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"No, I'll pass your message on to my subordinates."

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"Is whatever's wrong with you going to mean I have to have a conversation with a different person about this any time soon?"
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"Wrong with me? I think I've been very reasonable about this."

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"I mean medically."

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"Probably not. I have a year, maybe two. By then your demands will have worked out one way or another.

If you knew of a cure you'd already be exporting it, I assume."
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"Well, there's cures I can bottle and cures I can't. I can fix an amputee but only in person. What's wrong with you?"

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"Cancer. Not one of the ones where you have a cure we've been distributing. As you can see."

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"If it's not in your brain I can operate on that on a principle similar to the amputee one," Cam remarks.

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"If you're trying to bribe me, the likely result is that some of my subordinates think I'm compromised and try to replace me early. Not a bad deal for me, assuming you then go on to bribe me, but it might land you back here having the same conversation with someone else."

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"I'm not trying to bribe you in advance," Cam says.

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"Leading to the same risk of you winding up back here, and also me remaining un-bribed.
Don't worry, I'll pretend you hadn't said that part and act accordingly."
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"I really can't do anything about brains, so I recommend being really squeaky clean by the time I am next in town lest metastasis obviate your options. And if I ever have the urge to operate on inoperable cancer in people who aren't productively steering large international organizations I know where to satisfy that impulse and it won't put me anywhere near you."

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"Yes, yes, you've made your point."

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"I like it when I make points. Anything else to cover before I fly away again?"

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"Not at all. I look forward to working with you. Productively."

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"Lovely."

Cam heads out.
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Leaving the Elite to presumably restructure their organization on short notice.

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One can always hope.

Cam calls his ship down from geostationary orbit.
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There'll be a bit of a wait while it descends.

Just before it reaches him, there's a crash. It's loud, but he can feel it more than he can hear it. The crash itself is more like an impact, like if someone dropped a grand piano that was also the size of the moon. The spaceship rocks in the air, and shattered glass falls down from it.
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The fuck?
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The good news is, this wasn't targeted at Cam. The bad news is, this wasn't targeted at Cam.

In every direction windows have exploded, sirens are going off, and there are plumes of sand and glass rising into the air.
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The fuck. Cam lets his shattered spaceship make an emergency landing and takes to the air on non-glass wings.

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This is a bad city to not be invulnerable in. Cam may have been lucky enough to be away from anything that exploded, but a lot of more fragile people weren't. The dust is settling, and even after the explosion the place is still loud.

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Does anyone seem to know what happened?

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Yes. Almost everyone does, except Cam. If he lands and asks, the first response is going to be "Shatterbird."

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