This story follows the events of my previous story, Dog Days and A Feint Intervention. You might want to finish reading them first before getting down here.
"Do you want to hear the chemistry?"
Her sarcasm was dressed in a voice so stern and almost too cold, in contrast to the scorching summer day that it was. Her aim was sharp, yet her gaze didn't move an inch from her little playthings—mostly deadly—with which her both hands were so busy; refusing to pay homage to the even deadlier man planking on the steely wall before her. He shot back.
"I'd rather hear why you hadn't called me directly, Sherry." His silvery hair waved as he prowled closer to her rear. Soon the icy surface of the scientist' latex gloves were warming up as an effect of its friction with the gentle touch of his palms; even if warmth wouldn't be a proper attribution of him. In fact, Sherry's back was already chilly as he spared it no space with his own build. The air he breathed around her rear neck through her ear was stalactite sharp. "Is that how much you hate me?"
The tubes Sherry held shambled in refusal of his advances. She timidly sledded to the other edge of the cabinet fully filled with substances and apparatuses, in alibi of reaching a distant bottle of substance. Silently sighing, she tried coming up with any answer that might sound sensible, and failed. "What's the difference? It's not like I expected Vodka not to tell you,"
Gin knew she wasn't prepared for an answer. What he knew he didn't was on what occasion did she betray her incessant determination to rid his presence from her lab.
"You're here because I need something from you..." Not a word she spoke of was any lie. At least, so far. "...and it's for research purpose, of course."
Gin gave up on his standing, relenting to space their footings as he took her throne in the form of a grand rolling chair by the paneled window. It was shut, obviously. Neither the commander nor his relative subordinate was into lights. He crossed his legs and bent his elbows, in anticipation of her so called development report.
"This is rat number five, a genetically altered specimen with complications of renal impairments, heart insufficiency, and minor lobotomy. In other words, it should have been dead. But as you see, it's alive and well, and whether we would find out if it had anything to do with the current development of the drug, code APTX4868, it is up to you,"
That was the least science Sherry could come up with but Gin was still unamused. Not that he was a dimmer one, but this kind of talk wasn't his favorite pastime. In fact, no kind of talk was. "Cut to the chase, Sherry,"
"This lab doesn't have the necessary installments to investigate the drug's further pharmacokinetics. The drug has a weakness that made its study rather complicated, and it's in the form of its rapid elimination rate. Catching the traces of the drugs after administration is like racing with a nitro fueled car, and in this lab, on a limping unicycle. I need you to move the research to a more sophisticated facility, and not in more than a few days before rat five, our current and only lead, ceased to live."
"That's asking a lot. I don't expect you desk workers to understand how it works, but it takes time to find which facility befits our requirements, clear it, and move your whole current logistics there."
Sherry sneered sourly. She threw a shameful glance at Gin, only for a millisecond but it felt terrifying already. "Are you whining, Gin?"
Gin chuckled, in the best attempt of obscuring his being choked with her words. He rose from the chair and headed to the window, flicking one of its blind and peeped out to the quiet street outside the lab. "You should be thankful you're still alive, Sherry,"
What made you think being dead wouldn't make me feel more alive than now? These words she muttered as loud as whispering wind in an empty room, believing what he claimed to be her fluke had splinters of truth in it. If it were someone else who treated Gin the way she treated him, he might as well have been in his last moments alive. Not that she despised death; she would still embrace it. But lately, there were some things she was too resolute to pass. "Allow me to argue that the Boss has been urging the completion of this drug. Besides, you don't need to be in a hunt of a proper facility. I know exactly where I'd be working at,"
Gin let go of his fingers from the blind and retracted himself to where he seated himself previously, ready to hear the continuation of Sherry's rare monologue.
"Murasame lab, Chiyoda. They're going to relocate anyway, all you need to do is to fast forward it."
Her voice broke his focus, and even more so when he heard of that location. "Negative. You haven't heard the news, have you?"
Sherry paused before she went on to the next rat, the next vial of haloperidol. "So it really was you."
"So you have," Gin rose up and skulked forward the stacks of cages, this time barring the distance once lacked from Sherry's back. The vision of a living thing, formerly in a brawl so riotous against the frozen bars of steel that contained it, in matters of seconds lost its vivacity in the hand of some dismal liquid that wouldn't have even moved had a thumb not pushed it down the needle, piqued his interest as it reminded him of his gun. "Is that the drug?"
"Now you're interested?" She put the syringe, now half full of its content, on a metal tray beside the cages. Simultaneously, she picked up another vial; one labeled 'APTX4868', and shoved it on Gin's visual. "That was just sedatives."
Gin watched as she casually spooled out the drug, his lethal stare closely inspecting the littlest gestures the woman before him made; all the little shifts in between the strands of her hair, all the gentle motions of her left bare hand a little too white as a result of its constant mingling with ludicrous amounts of chemicals, all the subtle thuds as it combined forces with her concealed right hand, manhandling the syringe pump into her little friends. Gin couldn't be sure if it was the one rat she called number five earlier. Then again, he didn't care. Not yet. "I don't understand how you can't distinguish my doings from the whatnot, us having known each other this long, this well,"
Sherry could feel her stomach ejecting its fill just from hearing Gin's allegation, but it wasn't her body's to decide what would happen. Playing along was her late game. "Right. It was a little too messy. Anyway, who—"
"A little?" He prowled closer on the purpose of getting a better vision of one of the drugged rats. It was even before he continued that it choked in miserable gasps, body outburst in mortal spasm, leaving only a trace of agony squeaked from its lifeless throat. The green eyes that watched the soul expired blinked. "Your drug kills."
Sherry checked the monitor and jotted down the current time, tagging it '#8'. "The drug has a small index of therapy. Meaning, it mostly kills than saves. A little deviation of dosage shows fatal implication to various host conditions... What was it again about last night? Who'd have screwed up that mu—"
"And this drug leaves no traces in the body?"
No matter how she refused to admit it, not a big part of Gin's claim on how well she knew him was faulty. Gin was a murderer, a merciless one, and that fact Sherry knew too well. Just a stroke of his sentence and the detrimental spark in his eyes could tell Sherry that his intention was nowhere near noble. It was what happened to the last drug; despite its having no lethal properties was fully in their grasp, he was using it as a means to such ends. The stark astonishment in the form of a humoral surge overflew Sherry's senses rebelled as the thought of her impending credits to God knows how many souls were to fall thanks to her work.
On the other hand, as truthful was the fact that Sherry knew Gin, he knew her possibly even better. He knew her being brought up under the organization wings didn't simply buy her concordance with its approaches. He didn't even need to turn his eyes to catch her trembling hands, aghast and in terror, reaching out to his from behind; trying to seize the drug he filched from the cabinet.
The frantic, forlorn shout of dissent coming out from her lungs couldn't penetrate his grit. She shambled, yet not solely because of her despair.
To describe Gin's sentiment to Sherry was to come hell. At one side, he was yearning for her being, craving for the touch he believed he deserved. At another side, he was the Gin everyone had the correct assertion about. The mirthless, atrocious man he always was. To have any desire past avariciousness was against his nature. That was what he chose to believe, that was what they chose to believe.
In her right mind, it won't be a total shock for Sherry if Gin went as far as to take her life as the punishment of her belligerence. Yet during its shy attainment, the naive girl couldn't yet believe Gin would go as far as to knock her out just to obtain the little thing he wanted to take in custody.
Sherry's conscience began decaying as Gin's thumb emptied the liquid in the syringe tube into her cephalic vein, her insurgent eyelids closing along the rhythm of her loss of muscle tones. In less than a few seconds her whole body collapsed inertly onto the cold floor, leaving only her right arms in the confinement of Gin's left. That, and her reflection on Gin's vacant eyes.
"Aniki!" The shout busted as the door by its dispatcher slammed. Vodka entered the room, panting. The stairs run had seemingly tired him, only to be farther taken aback with the vision of the organization much prized scientist lying down on the floor, and his superior holding the needle attached to her arms, conveying his responsibility of her mishap. "A-aniki..."
"So, Vodka," Gin took the needle out and let go of his grab, allowing gravity to take over Sherry's body. "Did you get them?"
The sidekick halted his confusion. Not that he was concerned of any sort with the woman in notice, not that it was rare for him to see his aniki's exploit in other people's menace, but never in his wild mind did that certain girl would face her menace in the certain man's hand. "Y-you're right, aniki. Someone's watching over this lab!"
Not the exact kind of answer he would like to have, Gin deemed, although it was him who suggested so. He stepped away from Sherry's body, putting down the syringe, taking out his pocketed pair of gloves and wore them. He reached to the window and peeped through the blind, again.
"They ran away, but I managed to attach a tracker in the car. That was the least thing I can do, they were fast to realize we were tailing them. S-sorry, aniki..."
"It's fine, Vodka." Gin pardoned his underling as he collected the little containers labeled APTX4868, all the baker's dozen of them, tucking them into the spacious compartment in his bleak coat. Vodka watched in bemusement. "We're moving the lab,"
Vodka was not surprised by this. The plan had been circulating this past week, since Gin confided him his suspicion of the lab being spied on. He was wondering if it was Sherry's rejection of the move that had her in her current state, but his job wasn't to concern over her well-being, or the research department in general. It was someone else's job.
"Call him to start right away, Vodka."
As Vodka hurriedly took out her phone and typing a message to a fellow member of the organization, he sneaked glance over his partner, now on his right knees by his rumored lover's body, his hand stroking over her cheek.
"It's a cold world we're living in, Sherry,"
The next thing he sneaked glance over was the girl lying down on the floor he was about to leave as he opened its door, dutifully leading his partner out as the latter instructed. Gin noticed his partner's shy anxiety, and decided to soothe it.
"That was just sedatives."
Hello there! Thank you for reading my new story. I hope this one give you more or at least the same enjoyment with the last one. Also, in case any of you was waiting for this update (which took a longer time than usual, I guess), I'd like to have you blame my studies and the guy who stole my focus lately. Also, I'm sorry!
Do stick around and wait for the next chapter. Don't forget that your reviews are my wages and I have rents to pay ;P cheers!