Emily made the connection so fast it was a little scary, even for her, "You think he's doing some kind of bio-weapons testing aren't you? Maybe virus production? Umbrella Corporation type shit?"

"Umbrella Corporation?" Kenneth asked confused.

Emily shook her head, "It's a bio weapons company in a video game. You think he's doing something like that, don't you?"

Kenneth nodded, "It's the only thing that makes sense. I can't believe you and Stewart were so stupid not to have found out anything about this guy. Is money really as far as the two of you thought? Money isn't everything, and more often than not it'll get you killed."

Emily still felt a twinge hearing Kenneth talk about her former…thing, whatever Stewart was, her lover? Boyfriend? Fuck buddy? Not that it mattered anymore, he was dead and she was alive. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was probably Kenneth that had killed him. Even though she felt a twinge, it was getting smaller by the day and she couldn't really bring up any real emotions when she thought about him. Stewart was an idiot and a loser and looking at her life now, maybe dying was the best thing he could have done for her.

Had money really been the only thing she thought about back then? She knew she wanted the farm; she knew that money meant freedom. Freedom from working, freedom from being tied to an employer or work schedules, freedom from tightening belts around the end of the month to make sure you had enough of the stuff to pay all your bills. Money was freedom to move and go where you wanted to go. Yes, money had been all she had thought about, but not for the reasons that Kenneth supposed. She didn't want fast cars, shoes, clothes, or trips to the club. She wanted freedom.

Kenneth wouldn't understand any of that though, "Yes, money was all we thought about. It's the only thing that really matters where my farm is."

"Well, I hope you have learned at least, that money isn't everything and sometimes, giving up some profit now, might pay huge dividends later."

"You're talking about your government lackeys and spies, aren't you?" Emily asked calmly.

There was a strained and prolonged silence at her comments. Emily stopped a smile from forming on her lips. She did like it when she could make Kenneth speechless. Nova would have told her that this small victory was pointless and she had given up a major advantage. Nova had told her time and again, that people thought women were weak and stupid, and that it benefitted her to play into that. If you show your strength and intelligence, then people would watch you closer and be more guarded around you. Emily didn't feel like smiling anymore, but the shocked silence of Kenneth had been worth it, at least she tried to tell herself that.

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"Michael, take us back home," Kenneth stated quietly and sat back in his chair. The car became silent as death and Emily felt a very real chill slide down her back. She would have to be very careful around her Head of House from now on.

* * * * *

Simon stood in a very rich room. The furniture was of the highest quality, meticulously cleaned and conditioned. The wood of the few tables in the room shone softly with the reflected light of the room. The couch he was sitting on gave off the soft aroma of genuine leather from which it was made. The floor was hard wood with a bamboo throw that took up the middle of the room. And yet with all these embellishments, the room felt dead and cold. There was nothing that made him feel at ease here. And, not for the first time since coming here, he tried to stifle the growing sense that coming here had been a terrible mistake. A sliding wood door opened on the far side of the room and Simon fought every instinct he had to jump to his feet.

A tall Asian man stepped into the room and Simon slowly stood up. "Sir, Madam Nakahara will see you now. Follow me, please."

Simon followed the man deeper into the viper's pit. There was no going back now. The wood and paper door closed behind him and to him it might as well have been a steel vault door. He was committed. He had had no previous experience with House Himura, and he certainly had never met their Head of House, Fumiko Nakahara. By all accounts she was a cold-blooded logistician, which was the primary trait and strength of her House. He was counting on that cold logic to work in his favor. Besides, she would find what he had to show her very illuminating.

His escort led him down a hallway and then turned left, slid a keycard through a reader, punched in a code and held his eye to a retinal scanner. The rather large steel reinforced wooden panel slid silently back on its track to reveal something that Simon wouldn't have believed unless he was standing there looking at it.

The room wasn't a room at all, but an open balcony. The stars shone overhead. His vampire sight picked out the barely perceptible smudges around the edges of the night sky. The 'smudges' were what gave away the illusion. This wasn't really the night sky, either it was some kind of transparent material that covered the balcony in a dome, or it was the clearest, high-definition projection of a perfect Los Angeles night sky possible that was being shown on the underside of the protective dome that curved overhead.

The main room floor was taken up by a meticulously well-kept sand garden. There was a group of three large bonsai trees in the back right corner. While several boulders were placed to match, what he guessed was, some sort of astral significance, perhaps a constellation? Throughout the garden the deep and clear grooves of the rake lines through the sand looked like they had been chiseled from stone, and not simply traced in loose sand. He had trouble picking out even the smallest grain of sand that was out of place. The gardener had better have been getting paid a lot of money. He had never seen even a close equal in skill and care that had been given to this garden.

He was led around and behind the rock garden to a small arched wooden bridge that ran over a sizable, running creek that was fed by an impressive waterfall that came down at least twenty feet. Being fed by some unseen source, the water cascaded down its long drop, bouncing off several rocks on its way down to a sizable koi pond, before running under the bridge that he now crossed over.

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