Earlier that week...
I could hear the raised voices from the front of the shop. Becker certainly wasn't happy, and I couldn't blame him. But there was nothing I could do to keep Elspeth out of legal trouble; Serena would probably be more help there, and Alyn would no doubt be along soon enough. The easiest thing for me to do now, so that I wouldn't get myself into any more trouble, was to just sit here calmly.
Of course, I had the urge to rebel. It was something I'd never done before I got the shot, and sometimes it was hard to fight. But I knew that anything I did to upset Becker now would only rebound on me, and there was no way that could be a good thing in the long run. But I wanted to hurt him; I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to feel more pain than he got from a simple broken tooth, and I wanted it to be me causing him problems. I knew it was irrational, and that I would be so much safer just keeping to myself, but that didn't seem to matter to my lizard brain. I had to hurt him.
I stamped down on those impulses as hard as I could, and tried to force myself to just sit there. Of course, there was nothing wrong with working the handcuffs loose, now that Serena had unclipped one of the cable ties for me. Even if I pulled my hands out of them completely, I would be able to put them back on before anybody else came in here. With the volume of the raised voices in the front of the shop, I was sure that I would hear a real difference just as soon as the first door was opened.
And then I looked down at the stuff on the desk. There was a desk tidy thing, a little mountain of plastic tubes with all kinds of junk in it. From erasers to staples, and even cable ties if I wanted to reseal myself in order to avoid suspicion. And a veritable forest of pens of course, but more than anything else I didn't want to touch those. Some were disposable ball-point pens that he would hand out to customers – or the parents of customers – when something needed to be signed. But most of them had been used by Becker at least once, and so had their barrels deformed by innumerable tooth marks, and visible trails of old saliva dripping down the outside of the pen.
I shuddered, and then somewhere in my mind I compared that image to what I had already seen. Somehow it all made sense. It was the reappearance of a memory from long ago, something I'd thought about but never thought it would happen. I stared at the pens, and the gobs of spit dangled disgustingly from the caps. And when I stared hard enough, it reminded me of when I'd spat at Becker earlier, and my own mouth juices dribbling down his tie. It was the same stuff, I knew, so why did his make me feel particularly gross?
It didn't matter. I reached out for a cable tie, being extra careful not to tough those disgusting pens. I couldn't pick up just one, so I got a small bunch, spread them out on the desk, and then returned the ones I didn't need. And then I couldn't restrain my curiosity anymore. I needed to hurt him, and sheer chance had given me exactly what I needed.
I took one of the empty vials that he had carelessly laid out on the desk. I unscrewed the cap. I'd seen him do it twice now, but that wasn't particularly important because there were instructions printed on the side. They would later be covered up by a label with the patient's name and ID codes, but that didn't matter now. I took out a swab, rubbed it all over the gross pens as well as I could at arm's length. I nearly cried when I slipped for a fraction of a second, and came within a hair breadth of letting his saliva touch my skin. But I was confident that there was enough on the swab, so I put it back in the vial. Not like that would do anything; even if I could find a lab to do something with it, the sample container needed a few blood samples as well. And how was I going to get my hands on Becker's blood, unless he happened to get repeatedly punched in the face and left a pool of the stuff on the desk beside me.
I quickly searched the desk until I found an automatic sample syringe. They were supposed to be easy to use, so that it would be easier if he had a patient who was resisting. I could just pull the safety out – a thin strip of plastic that made the needle live – jab it into someone, and it would collect blood automatically when the tip reached a vein. I wasn't quite sure how it worked; did it detect when the tip was in liquid? I tried dipping the tip in the blood puddle on the desk, and it filled up right away. So apparently ease of use was a big deal for whoever designed these things.
I squirted blood from that syringe into all the little vials in the sample container. And then I wondered what I could do with it. That was something I hadn't really thought through. Sure, having a sample of the guy's DNA would make it so much easier to humiliate him now that Serena had control of the company. But how could I even get it out? I didn't have pockets in this outfit. I weighed it in my hand, and then looked down at the desk. The form with my name and ID on had somehow escaped the splatter. I hated Becker, I needed to hurt him, and I had exactly the way to do it.
I put the container with my blood and saliva in on the floor, and stamped on it twice. I made sure to break every part of the container. Then, hoping that nobody had heard that little crunch, I swept the remaining empty vials onto the floor on top of it. There was a forest of broken glass now, and I was sure that nobody would be able to extract anything meaningful from the layer of blood that coated many of them. But I was sure that I only had seconds before they heard the crash and rushed back in here.
I put the last vial, the one with Becker's blood in, carefully down on top of the pile of shards. And then I pushed my hands back into the handcuffs, bit the cable ties to hold them still, and pulled until they were tight again. I was barely in time, as the door flew open and I saw Becker standing over me again.
"Oh dear. Haven't you got any more of those little vials?" I tried to sound as smug as possible, and it honestly wasn't hard. I wondered if I could actually get him to believe that I was so excited about me just destroying the samples.
And he bought it. My heart leapt when he leaned down and picked up the vial of his own DNA samples. "Oh no, what do we have here?" And he put the label on them without a second thought. It was the hardest act I'd ever had to pull off, not laughing at that. But at the same time, I was acutely aware that I'd committed a very serious crime, and that even if Becker got what he deserved, it would be hard to get a court to agree. I was terrified that I would end up getting a criminal record for this, along with everyone else involved.
Becker just carried on as if everything was normal, but I could already see the gears turning in his mind. Trying to find some way he could turn this to his advantage; maybe demand more punishment or something. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, before he realised that I wasn't as upset as I should have been; or was maybe not the right kind of upset. Thankfully, Dad seemed just as embarrassed by my behaviour, and frogmarched me out of the pharmacy just as soon as we could leave without being impolite.
"Hi Mr Pee," Todd Becker was waiting outside the shop, and greeted us with a smarmy grin. "Aww, hi Lorna. So keen to leave? No sarcastic comments for me today? You could actually be cute, you know? Exotic. It's just that mouth letting you down. I might do you after Thursday, when you can't talk back. What do you think, Pee? Think you'll still be so popular when you haven't got the fancy words to hurt people?"
It took me a couple of seconds to put together what he was saying. He could only mean the Loquaciousness dose, the one that caused a speech impediment. I guessed that was more logical than anything else he'd said so far. It was my ability to think on my feet and say the right thing that had ended up causing so much trouble for me. And now it seemed like both he and his father had lost teeth because of my manipulative abilities. It was weird to think of it like that; but if they wanted to stop me doing it again, that dose was probably their best choice.
"Wait and see!" I called back, as if it could be some kind of retort. It didn't really make sense in response to what he had said, but with Todd I could guess that it would take him almost a minute to realise that; and he'd be left feeling like the dumb guy who couldn't even understand the insult. In a way, I hoped that he would think back to that and realise on Thursday that I'd still been one step ahead of him. Wait and see made a whole lot more sense when I was implying that he didn't know who would be getting the dose. Of course, even once the syringes came back from HumiliX labs, it didn't mean I had my revenge. If the substituted samples didn't get caught, the DNA-calibrated injectors would be destined to deliver their dose when pressed against Andrew Becker's skin rather than mine. So maybe he would try to inject me, it wouldn't work, and then I would know to try injecting him. That would be a perfect revenge, but I still had no idea how I would be able to actually get my hands on the things.
"What was that all about?" Dad growled under his breath. I could see that he'd been just as angry about Todd's words, and was restraining his own urge to go back and give the bully a slap. I could understand that.
"Did you have your phone recording him?" I asked. "I can't remember if I started mine while we were rushing. He... Well, I think he means I'm going to get the dose that causes a speech impediment. He said something like that to Serena as well, like his dad lets him know what dose somebody's going to have. I don't know if Becker just told him what he expects the algorithm to select, or if Todd's actually asked his dad to pick that one for me. It sounds like something he'd do. But if he knows before I do... that's highly illegal, and could see them both in jail."
"You really think he'd do something like that?"
"They're not the most honest people," I said. "On Thursday, if the dose says Loquaciousness, you know we need to see a lawyer. And that'll be on you if I can't talk about it."
"And if it doesn't?" he said. "Maybe that means it's just you trying to cause more trouble. I know it's not your fault, but... I'll have to think about other punishments too, if you can't stop escalating. You need to keep yourself under control."
I sighed, and didn't say anything more. It had somehow become a test; if the supposedly random algorithm selected the dose that Todd had predicted, Dad would understand just how much the Beckers had been lying to him, and maybe he would actually have my back. And if it didn't, which I really couldn't imagine happening, it would be so much harder to get his trust on anything in future. It was a gamble; but one that I at least was confident in.
I made sure to tell both Mum and Dad what to do if it turned out to be that dose. If I couldn't speak clearly, they would need to send that recording to Alyn. It would stack up with all the other things Serena had collected proof of, and I was sure that Becker would be in more trouble than he believed possible. But over the next couple of days, I couldn't bring myself to see my friends again. Even Clint. I knew I had done something very stupid, that probably sabotaged my chances of getting the debate certificate, just in the name of revenge. The thought of Becker trying to defend himself in a corporation court with a drug-induced speech impediment felt like it would be perfectly just; but I couldn't even tell myself that it had been worth it.
And with the possibility of a future taken away, I sank back into despair.