“Jaime,” he began, his voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat and tried to summon a shadow of his old bravado. “Or, I suppose I should say, Miss Jenkins.” “Jaime is fine,” she said. She did not smile. She did not offer him a seat. She simply leaned against the edge of her massive mahogany desk, her arms crossed. “What do you want, Gavin?” Gavin shuffled his feet. “I have a proposition. A new venture. It’s in crypto security. Blockchain verification for autonomous vehicles.” He began to pull a stapled document from his portfolio, his hands trembling slightly. “I thought, given our history, and the incredible success you’ve had, that Aerologics might want to be the lead seed investor. It would be a strong signal to the market. It would show that there’s no bad blood. It would be good PR for you, to show you’re forgiving.”
Jaime watched him. It was almost fascinating. Even now, stripped of his power, exiled from the boardrooms where he used to be a god, he still believed the world operated on the currency of appearances. He thought this was a game. He thought he had just lost a hand of poker and could bluff his way back to the table. “I don’t care about my image, Gavin,” Jaime said, her voice dropping an octave. “And I certainly don’t care about PR.” She walked back to the window, her back to him. “Do you know where the sigma variable actually came from?” Gavin blinked, confused by the sudden pivot. “The math? You said it was chaos theory. Something about wind shear.” “It applies to wind shear,” Jaime corrected. “But that wasn’t its purpose. I didn’t write that equation for drones, Gavin. My father wrote the first draft of that function fifteen years ago. Dr. Silas Jenkins.”
Gavin frowned, searching his memory. “The name sounds familiar. He was a professor at the University of Washington, wasn’t he? The one who had the breakdown.” Jaime’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “He didn’t have a breakdown,” she said, her voice sharp as broken glass. “He had early-onset Alzheimer’s.” She turned around, her eyes blazing. “He was a genius, Gavin. A visionary. He wasn’t trying to map drone paths. He was mapping neural degradation. He was trying to find a mathematical model to predict which neurons would misfire before the connection broke. He called it sigma decay. He was trying to solve his own death.” She walked over to the desk and picked up the photograph. “He lost his tenure because he couldn’t finish the proof in time. The disease moved faster than his hand could write. The university cut his funding. They threw him out. The medical bills took our house. They took everything. That is why I was a waitress. I was working double shifts at the Grind and Circuit, not because I lacked ambition, but because I needed to pay for a care facility that wouldn’t let him rot in a bed.”
Gavin shifted uncomfortably, clutching his portfolio tighter. “Look, Jaime, that’s a tragedy. Really. I’m sorry for your loss. But what does your father’s medical history have to do with my funding proposal?” “Everything,” Jaime said. She opened a drawer and pulled out a thick leather-bound document. She dropped it on the desk. It landed with a heavy thud. “Because last week,” Jaime said, “I used the fourth-quarter profits from Aerologics to buy the patent rights to my father’s old work back from the university. I bought the entire department. And I launched a new subsidiary this morning. Jenkins Neuromapping.” She pointed to the document. “We aren’t just shipping packages anymore, Gavin. We are using the swarm logic to model brain activity. We are using the profits to fund Alzheimer’s research. Real research. The kind that doesn’t yield a return on investment for ten years. The kind investors like you would never touch, because it doesn’t buy you a new yacht in six months.”
“Okay,” Gavin said, looking desperate. “That’s noble. Good for you. But I’m asking for a hundred thousand. A seed round. Just a crumb, Jaime. Please.” “I’m getting to that,” Jaime said softly. “You see, to fund this research, to make sure no one ever pulls the plug on it like they did to my father, I need absolute, unshakable control of my assets. I can’t have loose ends. And I can’t have liabilities.” She pressed a button on her desk console. A large screen on the wall flickered to life, displaying a legal filing. Case 24-CV-0991. Assignment of debt. Holder: Aerologics Holdings. Debtor: Gavin Reed. “I bought your debt, Gavin,” she said.