Stained

Security

“Business is in itself a power.”

–Garet Garrett

            I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and took a sip of coffee. “Morning.” I grumbled as I walked behind the lobby desk and waited for her to open the door.

            “Good morning Mr. Bane, how was your night?” The woman behind the desk asked.

            “No need to be this polite, I don’t like you either. Last night was fine.”

            She finally opened the door and I stepped into the white lab where I was immediately bombarded with people in lab coats and clipboards in their hands all talking loudly to me about the Stained.

            “Everyone shut up.” I set my coffee down and rubbed my temples. “Do you know what a hangover feels like? And how much it hurts to walk into a place as bright as this with one and then have too many people talking too loudly right in your ear? Now, let’s try this again. I’m going to pick up my coffee, put on my sunglasses, give you a thumbs up, and you will speak to me one at a time.” I took my glasses from the collar of my shirt and put them on before picking my coffee back up and gave a thumbs up. “Okay, now, one person can tell me something.”

            A woman spoke up after a few seconds. “There’s a Stained in Russia who needs surgery for a procedure that—”

            “What are you asking me for? Get to the point before I skip you and go to someone else.” I sipped from my coffee and tapped my foot to the beat coming from my headphones that hung around my neck.

            “Sorry sir.” She mumbled before finally saying what she wanted to the whole time. “This Stained needs about 76 thousand dollars for the surgery, anything over 35 thousand means we have to ask you.”

            I mulled it over in my head for a few moments. “Benefits to the procedure?”

            “She is the only one that we have tried this on, it is purely experimental but has to keep being redone because of her growth and aging. This will be the last surgery which will give us definitive results, allow us to decide if we should try this on others, and will allow us to study is she is affected in her powers through the procedure. In the past it worked very well on her, but this is the last one she needs because she is done growing and has reached her prime. If we don’t act soon then we lose all of our research and the specimen.”

            “Why would we lose the girl?” I asked, curious as to what the procedure was now, but didn’t have enough time to go into specifics and make all of these other people happy still.

            “The physical, mental, and emotional effect are irreversible. She has gone her whole life with the product of this procedure and hasn’t been trained like the others. She wouldn’t be as useful on the field and could be a hazard to the team if she couldn’t keep up.”

            “She’d be dysfunctional without this?” I asked for confirmation.

            “Yes sir.” Her tone was emotionless and reminded me of my father in too many ways. Were they all like this?

            “Fine. You can have the money. Who’s next?”

            A security guard pushed through the small group. She was just under average height and her jet black hair had been pulled up in a ponytail to show dark brown eyes. “Sir, we have a problem.”