Chapter Text
Faro Automated Solutions
November 03, 2064
Ted Faro had always been aware of what many had thought was his greatest asset: his looks. He was, by any objective measure, an extraordinarily handsome man. He himself could see the evidence of that every morning when he looked into the bathroom mirror. Even at the age of fifty-one, he was a handsome man.
His plastic surgeons and nutritionist made sure of it.
However, while there had been days when those chiselled features of his had once impressed the woman in front of him, those days were long past.
The hologram of Elisabet Sobeck examined him coolly as he absorbed the statement she just made.
‘“Project Zero Dawn?” he exclaimed with horror. ‘Jesus, Lis! There has to be another way.’
‘If there were a nicer way to fix your mess, I would have proposed it.’ There was no emotion in her voice.
Faro blanched at her tone, or lack of thereof. ‘But this?!’ he sputtered, becoming increasingly more agitated. ‘This?! When I asked you to find a cure, I didn’t expect it to be worse than the disease!’
Sobeck’s intelligence dwarfed Faro’s the way as a sun would dwarf an atom. She had already run all possible scenarios, came to the one solution that would work, and had dealt with the horror of her decision in the time it would take most people to choose what drink to have with their meal.
The intelligence of Elisabet Sobeck. Her gift, her curse. She knew exactly what to do and how much time she would need down to the second. She could feel those precious, irreplaceable seconds escaping her as she looked at this frightened man.
‘It’s not, Ted,’ she said, using the tone one would use when talking to a particularly stupid child. ‘It may be grim, but it’s our only chance. Now sign the proposal.’
‘Sign it? I can’t sign that!’ he protested. He was trying to look away, hide his face, but those accusing eyes kept finding him.
‘Yes, you can.’
‘That?’ Faro demanded. ‘Lis, I cannot in good conscience sign that!’
Sobek’s patience died. ‘You’ve got a choice, Ted-’ she began.
‘I know!’ He was going to say more but her eyes flashed, intimidating even through the hologram, and he shut up.
‘I am speaking to you from a VTOL en route to U.S. Robot Command! In fifteen minutes, I meet with General Herres and the rest of the Joint Chiefs!’
‘… What? Are you crazy?!’
Faro had immediately cottoned on to the implied threat but Sobeck spelled it out for him so he would know that, for possibly the first time in his entire life, there were consequences for his actions. ‘Now your choice is what I tell them. Sign, and I’ll tell them the wealthiest corporation on Earth has guaranteed the funds necessary to build Zero Dawn exactly as I’ve designed it. Or don’t sign- and I will make sure they and everyone else on this planet knows the real cause of the glitch.’
She was taking about throwing him to a literal lynch mob and she said it so casually that she might as well have been discussing the weather.
‘Jesus, Lis! You don’t have to threaten me.’ Faro seemed to shrink into himself. ‘I’ll sign.’
Sobeck’s lip curled in an ugly, triumphant snarl. ‘Look on the bright side, Ted.’ She made his name sound like a curse that would have made the bluest of blue-collar workers blush. ‘From here on out you get to do what you’ve always been good at. Footing the bill while others get their hands dirty.’
For Faro, the whole world seemed to consist of only her eyes, her lips, and the screen with the contract awaiting his signature.
‘God forgive me,’ he whispered as he signed. He looked up but, having gotten what she needed, Elisabet Sobeck had already ended the call.