plan.”

“Oh no,” Kim said mockingly. “Saw right through our plan to use her and Alex as bait, right?”

“Yep,” Vell said.

“And what about our actual plan?” Samson said. “Any sign she’s onto that?”

“Fucking clueless,” Vell said. He and his friends shared a quick, conspiratorial chuckle.

Helena was right. She actually was smarter than Joan -smart enough to know a scheme when she saw one. But she was also more arrogant than even Joan had ever been. Too arrogant to think there might be a second scheme running right underneath the first one she spotted.