Chapter 10 010
Morning arrived with two things Jared had not expected.
The first was a call from Victor Harrington at six fifteen. The old man never called that early which meant whatever he had to say could not wait for a reasonable hour.
"Jared. Are you awake?"
"I am now," Jared said, already sitting up.
"There is a meeting this morning at nine. Boardroom at Harrington Capital. Three people you need to be in a room with. I cannot explain everything over the phone but clear your morning and dress well."
The call ended before Jared could ask a single question.
The second unexpected thing was waiting in his status panel when he opened it.
\[System Notification: Major market event detected. Helix Bio — pending FDA fast track designation announcement expected within 48 hours. Current valuation inside your portfolio will shift significantly upon confirmation.\]
Jared read it twice then sat completely still for ten seconds.
He had noted Helix Bio the night before as something worth examining more closely. The system had apparently decided to accelerate that timeline considerably. A fast track FDA designation for a cardiac diagnostics device would not just increase the company valuation. It would put the asset on the radar of every major medical technology investor in the country.
He owned it already. Buried inside a distressed private equity fund he had bought at forty cents on the dollar seventy two hours ago.
He opened his full status panel.
\[Name: Jared Knox\]
\[Level: 4 (81/200)\]
\[Title: Rising Dragon\]
\[Skills: Medical Expertise (Intermediate), Charisma Boost (Advanced), Property Management (Advanced), Market Intelligence (Passive), Business Intelligence (Beginner), Negotiation Mastery (Intermediate)\]
\[Total Asset Value: $25,400,000\]
\[Liquid Balance: $680,000\]
\[Active Mission: California Top 100 Wealthiest — 162 days remaining\]
\[Side Mission Active: Secure Culver City Tenant — 13 days remaining\]
He dressed quickly, ate standing at the kitchen counter, and was in the car by eight.
Harrington Capital occupied the top two floors of a quiet but prestigious building in Westwood. The boardroom on the upper floor had floor to ceiling windows and a long table that seated fourteen. When Jared arrived at eight fifty five, Victor was already seated at the head. Raymond sat to his left. Three people Jared did not recognize sat on the opposite side of the table.
Victor made the introductions without ceremony.
Margaret Tsai. Managing director of Tsai Infrastructure Group, one of the largest privately held construction and development firms in California with projects spanning commercial, residential, and public sector contracts. She was in her mid fifties, composed and watchful with the particular stillness of someone who had spent decades in rooms full of loud men and had learned that silence was a more powerful tool than volume.
David Park. Not related to Grace Park. A Korean American private banker in his early sixties who managed capital for roughly forty of California's wealthiest families through a firm called Park Meridian Private. He had the relaxed precision of a man who had seen every kind of financial situation and been surprised by none of them.
The third person was younger. Late thirties. A woman named Claire Mason who ran a technology focused venture fund called Mason Vantage with two point three billion in assets under management. She had backed four unicorn companies in the past seven years and had a reputation for identifying inflection points in technology markets before the broader investment community caught up.
Jared took his seat, noted all three of them carefully, and waited.
Victor spoke first. "I asked these three here because I trust them and because I believe they are looking at the same thing from different angles. Jared, tell them about Helix Bio."
Every eye in the room moved to Jared.
He had not prepared a presentation. He had no slides, no printed documents, no rehearsed pitch. What he had was Medical Expertise, Business Intelligence, Market Intelligence, and a Negotiation Mastery skill that was already reading the room with quiet precision.
Margaret Tsai was skeptical but genuinely curious. David Park had done some homework already, his slight forward lean giving it away. Claire Mason was the most important person in the room for this conversation and she was currently unreadable.
Jared spoke for twelve minutes without stopping.
He covered the technology itself in plain language, what the device did, why rapid cardiac screening mattered at scale, and why the current diagnostic infrastructure in American healthcare created a specific and enormous gap that Helix Bio's prototype addressed directly. Then he moved to the business position. The pending FDA designation. The patent situation. The fact that the asset was currently buried inside a distressed fund that the broader market had not examined closely enough to understand what was inside it.
He did not oversell. He did not use language designed to create excitement. He laid out what he knew and let the facts carry the weight.
When he finished the room was quiet for a moment.
Claire Mason spoke first. "You acquired this fund position two days ago."
"Yes," Jared said.
"At forty cents on the dollar."
"Correct."
She looked at him with an expression that was not quite a smile but was adjacent to one. "That is either very lucky or very good."
"I prefer to make those two things the same," Jared said.
David Park leaned forward. "If the FDA designation comes through in the next forty eight hours as you suggest, what is your position? Hold, develop, or exit?"
Jared had thought about this in the car. His Negotiation Mastery skill had already mapped the three possible directions this conversation could go and where each one led.
"Develop," he said. "But not alone. Helix Bio needs capital, operational expertise in the medical technology space, and a distribution network it currently does not have. I can provide the first. The right partners provide the other two."
The word partners landed exactly where he intended it to.
Margaret Tsai shifted in her seat. "Infrastructure and distribution in the healthcare adjacent space is something my firm has built over twenty years."
Claire Mason set her pen down. "Medical technology is a gap in my current portfolio that I have been looking to fill with the right vehicle."
David Park simply nodded slowly, which Jared understood from his Negotiation Mastery read to mean he was already calculating what his client network would want from something like this.
Victor Harrington had said nothing since introducing everyone. He sat at the head of the table with his wine glass from the night before replaced by a coffee cup and the satisfied expression of a man watching something he had engineered arrive at exactly the destination he intended.
\[System Notification: High value network convergence detected. Reputation surge incoming. Relationship Status updates in progress.\]
The meeting ran for another ninety minutes.
By the time it ended a working group had been formed. Jared would lead as the asset holder. Claire Mason's fund would provide growth capital. Margaret Tsai's firm would handle infrastructure buildout when the product reached commercialization stage. David Park would begin quiet conversations with three specific family offices that had expressed interest in medical technology exposure.
No formal agreements yet. Everything was preliminary and contingent on the FDA announcement. But the architecture of something very large had just been sketched out in a quiet boardroom in Westwood.
Jared was in the elevator heading down when his phone buzzed. A news alert.
Helix Bio Inc has received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for its RapidCore cardiac screening system. The company stated the designation will significantly accelerate the regulatory review timeline.
He stared at the notification for three seconds then put his phone in his pocket.
\[System Notification: Helix Bio valuation recalculation complete. Estimated current market value of your fund position — $47,000,000 and rising. Medical Expertise skill contributed to accurate early assessment. Skill upgraded — Medical Expertise now Advanced Level.\]
\[Side Mission Issued: Formalize the Helix Bio investment consortium within 21 days\]
\[Reward: Level plus 2, plus $3,000,000, Legendary Skill Box, Reputation plus 500\]
Outside on the Westwood street the morning was bright and unhurried. People walked past on their phones and their coffees completely unaware that a twenty six year old man standing quietly on the sidewalk had just watched his asset position jump from twenty five million to over sixty five million in the space of a single morning.
Jared put on his sunglasses and looked up at the pale blue sky.
\[Name: Jared Knox\]
\[Level: 4 (97/200)\]
\[Total Asset Value: $67,300,000\]
\[Active Mission: California Top 100 Wealthiest — 161 days remaining\]
\[Days since hospital discharge: 43\]
Sixty seven million in forty three days.
He needed four hundred and eighty million to crack the list.
One hundred and sixty one days to get there.
He pulled out his phone and called Anita Sorel.
"We need to talk about leverage," he said when she answered. "Institutional credit lines. How fast can you move?"
"How much are you thinking?" she asked.
"Enough to make the next six months look like the last six weeks," Jared said.
A pause. Then Anita made a sound that in anyone less composed would have been a laugh.
"Come in at two," she said. "I will have the team ready."
Jared ended the call, flagged a car, and got in.