Story code: ST-000833
Part 4: The Settlement
The hands hit Greg like falling concrete. Thick fingers dug into his armpits, violently wrenching him backward. The momentum tore the shoulder seam of his cheap polyester jacket. Greg kicked out, his scuffed shoe connecting with nothing but the heavy air of the antechamber, before his spine slammed hard against the marble floor.
He gasped, the wind knocked out of him. A heavy knee dropped onto his chest, pinning him instantly.
Through the ringing in his ears, Greg watched Vance scramble backward like a crab. The billionaire’s pristine white collar was a canvas of bright, arterial red. Vance pressed both hands over his face, blood leaking through his manicured fingers, his chest heaving in ragged, panicked gasps.
The lawyer, Diane, stood over Vance, shouting into her phone.
The second security guard grabbed Greg’s right arm, twisting it sharply behind his back. The pain flared hot and bright, forcing Greg’s cheek into the thick, lemon-scented carpet.
“Get the paper,” Vance gasped. His voice was thick and wet, muffled by his bloody hands.
The knee on Greg’s chest shifted. A hand plunged into Greg’s trousers pocket. Greg thrashed, twisting his hips, screaming into the floor, but the guard’s grip was absolute. The man pulled his hand out, holding the damp, creased square of paper. He didn’t even look at it. He simply handed it up to Diane, who slipped it into her leather folder with the cold efficiency of an automated machine.
The heavy oak door flew open. The Capitol Police finally rushed in, weapons drawn, brass pins gleaming under the sconces. The blind eye had been cured the exact moment it became legally advantageous.
“He attacked Mr. Vance!” Diane shouted, pointing a trembling, perfectly manicured finger at Greg. “An unprovoked assault!”
The private guards stepped back, letting the federal officers swarm Greg. Cold steel locked around his wrists, biting tight into the bone. They hauled him to his feet. Greg let his head hang. He didn’t fight them. His knuckles throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache, and his right eye was beginning to swell shut from where it had hit the floor.
He looked up just in time to see Vance being guided out the secondary door by Diane, a white towel now pressed to his ruined nose. The billionaire didn’t look back. The equation was already rebalanced.
The sterile hum of the D.C. central cell block air conditioning was louder than the Senate chamber’s had been. Seventy-two hours later, Greg sat at a bolted-down metal table in an interview room. The orange canvas of his jumpsuit scratched against his neck. The sharp, overwhelming smell of industrial bleach and unwashed bodies coated the back of his throat.
Across the table sat a public defender named Miller. Miller looked twenty-six, wore a tie that had a coffee stain near the knot, and had not made eye contact since sitting down.
“Aggravated assault of a congressional witness,” Miller said, reading from a bulky plastic tablet. “Assault on federal property. They’re treating this as domestic terrorism, Greg. The U.S. Attorney is making a prime-time example out of you.”
Greg stared at the scratched metal table. “Did they log the paper? In my pocket. I had a piece of paper.”
Miller sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “There is no paper in the property report. You had a comb, three dollars, and a house key to a property the bank legally repossessed last Tuesday.”
Greg closed his eyes. The master override key. The proof. Gone. Swallowed by a leather folder and probably burning in a high-rise incinerator by now.
“They’re denying bail,” Miller continued, his voice devoid of pity or surprise. “You have no assets. You have no fixed address. You’re looking at fifteen years, minimum, in a federal penitentiary. The prosecutor isn’t even offering a plea deal. They want a public trial.”
Greg slowly turned his head. Through the wire-mesh window of the heavy steel door, he could see the guard station in the hallway. A small, muted television was bolted to the cinderblock wall above the desk. The bright blue graphics of a financial news network scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
Greg squinted through his swollen eye, focusing on the ticker tape.
*SEC ANNOUNCES SETTLEMENT WITH VANCE CAPITAL.*
The camera cut to a shot of Marcus Vance walking across an airport tarmac toward a massive, sleek private jet. He wore a sharp black suit and dark sunglasses. A small, flesh-colored bandage was taped over the bridge of his nose. The billionaire looked mildly annoyed by the wind disturbing his hair, but otherwise entirely unbothered.
*FIRM TO PAY $12 MILLION FINE OVER ALGORITHMIC TRADING ‘IRREGULARITIES’.*
Twelve million dollars. Greg did the math in his head. Vance’s platform processed that much capital in roughly forty-five seconds of pre-market trading. It wasn’t a punishment. It was a permit fee. A rounding error.
“Greg, are you listening to me?” Miller asked, tapping his pen against the metal table. “We need to figure out a defense strategy. We have absolutely nothing to work with.”
Greg looked away from the television. He looked at his own wrists, bruised dark purple and yellow from the steel cuffs. He thought about the empty house he could never return to, the decades of exhausting labor vanished into a server farm, and the fifteen years of concrete walls stretching out ahead of him.
Vance had been right. It wasn’t a grand conspiracy. It wasn’t malice. It was just math.
“I’m listening,” Greg whispered, his voice hollow, echoing faintly in the small, concrete room. “There’s no defense. Just tell them I’m ready.”