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“Careful,” Dr. Maxis warned his assistant, “need I remind you how dangerous that is?” The two men stood close together in their shared lab space. Buried deep in the building’s 3rd basement, they were practically alone down there. If something were to go wrong, no one would be coming to assist anytime soon. It didn’t help that it was the middle of the night at the end of a long workday. The aging light fixtures that hung above them flickered every so often, threatening to bathe them both in darkness.
“You worry too much, Dr. Maxis,” the assistant, Richards, assured. “I will handle this as if it were my own child.” The younger man gripped the pair of tongs in his hand for dear life. Held within them was a sealed test tube containing a strange, purple liquid. Despite Richards’s claims, his hands trembled, ever so slightly, as he moved the tube across the table.
“You’re trying my patience with your hollow words, Richards,” Dr. Maxis seethed. The older man glared at his assistant, judging their every move. He maintained his stare until Richards gently set the tube into its new home, a small rack, at the center of the table.
“See, nothing to-,” Richards began, before the lights cut off for a brief moment. They returned quickly enough, but now they flickered much more consistently. Neither man was an electrician, but even they could tell their time in the light was limited.
“Damn faulty wiring,” Maxis growled. “I’ve been warning those idiots in management this would happen.”
“It’s just the lights, I’ll pull out a flashlight, and we can finish this,” Richards brushed it off.
“No, you fool, listen,” Maxis hushed the other man. Richards pricked up his ears but heard nothing. The room was dead quiet.
“I don’t hear anything,” the assistant stated.
“Exactly, the A/C, the coolers, everything shut off,” the older man pointed out.
“Oh, no,” Richards’s heart dropped. “Does this need to be refrigerated?”
“Of course it does. Have you not learned anything?” Maxis snapped. “If this is left out to expire, two weeks of hard work and $10,000 go down the drain. Now hurry, let’s take this upstairs and find a working refrigerator.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Maxis,” the younger man gulped as he picked up the test tube with the tongs again. After grabbing a flashlight, the two men exited their lab into an equally poorly lit hallway. Thankfully, the lights did not flicker. Instead, half of them had burned out. Most importantly, the ones surrounding the stairs. “I don’t like this,” Richards admitted.
“I don’t care, move,” Maxis forced his assistant along into the darkness. Some points were so absent of light the two men could barely see their own nose. “Blasted darkness, what’s with your flashlight?”
“Is there a problem, Dr. Maxis?” Richards asked, still holding onto the tube for dear life.
“Have you replaced the batteries recently?” Maxis inquired.
“I thought I did yesterday,” the assistant claimed.
“Of course you did,” the older man groaned. “Move, we’re on borrowed time.” The two men rushed through the hallway until they finally reached the stairs. They hoped that they’d get some light trickling down from above. But, to their horror, the entire stairwell was pitched black, all the way to the top. Thankfully, they only needed to scale three floors to reach the lobby, which would have some natural moonlight from the windows.
“Dr. Maxis, are you sure about this? I can barely see,” Richards tried to hide his panic behind a question.
“Just move and follow in my footsteps,” Maxis took the first step.
“If you say so,” Richards followed.
“Slow down, you’re shaking the tube too much!” Dr. Maxis yelled at his assistant.
“Okay, okay,” Richards drastically slowed his pace.
“What are you doing? Speed up, or we’ll never make it in time,” the older man continued his tirade.
“How fast do you want me to go?” The younger man blurted out.
“Is this so hard?” Maxis grew more hysterical. The two men had barely made it past the second basement.
“Dr. Maxis, please, I’m holding our jobs, and maybe even lives right here,” Richards exclaimed. “I don’t need any more stress. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Dr. Maxis spun around. “Why don’t you stop being such an incompetent screw up who needs his handheld through every experiment. If I had it my way, you’d never-!” The scientist never got a chance to finish his sentence. In his fury, he misplaced a step and tripped backward. He tried to right himself, but the older man overcorrected and tumbled forwards.
“Dr. Maxis?” Richards shouted as they jumped out of the way on instinct. Then remembering his boss was about to fall down a flight of stairs, his brain told him to reach out and catch him. Alas, in that brief instant, he forgot the dangerous substance still held in his hand. Maxis collided with his arms, and Richards let the other man fall, taking the test tube with him.
Dr. Maxis rolled down the stairs and crashed down onto a landing, the glass in the tube breaking on impact. A horrific sizzling sound and a smell akin to burning flesh filled the area. Richards stood parlayed for a moment, unable to see what occurred in the darkness.
“Dr. Maxis?” Richards called out and received nothing but eerie silence. “I need to...Shit, that stuff is toxic. I need to leave, call for help,” the younger man scrambled up the stairs in search of a phone.
“Fool, why did he leave?” Maxis coughed. He could feel blood all over his chest and hands. His entire front burned in enormous pain, both from the liquid and the glass shards lodged in his belly. The older man tried to stand up, but he realized his legs were numb. His brittle, aged bones could not withstand the impact. “It was toxic to the touch, the touch that fool, why would he...?” The scientist stated before he was hit by a moment of realization. “I didn’t tell him...” The older man’s voice trailed off as he felt the darkness consume him further.
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Details are important, they help prevent miscommunication.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy
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