Chapter Text
Act 1: The Rise of Kingdom Corporation
Chapter 1
Downtown Seattle, Washington
Seattle glittered beneath her room on the 32nd floor and the city looked harmless. The distant lights of the ferries moved across the Puget Sound, carrying people to their destinations. Clouds were rolling in. Maybe it would rain tonight, maybe it wouldn’t. Seattle weather was unpredictable like that. Earlier in the morning it rained. By midafternoon, it was partially cloudy but mostly dry. By the early evening, clouds had disappeared. Now, it was nearing 10pm and the clouds were approaching once again.
The treadmill hummed beneath Sabine Callas’s feet, steady and mechanical. Her breathing remained controlled as she ran, but her pulse did not. She adjusted it to follow the rhythm of her steps, following the 2:1 breathing pattern. It refused to obey. It hadn’t all day.
Numbers helped, from speed to distance, to heart rate. She focused on the digital display in front of her, watching the values shift in clean, predictable increments. Variables could be tracked, controlled. Unlike other things.
Her gaze flickered briefly to the floor-to-ceiling windows, the glittering lights of other buildings in Seattle alive with movement. People who didn’t need to think about the details about the energy source behind many parts of their life or what that energy source was becoming. Her jaw tightened and she took a deep inhale.
Radianite had changed everything but not all at once. That would have been easier to understand. It embedded itself into the infrastructure of the world, the research around them, and the conversations held behind closed doors. It drove her work, her own life.
Focus. She thought about her own office inside her 2 bedroom apartment. The whiteboard with notes, meeting dates, and research. The stack of paperwork on her desk. The thick binder of medical radianite research. Her computer, constantly running, a low hum beating from it. Possibility was limitless and intoxicating. The question of what if.
Years ago, she studied her ass off to get into University of Washington’s Medical School.She spent the occasional weekend at her grandparents’ house across the Sound, in Bainbridge. All while her mother spent her last months on this planet, fighting that mysterious disease that came after First Light. While her father unearthed Radianite, unleashing it into the world, the biggest discovery that could change countless lives.
She increased the incline of the treadmill, welcoming the burn in her calves. Pain was measurable, predictable, and even responsive to input. Unlike the hospitals where terminal diagnoses were delivered in careful voices. The uncertainty of the disease that was slowly taking countless lives across the globe, following the infamous event, First Light. No one understood what was happening, but many soon learned that people were dying because of it.
“I’ll fix it.” She had told herself when she spent one weekend at her grandparents, staring into the Seattle skyline from the private waterfront.
Pre-med was the obvious path. But it wasn’t enough. Treating a disease after it manifested felt like chasing smoke. The real power lived upstream, where it was important to understand what was the cause of the disease. The molecular architecture, the chemicals, the cells. Chemistry made sense, it obeyed. Learning was one thing but understanding it deeply was important.
When her father found Radianite, the world shifted. Kingdom Geology developed into Kingdom Corporation as energy sources shifted from fossil fuels to the mysterious Radianite. Sabine believed Radianite had potential to heal. To save.
She recalled her father’s facetime call, the fever behind his eyes as he talked about how life-changing the discovery was.
When Kingdom Corporation formed, she watched them build and expand. She entered but she took her mother’s maiden name, refusing to be someone titled, the daughter of the founder of Radianite. She refused that connection because as much as she loved her father, she also hated him for not being there when her mother passed.
She built her way up in Kingdom Corporation, soon becoming the Chief Scientific Officer at the young age of 24 years old, following her thesis on Radianite usage on Biological Tissue and officially becoming Dr. Sabine Callas.
She blinked the sweat from her eyelashes as she slowed the speed of the treadmill, before she stepped off, walking to her kitchen counter where her water bottle and towel sat. She wiped her sweat off before taking her bottle and walking up to the windows that overlooked the city.
Her phone then rang. She glanced at where it sat, the simple console table that sat against the corner of the large window. It was her father.
“Dr. Callas.” She answered.
“Sabine, have you looked over the email regarding the Gala?”
His voice sounded tired. She knew he was. He ran around the world, his corporation expanding on every inch of the planet. She doubted he was even in Seattle tonight despite the Gala happening tomorrow night.
“I have. I’ve sent a follow-up.”
“I haven’t- ah, nevermind. I just saw it. If you could please emphasize more on Radianite Research for energy sources, that would be key to securing more deals for Kingdom.”
“I will not change it.”
“Sabine.”
“I’ve already told you, I will not change it. Medical research is important to me. This is important for Mom. For other people out there like Mom.”
The phone line went silent. Her father’s breathing being the only sound coming through.
“Sabine,” He began, “We have a lot of… important people coming to this year’s Gala. It’d be important to dive deeper into Energy Research of Radianite and explaining our findings on Radianite than putting the majority of your presentation on Medical use. If we don’t gather more backers-”
“Medical Research requires backers too.”
“We can work this out with them once we explain the importance of understanding Radianite and how we could use it for energy. Energy is just the beginning, Sabine.”
She took a controlled inhale. “I understand. I’ll… make adjustments.”
“Thank you, Sabine.”
With that, he hung up. She gritted her teeth before taking another breath to calm herself. Her father saw energy potential. She saw biochemical reactivity potential.
She glanced at her phone as his contact disappeared and the background photo of her friend and her stared at her. She wondered how she was doing.
While she was an undergrad, prior to her mother coming down with the mysterious illness, she had visited Shaanxi, China, taking an elective on Traditional Chinese Medicine. This was where she met Ling Ying Wei, a young woman who had volunteered to meet the international students. Compost, incisive, and almost unnervingly perceptive. She recalled Ling trained at a monastery in the area and emphasized the importance of balance to Sabine and other students.
When exploring Shaanxi, Sabine recalled coming across a small book store, where she found that book with the worn silk binding and handwritten annotations. She opened it, finding an image that oddly resembled that same mysterious element her father had discovered. She wondered why it was shown in that book. She never understood why and it always sat in the back of her mind. She never told her father about that book. Some knowledge was best left unannounced.
That night she went to bed, her computer left on, the presentation redone to her father’s wishes. Her dress was prepared. Her body was tired but she felt ready. She needed to secure more funding for her own personal research. The mysterious disease that still ravaged few individuals was severely under researched. She would understand what caused it. She will find a connection between Radianite and creating a cure.