novelnext Chapter 346 : The Goose That Lays Golden Eggs (4)
Chapter 346 : The Goose That Lays Golden Eggs (4)
After wrapping up the meeting, I walked Pierce out.
We strolled down the hallway side by side when he suddenly spoke.
“If you need anything, contact me anytime. As you know… this job isn’t that simple. You’ll have a hard time handling it alone.”
I stopped walking for a moment and turned to stare directly at him.
He had always been cautious and attentive to my reactions, but today, he slightly lifted his chin as if showing confidence.
“It might sound like unwanted advice, but there’s a high chance that your usual push-forward style won’t solve this one.”
He was giving me advice.
To me.
‘Has dementia already kicked in?’
From the Goldman days until now, I have never once needed any guidance from him.
There’s no way Pierce doesn’t know that, so he must have forgotten.
‘I guess aging really does come early these days…?’
“This client is extremely cautious, so they won’t budge from a bit of pressure.”
Sadly, it looked like the symptoms were already showing.
Which meant I needed to remind him who he was talking to.
“Cautious, huh… like a turtle. Careful, slow, always hiding inside its shell at the sight of unfamiliar danger. But—”
I stared straight into his eyes.
“Do you really think that’s fine? They’re racing on the same track as a racer. Quite the leisure they’ve got.”
Here, “racer” referred to Editus, the company that had visited me not long ago to give a direct declaration of war.
They were currently the frontrunner in the CRISPR race.
Pierce understood and replied,
“In a race, speed isn’t everything. Doesn’t the turtle sometimes beat the hare?”
But his tone sounded oddly relaxed.
Did he become so full of himself just because he correctly predicted one of my reactions earlier?
“There’s truth in the old saying. Pushing a turtle won’t make everything work out. Keep that in mind.”
‘Yes… dementia indeed.’
The symptoms were severe.
Trying to impart “wisdom” to me of all people.
I smiled and responded.
“Western fables are fine, but as I’ve always told you, I prefer Eastern wisdom. And I learned how to handle a stubborn turtle long ago—through a classic Korean poem.”
“Oh? Now I must hear it. What is it?”
“‘Turtle, turtle, stick out your head. If you don’t, I’ll roast you and eat you.’”
Even if it hides in the shell, it’s useless.
If you build a fire beneath its feet and slowly raise the temperature, eventually it can’t endure and pops its head out.
The key is the position of the fire, the heat intensity, and the timing.
And I had already gathered some intel related to that.
I was just about to warn Pierce about it—
“Pff!”
A suppressed laugh suddenly echoed behind us.
It wasn’t Pierce.
The sound came from farther back.
When I turned around, I found its source: Gonzales.
He snickered while pulling out a small notepad and a fountain pen from his pocket.
“My apologies. I’ve been getting into Eastern culture lately. Could you recite that poem one more time?”
Pierce looked briefly stunned, but then recognized who it was and shook his head.
“Do as you please.”
In the end, Gonzales persistently pestered me and wrote down the poem.
“My bad for interrupting. Please continue.”
And he disappeared just like that.
As always, no one really knew what went on in that man’s head.
Anyway—
Though the flow had been slightly interrupted, I picked up where I left off.
“And one more thing. I think you’re forgetting the fact that there are two turtles in this race.”
“Two?”
We’d only been talking for maybe thirty minutes.
Yet he had already forgotten.
Aging truly was frightening.
“In this race, there’s another turtle besides the hare.”
The other turtle.
That meant Intelligencia—one of the three companies I had yet to meet.
Another rival of CRISPR Medical.
‘They’re actually the competitor that concerns me the most.’
If Editus was a merchant running with one golden egg in hand, then CRISPR Medical and Intelligencia were entrepreneurs selling the system that produced golden eggs.
Of course, their approaches were completely different.
CRISPR Medical was like a restaurant that delivered food straight to your door, while Intelligencia was like a meal-kit company selling golden recipes.
But if the meal-kit company took off with heavy investment behind it?
Naturally, the restaurant would see fewer customers.
‘A perfect fire source.’
As I said, to drive the turtle out of its shell, heat was necessary—and Intelligencia was the perfect fuel.
“I wonder if they’d still be relaxed if the ten-billion-dollar deal went to the other turtle.”
If Intelligencia teamed up with me and surged ahead, CRISPR Medical wouldn’t be able to stay comfortable for long.
But then, an unexpected reaction came.
“So you haven’t met them yet.”
“I’ve received an invitation.”
When I told him the meeting was scheduled in three days, Pierce’s eyes widened.
“They… invited you?”
He looked completely dumbfounded.
His reaction was so shocking that I couldn’t help asking:
“Is there some reason I can’t meet them?”
“Well… you’ll understand once you do.”
***
Three days later—
I headed to Massachusetts to meet Intelligencia.
‘Who the hell are these people?’
Pierce’s bizarre reaction lingered in my mind.
He had looked at me like I was a steak walking into a vegan social club.
Intelligencia was a crucial “fire source.”
If leveraged properly, they would heat the shells of every turtle in this race.
But—
‘What exactly doesn’t add up?’
I had done plenty of research on them.
Yet Pierce’s reaction remained a mystery.
‘He really might be going senile…’
While that thought crossed my mind, Intelligencia’s front entrance appeared.
When I reached the door, an unexpected figure greeted me.
“Welcome, I’m Nareth Bannigan, the CEO.”
Usually, CEOs appear at the end of a schedule to flaunt their authority.
That’s the standard psychological tactic to gain the upper hand.
But this person had personally come out to the lobby to open the door for me.
“This way, please.”
The company interior was an open-office layout.
It felt less like a biotech company and more like a Silicon Valley startup.
Bean bags and ping-pong tables scattered around, and—
“Oh? You’re a guest? Want some coffee?”
An employee casually approached and spoke to me like a friendly barista.
They had clearly invited me to headquarters to show off this sense of camaraderie.
‘So that’s the angle.’
Our destination was a meeting room in the corner.
A corner office with two glass walls.
Real estate common sense dictates that a CEO should occupy such a prime location, but here it was open to anyone as a shared meeting room.
It felt like using a Rolls-Royce as an Uber.
But when I stepped into the conference room, more people than I’d expected were waiting inside.
“Let me introduce you. This is Jonathan Ranford. He’s our CTO for now, but at the end of this year he’ll be taking over as CEO in my place.”
He casually introduced his successor.
It was a way of signaling that this was a planned transition, not a power struggle.
“I came from the VC side and handled the early funding, but now we’re at a point where the technology matters more.”
The CEO grinned and pointed to the next person.
“And this person, you may already know her… this is Jillian Dowden, our board member and technical advisor.”
Of course I knew her.
Jillian Dowden.
She’s one of the inventors of CRISPR technology and, in the future, will go on to receive a Nobel Prize.
“And this is Damian Lozano, our technical advisor and co-founder.”
It was an interesting lineup.
The incoming CEO who would run the operations, and two tech titans who embodied the company’s symbolic weight.
They had basically gathered the present, the future, and the legend all in one room.
Once the introductions were over, the CEO got to the point.
“We’ve been guessing that the one buying up our shares lately is you, Mr. Ha Si-heon. Is that correct?”
“That’s right.”
There was no reason to hide it.
“As you know, through the Cure Fund I’m planning to build the future healthcare infrastructure. CRISPR will obviously be one of the core pillars. I’m prepared to commit up to a billion dollars on a twenty-year horizon.”
I went straight to the number.
But as soon as I finished speaking, a strange silence settled over the room.
Then the eyes of the eight people there all turned to the same place.
To the current CEO, Bannigan.
The movement was as natural as a well-rehearsed orchestra looking to its conductor.
“And the other terms?”
Bannigan asked slowly.
He didn’t look the least bit excited by the figure of a billion dollars.
If anything, there was a hint of wariness in his eyes.
He knew that an unexpected gift from Wall Street was often just a Trojan horse.
“Of course there are. I want to run a clinical trial on Castleman disease.”
“Castleman disease… I’m not familiar with that one.”
“It’s a rare idiopathic multicentric disease.”
But then, someone other than Bannigan spoke up.
It was the newly introduced CTO, Jonathan Ranford.
The company’s chief technology officer.
Once again, all the heads in the room swiveled in his direction.
Like a pack of meerkats.
“We plan to start with single-gene targets. It wouldn’t be wise to take on a complex polygenic disease in our very first clinical trial.”
“That’s why I’m offering a billion dollars and twenty years.”
When I said that, the CTO frowned.
Then he turned his head.
Toward the current CEO.
“Is that all?”
“No. I also want commercialization in the shortest possible time. And for that… we’ll have to settle the patent issues first.”
The air in the room turned cold.
Because I had brought up the patent lawsuits.
“Are you telling us… to use the Broad Institute’s patents?”
This time, the one who spoke was the inventor herself, Jillian Dowden.
Her tone was icy.
It was understandable.
The CRISPR patent war is complicated, but the core is this.
The first people to discover CRISPR technology were Intelligencia’s Jillian Dowden and CRISPR Medical’s founder, Emily Chapellier.
Overjoyed, they published their findings to the academic world.
The principles of CRISPR-Cas9, its mechanism of action—everything.
On the strength of that achievement, they would later go on to win the Nobel Prize.
But academic glory and business are two very different things.
Because the one who secured the patents first was someone else entirely.
That someone was Min Zhao, the founder of Editus.
Using the inventors’ published work, he detailed how to apply it to mammalian cells and filed for patents faster than anyone else.
Of course, Jillian Dowden and Emily Chapellier had also filed their own patent applications.
But there was one critical difference between them and Zhao.
He had paid extra for expedited review.
In the end, the inventors had discovered the core technology, but the lucrative human-application patents were monopolized by Min Zhao.
Naturally, the inventors were furious.
But in the patent lawsuits, the courts sided with Min Zhao.
The inventors appealed again and again, but the outcome never changed.
As a result, a decade-long legal war dissecting every comma in every paper would drag on…
But that comes later.
Right now, I had to persuade Dowden—the protagonist of that whole saga—within that context.
“So you’re saying you acknowledge their ownership.”
Her voice was cold.
Her pride as an inventor had been scratched.
“There’s nothing for me to acknowledge or deny. I’m neutral.”
I shrugged.
“Personally, I don’t care who wins. The problem, realistically speaking, is that until the dispute is resolved, no one can move freely.”
Even so, Dowden’s expression was far too stiff.
‘She’s more emotional than I expected.’
I needed to turn the wheel a little.
I quickly adjusted my expression.
A look of genuine empathy.
A signal that I was on her side.
“That’s just my opinion as a Wall Street guy. Personally, I feel differently. Honestly, it was a dirty move. You did all the work, and Min Zhao just slapped his spoon on top and walked away with all the rights.”
The tension slowly eased from Dowden’s face.
Then she went on, almost in a sigh.
“He deceived me on purpose. He didn’t tell me a thing.”
Bitter betrayal seeped through her voice.
In fact, Dowden had been one of Editus’s founding members.
But Min Zhao had handled the patent process behind her back, even though she was a co-founder.
Of course she was overflowing with a sense of betrayal.
Anyway, after brooding on those memories for a moment with a dark look, Dowden lifted her head.
“But telling me to use that man’s patents is the same as telling me to admit I’m not the true owner of this technology, isn’t it?”
Her guard was back up again.
I shook my head with a serious look.
“No. It’s the opposite.”
I paused for a breath, then continued.
“I want to help you get revenge on them.”
All eyes focused on me.
I placed my hand on the table and enunciated each word clearly.
“I’m saying I’ll put a weapon in your hands—so you can bring them completely to their knees.”