Quaranteam

Chapter 32

"Excuse me?" Andy said, trying to buy himself some time.

"I said, why don't you tell me a bit about the poker game where you won the lives of Emily Stevens, Sarah Washington and three other women," Katie Couric said to him.

Andy knew he was in a dire pickle. If he asked them to turn the camera off, turn the microphone off, refused to answer the question, it would make him look far guiltier than he actually was. However, there was something about the way she phrased the question, and suddenly, he had an epiphany.

"Why don't you tell me what you know, or, more importantly, what you think you know, and maybe I can shed a little more light on the matter," he said to her.

She was on a fishing expedition. It was the kind of question meant to catch him off guard, to make him think she knew a lot more than she actually did, and to prove it, he was going to need to force her hand a bit. She was bluffing, thinking her pair of aces was good enough to stare down someone holding a possible flush.

She hadn't mentioned who'd held the game. She hadn't mentioned who else had been playing there. She hadn't mentioned with other girls he'd won, other than the two big headliners. She'd thrown out a couple of pieces of information and implied she had the whole story, but if she had the whole story, she would've led with more. She was hoping to get him to spill more information.

"Isn't it true that you gambled with women's lives in order to win Emily Stevens and Sarah Washington?" Katie Couric said, trying to press again.

"I didn't know Emily or Sarah were going to be there."

"So you gambled just hoping to win more women to your household?"

"No, I gambled because I was trying to save a couple of women on behalf of one of my existing partners," he said with a sigh. "Look, I know you think this is some gotcha moment, and that you're going to expose me for being some kind of villain, but I'm going to tell you the entire story, and then you're going to have to decide what to do with that information, because depending on what you do with it, you could end up doing a lot of damage."

"So why don't you start at the beginning?"

Over the next thirty minutes or so, Andy regaled her with the entire tail, how Covington had come to him to invite him to the poker game, how Niko had revealed that she knew both Dr. Varma and her daughter Asha were going to be in the pool for it, and that they were currently being shipped over to Covington, a man who Andy made no attempt to paint in a good light. Andy told her how the two women he'd had to use as collateral into the tournament, one of whom he barely knew and the other was his ex-girlfriend, whom he wasn't going to accept as a partner anyway.

As he told her the story, Katie Couric mostly let him talk, asking the occasional question -- how had he known that Dr. Varma and Asha were going to be there, what did plan to do if he lost, etc. -- before letting him continue.

Andy zipped through the actual poker tournament very quickly, although he did make a point not to name names of anyone else who was there, other than Covington, despite Katie asking twice. The rush of winning lasted very briefly, he told her, as almost right after, they met Piper.

When Andy described how they'd found her, in a near feral state, he spared no detail, making sure that Katie understood just how cruel Covington had been to the women he'd had under his household. He even paused to asked Katie what she thought a man like that would want both a mother and daughter for, and he watched the reporter visibly blanch at that.

"How did this game even get started?" she asked him.

He shrugged a little. "I don't know," he said honestly. "Niko manipulated the situation into me getting an invite, and Emily herself contributed, trying to make sure that I would win, since she wanted her and her partner Sarah to be assigned to me, since Sarah is such a huge fan of my writing."

"How do you make that kind of decision? How do you decide to gamble with a woman's life in your hands?"

"Very,

very

carefully, and not without long consideration," he sighed, sitting back in his chair. "Like I was telling you earlier, sometimes bad people do good things, and sometimes good people have to do bad things for good reasons. Niko was very close friends with Dr. Charlotte Varma, and she'd met Mister Covington more than a couple of times. One of Covington's partners, Rachel, works at the base, and helps with the scheduling and directing of where people are going, so she's probably how Covington got the game started, when he realized he could manipulate the system. I mean, I'm sure other people on the base have to be in on it, but who that is, I certainly couldn't tell you."

"People like Phil Marcos?"

Andy scowled at her, pointing a finger her direction. "You try and blame this on Phil and I will go to every single one of your competitors and tell them how you made that shit up to get ratings," he said angrily. "Phil's a damn good man, one of the best, and while I'm sure he's aware of the game, I'm also fairly certain that he probably can't do anything to interfere with it."

"I thought Mr. Marcos was the head of the project."

"

Doctor

Marcos is high up on the team that's developing and implementing the process, but he's certainly not in charge. There's at least a handful of people above him, and besides, Phil's only working on the process itself, not the pairing and matching of individuals. I'm sure they must've mentioned there's two divisions on the base during your tour. Phil's half works on the biology. The other team works on the sociology and matchmaking, and while Phil can trade the occasional favor to get things done a certain way on that team, he'd never have gone along with this poker thing, or for people being used as chips. Shit, he damn near tore my head off after he heard I'd gone and played in the tournament even the once. Made me promise I'd never do it again. So yes, Ms. Couric, I can guarantee you that Phil has nothing to do with the poker tournament."

"You mentioned one of Covington's partners, a woman you called Rachel, was on the coordinating team. Would that be Rachel DeMarco?"

"I don't know," he said. "I've never met her. Niko would know. I could ask her. Why?"

"Well, Rachel DeMarco is the person who told me about your involvement in the tournament. She actually made it sound like you were running the event."

"

Running

it?" he laughed, almost incredulous. "Fuck

off

. No, Ms. Couric, I was not running the tournament, nor have I played in it more than once. I went the one time as a favor to Niko, to try and keep her friends Dr. Varma and her daughter Asha safe."

"So you won both Dr. Varma and her daughter Asha?"

"I did."

"How come Dr. Varma isn't here as well? Asha was at our first group interview."

"Dr. Varma isn't attracted to white men, so she asked if she could be paired up with Phil instead. I respected her wishes, obviously."

"Wait, Dr. Varma is one of Dr. Marcos' partners?"

"When she arrived at the base, she was married, but her husband died very early in the initial stages of research into the DuoHalo Virus," Andy said. "In fact, Phil said quite a lot of men died on the base due to whatever incident it was that happened in the early days. He couldn't get into details, but he seemed pretty frustrated by it. But after her husband died, she slowly started falling for Phil, a sort of second act if you will, so when I rescued her and her daughter from Covington, she asked if I thought she could be paired up with Phil. I called Phil up, and he agreed, so she's paired with him, and her daughter Asha is paired up with me. We all agreed that a mother and daughter being paired up with the same man just had an ick factor that none of us were comfortable with."

"The woman who died. Where did you say you met her?"

"I didn't, and I know you know that. But I met her at Covington's home. She was originally scheduled to be the dealer for the poker game that night, but I made a point about never trusting a house dealer, so she was relieved of the job, and the participants all took turns acting as dealer, so no one player could sway the game that much. I suspected Covington might have been using the dealer being a member of his house to fix the game, and the last thing I wanted was a cheat."

"Who else was playing?"

"Where are you

going

with this, Ms. Couric?"

"Look, Mr. Rook, you seem like a good man, a decent man, but this kind of thing, it can't be allowed to continue, a handful of men trading women like cattle. We're better than that as a country, and I believe you when you say that you were only doing it to help some people. But think about all the women who don't have someone like you looking out for them."

"Right, but in giving you this list of names, I'm painting a huge target on my back here in New Eden. Are you planning on running a story just on what I tell you? Because that's a sure fire way to only make things worse."

"Of course not, Mr. Rook," she said with a sigh. "But I can talk with the White House, or the Senate, and expose some of this, and get it shut down."

"Well, I'm glad you believe that, Ms. Couric, but I can't say that

I

do. Still, I hope you succeed."

"So who else was there?"

"You had myself and Covington. The Mayor of New Eden, James Haunton. Financial investor Gregor Vikovic. And Jake Jacobson, ower of the AllStore group."

"That's it?"

Andy considered for a moment, and decided that he should let Nathaniel Watkins name slip his mind for a moment. "There was one other person there, but I don't remember who it was. Nobody I immediately recognized, and I was very focused on the game, and making sure that I didn't screw up." Andy wasn't entirely sure why he decided to conceal Watkins identity, but suspected it was because Nathaniel was the only person who'd treated him as a human being, and the fact that he'd given Andy a few hundred mil didn't hurt either. But for the most part, Watkins had seemed like a good enough person that Andy felt like giving him a pass. In the short period of time he'd talked to him, it had almost seemed like Watkins' presence at the poker game was for the same reasons he was there -- to try and protect people caught up in the mess.

"And you said it's Covington who's running the event?"

"Yes," Andy said. "It's always at his house, and they've apparently run it a few times before. I expect having the Mayor in his pocket certainly helped him set the whole thing up and keep it quiet, but I expect he's also got someone over at the base helping him, someone in the logistics and organzational team, but who that is, I couldn't tell you. Niko said she's been trying to find out, but that the scientists on that half of the team tend to be a bit rude to women, including those working in the security detail."

"Wait a moment. You said Veronica DeLaCruz, the women who died a few days ago, she was originally supposed to be the dealer at the poker tournament?"

"That's right."

Katie Couric paled a moment, before she looked at Andy. "Do you think her death is at all connected to her not being able to fix the poker tournament in Mr. Covington's favor?"

"Oh shit," Andy said, a little shook by the suggestion. "I hadn't even thought about that, but it's certainly possible. Believe me when I tell you that Arthur Covington strikes me as the kind of man who's capable of just about anything. And I did mention that Emily was attempting to convince Veronica to cheat on her behalf, to ensure that she and Sarah could guarantee coming to our family and not anyone else's, so it's also possible that he somehow found out about that."

"Who knew about that?"

"As far as I know, just Emily and myself, although I've mentioned it to a couple of the girls here, all of whom I obviously trust with my life," he said. "But it's not impossible that somehow Veronica told someone else, or that she was so frustrated with Covington that she just wanted a way out. As I said, I didn't really know her at all, so I can't say. But if you're asking me if I think it's possible Covington had her murdered, either for failing to rig the game in his favor or planning to rig the game against him and failing in that, I think it absolutely something the man is capable of."

"If I informed the President's office about all of this, do you think you would manage to stay safe of repercussions, or would you be at risk?"

"Don't worry about us, Ms. Couric," Andy said. "If you think you can make sure these bastards aren't trading the lives of women with no regard for their wants or desires, you absolutely should do everything you can to put a stop to it. If that means Covington wants to take a run at me because of it, well, I'll handle that when it comes up. He's exceptionally rich, but he's not invincible."

"Not to remind you of things you already know, Mr. Rook," she answered, "but you were just saying a few hours ago how your health is now responsible for the well-being of over a dozen women. Do you think they would all be okay with you being so cavalier with their safety?"

"If it meant that hundreds if not thousands of women would get to fairly choose their partners instead of being saddled up with people they can't stand, I'm sure they would." He sighed, leaning back in his chair a little. "So how do you want to play all of this?"

"It won't be part of the main story, but I'll threaten to run it if the President doesn't do something to ensure that a stop comes to this kind of thing," she said. "I just got word this morning the Presidential election's being delayed again this morning, and that'll be another thing they're going to include in the announcements. The special election will be in February, and the new President will be instated in office in March, as well as Representatives and Senators to replace all those who've been killed by the DuoHalo Virus. The Republican Party apparently wanted time to have a mini-primary for the new Presidential election, so they won't know their candidate for a month, and plans to have the election in December have been scrapped. So President Pelosi will remain in power until March, and that should give her a little bit of time to try and get this mess sorted out. Because if it's happening here, I imagine it's happening in other places, and that kind of damage could scar our country for centuries."

"Forgive me for asking, but you know a lot more about this than any of us do," he said. "How many centers like the base in New Eden are out there?"

"They started mass production about a month or so ago, and the goal is to have every man paired with at least a couple of women before January 1

st

, because the casualty rates for men are so insanely high. The hope is the news story will light a fire under those who have been afraid to get vaccinated, when they hear just how many people have died because the DuoHalo virus. But there are still enclaves of men who insist they aren't going to pair up with women, because the treatment will install 5G microchips in their penises, or some such nonsense."

"If we've got problems like this poker game here at the source, I imagine there's this sort of thing starting up in a number of the other pairing centers around the country, so I don't mind you showing this conversation to the President, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if it means ensuring that women get to decide who they get paired up with."

"It's very noble of you to say that, Mr. Rook, but you know as well as I do that some men are unlikely to get paired up with women they would like. I was a little leery of the Level system when I heard about it, men being classified in terms of priority from level 1 to level 5, but I suppose it's the least worst option out of all the ones we have," she sighed. "And you assure me if I talk to any of the women here in your house individually, without you around, they will all tell me they chose to be here, in your company?"

"Well, no," he admitted, "but I think they will all tell you they are happy here. But Piper, and to some extent Niko I suppose, they weren't really in their right minds when they arrived."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Did they not cover this when they were talking about the process with you at the base?"

"No, they most assuredly did not."

Andy let out another deep sigh. "Okay, so after women are administered the treatment at the base, they're kept there for 24 hours observation, to make sure there aren't any unusual reactions to the process, which is normal. Then they're delivered to their male partners whom they're going to be imprinted to."

"Yes, they told us all this."

"So, the longer a woman goes without imprinting, the more the chemicals start to affect her ability to think clearly. That's how Piper got into the state she was in when Niko and I first met her. She couldn't think, couldn't speak. She's thanked me, repeatedly, that we rescued her from Covington, and she's told me again and again that she's happy with us, here in our family, but the ability to make that decision was taken away from her by Covington. There is a limited window after a woman receives the initial treatment where her cognitive functions are full, and the longer she goes before imprinting, the more compromised those functions are, albeit temporarily, at least I hope."

"Have you heard of women being made to wait longer before imprinting?"

"Hell, I haven't heard of anything like what happened to Piper

anywhere

and if I had, I'd be kicking up a fucking storm," he said angrily. "I was so livid that I wanted to go and beat the shit out of Covington myself right then and there, but I also needed to make sure I got everyone out of their situations first. We were still at his home, and I'm sure he has some sort of security. What he did to Piper wasn't just unforgivable, it was criminal, or at least it should be, but we're in uncharted waters here, Ms. Couric. There's going to be an entire new wing of legislature and legal decisions spiraling out of this for decades. And nobody knows how any of it's going to turn out, because all the signposts people used to use to predict these sorts of things have been tossed in the woodchipper. I don't know how many people in Congress died, but I imagine you do."

"Around 60% of the Representatives and about 70% of the Senators, as well as five of the Supreme Court Justices, although Ruth Bader Ginsberg died from cancer complications, not the DuoHalo Virus. It's an almost incomprehensible strain of the system."

"I'm sure some of those people who will be elected to Congress to fill those vacancies will be men, but the overwhelming majority of them are going to be women. And that's going to change a lot about how the country operates. Not as much as I'd like, I'm sure, but a lot."

"Why do you say not as much as you like?" she asked him.

"I was very lucky to get level 5 status, but you know who else got level 5 status, Katie? The billionaires of America. Jeff Bezos. Bill Gates. Elon Musk. Warren Buffet. And you know the most fascinating thing about it, that I hope you focus on in your story? You know how many of those people refused treatment?"

"Very few?"

"Absolutely none," he said. "In fact, what I have heard is that the ultrarich were bumped to the highest possible priority, and were the very first in line to get paired up with people. Now, what level of scrutiny did those people go through in their pairing process? Not a whole lot, I imagine. In fact, I'm willing to bet that on the other side of this, when we start to see what the new world looks like, you're going to see those men with impossibly beautiful women, celebrities, athletes, women who probably wouldn't have given these men the time of day even with all their money. They did it because it ensured their survival. I know the fatality rate for women with the DuoHalo Virus is only a fraction of what it is for men, but it's still a risk. And I'm worried that those people who have insane amounts of money are going to continue to do what they've always done -- spend that money to ensure they keep making money at the expense of those without it. They will attempt to buy their way into power once again, and will simply adapt so they don't get knocked off their pedestals."