The Pink Poison

Chapter 1

POV : Halima

"Mrs Halima Fall-Roberts, please stand up."

The voice of the Chairman, her father, resonated loudly across the meeting room. she quickly gathered her thoughts and stood up, walking silently until she reached the mic.

            "You requested a scheduled audience with the board. The floor is yours for 15 minutes, please make your case."

Hali tried with great effort not to let his commanding voice unsettle her. When she raised her hand to reach the projector remote, she noticed it was slightly shaking.

She has never been fond of public presentations.

"Mrs Roberts ?" the Chairman asked, concerned as to why she hadn't started her pitch yet.

Pull yourself together Hali, the little voice in her head demanded.

She couldn't even count the number of times she had to address the Board, her Board, and yet this excruciating feeling wouldn't leave her alone. Pushing back the ridiculous lump in her throat, she pulled on the edges of her blouse and began.

"As you all know, by the end Q4, we will have reach four years of internal development of the Rhodonosis treatment , and for that I would like to thank you all deeply, you shareholders present today, for putting your trust in our vision, in our team, and in me."

She smiled and paused to peer at the mostly old and wrinkled faces. Most of them seemed unfazed, more worried about what was about to come. And they would not be disappointed.

"As you chose to share this journey with us, it is my duty as the founder of FaR Labs, to be fully transparent about our trajectory for the weeks, months and years to comes. I would like to start by giving you a quick overview of all we achieved this year."

She quickly goes through the slides her assistant prepared, browsing the analytics and technical data, though most of the shareholders were not really listening. Then came the difficult part.

"In all honesty, we are getting very promising results. However... our monitored samples are still getting unpredictable outcomes. We need more technology to counter any potential dangerous after-effects before launching it to the worldwide market. And, as you might have guessed, we will require more time, and equally more fundings... Considering our current financial situation, we will not be able to renegotiate any proportional increase in shares unlike last time."

She said it.

It echoed in the meeting room as if I had dropped a grenade on an ant farm. Except the ants were as quick to attack.

"This is outrageous !" - "I can't believe it !"- "I was a fool for investing in this !" She could hear in the audience.

The Board members started to get off their seat to display their disgruntlement. They were enraged, she could feel it. But she did not dare to look them in the eyes.

"Sir ! Please regain your seats !" Her father tried to defuse the palpable tension with big gestures.

"I enjoin all the members of the Board to maintain the professional etiquette. We will proceed to questions once everyone has regained their calm. "

It took a few minutes to get back to normal, but she knew she wasn't off the hook.

"Mr. Glendale, please go ahead"

A chubby short man with slicked brown hair got up to face her. His face was red with anger as he was pointing an accusatory finger right at her.

"This is absolute bollocks !I trusted your ambition because you gave us a three years time limit to start hoping for a return on our money. We should have launched in Q4 last year already ! Why do you keep delaying it ?"