From Bullets To Billions novel Chapter 431

Chapter 431: The Gilt Rat’s Game

The Bobo’s facility was a towering testament to ambition, a sprawling research institution that housed numerous departments, each working on wildly different projects. The sheer scale of the operation was immense; specialized labs occupied different floors, dedicated to various esoteric fields of science and engineering. Reports were mandatory, compliance was strict, and funding was seemingly endless, yet, despite the staggering resources poured into the structure, not a single department had managed to produce a breakthrough result yet. The constant pressure was a tangible weight in the air.

In the heart of one of these high-security production labs stood a man named Ramon. He looked deceptively young, yet the stress of his work or something darker had already caused all of his hair to prematurely whiten. Ramon was the meticulous mind in charge of this specific, highly sensitive production line. He had his own dedicated team of scientists and engineers, all dressed in standard-issue lab coats.

But today, their secretive sanctuary had a visitor, and he looked entirely out of place.

The visitor, a man known as Evon, wore a short white jacket that seemed more fashionable than functional. He hadn’t bothered with any type of lab coat, a clear sign of his elevated status and disregard for protocol. He was lean with short black hair and a small, almost arrogant cut on his lip, giving him the look of a street fighter dressed for a business meeting.

"So, how are things going?" Evon asked, his tone impatient and slightly rough, lacking the polite cadence of the scientists around him. "Is the product finished yet? You’ve managed to still stay under the radar with everything, right, Ramon?"

Ramon, the man with the shock of white hair, calmly reached up and pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, a practiced, stabilizing gesture. He allowed himself a small, chilling smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

"It’s been over a year now, Evon," Ramon replied, his voice a low, self-satisfied drone. "And she is none the wiser. Who would have ever thought these Stern family members were such easy, arrogant targets to make money from?"

Ramon walked over to one of the central consoles that was currently displaying various benign research reports and endless spreadsheets on its multiple screens. With a few precise button pushes, a low hiss of steam escaped from a concealed vent in the wall. The metallic wall panels then began to flip over, quickly revealing what was previously hidden: a massive array of equipment, information displays filled with diagrams of different herbs and biological notes, and finally, the actual project.

The equipment on display was highly advanced, almost alien in its design. It looked like various pieces of specialized, mechanical armor meant to be worn directly over the human body. They were mechanical exoskeletons designed for the legs, the arms, the hands, and the rest of the body. Each piece was sleek, metallic, and deadly in its precision.

"We managed to successfully obtain the seed money from Chad Stern and the Black Hounds, the money he foolishly wagered on that ridiculous event," Ramon explained, gesturing to the gleaming tech. "And we have been using that substantial war chest to develop our latest, greatest product."

He walked over to the now-exposed wall rack. Ramon then picked off a single piece of the prototype, a glove-like device that went around the user’s hand. It clipped around his forearm with a soft hiss and then encased his entire hand in metallic plating, forming almost a gauntlet over each of his fingers. He flexed his hand slowly, opening and closing it. The device moved naturally with his fingers, not hindering his dexterity at all. It felt like an extension of his own bones and muscle.

"And then, there’s the money that Bobo has given us to conduct her own legitimate, and frankly, fruitless research," Ramon continued, his voice dripping with contempt for his employer. "We have designed a method to systematically divert those funds elsewhere. We have been moving that research money around for our own personal use and development for quite some time now, and she hasn’t been able to notice a single thing. And she never will notice until it’s far too late for her to stop us."

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