Marcus had been composing the press release in his head since Thursday, which was how he knew his leg was healing. He was slowly turning back into himself.
He was on the couch with his foot up on the milk crate and the tablet on his chest, waiting for the noon window. He was sick of the fucking milk crate, but Samantha had told him to keep his foot elevated until she told him to stop. He wondered if she was just fucking with him now, but turned his mind back to the press release. Three founders of a small company had stopped the worst attack in the history of the internet and then given the world the fix for free. It was true and was the best thing he had ever had to sell, and he had sold a lot of things that weren’t true at all.
He could see how the near term played out. The interview where he was careful and humble. The part where he said it was really Samantha, and meant it, which made him look better for saying so. The company coming out of it not as the firm that caused Bitcoin to die but as the one that saved everything after. He had spent his whole life wanting to be the guy in the middle of something like this. And here he was, not even in the middle, but in the front, and it was exciting to consider what came next.
Samantha was at a bookshelf in the corner of the room picking through Doug’s books for something to read. He could feel the exhaustion radiating off of her. He wanted to do something to make her feel better, but he didn’t know where to start. Vlad was outside on the rail with the dog, where he’d been every two hours since yesterday, pulling things down and adding to the list.
“Noon,” Samantha said, without looking up.
Marcus swung his foot off the crate slowly and got the case. He looked at the back of Samantha’s head and thought about saying something, but didn’t. Instead, he took the case to the rail and set the dish on its spot. Vlad didn’t move, so Marcus scooted over a little and then sat on the step because standing on the foot for four minutes was not worth it.
The messages came down. Most were for Samantha. One was for him, from Eleanor, forwarded through the account Seth had set up.
Marcus — the Council goes public Tuesday with the transition plan and a timeline. Oduya wants a founder in the room when it’s announced — a face people recognize, to say the fix is real and the three of you are not the enemy. He means you. Seth thinks you should. I told them I’d ask. If you want it, say so by the four o’clock and I’ll make it happen. It would help you. — E
It would help him. Eleanor did not say things that weren’t true. She knew what she was handing him. A seat in the room. The recognizable face. The fix is real and these people saved you. His name coming out of the two weeks as the founder who stood up, instead of the founder who ran.
“What is it,” Samantha said. She’d come to the door.
“Eleanor. They’re going public Tuesday. Oduya wants a founder in the room.” He paused, but then said the whole thing because he wasn’t going to be the guy who edited it in his own favor right now. “She says it would help me.”
“Do it,” Samantha said. “It would.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said.
The part of his brain that had been running since Thursday started laying out how he’d play the room, who he’d thank, the exact amount of humble. It was good. He was good at it. And underneath it, one beat behind, he could see what would happen on Tuesday if he walked into the room.
The story would become him. A hunted CEO, a cabin, a manhunt, a founder who’d been on the news for two weeks as a fugitive, now standing next to the government saying trust us. Every camera in the room would be pointed at that, and the transition — the now over a hundred kinds of boxes somebody in a truck had to go fix before the next hospital — would be the B-roll behind his face. He would help himself and he would slow the fix.
“Vlad,” Marcus said. “If I’m the guy on Tuesday, does the patch move faster or slower.”
Vlad didn’t look up from the tablet. “Slower.”
“Why.”
“Because then it is a story about you, and the story was already about her, and neither of those is a story about the boxes.” He scrolled. “Eleanor is boring. Boring is what you want. Nobody makes a movie about a seventy-four-year-old woman reading a standard. They just do what she says.”
Marcus wanted to argue with Vlad. Make the case why his being in the room was the smart move, the reach, good for their company. He had converted every threat in this entire thing into a person he could work, which was the one thing he was unarguably good at. He wanted to be in the room so badly his foot had stopped hurting.
He opened a reply to Eleanor.
He typed Yes and looked at it and deleted it.
It should be you, he wrote. You and the Council, nobody from the company, not me. Put the boringest person you have at the front and let them read the timeline. If my face is in the room Tuesday is about the manhunt and the three of us, and it needs to be about the boxes. I’ll do anything you want that isn’t on camera — calls, vendors, whoever won’t move, I’ll work them all day. Just not the room. Tell Oduya the founder said the fix is real and then keep the founder off the stage. — M
He reread it while Vlad read over his shoulder. He thought about adding one more line, a simple one he could add that would make stepping back look like leadership, that would get him the credit for giving up the credit. He saw it clearly.
“Thirty seconds,” Vlad said.
He didn’t add it. He clicked send.
He pulled the dish and sat on the step with it in his lap. His foot had started hurting again. Samantha was in the doorway with a paperback held closed over one finger.
“You turned it down,” she said.
“It was the right thing to do.”
“That was the thing you wanted.”
“I’ve wanted that my whole life,” Marcus said. He wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. “I wrote the speech Thursday. I’ve still got it.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s a good speech.”
“So why.”
“Because I’d be good in the room, which would slow things down. That would cause another hospital like problem, maybe worse. Vlad agreed.” He looked at his foot up on the step. “I gave up on the company when we were in the mountains. I thought that was the hard one. This is the hard one.”
Samantha came and sat down on the step next to him, on the side away from the foot, and didn’t say anything, which from her was a lot. Cooper came over and put his head on Marcus’s good knee. Marcus scratched the dog’s ears and watched the road down below where nothing was coming, and for a minute the three of them sat there. Together.