Hastur had never attended a board meeting before, and he was very curious.
Finnian, on the other hand, wasn’t curious at all when he heard the news over the phone. He even took a deep breath after Hastur finished expressing his support with the words, “I’ll stand by your side.”
Even though just half a minute earlier he’d been seething over the news that Old Hank Vincent was about to be released from prison, Finnian forced himself to calm down and persuade Hastur.
“No need to come with me, right? Those board members have faces uglier than sin. I’m afraid you’ll want to end the world halfway through.”
“I won’t,” Hastur clarified seriously. “At least I won’t hurt you or the people at the orphanage.”
Finnian: “…”
…So you really were planning that??
He tried steering the thoughts of the rather violence-prone egg yolk jellyfish. “But outside the orphanage, there might be other interesting people. People like me, Dustin, and Adolf? And all those innocent kids—think about Casey. Think about Alpha, who’s still helping us… cough, helping her father with those reports.”
“We were all ones you picked up, one by one. If you went ahead and ended the world, then outside the orphanage… there could be countless little Finnian and little Dustins out there. They’d all be killed. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”
Hastur immediately recalled the two hidden character profiles he hadn’t unlocked yet. “You’re right. No world-ending, then.”
He paused, then tentatively wiggled his tentacles. “How about ending just one room—”
Finnian: “No.”
Hastur felt a twinge of regret. After hanging up, he complained to G8273. “If violence is off the table, what’s even the point of a board meeting?”
At that moment, the hovercar they were riding in hummed along on autopilot, heading straight for Babylon Company Headquarters.
“…” Nasir, who had been furiously transmitting data to G8273 and Finnian from the seat beside them, slowly raised his head. “Board meetings are pointless to begin with. Nauseating. A complete waste of life.”
“Sounds like G’s kind of thing.” Hastur offered his objective assessment, meeting Nasir’s shocked stare without flinching. “You can check with him yourself.”
Nasir shot G8273 a look that said, “No way—you’re seriously not pissed about that?”
But disappointment was in the cards for him today. As an AI whose greatest joy and skill lay in imposing order on chaos, G8273 merely twirled his pen in boredom and clarified. “I don’t find board meetings pointless or nauseating. Though they do sometimes waste time for no reason, like any normal form of entertainment.”
“…??” Nasir’s “you’re all crazy” gaze shifted instantly from Hastur to G8273.
By comparison, the dean’s urge to get violent at a board meeting felt downright reasonable. Hell, who wouldn’t want to?
He resolved to stop pondering anything beyond “dealing with this one board meeting,” including questions like “What did Lancer Vincent mean by going along with whatever Finnian says next, with Finnian picking the new partner?” or “Is Lancer seriously stepping back from the power struggle? Handing it all to Finnian?” or even “How’d the dean switch faces like that—was he disguised before?”:
“Gentlemen, we’re at headquarters.”
The hovercar descended gradually.
The office tower on High Pei Street no longer spewed its usual irritating light pollution into the night, but it had sprouted countless eyes that never slept. Each pair framed anywhere from one to dozens of exhausted overtime workers—the density scaling with job rank.
Hastur tilted his head back for a look after stepping out, struck by how the eye-studded skyscraper, its upper floors lost in shadow, resembled one of those “Cthulhu”-system monsters from Nolly Qianning’s novels.
Of course—who said the corporate world wasn’t its own eldritch horror, an incomprehensible realm no mortal could defy?
He trailed after G8273 into Babylon Company Headquarters and ran into a dressed-up edition of Finnian at the entrance—meaning Finnian had ditched his usual white tee and biker gear for a suit.
Three or four equally sharp-dressed middle-aged men clustered around Finnian. Hastur could plainly read the impatience on Finnian’s face teetering on the edge of “Screw this, time to snap.”
But the next instant, as Finnian’s fiery gaze swept over casually, that bubbling “Screw this” turned into wide-eyed horror: “Holy shit! World’s fucked!”
Finnian reined himself in within a second, shoved his arm through the crowd, and marched over. “Didn’t I say you didn’t need to come keep me company?”
Hastur stood firm. “In this trying time, I want to be at your side.”
Finnian wasn’t sure who had it worse right now—himself or a planet perpetually one hair-trigger away from doom. “Board meetings don’t allow random friends tagging along, though. G… Lancer! You know the rules!”
The meeting hadn’t even started, and sweat already beaded his brow.
G8273 backed him up reliably. “That’s the rule, yes. It applies to me too. Old Vincent’s ownership is murky enough that I can’t attend this board meeting. We could wait outside the conference hall?”
Finnian exhaled in massive relief, fixing Hastur with an earnest plea. “Would you wait outside the conference hall for me, Dean?”
“…” The group who’d been chatting up Finnian earlier shot over curious glances, eager to ID whoever had turned the standoffish Luciano Hardy so agreeable.
Hastur had always doted indulgently on the humans in his care. “Just call if you need me. Soundproof walls or not, I’ll hear you.”
“…” Now Finnian worried that even the hallway wasn’t safe. He half-wished he could clock the dean and ship him back to the orphanage—too bad he couldn’t pull it off.
And wouldn’t you know it, some clueless idiot chose that moment to sidle up, eyeing him and then the dean like he’d spotted a chink in the armor. He flashed Hastur a sycophantic grin.
“You’re Little Lucy’s friend? Oh, I don’t think the board rules are all that rigid. Especially not for our dear little Mr. Hardy, who’s finally returned after nine years missing. We could make exceptions—say, invite you and little Mr. Hardy into the conference hall together?”
Finnian: …@#$%!
Fuck’s sake—he was busting his ass to save the goddamn world, and this moron was dead weight?
~~~
No matter how desperate Finnian felt inside, Hastur got exactly what he wanted and slipped into the conference hall.
The meeting kicked off promptly. The host at the head of the table adjusted the microphone at a leisurely pace.
“Delighted to see the government councilor and representatives from Wings of Michael Medical Company at today’s internal Babylon Company board meeting.”
The opener reeked of tension. Finnian crossed his fingers under the table, silently begging for everyone to keep it civil.
Fat chance.
The councilor jumped in right away. “Everyone here shares the same sense of justice, the same belief in the truth—that Old Hank Vincent could never have poisoned the Hardy couple.”
“The recording from Vice Director Dustin isn’t genuine. Or it’s been doctored. With today’s tech, that’s entirely feasible.”
Hastur, who’d been fiddling with his phone at the table, slowly lifted his head. “??”
Finnian was fit to burst—not just from rage at the councilor’s fact-twisting, but because: You idiot, have you lost your mind?? The dean’s a massive softie for his people… er, person-slash-nonhumans. Trashing one is manageable, but two at once??
Hastur had been texting G8273 for dirt on these folks’ ties to Old Hank. He now snapped his phone off, turned, and fixed the prattling councilor with a deep, piercing stare.
Finnian silently raged at the conference hall’s lack of blackout shades. First order of business if he clawed back control: mandatory sleep masks in every room. Earplugs too, while he was at it.
“I was there too,” he snapped. “The chief commissioner was right there. You saying we all heard wrong?”
The politician sensed a warm trickle in his nose but ignored it, smile unwavering.
“That’s not an impossible scenario. And I’d like to pose a follow-up—”
“How do you prove you’re really Luciano Hardy, the one who vanished nine years back?”
“…” Even Finnian, laser-focused on keeping the dean chill, blanked out at that.
“Appearance? Fingerprints? DNA? Memories? All forgeries waiting to happen.” The politician scratched at his itching nose, then went all-in.
“If you didn’t die nine years ago, why ghost the public inheritance from your parents? Why vanish for nine years only to pop back up now?”
Finnian gaped in disbelief. “My parents are the ones who ‘vanished.’ You think I’d strut into the company or go public if I had half a brain? Suicidal much?”
“But that’s merely your side of the story.” With nudges from the others, the councilor finally clocked his nosebleed. No matter—he snatched a handkerchief, clamped it over his nose, and powered on.
“Same as that recording from Vice Director Dustin. Same as your so-called identity. All too easy to fake.”
“That’s why we need an impartial authority to verify all this evidence. Like Wings of Michael Medical Company, here today.”
“No need for me to spell it out—everyone here knows the Group’s authority in the medical field. I believe all of you have signed emergency rescue membership contracts with the Group. Oh, perhaps except for this unidentified guest right in front of me.”
The congressman, apparently not courting death quite enough, leaned toward Hastur of his own accord. “If I may be so bold as to ask your occupation? I’m quite curious why Babylon’s board of directors would allow an outsider inside.”
It wasn’t at all what Finnian had expected—Hastur wasn’t really angry at the moment. He was far more interested in seeing how Finnian would react.
Staring at the congressman wasn’t meant to intimidate, either. It was just a natural response. In a meeting, wasn’t it normal to look at whoever was speaking?
Any ordinary person would instinctively avert their gaze from Hastur. Back at the hotel, everyone had shunned him like a venomous snake—even Old Hank, in his fury, hadn’t dared to meet Hastur’s eyes directly.
But today’s congressman was different. There was a stubborn streak in him. The more frightened he felt deep down, the harder he forced himself to stare straight ahead. He was exactly the kind of guy from a horror movie who ignored the ghost’s ominous wail of warning—”Stay away or die!”—and charged right in screaming, the first to get corrupted. No injustice there at all.
Hastur exchanged a few words with the congressman in kind (though the congressman’s barbs were loaded with subtext while Hastur stuck to the literal). Only then did he realize that Finnian might truly be stumped by the blatant trap the congressman had set. “—One moment, sir.”
He gave a polite nod to the congressman, whose face had turned purple yet who was still holding his ground at his post, then turned and leaned close to Finnian to whisper, “You don’t know how to handle this baseless smear?”
Finnian didn’t see himself as some master schemer in public eyes. He was more the muscle. “This is an open conspiracy. If Wings of Michael really runs the test, I’ll be rubber-stamped a fraud a hundred percent. Got any ideas?—Besides wiping everyone out.”
He was powerless against the congressman (and perhaps not all that inclined anyway). He wasn’t some bleeding-heart saint, but as for the rest…
What he meant was, the board needed to leave him a few people, right? Who would handle the work otherwise? Dump the whole mess on G8273? He didn’t dare.
“…” Hastur wanted to say he didn’t project an image of political wordplay expertise either. He was more the muscle too. “Give me a second to ask someone.”
G8273 was out. The other had made it clear he had no interest in meddling in human politics. Hastur might not have cared before, but given their relationship now… he decided to respect the AI’s individual principles.
Who else could he ask? Who had the chops to solve this kind of puzzle?
After mulling it over, Hastur slowly clicked 【Log Out】…
The steel lair of reality came into view.
Hastur glanced at the time: seven-thirty in the evening, prime time for human wage slaves grinding overtime.
He confidently texted the boss, who would absolutely never clock out early:
【To Boss: …】
He laid out the whole story from start to finish, then earnestly asked:
【In a situation like this, how should it be handled?】
He waited three minutes, starting to think there’d be no reply. He was just pondering, “Maybe ask Lv Zhucao? Though Lv Zhucao gets stumped by colleagues’ schemes all the time,” when his phone buzzed:
【Short-term solution or long-term?】
Hastur: “?”
As expected of the boss—still grinding away. No, as expected, so reliable. Or rather, as expected, brimming with experience. They were still racking their brains for a plan, and here the boss was, already segmenting it into short- and long-term strategies.
