Chapter 201 — The Price of Team Zero I
James opened the folder flat on the table before Finn could reach it.
"We already know what he wants," Finn said.
"No. You know what you assume he wants." James didn’t look up. "There’s a difference, and there are five of us in this decision, and four of us don’t have your history with him."
Finn’s jaw set.
"You can hate the offer after we read it," James said.
A long second passed.
Finn dropped back into his chair, arms folded, and jerked his chin at the folder. Permission, in the Hale dialect.
James read.
The first pages were structure. Team Zero entering Emerald Spire as an autonomous affiliated unit — not members, not employees. Their own name. Their own five-person roster, protected in writing. Final say on which floors they entered and when.
Then the support schedule, and James read it out one line at a time.
"Dedicated lawyers and accountants. Professional security for all five of us and immediate family. Full access to the Spire’s training facilities."
"Their facilities are genuinely good," Ronan said.
"Equipment procurement, storage, and repair. Floor analysts and intelligence reports. Sponsorship negotiation and media management. Medical, transport, admin." He turned the page. "And a permanent operational space inside their headquarters."
Silence around the table.
It was the wrong kind of silence for Finn, because the terms were better than he’d wanted them to be, and everyone could see him noticing that.
"Keep going," Maeve said. "The money pages."
James reached the commercial sections — licensing, representation, revenue — and Maeve held out her hand.
He passed the folder over.
She took a pen off Finn’s table without asking, uncapped it with her teeth, and started reading the way other people field-strip weapons. Her eyes moved in level passes. Every few lines, the pen came down and marked something small in the margin.
Then she started on Marcus directly.
"Does your percentage apply only to deals your staff obtains?"
"Commission applies to sponsorships the Spire negotiates or administers," Marcus said. "Unrelated income we never touch stays yours. It’s in clause nine."
"I’m in clause nine." The pen moved. "Who owns the Team Zero trademark?"
"You do. Registered to the team. The Spire takes an exclusive licence for the duration of the affiliation."
"And why does the image licence survive termination for another year?"
"Approved advertisements and stocked product need a commercial run-out. You can’t recall a billboard on the day a contract dies."
"Mm." Maeve marked it anyway. "The duration’s long and the permitted uses are wide. It gets tighter or it gets deleted."
Marcus inclined his head slightly, which from Marcus was a negotiating position.
She kept reading. Two pages on, the pen stopped moving.
"Information sharing." She looked up. "Your analysts want complete descriptions of every class, every skill, every System restriction we carry. All five of us."
"Analysts can’t build accurate strategy around abilities they’re forbidden to understand," Marcus said. "Half of what killed teams on high floors was their own guild not knowing what its climbers could actually do."
"They get what we choose to give them," James said.
It came out flat and immediate, and the whole table heard the floor under it. There were things in James’s interface that no analyst was ever reading.
Marcus studied him for a moment.
"Incomplete information means weaker analysis. That’s not a threat, it’s arithmetic." He paused. "But the clause can be voluntary disclosure. The Spire doesn’t own your System data, and I won’t pretend it should."
Maeve marked the clause, closed the folder on her thumb, and took out her phone.
"Who are you calling?" Cillian asked.
"My lawyer. She’s had my contracts for four years." Maeve was already typing. "I’m sending her this, and the sportswear inquiry, tonight. Until she’s read both — nobody accepts anything, nobody rejects anything, and nobody negotiates a single word out loud. Including in this room."
"We can’t even—" Finn started.
"You can have opinions. You can’t have positions." She hit send. "Positions cost money now. That’s the part that changed while we weren’t looking."
The lawyer joined by secure video forty minutes later, from an office with law books she had clearly actually read.
Her name was Roisin Kavanagh. She had the proposal open on a second screen, annotated, and she did not begin with reassurance.
"First, what this isn’t," she said. "It isn’t a trap and it isn’t predatory. This is a conventional major-guild affiliation agreement, competently drafted. The Spire wants enough return to justify financing and protecting an independent team. That’s legitimate."
"But," Finn said.
"But the danger in documents like this is never one clause. It’s direction." She scrolled. "Signed as written, nothing bad happens to you on day one. Then, year on year, Team Zero becomes commercially and operationally dependent on Emerald Spire, one convenience at a time. So let me tell you what it actually allows."
She went through it plainly, clause by clause, in consequences instead of language.
Commission on any sponsorship the Spire negotiated, managed, or administered. A smaller loot percentage from floors where Spire analysts, equipment, or personnel materially supported them — "materially" being a word she’d circled twice.
Exclusive representation: while it ran, every brand had to come through the Spire’s office. No side doors.
Use of the Team Zero name and all five likenesses for the life of the affiliation.
"Clause fourteen," she said. "You must consult the Spire before major raids. As drafted, consult means consult — they don’t hold a veto. But I’ve seen consult clauses grow teeth in renegotiation, so note it."
Analysts could request class and skill information. Refusal was allowed.
"Now the exits," Kavanagh said. "Leaving requires repayment of documented investments made specifically for Team Zero. Facilities built for you, staff hired for you. That’s standard, and it’s also a number that grows every year you stay. And approved advertising runs on for a period after termination — the clause Maeve flagged."
She sat back.
"That’s the shape of it. Generous services, patient hooks."
The table was quiet for a moment.
"It’s real value, though," Ronan said slowly. "I want that said before we talk ourselves out of it. Floor 20 made all five of us visible — them three most, but all five. Right now, if someone comes at my sister’s house, or leaks Cillian’s address, or fakes a contract in our name, we find out after. Security, lawyers, analysts — that’s the difference between preventing things and reacting to them."
"And it’s him." Finn’s voice had gone tight. "You’re all discussing clauses. I’m telling you what it is. It’s a system. He builds systems around people, and then the people—"
"That isn’t the reason to refuse."
Maeve said it evenly, and Finn stopped.
He looked at her.
"The terms are the reason. Not your father." She tapped the folder. "Because the offer isn’t unfair, Finn. That’s what matters here. It’s a fair offer — for a smaller team. It’s built for a team that needs the Spire more than the Spire needs them. Look at what’s sitting at this table."
She counted it off, flat, like inventory.
"James can finance early operations out of pocket. The whole world learned our name two months ago. I know commercial work. All five of us are recognizable Challengers in our own right, and the Team Zero name is welded to the world-first clear forever." She looked at Marcus, not unkindly. "We can afford to buy most of what you’re offering. Most teams can’t. That’s the whole negotiation, and this document was written before Floor 20 changed it."
Cillian raised a hand off the table.