Page 75 of Hollow State

“I’m not.” Gideon leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking about why Finch picked us.”

The thought had kept Darwin up some nights. He hadn't been the only medical researcher Finch could've approached. Finch knew others and had relationships with plenty of them. But Finch had made it seem like Darwin was the only one who could create the drug. The only one Finch trusted.

"I've wondered about that myself."

And Finch laid it on pretty thick about Gideon. How talented Gideon was and how in awe Finch was of what the military world had to say about the young genius.

"It doesn't make sense," Darwin said. "For the most part, we're rule followers. And we don't like surprises. If it's not working as expected, or if there’s any question of quality, we wouldn't bring the drug, or product, to market."

“That's interesting. Those are some of the things he accused me of, too,” Gideon said. “But before he pushed us out, he made sure he had exactly what he needed from us. And the shitty part is how easily we were manipulated because we believed in saving lives. We believed in the mission that Hyperion, in theory, stands for. We built something to be proud of, and he took our pride and used it against us.”

Darwin’s stomach tightened. “Nothing like a good character autopsy before a mission.”

“It’s the opposite.” Gideon leaned forward, fingers back on the keyboard. “The thing with Finch is, at least when we worked for him, he knew what we wouldn’t do. That’s how he played us. But tonight? You’re using the drug in a way he wouldn’t ever imagine you’d be capable of justifying. And I'm breaking laws in ways he’d never believe I would."

Gideon held up one of the mini-HELIOS. "It's why he took what I engineered and had another team make these. Same principle. Hell, he stole half my patent. And he used a group of men who don't have the kind of ethics we do. But what he's failed to understand, what he hasn't accounted for, is what happens when he backs men like us, people like Zadie and Wynn, into a corner.”

Darwin looked at the five names on the screen again.

Green.

Green.

Green.

Red.

Red.

“Even if he's accounted for us breaking into Hyperion,” Gideon said. "He won't see us using your drug or these devices. He believes we're still working with the same set of rules we had six months ago."

“Predictability has value,” Gus said as he leaned against the doorway.

Darwin glanced over his shoulder. He'd forgotten the general was even there.

“You can plan against it," Gus continued. "Count on it. Use it. Unpredictability gets people killed.” His gaze stayed on the monitors. “Good commanders plan for what the enemy can do and prepare for what they believe the enemy won't do. It's called the go-to shit plan."

"I remember those well." Gideon laughed. "My first commander always said the go-to shit plan should be the first plan of action since it was most likely to be the one used."

"Smart man." Gus nodded. "And while I don't question Finch's intelligence, his arrogance is going to be his downfall."

"The longer I worked for him, the harder it was to fit in the same room with him and his ego," Darwin said. "He always thought he knew the answer. That his way was the right way. It took a lot of convincing on my part to get him to drop the development of TTN-3 and the patch. But even when he did, he smiled and said, 'we'd get there someday.'"

"Every time we've found out something about Finch, we haven't been able to use it because of the distance between him and the crime," Gideon said. "First, it was Ramsey and then Pryce."

“For now." Gus stepped closer. “You've hit pieces of Finch's operation, but you haven't touched the core. The thing he cares about most. It's like those other pieces were all side ops. Distractions. Related projects he'd gotten involved in.”

Gideon stopped typing and glanced up. "You mean like proof of concept?"

"Exactly," Gus said.

Darwin stared at the screens, but he no longer saw the numbers. He saw the patches from Emma’s facility. The modified HELIOS devices. The coded vials. The way Finch had taken one system designed to save the body and another designed to monitor it and turned them into something that could be worn, tracked, dosed, adjusted…and sold.

"Bralorne Backcountry. Emma's test subjects. Gideon's systems. The patches. All of it." Darwin took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "They’re all data points. Just numbers and graphs to be shown to potential buyers. Ones we know he's met with down in South America, and God only knows where else." He dropped his hands to his lap. "It's no longer about proving it works but about demonstrating how long it will work on any given subject and how to monitor them. That's all this is about."

The monitor beeped sharply.

Darwin scanned Coulter’s biometrics.