“Nice. You should put that on a coffee mug and sell it thirty years ago. Look, boss, I haven’t had a full week off in three years. Three,” he insisted. “Years. And you promised me that my phone would not ring once until I checked back in. So, tell me why I’m talking with you right now?”

“Joe Ledger,” said Kuga.

Stafford closed his eyes for a moment.

“Ah. Of course,” sighed Stafford. “I suppose this was inevitable.”

“It’s become necessary. He is doing considerable damage to our network.”

“What kind of damage?”

“Do you remember Mislav Mitrović?”

“What do you mean, do I remember? Of course I do.”

Which was true enough. After Stafford and his small team handled the labor dispute in Java, the new staff he brought in to fill the sudden vacancies had all juiced up on a super eugeroic cocktail cooked up by Mitrović’s team of mad scientists. Even the laziest of them was now able to work thirty-six-hour shifts without sleep.

“Did you know Mitrović was dead?” asked Kuga.

Stafford sat up straight. “What? How…?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” said Kuga. “Ever since Java, you’ve been off the fucking radar. Ledger and his goon squad hit the island. Staff was wiped out, and we lost a shit ton of key research data for the next phase of the factory workers project. Unless we can get back up to speed, we stand to lose twenty billion in the next fiscal year because we might not be able to fill the orders that our friend Mr. Sunday is taking. Twenty billion. That’s billion with a B.”

“Holy shit.”

“Oh, there’s more,” said Kuga. “That cocksucker hit Van der Veer in Johannesburg. Gerald Engelbrecht is dead, along with all eleven of his staff. And god only knows what Mitrović and Engelbrecht might have told him before he put them down. We are in serious trouble here.”

“So put a team of Fixers at every lab we have. Your boy Santoro has enough of them trained by now. More than enough. He could invade a small country. No, let me correct that; if he gives them all the special upgrades, he could invade a large country. I don’t care how tough Ledger is, he can’t duke it out with those next-gen Fixers. Christ, did you see the footage from Java? It was like the police station scene from The Terminator. Those boys went through the crowd like shit through a goose.”

Kuga made a small sound of disgust and annoyance. “Yeah, well, that spooky bastard Church and psycho Ledger have a habit of winning against high odds. Ask the Jakobys, ask the Seven goddamn Kings.”

“You sound like you’re afraid of them.”

There was a beat. “Be real careful in your choice of words, buddy boy.”