Chapter 203 — The Price of Team Zero III

Chapter 203: Chapter 203 — The Price of Team Zero III

The company had sent four people. A partnerships director, two campaign staff, and a quiet man introduced as legal affairs.

The director came around the table with her hand already out.

"Maeve Callahan. We nearly worked together on the Meridian activewear campaign — two years ago? Your side priced us out." A real smile. "Half the deck we prepared assumes we’re explaining this industry to three Challengers. I suspect we can skip those slides."

"Skip them," Maeve agreed pleasantly.

James watched it happen, and kept watching it through the whole meeting.

When he or Finn spoke, the company people answered fluently, warmly, at speed. When Maeve spoke, the room slowed down. Notes got checked. Wording got careful.

Early on, she asked — mildly, as if asking about the weather — whether the requested image rights were campaign-specific or international.

The director opened her mouth, closed it, and looked at the legal affairs man, who leaned in and murmured something before she answered.

James filed that away. They came ready for climbers. They got a professional.

The presentation itself was slick. The three of them as the faces of the Floor 20 survival story. A studio campaign around the company’s Challenger training line. Individual portraits. A short commercial built on surviving Floor 20. Social content, a fixed run of launch appearances, and — if numbers landed — a longer ambassador deal and a Team Zero capsule collection down the line. Reserved studio dates, pending contract.

The Team Zero logo was on every second slide.

The words Team Zero campaign appeared, by James’s count, eleven times.

Ronan and Cillian appeared zero times.

Maeve let the presentation finish. Then she spoke before the director could move to the money.

"You can build a Floor Twenty survivors’ campaign around the three of us."

She pointed one finger at the logo on the closing slide.

"But you cannot use that name while pretending the team has only three members."

"Ms. Callahan, candidly—" the director spread her hands "—our research is what it is. The three of you carry measurably more audience value right now than your teammates. We’re building on the story the public already knows."

"I’m not disputing your research. I’m defining what’s for sale." Maeve didn’t raise her voice. "So here’s the structure that exists. The three of us front the Floor 20 campaign — that’s the story, fine. Ronan Cleary and Cillian Ward appear in the full-team photography. Anything that carries the Team Zero name includes or acknowledges five members, always. The three principals take individual appearance fees. The Team Zero licence itself is paid separately — and that payment splits five ways. Any capsule collection wearing the team’s identity represents the team. All five of it." She sat back. "Individual campaigns are a different negotiation, separately priced."

The director looked at the legal affairs man again.

This time the murmuring went both ways, and took longer.

"We can revise the concept along those lines," the director said finally, and the reason was sitting in plain sight: they wanted the three faces and the name, and Maeve had just told them the name came with a headcount.

Kavanagh took the draft agreement away during the break and came back with a list.

She read it out evenly. Three years of category exclusivity. Worldwide, multi-platform image reuse. Mandatory appearances with no ceiling. Merchandise rights over their likenesses. Restrictions on publicly wearing competing brands. Continued use of campaign material after termination, and approval rights over final ads that she described as "decorative."

"Against the proposed compensation," she finished, "the rights column is roughly triple the money column."

The negotiation ran another hour, and the company defended its ground the way real companies do.

Maeve pushed the term to one year; they countered with two and a renewal option, and it stayed open. Territories and platforms got defined; worldwide became named markets. Merchandise came out of the base fee and into its own separately paid schedule. Approval over final photographs and edited commercials went from decorative to real, after the legal affairs man extracted a response deadline in exchange. The appearance count got a fixed maximum. The exclusivity narrowed from "athletic and lifestyle apparel" to sportswear, after three passes. Campaign material after termination got a removal deadline measured in weeks, not a year.

Renewals, new territories, expanded usage — all repriced separately, not swallowed by the original fee.

"We’ll take the revised structure to legal and finance," the director said at last. "No promises on every point." She checked her tablet. "We’re reserving the two studio dates. Reserving, not confirming."

Chairs moved. The meeting began to end.

Then the director closed the Team Zero presentation on the screen, reached into her case, and set a second folder on the table.

Beside James.

"There is a separate opportunity we hoped to discuss with Mr Ganner."

The room changed temperature.

"If you’d prefer," she said to James, politely, "your colleagues can step out, and we’ll present it privately."

James looked at Maeve. At Kavanagh.

"They stay."

"Of course." The director opened the folder without missing a beat, and James understood she’d prepared for both answers.

The individual proposal came with research.

His age — the youngest name attached to a world-first in Tower history. His class, Legendary, one of a kind on the public record. A streaming audience that had watched him climb from Floor 1. His role in the clear. The scythe — "a recognizable visual identity," the slide called it, which was one way to describe it. And what the deck tactfully labelled sustained international attention, which was another way of saying half the world was arguing about him.

Then the offer.

A guarantee substantially larger than the entire team campaign. Solo international advertising. His own Challenger training-wear collection. Priority placement in global campaigns. Long-term ambassador status, expanded social promotion, and, in time, a signature line — clothing, accessories, his name on the label.

Kavanagh was reading faster than the director was presenting.

She found the load-bearing clauses before James reached the payment page, and her pen came down on them one by one.

First negotiation rights over any guild James later created. Priority over future Team Zero sportswear partnerships. Category exclusivity written wide enough to constrain what the whole team could wear in commercial appearances. The right to match any competing offer made to him. Control of his individual image, for years.

She leaned toward James and said it quietly, under the presentation’s hum.

"This is not only a personal contract. They’re using you to secure leverage over whatever Team Zero becomes."

The director caught it — she was meant to — and didn’t deny a word.

"Your counsel reads well." She folded her hands. "We’re prepared to invest very heavily in Mr Ganner’s global identity. Companies that finance a rise protect themselves against watching a competitor harvest it. That’s not hidden in the drafting. It’s the drafting."

She stood the folder’s last page open.

"The offer holds for seven business days — our international campaign budget closes then. Genuinely. We’re not manufacturing the deadline."

"He isn’t answering today," Maeve said. "Or this week. Not until every line’s been reviewed."

"We’d expect nothing else."

The director slid the folder closer to James, unhurried.

"The Team Zero campaign values what the five of you have built," she said.

She turned the folder to the page with his individual guarantee, and the number on it was the kind that changed families for generations.

"But this is what we are prepared to invest in you alone."

James barely looked at the number.

His eyes had stopped two clauses above it, on the line that gave a sportswear company priority over the future of Team Zero — first position, in writing, on something that didn’t even exist yet, that was still just a sentence Finn had said into a quiet room.

They’re not buying me. They’re buying the door before we’ve built the house.

The folder sat there.

James didn’t touch it.