AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I could maybe borrow an outfit,” I concede. “Give me a minute.”
I re-emerge from Ilsa’s room five minutes later, wearing her gray suit. She’s broader in the back but I’m bigger in the chest, so it fits better than I expected.
“Discreet enough for you?” I say.
“Yes.” Ilsa looks me up and down, her lips quirking up on the right side. “You know how I feel about a woman in a suit …”
“You’re goddamn right I do.”
We driveover to the lab. Because there’s no raw materials to work with, Hakim isn’t there. I punch in the code, shaking my head when I see Adrik hasn’t changed it. He really doesn’t know me at all.
Ilsa and I gather up everything I want, stowing it in the back of her car. The most valuable item is the custom pill-press. We take anything else that’s mobile, bemoaning the fact that some of the best equipment is too large and too permanently-attached to move.
As I’m grabbing the centrifuge, I knock a rack of glass vials onto the floor. They explode when they hit the boards, sending glittering glass fragments everywhere.
“Oops,” I say. And then, because that actually felt pretty good, I grab another beaker and deliberately smash it on the ground.
Ilsa snorts. “Is that your revenge? You’re gonna make Adrik sweep?”
“Yeah,” I say, grabbing the rim of the massive sterilizer unit and yanking with all my might, “He’s gonna sweep a whole fucking lot.”
The unit topples, crashing to the floor.
The noise is immense and invigorating. I’m sweating from the effort of hauling all this shit, face flushed, a dark, furious energy rising inside me.
Standing inside the lab again is painful. I’m remembering the endless hours I worked with Hakim in here, how excited I was when we finally figured out the god-awful process of synthesizing our own LSD, how Adrik picked me up and swung me around when we told him the good news.
He was only excited because he knew how much money I’d make for him.
I was just his fucking employee.
I rip one of the Bunsen burners out of its socket and fling it at the furnace, denting its metal flank.
Ilsa laughs. “You throw like a girl.”
She’s already grabbed her own burner, winding up. She pitches it through one of the high windows, glass raining down in a thousand vicious points, embedding in the rotting wooden floor.
“Show off.”
She grins.
I’m not smiling. The destruction isn’t relieving my anger. I’m only thinking how pithy, how pathetic this is. How little it will matter to Adrik when he has all the money, all the deals, all his Wolfpack around him.
The ugly little demon on my shoulder whispers in my ear:
He never needed you. He never cared.
He’s glad you’re gone.
Everyone’s glad when you’re gone…
I wrench one of the drainage pipes out from under the sink and hit the side of the furnace with it, as hard as I can. The impact vibrates all the way up my arms, the sound echoing in my ears, hollow and dead. I hit the furnace again and again and again, until my hands are aching, until the whole room throbs with a noise like a gong.
Ilsa stands still, watching me. She’s not laughing anymore.
After a minute, she grabs a pipe of her own and starts smashing everything in sight — the sinks, the tables, the cupboards, the fridge…
Her eyes are flat and dark, her hair in strings in strings around her face, teeth bared. I don’t think she’s seeing the lab at all, but rather the faces of everyone who let her down. Maybe even my face.
