Russell Brooks - Pandora's Succession

To her right was a door to the monitoring station, and the one ahead led to the testing room. Both rooms were separated by a one-way see-through window. She walked ahead, pushed the door open, and saw her two test subjects, Dewan and Eva, and her boss, Dr. Hideaki Hashimoto, as he spoke to them.

“Hexagon has patented more than twenty over-the-counter medications and is one of the leading researchers in drugs that could reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.”

She heard the door click shut as it closed automatically behind her. She smiled. Dewan and Eva were in two dentist-like chairs and beside them was a table with a metal box.

Hashimoto turned to the sound of the clicking door. “Dr. Parris.”

“Good morning, sir. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Parris walked over to the table, laid down her tote, and dropped her jacket on the back of the chair.

“I wanted to chat a bit with Dewan and Eva. Yesterday’s meeting was so brief that I wanted to get to know them better.” He looked at the two subjects, one a twenty-one year old African-American man and the other a nineteen year old Caucasian woman.

Parris walked up to the one-way mirror to fix the collar of her lab coat. On the other side of the mirror, there would’ve been at least two other scientists, both male, in front of computers recording everything from blood pressure to brainwave activity in the two subjects.

Levickis had already run their background checks the day before when Parris first met them, and both of them had criminal records. Dewan had a previous charge for marijuana possession in Brooklyn, New York-one that he denied by claiming the drugs belonged to his college roommate. Eva had been arrested in London, England, for hacking into an Italian bank’s computers and transferring over one hundred thousand Euros to different accounts she had set up worldwide.

“Did I mention before that Dr. Parris moved here from San Francisco where she conducted research for our sister company?” asked Hashimoto.

Eva rolled her eyes. “You have.”

Parris, now back at the table, glanced at Eva briefly and pulled the metal box closer to her. Although she tried to hide it, she actually stared at Eva’s circular nose ring. She had three other studs in both ears and even one through her tongue. Uggh. What was so exciting about puncturing holes all over your body? She flinched at the thought of having a piece of metal protruding through her tongue. Then there was Dewan-a handsome young man. He wore the typical baggy jeans and a Los Angeles Lakers basketball jersey. No tattoos.

“Now that Dr. Parris is here, I’ll leave you three alone.” Hashimoto got up and smiled at Parris before he exited, leaving a trace of his aftershave behind.

She’d successfully brainwashed two others like Dewan and Eva, a little over a week ago. But this time she would use a more recent variant of the drug, and the guinea pigs in front of her would be her first experimentation with it. “So tell me, how do you like your new surroundings?”

Neither one answered her. All right, time for a different approach. “Do you miss home?”

Dewan and Eva looked at each other as though they were silently trying to determine who should answer.

Parris looked at Dewan. “How about you, Dewan?”

“Me?”

“Yes.” Parris immediately dropped the sarcasm in her voice. “Yes, you, dear.” Parris clenched her teeth behind closed lips as though to catch her last word from leaving her mouth.

Too late.

Dewan shrugged his shoulders. “It ain’t Brooklyn, but hey, it’s a free trip. Anything to get away from there. It’s starting to become too bougie for me.”

“Why do you say that?” Parris asked.

Dewan sighed. “I mean, New York’s becoming a place for rich people only. Living in Brooklyn today, you might as well live in Manhattan. Damn rent is so expensive that it’s harder for people like me to get ahead, ‘cause I’m always broke.”

Parris looked him in the eye. “No offence, Dewan, but is that why you were selling dope on the side?”

“Aw shit, man. I’m going to tell you like I’ve told everyone else,” said Dewan. “It wasn’t my weed, I don’t smoke it, and I told my roommate to stop keeping that shit in our apartment. The police messed up their investigation and I go down for it. So much for justice.”

Parris did not notice any change in his eyes that made her believe that he lied to her. “I’m sorry to hear that, Dewan. I wasn’t trying to offend you. You’re right, life’s unfair. And injustice always tends to happen to the better ones. Trust me, I’ve met others. As a result, you’ve found yourselves on the other side of the law.”

“So what does that have to do with us?” Dewan asked.

So now he wants to talk. “I was just coming to that, Dewan-and this concerns you too, Eva. After three days around your new brothers and sisters, what is your own personal take on the group?”

Dewan sighed. “First of all, they aren’t my brothers and sisters. Second of all, they’re weird.”

Parris raised an eyebrow. “Weird?”

“Yeah, weird,” answered Dewan. “You know. Strange, odd.”

Parris put her hands in her lab coat pockets. “How are they weird?”

Dewan looked over at the table before he looked back at Parris. “They all act so happy, like they’ve all been visited by Mary Poppins or something. And also this ‘end of the world’ thing they keep talking about. That it’s coming and that they’ll be all saved.”

“And you find that hard to believe.”

Parris then turned to Eva. “How about you, Eva?”

“Well, yeah. I just wonder how everyone, or why everyone, in that group seems to think that the world’s coming to an end,” she answered.

“I had enough listening to that 2012 crap already,” interjected Dewan. “And now this. Then there’s the leader they all follow who says, ‘The wicked, they’re all going to be punished.’ Whatever that means.”

Eva moaned. “And they never stop.”

“No offence, Doctor,” said Dewan. “I just want to get paid, see a bit of Tokyo, and then go home. I’ve seen enough. That’s what you all promised in your agreement, right? I can quit this so-called experiment whenever I choose and you’ll fly me back home for free. That’s the agreement.”

Parris raised her index finger as she looked at both of them. “It is. But you haven’t come to the fun part yet.”

“Oh, so now there’s a fun part?” Dewan said sarcastically.

“Yes,” she replied. “The part where you get to try our new drug. This is the main reason why you’re both here.”

Dewan looked away to the door. “Yeah, yeah. The sooner we get this over with the better.”

“Talking about your experiment, what’s supposed to happen in these chairs?” asked Eva.

Parris walked up beside Eva and touched the headrest of her chair. “The visor attached here will fit over your eyes where you’ll see a variety of images. The electrodes that I’m going to attach to your head and chest will record everything from heart rate to brain activity.”

Parris strapped them both into their seats and then attached the adhesive electrodes to them, one on their temples and one on the left side of their chest.

Parris walked to the table and opened the metal box. She took out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a small bag of cotton balls, a pair of latex gloves, and two bandages, and she placed them each on the table one by one. There were also two twelve-milliliter graduated disposable syringes with hypodermic needles and caps attached to them that were alongside two small sealed glass vials filled with a clear solution.

She snapped on the latex gloves, removed the cap from the hypodermic needle, and picked up one of the vials with the other hand. She looked over at Dewan. He’d been staring at her for a few seconds and frequently rolled his eyes. She would treat him first. She stood to his side and rubbed the cotton ball in a circle on the back of his upper arm. She then took the syringe, filled it with the drug, and injected him. Not to her surprise, Dewan didn’t flinch. He was in no way like the stereotypical African-American males you’d see on some primetime television networks back home, where they’re portrayed as being obscenely foul-mouthed, low educated, trouble-making individuals. On the other hand, whether he was innocent or not, he was prone to violent outbursts. If only he knew who she really was and what she could do to him, he probably wouldn’t be in the same room with her.