Downpour



So this is it...

Images flashed through Rachel's mind as she stared down the silenced pistol barrels, well-aware of the targeting lasers crossing her chest; A white laboratory bustling with scientists in sterile biohazard suits, the scratchy writings of formulas on a whiteboard, screaming “subjects” strapped to operating tables as chemicals flow through a hundred IVs into their arms, chests, and heads, and the deceptively heartwarming smile of a middle-aged man.

How could something so pure become something so wrong? She thought, her hands still in the satchel hanging from her shoulder.

. ..

Henry Atchins was a father, a churchgoer, and above all, a businessman. He had acquired the feeble Lotus Industries for a mere fifty-thousand dollars in his early thirties, and over the course of a decade he built it up from a failing Tylenol producer to an inexorable pharmaceutical juggernaut. Lotus employed over a million men and women across the United States, and owned hundreds of manufacturing plants throughout Latin America and southeast Asia. They produced everything from allergy medicine to heavy painkillers, and they had either bought-out or undersold all of their major competitors in just seven years' time, all due to Atchins' uncanny administrative ability.

They had developed cures for the common cold, West Nile, and even created a vaccine for AIDS in recent years, which quickly catapulted Henry into the limelight, receiving a Nobel Prize and countless other humanitarian and scientific achievement awards. He was viewed as a savior by some, a con artist by others, and to those that knew him, an incredibly kind man. What people didn't see, however, was his indomitable ambition and bitterness.

He had married in his late twenties, taking a blonde woman named Julia as his wife. He loved her so very deeply, and they had a child in his mid-thirties once the company had become stable enough that he was sure to have a family-supporting income. This little girl was named Rachel, and she looked just like her mother, but with her father's kind eyes.

For a few years they were happy, Julia and Henry raising their daughter, enjoying a comfortable, wealthy lifestyle. But just a week before Henry's fortieth birthday, Julia fell ill. She was examined by the best doctors money could buy, and it was discovered she had an inoperable brain tumor, and that the cancer was spreading. She lived only thirteen months more, despite extensive treatment, and steadily fell into insanity as the tumor grew and disrupted her normal brain functions. When she died, she took Henry's heart with her, and the man became cold inside. Rachel was only four when it happened, and didn't remember much of it, but from that day onward Henry's veins were filled with ice. Though he never showed it publicly, Rachel knew how angry and depressed he really was, but like a good daughter she wouldn't question him directly about it.

The irony of Julia's death ate away at him; if she had been diagnosed with liver disease or even a bad heart, his company's products could have saved her, but instead she was plagued with one of the few afflictions for which there was no cure, and as a result he had to watch her die slowly, day by day as her mind slipped away. As she grew more and more distant from reality, he became more and more bitter towards it, and by the time she passed, his bitterness had grown into a raging hatred inside of him.

Years passed and Rachel grew, receiving the best education available, until she was old enough to work for her father as a secretary. She was happy doing her job, but her real passion was in chemistry, and she took it upon herself to learn all that she could about chemicals and their properties. At only seventeen years of age, she had became so well-versed in the field that she soon found herself using her father's access key to get into the labs and run her own experiments. It was here that she made a fateful discovery.

It was late evening, after supper and after all the scientists had gone home. Only a skeleton crew of technicians and security guards were present at the lab facility, and Rachel made her way inside hoping to explore a theory she had been working on about ionic bonds. She quietly reached the filing cabinets in the heart of the laboratory, and searched for her personal file, “Atchins, Rachel”, where all of her work was held. As she found it, however, another file caught her eye: “Alzheimers: Mutagen”.

The company had developed a cure for Alzheimers over a year ago, so it was curious that there would be a file about it in the “active projects” filing cabinet. She pulled out the folder to take a look and scanned the formulas and hastily-written notes, reading about the quirky reactions the brain had to certain chemical compounds that were tested during the cure's development.

''These experiments failed. Why would they be researching them further?'' She wondered.

She moved to a nearby whiteboard and started writing out the formulas in the file, linking them together as the scientists had done and noting the effects of each variation of the compound, until she realized just what it was that the chemical would do. Not fully believing it, she looked over her notes and double-checked the formulas.

''Suppressed sexual drive... Reduced cognitive ability... Repressed motivational structuring... Self-replication genes... This drug would turn a man into a braindead automaton! What's worse, if this ever contaminated a major water source, it could spread throughout the entire planet, turning men and women into mindless slaves!'' She thought frantically.

She moved to the computer terminal on the desk and pulled up the electronic files for the project, skimming over the notes and scrutinizing the test results. She watched half a dozen video records of the testing process, wincing in sympathy with the subjects' violent reactions.

Then she remembered, with horror, a project that she had filed for her father a few weeks ago detailing a new contract for purification agents for a water processing plant in the heart of the United States: St. Louis. She quickly pulled up the project folder, scanning the chemicals that were to be manufactured and shipped over the following month, and saw what she feared the most: the same identification code for the formula she had just found.

Suddenly, it all clicked into place. Her father had never gotten over her mother's death, and hated the world for taking her from him. He wanted to make them all suffer as she had in her final months; he wanted revenge on what he saw as an oppressive, cruel world.

With tears starting to well in her eyes, she knew what she had to do. She removed the chemical's identification code from the project log, then searched for the source files of the chemical compound using her father's passcode, deleting them from the servers and backup servers forever. She then double-checked the records to see where the samples of the chemical were being stored, and how much of it was prepared. She purged these records as well and returned to the filing cabinet, grabbing all of the files relevant to the chemical, placing them into a watertight, sealed file protector. Before leaving the room she wiped the whiteboard clean, thoroughly erasing the formulas she had written.

She then went to chemical storage, removing the single vial of the chemical that was stored there, and placed it into its own protective, sealed encasement. While the chemical could self-replicate in water, direct exposure to the air would quickly neutralize the compound and force it to break into its component parts, which would harmlessly oxidize into the atmosphere. As much as she wanted to do just such a thing and get rid of the chemical forever, she knew it would be powerful evidence, especially when combined with the research notes. The encasement would protect it from the standard jarring of transportation, but it wouldn't take much to break it open either, so she wrapped it in a clean cloth from the sanitation cart.

As she packed the items into her satchel, she thought over her crude plan: she would take the research and run, get as far away from the company as she possibly could, and then turn the research over to the government as well as a synopsis of the situation to the media. She would be condemning her father's company, and by definition, her father, but he had condemned himself when he began this mad quest.

As she passed the security station on the way out of the building, she contemplated grabbing one of the pistols, but decided it would be unnecessary. If she were caught, then her whole plan would have failed anyway. Instead, she grabbed a yellow raincoat and added just a couple of items to her bag before leaving the building.

She had only been gone for twenty minutes when Henry logged into his account and saw that several of his files had been tampered with. He quickly checked the history of changes, and discovered that all files related to his special project had been removed. Shocked and enraged, he accessed the surveillance video files and watched with disbelief as Rachel discovered and foiled his plan. He paused for a full twenty seconds after she left the lab on the screen, then called the security branch of the company. With a face set in stone, he ordered them onto another “special assignment”, and walked to his car.

. ..

“Put your hands in the air, and we won't shoot you!” One of the security agents called out, his silenced pistol trained steadily on her heart.

He wasn't the only one; at least a dozen of the men had surrounded her with their pistols drawn, and red dots danced across her yellow raincoat, distorted by the rivers that traced their way along the creases. The rain was calm, but persistent, and had drenched her hair despite the raincoat's protection in the thirty-four minutes she had been running.

As the agents slowly closed in, several black cars pulled up around the wharf behind them and more agents filed out, drawing their own pistols and sighting them on the girl. Another car pulled up, this one a dark crimson, and a middle-aged man exited from the back seat, looking intently at the girl with mock-pity.

“I won't tell you again, HANDS UP!” The agent barked.

The girl closed her eyes and a single tear traced its way down her cheek, dripping from her chin and splashing on her boot. “As you wish...” she sighed.

Raising her eyes again, she looked directly at her father with pity. She lifted her hands from the satchel, a grenade gripped tightly in them. As Henry's expression turned to horror, she pulled the pin, holding it up in one hand as she raised the grenade with the other.

“It's over...” She whispered, and released the safety handle.

--Sangheilioz 06:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)