Saving Jay

[Lawrence Monday]

Dr. Opal Von Stein | Zacarías Amengual

The angle of her jaw tilted sharply when the drug lord entered the office without a simple preamble. She loathed this man and all that he represented, but she needed his patronage more than ever. Like always, she did not inquire as to his methods because they obtained results – for her and for Orion – but that was not the reason for her distaste. He expected things of her, behaviors far inferior for her station as a scientist and doctor, and when his dissatisfaction was keenly felt, it was repulsive. He treated her like a child. She wouldn’t stand for it.

“I don’t want any more of your little projects in my facility. It is too much for us to handle. Yesterday there was a power surge that nearly wiped out an entire week of data collection.” She watched with a curl to her lip as though monitoring the journey of a cockroach creeping the linoleum. He settled into her chair, flat stare that chilled her to the bone.

“You will deal with these challenges, Opal. This one is special.”

She sniffed derisively. The project was recovering in one of her precious spare beds, stinking up the room. They were precious resources. That medicine wasted on the walking-dead. Not to mention she herself had to be the one to place the intravenous line.

“Tell me about the Oculus,” he said, lifting a biometal band from her desk and turning it in his hands. Made of copper, the fibermetal was flexible as cloth until an electric charge was placed through the meshwork. A small flick of a nano-lithium, biosourced battery and the metal flexed into shape harder than steel, fixed into the shape it held prior to the electric pulse. In that regard, it maintained any shape desired. For their purposes, it was formed into a circle.

“We’ve successfully retrofitted the Oculus to infuse a constant transdermal pulse of serum. This will eliminate the need for regular injections so long as the Oculus is flush with the skin. Think about nicotine patches of old. Put it on the skin and the drug will be absorbed, but with an upgrade, of course. It won’t rip off like a shitty bandaid.” She smiled proudly. The technology was originally designed to replace mesh and balloon angioplasty for opening clogged arteries. The electrical potential was derived from the human bioelectricity conversion, so once placed, it was indefinitely sustainable.

Zacarías was legitimately impressed. Opal smiled as he attempted to lay the oculus along his forearm. She shook her head. “No, my recommendation is at the throat. The participant will be less likely to want to take it off. It will feel like a necklace or a collar, familiar to them.” She started to summon one of their participants to demonstrate for their patron, when he interrupted.

“And the channeler will be perfectly compliant. Docile? Forever?”

“As long as the Oculus is worn, yes. Meek as a lamb.”

Zacarías stood, slipping the prototype device into a pocket. Opal blinked, he was a lot of things, but he couldn’t just take her stuff! She stood when the fire alarm blared.

A rush of heart rate and she leaned over her desk, summoning security information about their environmental monitoring system. The fire was coming from one of the laboratories. She gasped and hurried, but Zacarías was already gone. She didn’t care. She had to save her work!