Read Online Final Empire by Blake Northcott - Free Book Online Page A

one can.”
    I nodded weakly. He was right and I wanted to agree just to be polite but I couldn’t force myself to say the words out loud.
    “So have you made all the necessary arrangements?” he asked.
“Yeah. Peyton is running the Moxon Corporation, so if anything happens to me she’s got everything in her name.”
    “I know,” he said, motioning to the small holo-screen that hovered above his desk, “we have news here in Switzerland. I’m not taking about your financial assets.”
    “She knows that the tumor was removed during my surgery in France last year, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “And the detail about the remaining piece that could not be extracted?”
    “She knows it’s there...” I started down at my shoes. “I might’ve left out the part about it being malignant.”
    “You haven’t told her yet?” he asked. “You’re waiting for a special occasion, maybe?”
    I stared back over my shoulder at the white office door. She was sitting on the other side, thinking this was a routine check-up she’d scheduled for me – just a quick visit to discuss my meds and possibly adjust the dosages. Shit, I should’ve told her. There is so much I haven’t told her, so many things she deserves to know.
    “I know your previous doctor,” he said, pulling a fresh cigarette from the breast pocket of his lab coat. “Dinneen is a wonderful, talented man. We’ve met at conferences, shared drinks and stories...but as you Americans say, he likes to coat things with the candy.”
    “All right...”
    Doctor Zbinden brought the cigarette to his lips and cupped a hand over the tip, lighting the end with a Zippo. “Did he mention how sudden things can happen? How rapidly this could progress?”
    I shook my head. I’d been routinely missing scheduled check-ups since the bulk of my tumor had been removed last year. If it weren’t for Peyton I wouldn’t even be here now.
    “Many years ago,” he began, “I diagnosed a patient with a tumor, not much different than yours. It’s an emergency, so we schedule surgery immediately...but not immediate enough. He flies to Switzerland with his fiancée, and we make all the arrangements – within twenty four hours he’d be operated on to remove the mass. She found his body the next morning on the floor of the bathroom.”
    My heart skipped a beat. “So it was sudden...” I asked. “painless?”
    “Yes,” he says. “ So sudden and painless that he still had a toothbrush in his mouth when she found him. He didn’t even have time to blink before the lights went out. There was no deathbed chat with his loved ones, telling them how much they meant to him. It was a lightning strike.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
    “Jesus...” I whispered under my breath.
    “Jesus has nothing to do with this,” the doctor said, blowing a fresh cloud of smoke from his lips. “This is science. You have time, yes. How much? I cannot tell you. All I can tell you is that right now, time is not your friend.”
    “Given enough time, science cures everything.”
    “Yes, this is true. In ten, maybe fifteen years we may no longer have cancer. I’ll be out of a job.” He motioned to the picturesque snow-capped mountain visible from his office window, framed by a cloudless sky the color of blue silk. “I’d actually prefer that...take an early retirement and spend it on the slopes. But that is a very large-sized ‘maybe’.”
    “But that’s the direction things are going,” I said emphatically. “I’ve read the research. Breakthroughs are happening all the time.”
    “That’s quite a gamble. Waiting around for a cure? I can’t guarantee you one year, let alone ten or fifteen.” He took his cigarette in his fingers, glancing down at it. “We all take risks, Mister Moxon. We make choices, roll dice. But we have to accept the consequences of our choices...and we have to realize the odds we face when we place a bet.”
    “There’s a solution to every