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  But neither was a problem for Ian Blackwell Holdings. It had the perfect home for the interface, the perfect place for it to become a reality. Pythia Vision, a subsidiary that Ian had formed and was putting substantial resources into, intending to make it his company’s forward-looking artificial intelligence arm, a hub of technological brilliance. Pythia Vision was already working on a number of commercial applications, but its aim was to ultimately develop complex civilian and defense systems that would require the participation of both humans and machines to achieve optimal results. And the attainment of this, Ian believed, depended on two crucial components that existed in two companies, one of them Alster’s.

  The other he had already acquired a few months earlier. InSyn, or Intelligence Synergy, which was what he thought it should have been called—why the founders had decided to shorten the name into an unintelligible assortment of letters was beyond him. InSyn was a company in Colorado, in the Denver Technological Center, that was working on creating the algorithms platform for a synergistic human-machine interface. One that would one day, once the required technologies advanced enough, allow humans and machines to work side by side seamlessly in dynamic multitask decision-making situations.

  InSyn’s algorithms were his, but in order to implement them in an actual interface in a way that it could be used by Pythia Vision, he needed the Alster virtual interface. The problem was that the interface was too skillfully patented, and, anyway, Ian wanted the developer, too, and the team the guy had already assembled.

  He had no interest in the rest of Alster Industries. Still, he was willing to buy the entire company, if needed, to get that one subsidiary he wanted. And if he already had to buy Alster Industries in its entirety, there was another aspect of it that interested him. As a result of Jeremy Alster’s treatment of his employees over the years, they were loyal to him. And loyalty was not easy to find these days. Employees who invested back in a company that invested in them, who chose to remain with it and to grow and develop according to its needs, that was an asset of great potential if one handled it correctly. Training new people took time, and time was competitiveness and money.

  Ian knew the plans of the other contenders for Alster Industries, plans they tried their best to hide from Alster. They would get rid of the weak and keep only the strong. That wasn’t quite what he had in mind. He would take Alster Industries apart, yes. It would effectively cease to exist. But while the more successful subsidiaries would be added to his own or merged into them—for the most part, he didn’t mind having them in Ian Blackwell Holdings’ extensive portfolio—the failed ones would not be eliminated, not exactly. He would use their employees. They weren’t stupid, they knew their time was up and had known for a while that Jeremy Alster was carrying them on his back. Concern was widespread, and Ian intended to use that to his advantage. He would inject new businesses into any subsidiaries he could, and where that wasn’t a viable option, he would relocate useful employees. He would then take the others, compensate those he had no need for in a way that would undermine any dissent, and teach those who could be taught, to enable them to join Ian Blackwell Holdings. Give them all peace of mind, give their families a future, and shift their loyalty to him and to his company.

  He had already decided on the team that would be in charge of the human resources part of his plan, and intended to have Alster himself work alongside it. The man knew everything about each and every one of his employees, and that was invaluable and would make the process more efficient. They would be interacting with Alster, rather than with the unfamiliar representatives of the company that would by then have taken over their livelihoods. The way Ian planned it, the transition would be far more likely to succeed.

  Money was not an issue for him. He was not Jeremy Alster and Ian Blackwell Holdings was not Alster Industries. Ian never compromised, and every takeover he had ever completed, friendly or otherwise, had been carefully thought out. As a result, he was not only the only one offering this ambitious plan to Alster, he was also the only one who had the ability to carry it out without it causing too much of a dent in his own company’s very deep pockets. Failure would hurt but not destroy him. Success, he knew, meant that Ian Blackwell Holdings would skyrocket to new heights.

  The problem was that Alster was hesitating. People did not usually hesitate when Ian Blackwell came after them. It was known that if he wanted a company, he got it. But Alster was different. He would fight to the end to protect his employees, which was why Ian had approached him in the first place in a different manner than was his convention. He had stayed back, letting others bid for the company, not letting anyone know he too was interested while learning their intentions. When he had finally entered the arena, it was quietly, and he had approached Alster directly. His offer was a number, and a plan. The number was less, much less, than the others had bid, which he had ways of finding out. The plan was for the failing companies, and for each and every one of Alster Industries’ employees.

  Alster had not made the offer public, which was a good sign. And yet he wasn’t going forward with it, either.

  Ian had an idea why. And he was hoping his plan to get married would go some way toward solving that.

  Chapter Two

  Victoria Davis glanced at the man she was walking beside. She was more nervous than she’d ever been. If he would not be pleased at the end of his visit, it would be her job that would be lost, her career that would end. Although she wouldn’t mind that as much as she would not having a go at getting Ian Blackwell.

  This wasn’t her first time on one of his post-takeover transition teams, but it was her first time as the administrative head of one, and she was determined to show him she was a team player. She would, simply said, do whatever he asked, and if she was lucky maybe he would be open to more. She let her eyes roam over him, discreetly so. That’s one hell of a man, she thought. Put him in a crowd and he would stand out, a striking man by all standards. By all standards indeed. She sighed inwardly. She followed the gossip, knew every item her boss appeared in, had heard of his feats. She had a photo of him tucked away in her bedroom, where no one would see it. Everything she wore now, and the hairstyle she had done as soon she got the call informing her that he was coming to see InSyn, it was all meant to attract his attention.

  So far he hadn’t so much as looked. And right now he didn’t seem pleased, to say the least.

  Ian finally had an insight into what was happening in his most recent acquisition. On the flight over to Denver he had read once again the reports he had been getting from the transition team and had gone through the original due diligence report prepared for the company, which had been unfailingly thorough. And yet none of these had given him any idea as to why all efforts to successfully integrate InSyn into Ian Blackwell Holdings’ companies portfolio had failed.

  But this visit had.

  “Sir, I know you originally intended for InSyn to be an independent subsidiary of Pythia Vision,” Davis said, “that you wanted it to retain enough of its operational freedom to continue doing its work the way it always has. But that’s just not working. These people are impossible. I have to say, I have no idea how this company has managed to get this far.” She glanced at him. He didn’t bother to return the look. “And I think you’re right. I mean, of course you’re right. It can’t stay here. It’s best to just dissolve it, as you said. I tried everything, they’re refusing to cooperate. Even after I told them what you’ve decided, that because of their behavior we’re shutting them down. And even after we’ve already began the preparations for the relocation of the employees we plan to keep.”

  Ian frowned. He hadn’t approved that. InSyn was not supposed to know what he had planned for it until he would make his final decision, after this visit. It made no sense to tell them yet.

  Davis continued, nervousness clear in her voice. “We didn’t even ask them for much, just to understand that they’re now a part of a bigger company, your company, and to act accordingly. But
they’re constantly objecting to me and to my administrative team, and even the technology coordination team, the one from Pythia Vision, I don’t understand their problem with it.”

  InSyn and Pythia Vision had worked together in the past. Pythia Vision had been using InSyn’s machine learning algorithms in its artificial intelligence applications for more than a year before Ian decided on the takeover, and InSyn had advised Pythia Vision on a number of occasions. But now Ian wanted more than that, he wanted InSyn to fully align itself with Pythia Vision’s technology development plans in order to focus its expertise accordingly, and, at the same time, to prepare to translate its algorithmic platform into reality with Alster’s virtual interface. Evidently, neither was happening.

  “I mean, it’s been three months since we . . . since you took them over,” Davis said, “and, sir, nothing has been going as scheduled. Nothing. This has never happened in any transition I’ve been a part of.” She hurried on, defensive. “Instead of synchronizing its administrative operations with those of Pythia Vision, and increasing its cooperation with the technology development teams, the same teams it has already worked with so well before, it’s just . . . it’s like it’s increasingly withdrawing into itself.” She shook her head in exasperation, managing to make eye contact with Ian. “I’m sorry, sir, they’re simply impossible.”

  Ian had to contain his impatience. He knew all this. It was why he had finally decided it would be better—and certainly easier—if InSyn would be dissolved. The small company would be stripped of its assets, its technology experts moved to Pythia Vision as its direct employees and the rest made redundant. Ian wanted this to be done without further delay so that the elements he was interested in would be assimilated into the context he had intended for them, to be ready when he put his hands on the patents owned by Alster Industries. Which he had no doubt he would.

  Still, he was hands-on, and had his own way of looking at companies, down to their very core. The way an engineer would look into a complex machine and know, simply know all about it, he could look at a company and know its strengths and its weaknesses, its potential and its risks. And so before making his final decision what to do with his rogue acquisition, and for the first time ever for this company, he flew in himself and walked its hallways. And now he knew.

  The problem with this company was its people. InSyn was, quite simply, resisting its takeover, long after it was a done deal. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, Ian Blackwell Holdings had more than enough experience—and ways—to deal with that. But InSyn wasn’t the maker of a technology that could be placed in the hands of an external development team if necessary. It was people, brilliant minds who had spent years creating machine learning algorithms, analyzing the responses of human operators in their work with machines, and developing algorithms designed to balance all elements of the human-machine interaction in order to optimize it.

  And that meant that InSyn’s value lay in both its algorithms and the people who made them and on whom they were built being taken together. And if the people didn’t want to be a part of Ian’s company, despite what it was offering them, the very function he needed from them was under the threat of being rendered useless.

  He could understand their shock. They had had no idea that one of InSyn’s two founders had made failed financial investments in an attempt to make enough money to buy out the only other shareholder in InSyn, a venture capital fund. In a bout of greed, the man had wanted to reap the fruits of the small company’s success after he’d realized it was becoming a valuable subcontractor for Pythia Vision and had suspected that a takeover by Ian Blackwell Holdings—a high-premium one—was only a matter of time. The guy should have stuck to what he knew best, but he didn’t, and this resulted in his financial ruin. His and InSyn’s, as he had dipped into its financial reserves. And no one in InSyn had known, no one had any idea.

  Ian did. And he had used that fact to buy the man, then an emotional wreck, out. Or actually, Ian Blackwell Holdings had bought him out. Completely out. Ian no longer needed the guy for the company and didn’t want someone as unreliable as him in it. He had then bought out the other founder, too, but that one was easy. The man loved InSyn, and all he wanted was to remain with it into its future, to continue working in the company he had founded. And since his technological contribution was of value, Ian didn’t mind letting him do so. The money was just an added benefit for him. He liked to live well, and the purchase offer had given him just that.

  This meant that Ian Blackwell Holdings owned the two founders’ shares in InSyn. The rest were still owned by the venture capital fund that had made a series of investments in InSyn over more than a decade, ever since the algorithmic platform it had ended up developing was not much more than a theory. The fund had made the investments quietly and patiently, and it deserved its shares, no doubt, and the substantial gain it would now make from Ian Blackwell Holdings’ acquisition of InSyn and its planned use of the small company’s know-how.

  And so it was a good thing that Ian himself was also the sole owner of the venture capital fund and was the one who was providing it with its investment money, which not many knew, not even in his company. He doubted the greedy one of the two founders would have sold him his shares in InSyn as easily if he had known. Which didn’t matter, Ian would have ultimately bought him out anyway. He always got what he wanted.

  And he would solve the InSyn mess, too. He already had an idea how.

  “This way,” Davis said, and Ian turned his attention back to his surroundings. They were going down the stairs to the only part of the building he hadn’t been in yet, the basement level.

  “This is where they keep their mainframe,” Davis said, “and they use this place to store their data, too, there’s storage media here. And also a library of sorts, books and files.” Her voice took on an irritated edge. “I kept finding here some of the people who belong upstairs. Apparently they were trying to form another team or something, I’m not sure what that was. I put a stop to it immediately.” She shook her head, displeased. “I made it clear to them that we’re now making the decisions who works where, and that we’ll decide everything with Pythia Vision. They argued, but they always argue. They’ll simply have to get used to the way things are now. I know you wouldn’t want them to stand in the way of your plans, sir,” she added, “and I will do everything necessary to bring them in line before you relocate them.”

  Ian’s brow furrowed.

  The basement was cool and silent but for the constant hum of the powerful mainframe. The light came from evenly distributed, recessed LED light fixtures overhead and from long, narrow windows at the top of the external walls, hugging the ceiling. It was a good setup that prevented the sickly lighting that normally characterized such places, making it a friendlier work environment. The entire floor was an open space, and the only dividers were created by the cabinets holding the equipment, right of the stairs, and shelves holding books and storage media in orderly, clearly marked rows on their left. Several desks stood at convenient intervals, some with sophisticated workstations on them, although there was no one there to use them.

  Davis turned right at the bottom of the stairs, and Ian followed her deeper into the floor, between the sleek dividers. Everything here was state of the art, as he’d expected, and extremely well maintained. It seemed that the founders had at least done that right, even though they had not been smart with their funds, wasting money they didn’t have. He looked around him, assessing every element, every part of the place’s layout. He knew, of course, about all of it, every piece of equipment and every mind this company had. But he was seeing it first hand for the first time.

  The sound of someone speaking had Davis and him walking on to the end of the floor. Near the wall up ahead, a man sat behind a desk, where light from the early afternoon sun fell on him. As they watched, the man, black, heavyset, and in his late fifties, Ian judged, threw his hands up in frustration and then typed fast on the keyboard detached f
rom the set of screens before him, speaking to himself in the process.

  “No, no, no,” he was saying, apparently reacting to something on the screens. “If you do this the loop will be too quick for the human operator. What on earth are they thinking up there?”

  “Excuse me.” Davis took a step toward him, glancing back at Ian.

  The man didn’t answer, intent on his work.

  “Excuse me,” she said again, her tone hard. Perhaps she thought this approach would appeal to him, gain her his respect, Ian thought with distaste.

  “I told you,” Davis said, looking at him. “They don’t listen, that’s what I’ve had to deal with ever since my team and I got here. It’s as if they don’t understand that they’re now under a different ownership, that we’re the bosses now. They just keep trying to—” Her voice took on a shrill edge. “This disregard is annoying,” she continued, turning back to the man. “You there,” she called out to him.

  “Just a minute, please, we almost have it. I do apologize but this has to be done properly,” the man said, his eyes on the screens.

  “That I agree with. Damn it, you will come when your bosses call.”

  A dark expression crossed Ian’s face. He did not approve of her speaking to this man, or to anyone for that matter, in this way. He had seen how everyone he had met in the building so far had reacted to her.

  And she was taking some liberty putting herself in the same level as him. This visit had already shown him she was the wrong person for the job, and his transition teams coordinator would have to answer to him for that. He was angry, certain that if things here had been handled properly, the drastic change he had come to consider for this company, or his involvement at all, might never have been required.