"I know exactly what Chaos Corp has been doing all over the world!" I yelled, letting all my pent-up stress bleed into my voice. "You think the GDA is blind? You have been leveraging your one-year age-reversing pills to warlords, billionaires, and global dictators!"
Neel watched me rant with a mild look of amusement.
"You approach the most corrupt people on the planet. You offer them a miracle drug. A pill that reverses their age by exactly three hundred and sixty-five days. But you force them to sign some sort of devil's contract that they physically cannot deny after signing. And then, a few weeks later, they mysteriously drop dead!" I spat, my voice echoing in the large office.
I glared at him, recounting the terrifying intelligence reports that had been keeping me awake for half a year.
I planted my hands flat on the mahogany desk, leaning in.
"I have satellites watching every inch of this rock, Neel. I see the bodies. Kim in North Korea drops dead from a perfectly timed coronary and forty-eight hours later, a paranoid nuclear state happily hands its military assets and airspace over to your company."
I ground my teeth together, breaking eye contact for a second. I was consumed with dread. Chaos Inc. was growing like a parasite, and we were the host. No matter what I did, no matter how many agents I deployed, it amounted to nothing. They were going to absorb the GDA entirely. Everything I had built, every shadow I commanded, was being systematically stolen by a corporation because of a single fucking product. This lack of control was suffocating me.
I snapped my gaze back to him, holding up a finger and cutting right through his smugness.
"The warlords bleeding Central Africa for rare earth metals were wiped out by synchronized aneurysms over a single weekend. By Monday morning, Chaos Corp drones are running their mines to 'stabilize the region'. The cartel bosses down south die in their sleep, and their smuggling routes are instantly converted into your corporate shipping lanes for your work."
I let out a slow, harsh breath.
"In six months, eighty percent of the dictators who took your backdoor deal for those miracle pills are in body bags. But that is not what pisses me off. No, it's the fallout! Or rather, the lack thereof."
I stared him dead in the eye, refusing to blink.
"Not a single general has spoken out against this. No civil wars broke out, nor were any nukes launched. The successors are happy to smile for the cameras and hand their national sovereignty over to Chaos Incorporated."
I took a breath, feeling my heart pounding in my chest.
I tightened my grip on the edge of the mahogany desk.
"Now, you are moving on to America. You had the gall to start lobbying the United States President to outsource his military contracts to your private security sector in just six goddamn months! Neel, you cannot expect me to sit back and do nothing. I ignored it the first few times, but this cannot go on any longer!"
Neel stared at me for a long moment. The tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Then, Neel simply threw his head back and laughed.
It was a genuine yet echoing laugh.
"Oh my god! Are you serious?" Neel wiped a fake tear from his eye, shaking his head. "All this outrage? All this righteous anger just because you are getting jealous that Daddy President may favor our services over your bloated GDA budget?"
He leaned forward, steepling his fingers again, the amusement fading into a sharp, mocking grin.
[Image Here]
"Come on, Cecil. Where was all this grand moral animosity six months ago when Donald and I were sitting on that live television interview?"
I tightened my jaw, refusing to answer.
"You didn't mind Donald signing our contract to go along with my little story back then. The grand narrative where the GDA publicly embroiled the Chairman and falsely labeled him as a global terrorist." Neel leaned closer, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "We all know better. It was a complete fabrication, all done on my advice to put Chaos Corp on the tongue of every citizen in the world. We needed the infamy to build the brand, and you happily played the bad guy to get access to our tech."
"Now listen here about that." Donald stepped up, moving to defend the agency.
Neel talked right over him, not even glancing at the disgruntled man. "Not to mention you do not seem to mind the annual pills we will be supplying as your personal benefit for following my little act. Remember our deal, Cecil? A pill a year effectively makes you immortal. You get to stay in your prime, running your little spy games forever. Oh, speaking of Immortal, how's the washed-up act doing right now? Enjoying the joint pain?"
I sighed heavily, pulling my hands off his desk and aggressively rubbing my temple as I felt a massive headache forming behind my eyes.
"The deal was for the GDA to take the brunt of public opinion to help you establish a foothold." I said, lowering my voice to a low growl. "It was not for Chaos Corp to threaten to take away our international privileges and deal directly with the United States Government behind my back!"
"Oh come on, Cecil,-can I call you that-let us drop the titles for a second." Neel tilted his head, looking genuinely curious. It was the first time he looked somewhat normal during the entire meeting. "Help me understand something. Why the fuck do you even want the job?"
I blinked, taken aback by the blunt question. "Excuse me?"
"Why do you hold onto this miserable position?" Neel gestured vaguely to my tired face and graying hair. "All this stress? All these sleepless nights? Managing ungrateful superheroes, hiding secrets from the public, fighting off alien invasions? It cannot be good for you, even with our age-reversing pills in your system, right? Think about it, Cecil. You could have an eternal holiday. You could sit on a beach in the Maldives with a piña colada, completely carefree, while Chaos Corp deals with, well... all the chaos."
Neel pointed a finger at the heavy office doors behind me. "In fact, let me show you how much we appreciate your hard work."
Right on cue, the heavy oak doors clicked open.
I turned around and in walked a beautiful blonde woman in a stunning, form-fitting red dress. I recognized her instantly from the GDA database. Ms. Winchester, or as she was famously known as Supermom. Coca-Cola execs would be frothing in their mouth if they knew where all their hard work ended up, secretly working as a high-level Chaos Corp employee.
She walked across the room with practiced elegance, holding a small ivory box as she set it gently on the desk between Neel and me, gave a polite bow, and stepped back.
"Thank you, Ms. Winchester. That will be all." Neel dismissed her with a gentle smile.
She turned and left the office, the doors clicking shut behind her.
Neel reached out and popped open the lid, turning the box around and pointing it directly at Donald and me.
"How about ten years?" Neel's voice was soft, almost hypnotic. "Does that sound good enough to cool you off, Director?"
My breath hitched in my throat. I heard Donald's cybernetic lungs literally stutter beside me.
Resting on a bed of dark purple velvet inside the box were exactly ten glowing pills pulsing with a faint energy. Ten years of life, no… ten years of youth.
I stared at the box. My rational mind screamed at me that this was a trap. This was how he bought the warlords. This was how he owned the dictators. One single pill had cost some of the most powerful people in the world their entire countries, their legacies, and their lives. And he was casually offering me ten of them.
The biological craving inside me was immense. I was old, and my body hurt every single morning. I had plastic for skin and scars that ached when it rained. If I stayed young, I could keep fighting, I could keep protecting the Earth from the shadows, and I could keep an eye on Chaos Corp.
I narrowed my good eye, looking at Neel with unhidden suspicion. "No contract?"
"No contract." Neel raised his hands in a mock surrender. "Consider it a gift between partners. For your continued cooperation in keeping the peace."
I stared at him for agonizing seconds.
Then, I let out a long, heavy exhale. The tension completely drained from my rigid shoulders as a wave of shameful relief washed over me. I reached out, snapped the ivory box shut, and quickly pocketed it inside my trench coat.
I hated myself for it, but I needed the edge.
All the while, Neel just smiled. It was the smile of a man who knew exactly what every single person's price was.
"Anything else I can help you with today, dear friend?" Neel folded his hands back on his desk.
I scoffed at the title, turning away from the desk to leave. I had lost this battle of wits, but I remembered my initial reason for coming up to this godforsaken penthouse.
I paused at the door, glancing back over my shoulder. "Where is this Mark from the other dimension? The one the terrorist was chasing?"
Neel smiled softly, a genuine look of amusement crossing his features.
"Where else?" Neel replied, leaning back. "Home."
[A/N]:
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