Inveigle

Chapter Thirty:Serum

I screamed all the way back to floor 35. And I would have screamed all the way down the hall if it hadn't been for Pathos.

Honey, honey, shhh. Calm, calm, breathe. There you go. She coached me back to my senses and Logos commanded.

Observe.

Sasquatch carried me on the same path that I had followed the man in the lab coat on. Then we passed the door with the glow underneath and took two more lefts. He jostled me higher on his shoulder to reach into his pocket for a white card. He slid it over a gray keypad that momentarily flashed a green light in the top left corner. The door clicked open, and I soon found myself thrown down onto a metal slab. My right elbow hit so hard it sent a shiver up my entire arm. I jumped up to run, but gigantic hands shoved me back down like I weighed nothing. Leather straps were fastened around my wrists, ankles, and across my forehead as I struggled. I inhaled to scream. The panic was coming back.

Shhh.

And suddenly I felt like a child being held in my mother's arms again. Sasquatch left and I was alone. I could only turn my head about an inch each way, but I was able to see the same blue vials that made my stomach churn. I was dead. I knew it. I lay there for sometime, knowing I was a dead woman. I wasn't sad about my life ending. My life was nothing special. A wasted degree, too afraid to go home a failure.

I was worried about the students. They kept asking me to the community building events. I knew the gift of Pathos and Logos encouraged them. Would they continue to fight when I was gone? No, Persim would have the whole country eating out of her hand without me hosting Pathos and Logos. That school and many others would be shut down, entire communities would be shrunk down to nothing by sterilization and manipulated suicide. Then I thought of Sam. He had joined the Disciples again, just to help me out. I wasted his life. Would Boss let him leave again? He was nice to me, but Boss didn't get that title for nothing.

My thoughts were interrupted when a short, stocky Hispanic looking woman in a lab coat came in. Her hair was pulled back into a low brown pony tail. I saw that her wire rimmed glasses were covered in fingerprints as she waddled toward me. She gave off a motherly vibe. A sense of calm overcame me, and I thought, piece of cake.

"Hello," I said from the table.

She looked at me, her eyebrows twitched in curiosity for just a moment. She continued past me and grabbed an empty syringe.

"What is that for?" I asked, letting the honey saturate my tongue.

"President Persim wants all three. Or at least their essence," she ripped open an alcohol wipe and swiped my neck. I suppressed a shudder from the cold on my skin.

There was a loud knocking on the lab door. The woman opened it with irritation.

"I need another one," said a very familiar voice. I tried to turn my head but I couldn't fight the strap across my forehead.

"Now?" asked the lab tech.

"Yes, now, I am doing the work of the President. I am off to China to-"

She cut him off, "I don't need to hear your bragging, Mr. Senator." She came back into view and I saw her grab a vial filled with the green liquid. She screwed a syringe on and walked back out of my sight. A moment later the door clicked shut, and she was peering down at me from the top of my head.

"So, you've done this before? It seems like an important task. You must be very well respected around here."

"I have worked with the samples," she trailed. "But no, I was not the one who took the first essence. I was also not on the team that perfected the serum." I felt the needle pierce my neck. My blood filled the glass. I turned my head as far as I could and watched her place my blood in a test tube. She walked out of my view and came back with a dropper filled with the green fluid. She dropped a few milliliters of my blood in the vial and gave it a swirl. It turned a dark forest green.

"So you know," I said, knowing nothing myself.

"That you are them. Yes. And now we can complete the research for the president's plan."

She turned toward the tray of blue vials.

Stay calm, Pathos coached me.

"Emotion and Logic, yes they are here. Certainly, you don't want to be the one to take them out of this world."

Let it sink in.

The woman blinked a few times too many, but then turned on her heel to set my now green blood into an empty rack on the metal lab counter. "We aren't taking them out. We are using them."

"Using them how?" I asked.

The woman waited to reply, unsure if she should be talking to me. "We can create a temporary effect. Ethos' powers can be transferred to others. We just took his essence and created a sort of virus."

So that's how Trenchcoat is able to convince others to kill themselves so easily. It all made sense now. Those people, thousands of people over the last few years didn't really want to give up. They were swindled by cheap replicas of Ethos.

I held my breath as she reached for a vial of the blue. I opened my mouth, ready to beg. I could feel my heartbeat like butterfly wings on my neck.

No, watch her eyes.

The mousey woman stared unblinkingly through her finger print covered lenses at the vial. The liquid swirled in front of her, but she was looking through it, not at it. She walked toward me.

Don't struggle, came Logos' voice. You'll pull her from her logical sequence trance.

I felt sweat bead along my spine, as I did my best to remain still and keep a calm face. The needle was a foot away from my neck, the woman held it by her side. My eyes strained to see. It moved an inch. Then stopped short. She reached with her opposite hand across my chest. I felt the strap loosen. Then the blood flow returned to my hands and feet. Finally, my forehead was released. I jumped up from the table and stared at the lab tech.

"I've betrayed our leader," she said to the floor. I watched from across the metal bed as she slid the needle into her own wrist.

"No!" I yelled. But it was too late, the blue disappeared inside her. At last, she snapped out of her trance, and actually looked at me.

"The world needs you," she said. But I knew she was talking to Pathos and Logos. "The world needs Persim. I regret everything," and she collapsed to the floor.