Chapter 7
'…the price of baking soda…'
Roxas
The door shuts behind Sora as he makes his way out of the apartment door. As the wooden portal creaks closed, I find myself breathing a little bit easier. I'm… uncomfortable being around my brother; the feeling is very mutual, I'm sure. We've done too much to each other in the not-so-distant past for either of us to not feel some degree of tension. On the other hand, Sora did put me up for the night even though he didn't have to, so maybe this time it's me that's being the bigger dick.
'Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding,' goes the bell on the microwave; my oatmeal is done.
I walk, duck footed, over to the microwave and pop the door open. My calves groan in protest over having to move the two foot distance from where I was standing to the counter where the microwave sits; I tell them to quit complaining. When I remove the plastic wrap from over the top of the bowl, I get a nose full of apple cinnamony goodness. By the smell of things, little bro has been shelling out the extra 19 cents on the brand name oatmeal; the store brand kind doesn't have as rich a scent to it.
I snatch the bowl and scurry back to the couch as fast as my aching everything will carry me, placing the piping hot porcelain down on the dirty linen strewn across the couch. I ease back in the seat and sink into the cushions as far as I can go, letting my tired muscles relax and wait for my oatmeal to cool down. I reach for the remote control and flick the TV back on. The morning news is still on, but they've finished with current events and moved on to sports. After sports comes the weather and after the weather the show's over, so there's really no point in watching this anymore.
I flip to the Cartoon Channel. I'm in luck; Howl of the Sea is on and it's the episode where the crew fights that army of crazy jihad weasels.
I lay a few fingers on the bowl of oatmeal to check the temperature; my skin doesn't feel like it's going to catch fire. I grab the bowl, sit it in my lap and start digging in, letting the warm and gloppy mush slide down my throat and into my belly. The breakfast food warms my insides and the action packed, non-imitateable cartoon violence steadily kills the few remaining brain cells I have left after taking so many shots to the head.
I finish off the bowl just as the ending credits of Howl of the Sea start to scroll down the screen. I set the bowl down on the coffee table and belch without shame. Now full and no longer distracted by growling in my stomach, I become very aware of just how gross I was. I give an exploratory sniff to one of my underarms and recoil in horror. It pains me down to my soul to admit it, but Sora was right; I am disgusting.
Well, since I'm so foul I'm sure that my little brother won't begrudge me the use of his bathroom. I lurch up to my feet and hobble my way around Sora's apartment in search of a fresh towel and a washcloth. After hunting down the two items, I make my way into the small bathroom and turn on the shower, letting the whole room fill up with steam. The warm water feels like the caress of a beautiful girl against my abused skin- the parts of my skin that aren't cut or scraped up anyway.
Stepping from the shower, I towel myself dry. I'm surprised- and a little bit proud- to see the ring of filth that I leave around the bathtub after stepping out of it. Sora's going to be in a fighting mood after he sees that, and in my current condition I'd be on the receiving end of yet another beating. Good thing I plan on being out of here before he has a chance to see it.
It occurs to me that though I've taken a shower, I've got no clean clothes to wear and that Sora has forbidden me from wearing any of his clothes. Not that I would wear any of his lace curtain preppy bullshit.
Still, even a prick like Sora couldn't object to me washing my clothes here. After all, if no fresh garments are to be provided then my little brother shouldn't mind me using his detergent and laundry money. I'm sure he'll understand; now that my body is clean, I can't very well throw my dirty clothes back on. That's just nasty.
Yeah, I realize I'm being a dick.
Towel still wrapped around my waist to protect my modesty, I head back into the living room and gather up my belongings and set out to find the complex's laundry room. I somehow manage to get all the way there without the towel falling off and leaving me ass-naked in the middle of a strange apartment complex. The laundry room is an old brick building covered on two sides by crudely drawn graffiti; after I push open the door, I'm happy to find out that there's nobody washing their clothes. I got enough funny looks from people during my walk over here.
As I'm loading up the washing machine, I hear a muffled ringing sound coming from inside of my pants. I pull my cell phone out of my pants pocket before tossing the garment into the machine with all of my other clothes. The caller ID tells me that it's Naminé. I scramble to flip it open.
"What's up," I say.
"Roxas, where have you been," Naminé asked; she sounds exasperated. "I went by your house last night but your mom told me you never came home."
"I'm sorry," I say genuinely. Naminé is one of the few people that I can still call a friend and the two of us used to be….
Well… at this point I guess it really doesn't matter what we used to be. I just really want to get on her good side and stay there. I fill her in on the last twenty four hours; she gasps a few times and scolds me for taking unnecessary risks. In turn, I speak in an apologetic tone and agree with everything that she says. That conversation passes quickly and the two of us settle into silence.
"So…um, what are you doing now," she asks tentatively.
"Doing laundry in the nude," I respond truthfully. I can hear her sputtering at the other end of the line and I have myself a little laugh at her expense while she calls me a perv. I imagine that angelic face and all the blood that must be rushing into it right now. The thought makes some of my own blood start rushing to a certain place.
"Hey, you asked," I say playfully.
"Okay, image in my head that really did not need to be there," she sighs.
"Look, the reason why I called you in the first place was to tell you that I finished up the analysis of that HEARTLESS that you gave me. That stuff was… well… I found something bad."
Hesitation; hesitation is never a good sign.
"Bad how," I ask warily.
"Bad as in pure poison; that stuff is a killer."
I realize that she's tiptoeing around the point, which does more to worry me than anything she's said so far. Naminé does not tiptoe; she likes to get right to the point.
"I'm not really following," I say. "HEARTLESS is a hard drug; of course it's a killer."
She sighs; this is obviously difficult for her. "No, it's… okay I'll explain, so try to keep up."
"The medical name for HEARTLESS is Hexolseromine. Hexolseromine isn't a very complex chemical; you can get the ingredients to synthesize the stuff from the local Mega-Lo Mart, though you probably already knew that."
I notice the shot she takes at me and ignore it. After all, I did already know that. She continues.
"To make the finished product you have to go through the cooking process where you add in the various ingredients to create the narcotic. The most important step in the cooking process is the second to last one, the one where they add in the Codeine."
"Wait, why is the Codeine important?"
I may know how to cook HEARTLESS, but I've never had the slightest idea what any of the crap we put in it was actually supposed to do. All I knew was that the finished product put a fat knot of money in my pocket.
"Don't interrupt, I was getting to that. The Codeine acts as an agent to deaden the potency of all of the toxic crap that you use to make HEARTLESS. Without it, and depending on how it's cut, the mixture can be up to seven times more potent than usual."
I can't help but interject. "Wait, how did you find this out?"
"I tested the pills by dissolving them in a complex saline solution; normally, when it dissolves, HEARTLESS would turn the solution purple. But when I tested some of the pills, they ended up turning the solution black!"
"And… black is bad," I asked, wondering if she thought I sounded as stupid as I thought I did.
"Yes Roxas, black is very bad," she replies, the slightest hint of amused condescension in her voice.
"You remember what I said about the Codeine, right? For those pills that came up black, there wasn't a trace of Codeine in them; it's as if whoever was cooking the stuff just decided to skip that step and move on to the last one."
"So the cooks made some half-assed HEARTLESS," I say dismissively. "Mistakes have been known to happen."
The bookworm gave me an exasperated 'tsk, tsk, tsk,' from her end.
"Roxas, from the results of my experiments, I estimate that one out of every five pills in those bags is incomplete. That's twenty percent. Now, you're right. Mistakes do happen; twenty percent, however, does not suggest a mistake. Twenty percent suggests a considerable degree of planning and forethought."
"Whoa, hold up now," I say quickly.
"Don't you think it's a little too soon for you to be saying what I think you're saying? I mean, I didn't get you all that much HEARTLESS to play around with."
"I know, so I got more," she replied.
"From who?"
"From how the hell is it any of your business, Roxas? The point is, I got more, I did the tests and everything's still coming up black. Now, I know that don't prove anything, but my intuition is telling me there's fire underneath this bit of smoke I'm finding."
I'm hearing what Naminé is telling me, I really am. Yet, somehow it feels like my brain isn't able to take in everything that she's saying. Because what she's saying is true; twenty percent of your product being fouled isn't a mistake. You have some fouled pills in every batch; it's unavoidable. Sometimes a few just don't come out right after the cook. But usually it's only around five or six out of every hundred; twenty percent of a batch is just a ridiculously high number. No way in hell you produce that much bad product by mistake; no way in hell Xemnas and Saix would ever let anybody in the Organization get away with making that kind of mistake.
Look up anal retentive in the dictionary and you would see some nice two by twos of Xemnas and Saix. Those guys run a tight operation and they always insisted that all of us Organization members were just as anal about everything that had anything to do with HEARTLESS.
So, the explanation that makes the most sense is the one that makes the least sense. The only explanation, the only plausible reason for there being that much fouled HEARTLESS is that the Organization put it out there intentionally.
"But why would they do something like this?"
"I was hoping that you could fill me in on that part," the bookworm asks in a small voice.
And suddenly, my mind goes back to that news report that I saw this morning. I had thought that all that stuff that they were saying about the recent upsurge in overdoses was just the press sensationalizing the drug problem for sweeps week. But from what Naminé just told me, those extra overdoses have a definite cause.
This whole situation suddenly seems so much bigger than Pence. I get this cold feeling in my stomach that's doing a better job than that header I took out of Saix's van of telling me to back off of this thing that I've stumbled across. I'm starting to get a real sense that I should have listened to all of those threats that warned me to back off.
Funny thing though, I'm also starting to get a stronger than before that I have to see this through to the end because this situation is bigger than Pence. My friend was one person who became a victim of this… thing. He wasn't special, he wasn't targeted specifically, he was just a kid who made a bad decision and was unlucky. And if I don't do something, plenty of other people will be getting unlucky; people who might have lived otherwise.
I'm going to have to rethink a few things.
"This calls for a new approach," I say.
"New approach; what do you mean by new approach," Naminé asks me.
"Look, I need to get a few things settled, but after that I'm coming to see you. Until then, you shouldn't be in contact with me," I reply.
"Hey, wai-," she starts to say something; probably a protest. I hang up and turn off my phone before she can get it all the way out.
'Ding, Ding…'
My clothes are done.
When Sora returned from whatever inane little extracurricular activity he's been doing for the past few hours, I'm back on the couch, clean and drier fresh down to my drawers. Seeing that I was now capable of independent movement, he tossed me his screwdriver and told me that my Vespa was parked outside. We didn't spare too many words on each other after that little declaration; I said thanks one last time, he made this dismissive grunting sound, and I got out of there before he decided to check his bathroom.
Prick…
When I pulled up at my house, my head was spinning; I had learned a lot of things and yet I somehow felt even more lost than before. I had no idea where any of this information would take me and frankly, the possibilities scare the hell out of me. I'm going to have to put more thought into my actions, think about things strategically. No more going off half-cocked and making things up as I go along. I need to make an actual plan to…
"Oh so you finally decide to come home?"
I feel my balls retreating into my stomach. Shit.
"M-mom?"
