by Owen Grant
Michelle started crying. “I didn't. Dr. Watson paid me. I thought that it would be fine. I really did.”
“He paid you to take the drug, and you did it?”
“I don't know what I was thinking.”
“Well, we have to stop him!”
“Definitely.”
“So how would you feel about giving him a taste of his own medicine? Literally?”
“Baxter ruined all the samples that we had in the office.”
“I have one.”
“Do you want me to-”
“He won't trust me. You know that. Put it in his drink or food or something.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“This is to stop other people from going what you are going through. I hate seeing you like this. I don't want anyone else to experience the same fate.”
Michelle nodded. “I have to do it. I'm seeing him tonight. I'll do it then. I don't want to wait any longer than we have to.”
“You're very brave,” Alan said.
“I have to be. Did Mr. Daly mention anything about a cure or a reverse for the pill?”
Alan looked down in silence.
“That's fine,” Michelle said. “As long as no one else has to experience this.”
Alan gave the woman across from him the small envelope that contained the pill. “Here. Be safe.”
“My safety really doesn't matter anymore.”
Michelle got up and kissed Alan before leaving. “I'll call you when it's done.”
Alan ordered a drink and tried to calm his nerves. He may have just sent a beautiful woman to her death. She had another month or so left on this earth. He didn't want any of it cut shorter than it already had been.
Alan went home and nervously waited for the phone call to tell him that everything had gone as planned.
“Hey! Get to the old office when you can. Everything is done,” Michelle said.
Alan rushed as fast as he could. He was relieved that Michelle had been able to get the job done. He could have saved a lot of people from suffering the same way that Michelle was suffering. The same way that the young man who was killed by Dr. Watson suffered. When he got to the office, he saw a much different scene than he had expected.
Dr. Watson was in the office in front of Michelle who was tied to a chair behind him. Alan jumped.
“Michelle!” Alan screamed.
“Trying to drug me with the very drug that's going to make me a fortune, huh? Brave. Tell me, Alan. Did I or did I not warn you to let this whole ordeal go?” Alan froze when he saw that Dr. Watson had a pistol in his hand.
“You did, sir.”
“And what did you do?”
“I pursued Baxter for more information. But I only did it so that I might be able to help. I wanted to learn how to counter the drug's effects. I wanted to help Michelle.”
“As I told you before, you have helped enough.”
Michelle struggled in her chair, which got Dr. Watson's attention. He walked up to her, and Alan could hear the loud sound of his open palm across her face. “Shut up,” Dr. Watson said. “You only have a limited time left on earth. I suggest you behave so that you can somewhat enjoy your last month or so.”
“Now, where were we, Alan? Before we were so rudely interrupted? Oh, yes. You went around my direct orders and did something that I asked you nicely not to do. So, what type of punishment do you think that this deserves?”
“I'm sorry,” Alan said. “I will disappear. Michelle and I will disappear and never bother you again.”
“I don't know. I'm rather angry at both of you. You also lied to me. I thought that we had somewhat of an agreement, Alan. You can't be trusted.”
“I'm done trying to uncover this. I don't care anymore. I've already lost the most amazing thing that I've ever had in this world. There's nothing that I can do about it anymore. I understand that.”
“Well, neither one of you are going anywhere,” Dr. Watson said. “Move over to the wall.”
Alan obeyed, sizing up Dr. Watson in the process. He was middle-aged, but he was also larger than Alan. And he had the gun pointed at him.
“We never went over this. What exactly is your punishment going to be?” Dr. Watson asked. “Should I just shoot you here and now? Should I shoot your lover first? Personally, I like them a bit younger, but to each their own.”
“Don't hurt her,” Alan begged. “Just hurt me instead. Everything has been my fault.”
“I don't know,” Dr. Watson said. “Hurting her seems to have a much more effective impact on you.” He walked over to Michelle and lifted up his hand to smack her again- the gun still in his other hand. However, Alan couldn't assume that he's get an opportunity this good. He jumped up and ran toward the man. As Dr. Watson was turning around to see what was happening, Alan jumped on top of him and pinned him to the ground. A loud bang came from the gun when it hit the ground. Apparently, the doctor had enough time to pull the trigger when he was falling to the ground. Alan couldn't feel any pain. He looked up at Michelle to see that she wasn't in any pain, either. Luckily, the gun had hit the wall and did not injure anyone. Alan jumped up and grabbed the gun. He had never held a gun in his entire life. He pointed it at Dr. Watson and immediately moved toward Michelle. Clumsily, he tried to untie her from the chair while he still had the gun pointed at the doctor who was wallowing on the floor in pain.
“Get out of here!” Alan screamed to Michelle. She ran out in a hurry, but not before handing Alan the small envelope.
“So,” Alan said, facing Dr. Watson. “We have some business to take care of.” Alan went to the sink in the office and got a glass of water. He then took out the small pill in the envelope and dropped the pill inside of the glass of water. He sat down a safe distance from Dr. Watson and put the water on the ground next to him. “Drink it,” Alan said.
“Are you crazy?”
“You thought that it was okay for other people to take. You thought it was ok for Michelle to take it. You take it. You want to learn about the effects of the drug? Well, now you'll have a first-hand experience.”
“You're sick!” Dr. Watson said.
“I'm not sick. You're sick. Giving people a death sentence just to further your research. And for monetary gain on top of it. It wasn't for science. It wasn't for a cure. You wanted money. Now, drink the damn water before you get your head blown off instead.”
The doctor seemed surprisingly comfortable with his fate. “It's all over anyway,” he said. He took the glass of water and chugged it in front of a wide-eyed Alan. He even opened his mouth to show that he had finished the drug. “The big pharmaceutical company wins again,” he said.
Alan tried not to act surprised. “You stay here. Wait ten minutes. Then you can leave.” And Alan ran out of the door.
Alan felt the fresh air and the dull sun hit him when he got outside. He also saw the beautiful smile of Michelle. He ran over to her, grabbed her into his arms, and kissed her.
“I'm so glad you're safe,” Michelle said.
“Me too!”
“Come on,” Michelle said. “I have some things to do with you before it's too late!” She was kissing Alan and pushing her body close.
“Yeah. Just give me one second.” With that, he sent a quick text to Mr. Daly and went off with Michelle back to his place.
Epilogue
Michelle's funeral was about three months later. In the final days, she remained extremely cheerful and funny. She had accepted her fate a while ago. Alan stood at the front of the visitation with the family. After the last couple of months, they had grown very close. Michelle was one of Alan's first crushes and his first true love. She would be a part of him for the rest of Alan's life. That didn't make the death any easier, though.
When Alan left from the visitation, he heard someone call his name. As he turned around, he saw someone come out of a nearby car. Dr. Watson stood there with a devilish smile. Alan was hoping that he would have been bed-ridden by now.
&nb
sp; “What are you doing here?” Alan asked.
“I am here to give my condolences. I know that you were very fond of the rat.”
“She was a beautiful human being.”
“Well, I'll be seeing you around,” Dr. Watson said. He had a gleam in his eye and looked like a younger man.
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I can tell you right now, my biggest problem is greed. Unfortunately for me, this is not just my problem, but a global epidemic. I can honestly say that up until this point, I never used illegal means to satisfy my need for greed... up until this point. In fact, I had no idea I was breaking the law in the beginning. I guess that's where I should start. This journal will either be my criminal defense or my obituary. Only time will tell, who knows – maybe it will make me a hero.
First off, I make pretty good money already. I made it out of college 4 years ago and immediately got a job with the Federal Aviation Administration. Sounds pretty impressive doesn't it? Truth is I pull, repair, and replace circuit boards all day. Of course, that's not how I describe what I do to my lady friends. I don't describe it all. All I have to do is tell them I'm an engineer with the FAA and they're hooked. Enter my second biggest problem – women. Don't get me wrong, I'm no gigolo. I just love the big life; beautiful smiling women, my band of buddies, up-scale dining and fancy clubs.
I never really had a chance growing up to experience what it felt like on the other side. My dad took off when I was about 10. Not that we were rolling in riches before then, but mom had to work twice as hard to earn half as much when he left. Mom worked nights cleaning churches so she could be with me during the day and unfortunately, that is where most of my clothes came from. They weren't completely hideous but they weren't cool either. I think that is the reason I hated high school so much. I had plenty of friends in the classroom, but when it came to hanging out for fun, I didn't get many calls. That all changed in college and I took to being cool like a duck takes to water.
I needed an occupation that would pay for the kind of life I wanted. My dad was an electrician, but he worked long, hard hours, came home dirty, tired and did nothing but drink and complain about his job. I wanted big money, so I did some research. Overall, engineers make the most money straight out of college and accumulate the least amount of college debt. Bulls-eye, or so I thought.
I graduated with $113,000 to pay off in school loans and a job that only paid $48,000 a year. Don't need a college degree to do that math. Now after 4 years of gainful employment, I still have over 100k left to pay. Which is exactly why I started looking into some extra income.
Abel, my best friend from college, plays the stock market and is always telling me about these guaranteed money making opportunities; 2 of which I invested in. I lost $5,000 on the first investment and $7,000 on the second, too much risk for my blood. My half-brother, Jack, said the only way to go was real-estate, so now I own a 991 sq-foot condo in downtown Dallas with a rental income of $1200 and a $1000 mortgage payment. Jack was right, it's paying for itself, but I have to wait 15-years to cash in. Safe – yes, but it wasn't really helping out my cash-flow problem. Then, almost accidentally, I fell into the perfect compromise.
I was at work, trying to troubleshoot a limited short circuit that was sparking. The unit kept over-heating and after pulling it apart I realized the copper was completely oxidized. Not a good problem to have with only 1 hour left in the work-week. I did a couple of searches hoping we had a replacement in stock, which of course we didn't. Jerry, my site-supervisor, told me to try and clean it, The unit had to be back online by Monday morning, so Jerry took off to order the replacement, just in case. I slipped the board in my bag, figuring I could just clean it at home and headed out the door myself.
It's a 40 minute drive to reach my condo thanks to rush-hour traffic. It was the one thing I truly hated about Dallas, but living downtown made it tolerable. Everything you need for a good time on the weekends is in walking distance. It is also centrally located to all of my work sites, which tend to vary depending on who the FAA is working with at the time. That was when it hit me. This batch of upgrades were for the DOD. Jerry was gonna kill me for taking the board off site. That meant I was going to have to clean the board this weekend and put it back in the unit before they returned it to service on Monday.
Okay, so maybe my job is a little more complicated than how I described it. Most people just get lost in the details, so I leave them out. To lay it all out as simply as I can, let me just say that the word aviation covers a very broad range of aircraft applications. The FAA itself is used by many other federal organizations, for whatever reason, on whatever application, with or without the actual specialist working on the physical components knowing what the application is for. Make sense? Of course not. So what does that mean exactly?
Simply put, it means a peon employee like me, with no clearance, may possibly be assigned to work on the physical aspects of a project that requires clearance without ever knowing. For example, let's consider drones. At any given time my team may be 'contracted' out to troubleshoot the boards on drones operated by outside organizations. This can include repairing boards for an air-traffic drone used by the DOT or a top-clearance board for the DOD, you never know. As far as my work is concerned, I just fix it and forget it.
On this particular batch, the Department of Transportation wanted all of their ATC drones analyzed for climate endurance and then upgraded with the latest ERTS software. Each batch unit had a different sub-unit, and sometimes even a sub-sub-unit, so I seriously just forgot! I finally made it downtown to my condo. As the concierge parked my wheels, I sprinted through the lobby nearly knocking over Mrs. Drews and her dog. I could already hear my cell-phone buzzing in my pocket, as if I didn't know I was late. As soon as I got in the door, I threw my bag in the office, showered and took off for Dragonfly.
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