don’t want to hear the bad news,” she said pettishly.
“Then I’ll tell you the good news, first.” He nudged Mandy thoughtfully with his toe. “We need a steady supply of high quality, hand-selected lab rats. We also need someone to deal with our disposal issue. Remember Tom Bixby, from the Haven?”
Ava grimaced. Bixby had been one of Dr. O’s rich pets. One who’d survived and thrived after Dr. O’s Brain Potential Program. Off to Harvard with Dessie. She still remembered his hot eyes, his groping hands. “An arrogant prick, as I recall. That’s your brilliant idea?”
“He runs his own private military company. Bixby Enterprises. It’s gotten huge. I think X-Cog would be extremely interesting to him. And we would have multiple layers of security, since he’s Club O.”
Ava’s lip curled. “But he’s a dickhead.”
Des’s eyes rolled impatiently. “Don’t be a spoiled baby. Offering him a partnership would solve all our problems in one move.”
“And create a lot more,” she said.
Des’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve set up a demo. You will be good, Ava.”
Well, look at him. Throwing his weight around. Trying to whip her into line with his big dick. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me the bad news,” she said. “Maybe it’ll cheer me up.”
Des stared at her, nostrils distended, cheeks reddening. Anger turned him on. A fact she often turned to her advantage. “I was at a Parrish Foundation board meeting today,” he said finally. “Parrish is taking over where his bitch of a wife left off. Getting rid of Linda distracted him for a while, but the party’s over, everybody out of the pool. He’s engaged a panel of financial forensics experts to examine every penny of Parrish Foundation money spent in the past three years. And to vet all future projects. No more cutting it close.”
“Oh, God,” Ava moaned. “I’m so close to a breakthrough!”
“I know, but what can you do. He’s as much of a pit bull as his ballbusting wife, may she burn in hell. The Morality Police don’t want anything naughty going down, after Dr. O’s big scandal.”
“Fucking hypocrites. ‘Helix was a victim, too,’” Ava mimicked.
Des looked at the moaning girl at his feet. “This shit does not look good, Av. Save it for when we can afford a more secret facility, and that won’t be until after we get control of the Foundation board.”
“It can’t wait! Besides, no one will miss her. She’s just a whore that I scraped off the bathroom floor of a dance club. No wonder she’s a dud.” She kicked Mandy in the kidney. “I need better raw material to work with.”
“We need reliable funding first.” Des’s voice was stern. “And someone to supply lab rats, and safely dispose of the garbage for us. The Parrish Foundation is watching like a hawk. It’s too risky.”
“Charles Parrish has been raking in hundreds of millions in medical patents for years,” Ava said bitterly. “Like he cared where the smell came from before his nose got rubbed in shit.”
“Thank God he’s retiring. I’m giving a fawning speech for that pompous tightass at the retirement banquet. Fucking bore.”
“Retiring? That’s good.”
“Not really. It just leaves him that much more time to be possessive and controlling about Parrish Foundation research money.”
Ava gave him a big, brilliant smile. “So let’s kill him.”
Des looked startled. “That wouldn’t solve our problem.”
“No? You’re on the board. You handpicked the last two board members after we got rid of Linda. If Parrish disappeared, the rest of them will do anything you want, for the 400K salaries, the skybox, the Lear jet. The paid luxury vacations. They’re sheep. It’s easy, Dessie.”
Des grunted. “Hardly. Don’t oversimplify.”
“But it is simple,” Ava said. “We create the perfect board. Eliminate the watchdogs. Create a perfect screen of bland, squeaky clean product development projects that they can all feel virtuous about. Siphon a percentage of the money back to the real stuff, like Dr. O did. Except we won’t fuck up, and let it explode in our faces.”
Des looked dubious, but he wasn’t rejecting it out of hand.
“Who inherits Parrish’s fortune when he dies?” Ava asked.
Des frowned thoughtfully. “His younger daughter, Ronnie. Ronnie’s thirteen. Edie, the older one, was at the Haven with us, remember? Glasses, braces. Woof, woof. The cognitive enhancement program bombed out bigtime on her, as I recall. She never got into Club O. Just didn’t have what it took.”
Ava nodded. She remembered the tongue-tied Edie. One of the privileged ones, like Des himself. Rich kids who did the soft core version of Dr. O’s dirty mind games, because Mommy and Daddy wanted better grades. Ava hated the pampered little cunt for that.
“Who inherits if Ronnie dies?” Her voice hardened.
“Av. Please,” Des grumbled. “We can’t kill everyone in sight.”
“Who?” she persisted.
He shrugged. “The Foundation, I guess. I know that Edie’s out of the will, because I overheard Dad and Charles talking about her. He’d cut off her personal funds. He was arranging to disinherit her. That was a few years ago.”
“What did she do? Drugs? Partying? Fucking the wrong men?”
Des shook his head. “No, she’s just weird. She embarrasses him. Charles can’t stand that. She had, ah, problems. You know…” He twirled his index finger in a circle at his temple. “Doesn’t surprise me, since she’s one of Dr. O’s duds. Most of them cracked up years ago.”
Ava tapped her lip. “Dr. O wanted to do an interface with Edie Parrish so bad, he was practically pissing himself,” she said. “She had the perfect test results for it, but she was Charles Parrish’s little baby girl. He had to keep her in bubblewrap. Stick with the standard cognitive enhancement program. It drove him crazy.”
She left the rest of the thought silent. How she, Ava, had borne the brunt of Dr. O’s frustration. He’d taken it out on her. She had good reason to hate that mealy-mouthed little Parrish princess bitch.
Des looked baffled. “What was it that he liked about her? What can you see from test results and MRI’s?”
Ava’s smile was bitter. Des was such an ignorant dickhead sometimes. “They were exactly like mine,” she said softly.
Des’s face was still blank. “Meaning?”
Ava sighed. “I was his best interface, Dessie. Besides Kev McCloud, of course. We were the only ones that didn’t die of brain bleed. Some lasted a few days, but only McCloud and I were genuinely reusable. That’s why I survived. That’s why I wasn’t flushed down the john with the rest of them.” She brushed her hair back with a swipe of her hand, preening. “And being pretty helped, too.”
Des
