The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 169

"How many?"

"Excuse me?"

"I asked you how many UN personnel are there?"

The man hesitated. "...To my knowledge, sir, there should only be one."

David stared at him.

His gaze was horrifyingly flat, as indifferent as a man reviewing a quarterly earnings report.

A second later, the corner of his mouth twitched upward into a cold, mocking sneer.

"Heh. One? Adrian, do you have any idea how many lives Knox Bio saves every single year?"

The man named Adrian remained perfectly silent.

"Ten million," David stated. "Every year. Ten million."

He picked up his smartphone from the mahogany table. The screen was lit up with a breaking news alert: *Knox Bio Donates $230 Million to UN Global Rare Disease Foundation, Setting Historic Single-Donation Record.*

The comment section was already flooded with over a hundred thousand praises, a sea of "God bless Knox," "Mr. Lancaster is a true saint," and "This is what real corporate responsibility looks like."

He flipped the phone around, shoving the screen in Adrian's face. "Tell me, Adrian. Whose life is more valuable? One random worker, or ten million dying patients?"

Adrian slowly took off his sunglasses. He stared at the staggering dollar amount on the screen, and the endless tidal wave of glowing adoration trailing beneath it...

He was quiet for a long time.

"Understood." He turned on his heel and marched out of the cabin.

The helicopter continued its aggressive push south.

Outside the window, the churning ocean gave way to an endless expanse of ice. It was a bleak, ashen white that stretched to the horizon, resembling the dead surface of an alien moon.

David leaned back against his leather seat and closed his eyes.

His mind suddenly drifted to Lucas. He remembered the kid's very first black-ops assignment. Lucas had come back trembling, asking, "Boss, the things we do... are we doing the right thing?"

David had just smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "By the time you reach my age, kid, you won't bother asking questions like that."

It was a damn shame Lucas never made it to his age.

*

At the exact same moment David's chopper was breaching the Drake Passage, a commercial jet was tearing through the skies above the Pacific, flying from Washington, D.C., to the southernmost city in Argentina.

Garrison had his head pressed back against his seat, his eyes shut tight.

"I'm not falling for that trap. If I spill the beans and the brass comes looking for a scapegoat, are you gonna go to prison for me?"

Garrison: ...

The cloud cover outside the window thickened, and the plane gave a sudden, violent jolt.

"So, are you signing this or not?" Wyatt pressed.

"Done." Garrison quickly scrawled his signature across the page and shoved the notepad back into Wyatt's chest.

Wyatt tucked it safely into his bag, then fished a piece of peanut brittle out of his pocket. He unwrapped it, popped it into his mouth, and crunched loudly. After two bites, he pulled out a second piece and offered it to Garrison.

Garrison didn't even look at it. "No thanks. I don't eat candy."

Wyatt simply shrugged and popped the second piece into his own mouth. As he chewed, he suddenly spoke up again. "By the way, Dr. Foster. There's something that's been bugging me. I just can't wrap my head around it."

"What?"

"You're flying down here to track down your wife, right?"

Garrison stayed completely silent, which was confirmation enough.

Wyatt studied him, his eyes carrying a strange, piercing intensity. "If you love her so damn much, why did she run off to Antarctica in the first place?"