“Are there no facilities available that meet our criteria?” I asked. “Or are there none we can afford?”
Ariadne looked grudgingly at me before she chose her next words. “Money is not an issue. Foreman has assured me that we can make big moves with the trading unit in order to gin up cash and he’ll be able to keep the SEC from nailing us to the wall. We used to keep it small so it would glide under the radar, but he’s given us permission to do a few things that will quadruple our money in the next six months, which will give us enough to construct a facility that will meet our needs.” She grimaced. “But I don’t think you’re going to like the idea I have for it.”
I looked at her pained expression and felt my internal temperature drop. “You want to rebuild the Directorate campus.”
She was calm and cool when she answered. “We own the land outright, it’s well located. It does need some serious attention from a demolition company, but I have contacts in the construction industry that could get a primary building up in three months or less, assuming Senator Foreman could help with the permitting process. We’d be up and running in a facility that was designed for us in no time. The only downside—”
“Is that it was the scene of a rather spectacularly heinous murder,” I whispered, almost too low for the rest of the room to hear it. Almost.
“Who?” my mother asked. “Those four meta thugs you killed?”
“It makes sense to use what we’ve got,” I said, letting pragmatism drown out the screaming of my own voice in the back of my head. “Priority goes to a headquarters and a dorm—”
Ariadne nodded slowly. “I’ve got those marked down. A parking garage and training facility are secondary priorities. That will pretty much cover us for now, though, for what we need.”
“Do it,” I said. “Can you get us temporary office space while—”
“I signed a lease agreement this morning on eight thousand square feet in Eden Prairie,” Ariadne said. “Not far from the airport in case we need to land a chopper, and there’ll be enough space for admin with some room for your operations teams to at least plan and train in the place.”
I nodded. “And for housing—”
“There’s a motel across the parking lot,” she said. “Decent enough and convenient. We’ll be able to cover the expenses for your new charges without any trouble, though if you could hand me any who aren’t fighters, it’d certainly help us cover some of the jobs that aren’t presently filled—secretarial staff, all that.”
I nodded. “I think we have more than a few that can fulfill that function. Okay, so headquarters is covered for now. We’ll get Reed and Karthik working on Omega’s tattered remains here in the States. The next priority is expanding our footprint and recruiting new talent.” I looked at each of them. “If we’re going to fight the most powerful army in the world, we need an army of our own to do it with.”
“What’s your plan on that?” Breandan asked.
“I need to visit cloisters,” I said and turned to look at Scott. “I could use some help from someone who’s grown up in the meta culture.”
“Sure,” Scott said with a nod, his usual grin sadly missing. “I can help with that; my parents grew up in the North Shore cloister before the family decided to get out and move to the big city. Used to go back every summer for reunion s.”
“What kind of army are you looking to build?” my mother asked, her fingers interlaced in front of her. “Are you just looking to throw together anyone with a meta power, regardless of how much they’ve got?”
I didn’t know exactly what to say to that. “I’m just looking for some fighters. Some people who are willing to stand between Century and the rest of our kind with me.”
“So, basically anybody with more guts than brains.” She leaned back in her chair and made that damned hissing sound again. “You know there’s a power scale for a reason. You put a bunch of level ones against Sovereign and he’s going to wipe them out in about five seconds, not sparing a thought as he walks over their corpses to get to you.”
“I’m just trying to find a way to fight him—”
Her voice rose. “Everything you’re talking about so far is just going to make it easier for him to kill us all.”
“That’s enough for now,” I said, controlling my voice. “You,” I said to mother, “I need to talk with. Outside.”
“I guess I’m in trouble now,” she quipped as she stood and started to follow me to the door.