Chapter 6: Poison I

The walk back home had taken a while, but she was still able to make it on time. Unlocking the front door with a swift movement of the keys, she stepped inside the two-room apartment. Seeing as neighbors didn’t interact much around that area, she and Kay were mostly on their own.

All lights were off, so it should have been hard to see inside, but the faint illumination that came through the half-open windows was enough for her to move about. The house looked fairly well-kept, as they cleaned it and aired it regularly, however it also seemed to lack personality, as it was very sparsely furnished, and the scarcity of decorations made the walls look in everything similar to a blank canvas.

The two had been living there for over two years now, so it could only be assumed to be a deliberate choice, due to lack of either time or will.

She stepped down the corridor after dropping off the heavy bag on the floor, knocking lightly on her sister’s half-opened door. No answer.

Somewhat puzzled, Emily went in. With her right hand still lying on top of the keyboard on her feeble-looking desk, not pressing any key in particular, her older sister had seemingly fallen asleep beside her small laptop, gone into hibernate mode in odd mimicry of its owner.

(Passed out from exhaustion again, huh…)

With their parents gone, Katherine could be considered the house’s official source of income, with only a negligible government-funded subsidy to aid her.

Unable to responsibly hold any kind of job for more than three weeks, the younger sister allegedly had to rely on her sole legal guardian to keep the both of them afloat through her job in insurance.

Emily, on the other hand, would be seen as more of an unreliable slacker. She thought Kay would’ve been conscious of that, yet her sister hadn't ever berated nor criticized her for it.

In the end, that was just how she was seen. Out there in plain daylight, she was as useful as a screen door on a submarine, and there was no way to change that, no matter how hard she tried. Might as well just accept it as it was. She had gone far past the point of caring, now.

The pale girl sighed. Taking out a blanket from her own closet, she went back and put it over her sister’s shoulders. Even though the North was said to be worse off in that regard, the lower West District could still get quite cold during the night, even at that time of the year.

She wondered if simply moving Kay to her bed may have been better, but she didn’t want to risk waking her up, as she clearly needed the rest. So in the end, her elder sister remained in that position, her golden locks of hair rustling over the thin desk as she mumbled something under her breath.

The basic similarities between the two sisters were there, if one paid enough attention, but Kay was considerably taller, given the eight year difference. The noticeable bags under her eyes, which seemed to darken more and more every day, and far less pale skin and hair had also lessened their previously heavy semblance.

The girl winced. There was a low buzz coming from her bag. Going back to take a look, she took out the tiny, compact-looking cell phone she often carried around. Picking it up with her left hand, she felt it tremble under it.

Emily had lost count of how many she’d bought already, but in order to avoid being traced by competitors she had no other choice. Besides, these burner phones were as cheap as it got.

As she turned it on, the small screen on the mobile lit up, showcasing a series of unread messages. She could only scowl as she quickly went through them, as it could all be summed up as ‘nothing out of the ordinary here’ from several different people. Just as expected.

Moving back to her own room, the girl took off her gray jacket, exchanging it for a new one she’d buried in a corner of her closet, slightly ragged and with a dirty-looking white tint.

She looked around her bedside table, focusing on the fake wood planks that made up the floor on that particular division, specifically the ones sitting motionless under the solid piece of furniture. She placed both of her hands on each side of the heavy object and moved it aside, revealing yet more of those gray-colored wooden planks. One of them, placed horizontally in front of her and only a few centimeters from the wall, looked unusually crooked.

With the heel of her shoe, Emily applied some pressure on one side of the plank, and in response, the other side quickly shot upwards, forcing her to grab its edge with one hand to prevent it from colliding with the small table.

Dozens of small, opaque cylindrical objects could now be seen, filling the space beneath the area that gray plank had previously occupied. Neatly aligned next to each other, they made up four symmetrical lines of blue plastic tubes stocked on top of each other, with the exception of the topmost line from where five containers had already been removed.

More out of precaution than necessity, she picked about fifteen of the identical containers from that same line, only two remaining of what it had previously been, and stored them in her large cotton hoodie. After cautiously reverting that corner of her room back to its original state, Emily returned to the front door, taking out three of the tubes before unlocking it.

She opened the first one. A bewildering, incomparably sweet aroma filled her nostrils at once, as her head swayed numbly and her hands trembled in reaction. In the minuscule glimpse she had of the opened container, the scarlet liquid inside it rippled slightly, as if to give her a wink.

Haema. It was like finding a flooded river after countless weeks of drought.

The girl lifted her thin arm, and with a single movement, the substance was swallowed, one, two, three times, emptying the containers which she put away in a sealed plastic bag for further disposal.

Her torso contorted in place. Slowly, her arms and legs had stretched slightly in length, increasing her height. She could feel her own features change bit by bit. Turning into something else, just barely recognizable. Her eyes pulsed in place, glinting as though coverdd in gloss. The veins around her orbits seemed to pop in place, as though gaining a will of their own. A pair of hard, sharp fangs poked the inner side of her lower lip.

She checked the time again. 08:54, it was nighttime already. Once, she would have considered that late, but she knew there was nothing to do around Seagate, anyway.

Pulling on its soft strings, the pale girl tightened the dirty white hood atop her head, ignoring the locks of hair that insisted on blocking her vision. Her real work started now.

***

“So? What exactly did you find, then?”

It had only been about ten minutes since she’d arrived at the old Richards-Jackson building right at Seagate’s western limit, where most high-ranking Phantoms gathered. You could call it a ‘main hideout’ of sorts.

The hooded girl sat lazily on a ragged office chair, both of her feet lying over the top of a large metal desk in front of her. The desk had a small tactile keyboard and several additional buttons set beside it, all seamlessly embedded on its surface, on top of which a large, holographic screen with a middle-aged man’s face firmly lingered.

She cleared her throat once more. Her voice would sound distorted on the other side anyway, but she wanted to make sure good doctor Sarrif could understand her as clearly as possible, mainly due to the fact he could not see her face on his side either, only a static image. That forced him to rely solely on her contorted voice as he heard her demands.

«… I must say, even compared to all of your… previous requests, these samples have been some of the most unusual yet…»

“To the point already, doc.”

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«…V-Very well, then. This substance you’ve found is made up of several different components, including a variety of illicit chemicals and other foreign materials. Most notable, however, is the one constituent we found the highest concentration of. We have identified large amounts of allicin in this sample, mistress.»

“Allicin? As in… garlic, or something?”

«That is correct. I assume I don’t need to explain the… the… the implications of that to someone like…»

“You don’t.”

From under the hood’s long shadow, the girl squinted her eyes, then slowly closed them as her fingers inadvertently trembled behind her head. Allicin…

The composite known as allicin was the most powerful poison ever conceived in the history of mankind, surpassing even other, more recognized substances such as cyanide or arsenics. It could be obtained from garlic, a notable species in the Alliaceae family, known mostly for its high toxicity to the human organism. In spite of the indubitable danger it posed for the entire race, it was a rarely discussed topic among mainstream scientific authority for unknown reasons.

Only about 10 kilograms in total of garlic were estimated to exist in the whole planet at maximum, making it an extremely hard plant to find, and thus allicin was considered to be nearly impossible to acquire. Some speculated the fact to be a result of the consecutive masses of nuclear rain that had ensued during the Great War less than a century ago, but no actual conclusive evidence had been found, once again.

The more common and widespread options, such as cyanide and the like, were undoubtedly quite lethal to any person in their natural state, which established them as ideal for simple operations such as covert assassinations at daytime and other similar tactics.

Unfortunately for any would-be fixer, the conditions that made possible any significant damage to an enemy involving cheap toxins such as those were always ridiculously specific and situational, being that most of them could only possibly be carried out during daytime, preferably by poisoning a victims’ meals or beverages, and in order for any of that to seem feasible in the first place, one would first need to pinpoint their target’s public identity outside their night persona, among other details, which was of course a very prolonged, difficult task, if at all achievable. Any regular citizen’s face would usually become unrecognizable after dawn.

Additionally, the reason why such an attack would be impossible to carry out after the sun was down was quite obvious: ingestion of common venomous substances would, at the very worst, provoke little more than a long streak of nausea and pain to most boosted individuals, considering that just a few units of haema, even as minimal in quantity as to bestow the least physical improvements possible on the user, would be more than enough to vastly increase one’s immunity and bodily resistance, thus avoiding the intended effects.

But according to what she’d heard, allicin, as opposed to all other alternatives, was said to be extremely toxic even after liters of enhancer had been consumed, no matter what variety was applied. In fact, the alleged effects and rarity of the composite had granted it a status closer to that of an urban legend than a real, existing threat.

Any records of studies or tests had been few and far in between, and even Sarrif and the other white coats admitted to not having anything more concrete to share on the topic, though she’d offered a generous quantity in exchange for the intel. Corrupt scientists and magnates would often be prone to lie to their fellow man, she knew that. But lie to a tall pile of cash? That, she found hard to believe. In the end, she’d let them go regarding that, at least for the time being.

The little she had been able to gather, leaving aside made-up stories on the streets and as much pointless superstition as possible, was relative to its basic effects. The substance was capable of paralyzing growth by inducing fast-working necrosis on organic tissue, preventing natural regeneration of all affected areas, since cells would be dying at a rate slightly faster than the one an enhanced human body normally healed.

If that truly was so, then it would be one of the only things on the face on the UDS capable of killing a person in peak condition. Capable of killing even her. The sheer notion prompted her hands to tremble again, forcing her to let them down onto the arms of the chair.

Then again, allicin was rare. That was a fact. So rare it was, actual reports on its effects were extremely flimsy and hard to find, to the point the most recent ones currently obtainable dated back more than two decades prior.

Over time, like with everything else, people had just made up their own ideas on allicin anyway. Some believed swallowing it would turn them into ash, others claimed it could tear out all your skin bit by bit with but a single touch… somehow. And considering such rumors would so often wind up mixing with the real facts, she could only sparsely trust even the little, supposedly veritable information she’d been digging up.

“...”

She guessed in the end that only made the actual details even more valuable. If she could find them, that was. Still, it was one hell of an elaborate set up. She wondered, just what could the board of directors be trying to hide…?

Before they could drag on any further, her own inner ramblings were interrupted by the doctor’s hesitant voice:

«Uh… Excuse me, mistress? Are you still with us? »

“…Eh? Oh, right.” she lazily replied. “What else did you find?”

«Well… Not much else, I’m afraid. The samples you provided us with were filled to the brim with minuscule debris and a variety of other impurities. Of course, I am not trying to criticize your… eh… chosen method of isolation, I perfectly understand your work circumstances and, we… Anyway, it made the composites harder to analyze, since forensics aren’t exactly our specialty. Unfortunately, we have found ourselves unable to draw anything more… concrete.»

“Boo… That just leaves us in the same dead end. What am I even paying you for at this point?”

«That was really the most we could do, mistress. Please do accept our humble apologies. »

“Apologies…? What’s an «apologies»? Is it something I can use?”

«…»

“Tsk… I guess this is fine for now, so thank you, I won’t take any more of you fair researchers’ time. I’ll be sending you all our… ‘regards’ in a day or two, so rejoice.”

«Y-Yes, you have our gratitude. »

“Right, right. You can go back to work now, doctor. But please do stay tuned for more requests in the future.”

«Understood.»

She pressed a single letter on the keyboard and the bright, intangible screen instantly vanished. The girl sighed again, letting her legs down and resting her back against the shabby office chair before it slipped away from under her.

“Useless bums. They take too much money and rarely come back with anything useful…”

She took out the disposable device in her pocket and started to dial several numbers in fast succession.

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