The person that greeted us was a young, thin man wearing disturbingly tight pants. They left nothing to the imagination… Not that I was looking or anything, but it was difficult not to notice… Whatever…

The guy led me through an exquisite looking hallway. Walking on the short fur carpet felt pleasant on my feet even though I was wearing comfortable shoes already. The walls were filled with animal sculptures that moved around reacting to our presence. Primly speaking the man asked me if I’d like any beverages, which I politely refused.

Leading me through a double wooden door - which was probably the first one I saw since I came here - we entered an enormous circle office. The floor was covered with the same silver fur carpet. The back side of the office was a glass wall looking out to space and the busy traffic around the station. Behind a three or four meters long wooden desk, a man’s contour could be seen behind a holoscreen. My gaze wandered around the room and stopped on the glass encasements along the wall. There were at least ten and each contained a different looking animal. The smallest one the size of golden retriever and the biggest one towering above me standing on two legs. The big guy’s body was covered in bright yellow fur with his two upper limbs ending in disproportionately big three-fingered hands. It was staring at me menacingly with 4 blue eyes and showing his grindstone like teeth. They were blocks of dark brown with flat endings instead of being sharp or pointy.

“Helemran Zodioc Tharam, their favorite snack is thick bones. Fascinating creatures,” said a smooth voice from the direction of the desk.

The holoscreen was gone and the man behind the desk was standing now looking at the same creature with a gentle smile. Middle-aged, with very short blond hair without any distinguishing features. He was wearing a dark purple jumpsuit with a thick belt. It was unusual to my eyes, but it was still elegant and simple. Just like the office.

“Lively looking decoration,” I responded.

“But of course. Very well put! Lively... I like the sound of that since they are in fact alive,” he said with a refined chuckle.

“Alive? Aren’t these holograms?” I asked back with a frown under my mask.

“These are very expensive organism displays. The animals you see in there are all alive and physically present.”

Thankfully I had my smiley mask on because it hid the ugly expression on my face as I looked at the various animals in their tiny glass prisons. They could barely take a step around or sit down and there was no sign of water or food anywhere. This was freaking torture!

[Aium! Control your emotions! You dragged me into this, don’t you dare screw it up now!] Genna snapped at me.

[You’re right… I need to ignore this for now! By the way… good choice on the person!]

[I know. Remember, calm and confident!]

“Impressive collection I must say. That’s a Perumna Tharon Bell if I’m correct,” I said and pointed at a lizard-like animal stuck to the glass wall. The hours I put into documentaries were finally paying off.

“I see you’re an educated man. I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said as he finally looked at me. “After our initial conversations it’s a pleasure to meet you in person finally. I’m Urmon Galanth, head of Galanth Extractions,” he introduced himself.

“I’m Rabunde Jalaqua, the feeling’s mutual,” I responded with a polite smile under my mask and handed him a metal business card.

After days of arguments and thinking, we finally came to an agreement for our phase two target. Urmon Galanth the third generation head of the corporation Galanth Extractions. A titanic business entity with several fleets and bases across the Z14556 sector. Their main activity was resource extraction from planets. During his father’s control, they managed to get license to expand to habitable planets too. When Urmon succeeded his father he changed a few policies in a questionable direction. Resource extraction on habitable planets was a very sensitive activity since they had to strive to conserve and protect the environment and wildlife as much as possible. Unfortunately, the rules and guidelines weren’t strict enough. Urmon was well known for stretching these rules and disregarding non-sentient life. There were countless people advocating against his practices, but he was awfully careful to keep himself safe from legal repercussions. A real scum that would happily kill trillions of animals for profit while maintaining the facade of doing everything in his power to conserve life.

“Thank you, Sweetie, you can leave us alone now,” he said to the young man that led me here.

The ‘sweetie’ caught me by surprise, to be honest, but I didn’t let it show. We both sat down at this desk when he offered me a seat.

“From our preliminary conversations I understand the basic concept behind your approach, but why me? I saw the extensive list of pleased investors, all willing to vouch for you, but the scale of investments was kept low so far as I understood. Surely, you didn’t come to me for a few hundred thousand credits,” he said while fiddling with the metal card I gave him and crossing his legs in his seat.

“The difficulties are numerous in starting out a business like ours, especially the way we handle it. To stay independent and in full control, we sacrificed rapid development and decided on a slower, but more secure progression. I’m fortunate I had the opportunity to do business with so many people, but we’ve reached a point where we need a quantitative and qualitative change. We need to increase efficiency by lowering the number of investors while increasing the investments.”

“That’s a reasonable policy adjustment, but you must know that the anonymity around the company you represent is troublesome.” He held up the card with two fingers pointing it towards me and continued, “This S.C.A.M. company was founded around four months ago. It has no visible administrative or financial movements and the only person connected to it is Odin Romert. He’s the founder of the company and the sole member, too. What’s surprising is that according to my sources this person’s a well-known friend-for-hire in the night life on one of the stations in the Oopxyt AA system. I’m fairly sure that you aren’t Odin Romert,” he said with a small smile. “S.C.A.M., I heard it’s an anagram of sorts, but let’s be honest here. It’s a fake company. Do you know how unfavorable this looks?”

The question didn’t faze me, I was prepared for it. “Of course it’s not the real back company. It’s a cover profile for our front-end business. We started out without major funding or backers. I’m willing to disclose that our idea is groundbreaking and it’s proven to work flawlessly so far. Unfortunately, we have to resort to such measures to secure our current monopoly on this activity since in nature it could become a very competitive field. These are not excuses. We made the decision initially to go to certain lengths in order to protect our idea as long as we can. As for the name, it does suggest the nature of our business.”

“Then I reckon your name’s fake too. The mask doesn’t even need mentioning,” Urmon added with a frown.

“I’m sorry, but we deemed it as a necessary evil.”

“Do you realize how difficult this makes the situation? Especially since I have no idea about your ‘idea’ or activities.”

“Yes, I’m aware of it, but as you have proven already, information is a resource and we can only continue this on our own terms as long as the concept is secure and we are without competition,” I argued.

Urmon stood up in silence, walked up to one of the glass prisons and stared at the poor creature inside with his hands behind his back. This was a critical moment where I had to be patient lest I pushed him too hard.

“I’m intrigued,” he started after a while, “very much so. I’m willing to invest a substantial amount of credits, but I have conditions.”

“I’m open to discussions.”

He turned around and said, “I’m not willing to invest in your company unless I know what I’m getting into. However, I’m willing to postpone the information exchange until you are due for the first payback.”

“You want our business concept at the end of the agreed upon time along with the investment return?”

“Yes, but I know it’s a big condition for you so I would be unreasonable if I didn’t keep myself open for counter conditions from you.”

This was another key point in our conversation.

[Aium! Please don’t agree! You can’t! He’ll find you and get everything from you! You’ll ruin our lives if you go with this! Please…. PLEASE! Just stand up and leave, I beg you!] cried Genna in my mind desperately.

In case the guy monitored basic biological functions during our conversation we decided to manipulate me into correct responses. I was full of various drugs that kept me calm so far, but we were in scenario D1 and I needed real inner turmoil now. Genna delivered a shocking performance right on cue. I honestly felt remorse from the way she cried and begged to me. Needless to say, it gave my body a natural reaction despite being drugged.

After a minute of struggle, I finally answered, “It’s not out of question, but only if certain conditions will apply.”

“Let’s hear them,” he said with sparkling eyes and a big smile as he walked back to his chair.

“Previously we worked in 30-day cycles with our investors, but this time due to the increased amount we would like to extend it to 90 days. Also, we’d like to lower the interest rate to 12%.”

“I can agree to those. Anything else?”

“Yes. We’d like to add a non-competitive clause for our area of influence and a confidentiality agreement to stop the further spread of information.”

“Area of influence?” Urmon asked as he leaned forward with his smile lost.

“Yes! It encompasses two galaxies at the moment and at maximum we’d like to spread it to three more.”

“It’s territory based...” he mumbled to himself.

“Lastly, we’ll only agree if the investment is enough to justify the information exchange.”

“How about a 100 million?” he asked without hesitation.

It might have looked like I was thinking it through, but in reality, I was scared shitless. Even with the calming drugs, I was freaking out inside. Our bottom line was 78 million. With that much, I could pay back every other investor and still buy a very good ship for myself. This, however, was a lot more. Scenario F1-6 went right out the window since I didn’t have to haggle in this case.

“We find the offered amount appropriate,” I said with a genuine smile.

“I usually only do business with a solid contract, but I was considerate enough to take into account your position of anonymity. Still, I can’t let you leave without making this formal on the highest possible level so I reached out to a third party company that deals with old-fashioned DNA contracts.”

Sly fox… He knew so much about us and prepared for everything. Good thing we were more prepared.

“DNA contract?” I asked.

“It was the trendy contract form a while back, but it’s still completely secure. They only need a drop of blood from both of us and they’ll keep our information secure.”

A few seconds later the three-legged guy entered through the door with an older woman by his side. She wore a dark red uniform with a suitcase at her side.

“Thank you, Sweetie. Welcome, can we start the contract?”

The guy left after bowing slightly and the woman set up her equipment on the table. First, Urmon added the contract information and then I checked to confirm them. After that, Urmon was the first to push his finger into the hole to give a drop of blood. The woman nodded as a green light confirmed that everything was fine.

I was incredibly nervous about this. Thankfully, the shit-ton of drugs kept me stable enough both mentally and physically. Otherwise, my hands would have been shaking like crazy. I slowly pushed in my finger, I felt the needle’s push against my finger and a second later a green light popped up for me too.

“Is everything alright with the samples?” Urmon asked.

“Yes, Sir!”

“Wonderful! You can leave now.”

The woman hurriedly left leaving us alone again. Urmon picked up my metal card between two fingers again and asked, “Do I transfer the credits to the account on this, or you have another one?”

“The one on the card will do.”

“Done,” he said with a smile. “Damn, credits seem to flow through my fingers recently,” he chuckled.

“Are you expanding?”

“Ah, not that. I went a bit overboard with my son’s birthday gift,” he said with an embarrassed smile.

“Your son must be lucky!” I said politely, but I wished I could leave already.

“The little brat has no talent for business, but he’s an A ranked clone fighter so I can’t say that he brought shame to the Galanth name.”

“A rank? That’s an achievement not many can brag about,” I praised, but I really wanted to get lost from here.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I bought him a Level 1 BioEnhancement, it’s supposed to arrive tomorrow evening,” he said in a hushed tone and winked at me. “It’s a surprise,” he added.

“A level 1?” I asked genuinely slack-jawed. “Where did you find one to buy? They are so rare.”

I’ve been doing a little research about them and you couldn’t just buy one when you wished. The government approved BE manufacturers were only allowed to sell a limited number of them and they did it in various auctions.

“There was an auction on Horord X44 a day ago. I hired an entire ship to bring it back express so it’ll be here for his birthday.”

“Wow… Can I be your son too?”

“Ahahahaa! You’re a funny one Mr. Rabunde, or whatever your real name is,” he said with a loud laugh.

While he was enjoying my joke my mind started to wander towards places it shouldn't have. Towards ideas that should have been left alone.

“I hope we’ll have a very successful business relationship in the future. I also hope you’ll honor our agreements as much I’ll do. It was a pleasure meeting you Mr. Anonymous.”

“Likewise! Let’s have a very beneficial partnership!” I said in return.

As I left the building my mind raced. It wasn’t impossible...

[The credits are secured on the safe account. I can’t believe we pulled it off,] Genna sighed.

[Yeah, it’s… unbelievable. Thank you for doing this with me, Genna! Don’t forget to keep sending the credits back to the old investors as their time runs out. Have to keep up the facade for as long as possible.]

It wasn’t an impossible idea… I thought.

[Of course! Let me congratulate you! With this much other than buying a very good ship you should consider donating some of it to some worthy cause.]

[You still want me to donate? Didn’t I just help a ton of good people?]

[There’s always room to do good.]

[I’ll consider, but first, I want to cut this shit out already,] I whined as I shook my finger.

We’ve been planning this meeting for a long while now and we definitely knew the guy would ask for a contract. We also knew that he had a track record for doing DNA contracts in certain cases so we came up with a plan to dupe the system.

I needed human blood. Just like paying a friend-for-hire at a club to make the S.C.A.M. company I used another one for this. I got the poor guy blackout drunk and took some of his blood. Since he was unconscious, his A.I. had no idea either. The hard part was making the whole trick unnoticeable. After a few failed experiments I found the optimal solution. I put a few drops of blood in a tiny plastic ball with very thin walls and painted it skin color. I also used some publicly available anesthetic to dull my finger and then cut it open. It was still painful, but not unbearably so. I had to carve out a little tissue so the tiny blood ball could be inserted seamlessly. Genna was freaking out on so many levels it was making my head dizzy. When the little ball was inside I used a cheap cut sealer spray which closed up the wound without bothering about the missing tissue or the foreign object under it. It was unbelievably hard to find a brand that was shitty enough to only heal the cut. Before the operation, I practiced using the standard DNA sample taker so I would put the right part of my finger where the needle pushed in.

During the meeting, I had to pay attention to not touch anything too hard with my finger lest I burst the blood bubble inside. The careful planning and practice paid off. It worked perfectly and the machine took the poor guy’s blood instead of mine.

When I was done I wanted to get rid of the empty plastic from my finger as soon as possible and heal it properly since it was starting to hurt really bad.

Fortunately, my mind was far too occupied to be bothered by a little finger pain. It was going wild with ideas.

[Hey, Genna! I have an idea.]

[Oh, no...]