A knock at the suite’s door rang out—three raps, firm—from the living room.
Desmond waited, thinking. The clock on the table read 7:34 a.m. Too early for maid service.
“Hello?” Peyton said.
Three more knocks, louder this time, followed by a man’s deep voice: “Polizei.”
“Listen to me, Peyton. I think you’re in danger.”
“What? What’re you talking about?”
Three more knocks, insistent, loud enough to wake anyone in the neighboring room. “Polizei! Herr Hughes, bitte ?ffnen Sie die Tür.”
“I’ll call you back.”
He hung up and sprinted to the door, ignoring the pain in his legs. Through the peephole he saw two uniformed police officers, along with a man in a dark suit—likely hotel security.
The hotel employee was moving a key card toward the door lock.
Chapter 3
In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw sat up in bed with the cordless phone to her ear. “Desmond?”
The line was dead.
She hung up and waited, expecting Desmond to call back.
It was 1:34 a.m. Saturday night, and she had been home alone, asleep for over three hours. She was wide awake now, though. And unnerved.
She felt the urge to take a look around the two-bedroom condo and make sure there wasn’t someone else inside. She had lived alone since moving to Atlanta in her twenties, and with a few exceptions, she had always felt safe.
She grabbed her cell phone, rose from the platform bed, and cautiously paced out of her bedroom. Every few seconds her bare feet squeaked against the cold hardwood floors. The front door was shut and the deadbolt locked. The door to the second bedroom, which she used as a home office, was also closed, hiding it from the open-concept living room and kitchen. She’d found that pictures of pandemics around the world were a real mood-killer for company and gentleman callers, so she always kept her office door shut.
At the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, she peered down at Peachtree Street, which was mostly deserted at this hour. She felt a chill through the glass; it was colder than usual outside for late November.
She waited, still hoping the home phone would ring. She had considered canceling the landline a dozen times, but a few people still had the number, and for reasons she couldn’t fathom, the cable and internet bill actually came out cheaper with the home phone.
She ran a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair. Her mother was half-Chinese, half-German, and they shared the same porcelain skin. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d gotten from her father, who was English, and had died when she was six.
She plopped down on the gray fabric couch and tucked her freezing feet under her bottom, trying to warm them. On her cell phone, she did something she hadn’t done in a long time—something she had sworn she would stop doing: she opened Google and searched for Desmond Hughes. Hearing Desmond’s voice had rattled her. His last words—You’re in danger—still lingered in her mind.
The first hit was the website for Icarus Capital, a venture capital firm. Desmond was listed first on the Our People page as the founder and managing partner. His smile was confident, maybe even bordering on arrogant.
She clicked the Investments page and read the introduction:
It is said that there’s no time like the present. At Icarus Capital, we disagree. We think there’s no time like the future. That’s what we invest in: the future. More specifically, we invest in people who are inventing the future. Here’s a sampling of those people and their companies. If you’re inventing the future, get in touch. We want to help.
Peyton scanned the companies listed: Rapture Therapeutics, Phaethon Genetics, Rendition Games, Cedar Creek Entertainment, Rook Quantum Sciences, Extinction Parks, Labyrinth Reality, CityForge, and Charter Antarctica.
She didn’t recognize any of them.
She clicked the next link in the web search results, which was a video of Desmond at a conference. An interviewer off-camera asked a question: “Icarus has invested in a really eclectic mix of startups, everything from pharma, biotech, virtual reality, grid computing, and even extreme vacationing in places like Antarctica. What’s the thread that ties it all together? For the entrepreneurs out there in the audience, can you tell them what you’re looking for in a startup?”
Sitting in a club chair on stage, Desmond held up the mic and spoke calmly, but with infectious enthusiasm. A slight grin curled at the edges of his mouth. His eyes were focused, unblinking.
“Well, as you say, it’s hard to categorize exactly what kind of company Icarus is looking for. What I can tell you is that each of our investments is part of a larger, coordinated experiment.”
The interviewer raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. What kind of experiment?”
“It’s a scientific experiment—one meant to answer a very important question.”
“Which is?”
“Why do we exist?”
The moderator feigned shock and turned to the crowd. “Is that all?”
The audience laughed, and Desmond joined in.
Desmond leaned forward in the club chair, glanced at the moderator, then focused on the camera. “Okay, I think it’s fair to say that many of you out there—in the audience and watching this video—would say the answer to that question is simple: we exist because the physical properties of this planet support the emergence of biological life, that we are biologically inevitable because of Earth’s environment. That’s true, but the real question is why? Why does the universe support biological life? To what end? What is humanity’s destiny? I believe there is an answer.”
“Wow. You almost sound like a person of faith.”
“I am. I have absolute faith. I believe there’s a great process at work all around us, a larger picture of which we have only seen a very small sliver.”
“And you think the technology Icarus is funding will deliver this ultimate truth?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”