Vallejo stands at the window of her office, admiring the view while she can. She knows she's for it. The directives had included only two top-priority items: Help Roar-Sol maintain a low profile, and keep the Archives secure. She's managed the latter only at the expense of the former. Some decker got purged by the system and now it's all over the Net.
And now Rey is coming to see her.
You don't want to see him, and you don't want to be seen by him. She's said more than once that the only times you meet Mason Rey face-to-face are when he's going to buy you or when he's going to sell you.
And he might just sell you to the devil, if the negotiations work out in his favor.
He maintains the largest personal space of anyone she has ever met. He wears black kid gloves, and he never shakes hands, even at photo ops.
She's going to take the fall for this. She can feel it. Roar-Sol Codifiers "maintains the confidence of its clients by its ethical standards," according to Media Relations, and you can't sell ethical by giving away poster children to Trauma Team.
Madeleine Vallejo has done well at Roar-Sol. It's been a lot of hard work (some of which cost her good friends). Her bosses like her, and the folks who work for her respect her. She puts in late hours, and she buys into the company mission.
Like all good company missions, Roar-Sol's is a little larger than life. RSC intends to re-establish a platform in which the world economy can happen. They are going to create a secure space in which commerce is safe from the lawlessness of the times. And they don't talk in regional terms. Roar-Sol is going to single-handedly rebuild the world.
There's even a little jingle, buoyantly shameless: "Let's make moneeeey."
She thinks they can do it too. She's seen the specs.
But now she's out.
Oh, well. It's not like she doesn't have skills to fall back on. The only trick now is to stay cool and stay alive. And if she's as good as she thinks she is, she won't even get wiped.
0 Comments