Doctored Chance #NaNoWriMo2019

26 | Plan B?

Exhaustion gripped poor Tobias that night, mistaken by the updated Team Defiance as patience, maybe shock. He offered tight and bittersweet smiles to them as he waved them out of his laboratory, watching as the laboratory door swung shut. Through the tall, narrow window on the door he squinted to see them file out from the locker room and crowed ruefully to himself as Mr. Might pulled up the door he had foolhardily broken.

"Oh, Benjamin..." His eyes rolled lethargically. "Always with the entrances." Arrogant.

He looked to the window, eyes stinging and dry, to watch large vines recede from around the glass panes and slither downward. Down the side of the building, over the sidewalk and across the road. The thick green plants spiraled through an open manhole and disappeared into the shadows. A few small tendrils snaked out to pull the cover over and the campus street, after a few moments of rattling and splashing, was restored to normal. Quiet, empty, peaceful. The perfect working environment.

Tobias flopped over his desk, stretching his arm as far as he could to reach his earpiece. His fingers drummed uselessly against the table until he tilted in his chair and the device came just into reach. He dragged it back and fit it into his ear, adjusting it absently.

"Dizzy?" he rubbed his eyes. He rubbed them harder.

"You left me blind and deaf, Doc! Not cool."

One contact lens popped out, dry as bone. The second followed with a little more encouragement from his slightly trembling knuckles. He tossed the lenses into a bin under the bench and rolled his shoulders. "Change in plans, Dizzy. I'm spent."

"Talk to me," Dizzy urged. "There are no camera feeds from that lab. I don't know what's going on."

"Plan A failed. One virus is ruined. I need to synthesize a failsafe for the other because, thinking in the long-run, I can't have this spreading in Benediction." He unzipped his coveralls and reached into the pocket of his plain jeans, fishing out his hard glasses case. "I have a better idea than the other. A more satisfying plan."

"Are you all right? Can you tell me what happened with them? Did you fight? Did you win? Did you lose your temper with Mr. Might? Did you kiss Spectre? Did anyone recognize you?"

"Dizzy!" Tobias barked. He sighed and pinched his brow. The prosthetic stung, pulling on his skin with the same invasive, sticky grab felt when duct tape was applied to a mustache. Groaning, he lowered his hands and pressed them to his neck instead, laying his elbows on the bench. "I'm spent. I need to rest for a moment. Perhaps I can tell you about it another day, but for now, I need you to focus. Plan B."

The earpiece crackled. He heard the three girls talking all at once, an overwhelming buzz that was overridden quickly by a loud and forceful, "SHH!"

Dizzy answered, "Yes, sir. What can I do?"

"Can you hack into a bank account?"

There was a pause, in which Tobias slid his glasses onto his nose. He swallowed and opened the web browser to the fateful ad from Powerful Real Estate, flashing its price in bold white text over shifting red and orange graphics.

"You want to steal money?" Dizzy asked eventually. "We're supposed to be the good guys, Doctor. Unconventional good guys, but, good guys."

"In my will, I asked for half of all of my money to go to Viola Mae," Tobias explained quietly. "I need you to take just a couple hundred thousand back and put it into a property."

"A property? Like, a house?"

Tobias smiled to himself. A house. Indeed. "Can you do it?"