"Brothas and sistas! Sons and daughters of nothing! Don't dot your I's! Fuck paragraphs and complete sentences! Don't let them control you!" ~Tweeted by NewsAGoGo on September 12, 2019
The two little white pills sat harmlessly on the linen napkin. Airi surveyed them, lifting one up and rolling it absentmindedly between her fingers, before replacing it and picking up the tray.
This could only be attempted once, so she had to be careful.
And if there was one thing NewsAGoGo prided herself on, it was doing what needed to be done, and doing it well the first time.
Airi walked a short distance down the hospital hallway, toward the door of her superior's room. Then she paused and doubled back like she realized she'd forgotten something. Quickly, she ducked into the alcove in front of the toilets where the water fountains were. She set the tray on the back of one of the fountains and filled the tiny plastic cup.
Then, hunched over the tray so as to avoid the security cameras littering the ceiling, News peeled open the first of the pills, separating the capsule into halves.
What to do with the drugs? She couldn't dump them in the fountains, lest someone detect residue and put the pieces together. For the same reason, throwing them in the trash was out. The quickest and easiest thing to do was to take them herself, and so, cringing slightly, she swallowed the contents of both pills.
The burning sensation that shot through her reminded her why she'd stopped taking these pills in the first place. The outside of the capsule was supposed to keep the worst of it out of one's throat, but it still hurt almost as much with it than without. News gagged at the bitter aftertaste, and started chugging water to get it out of her mouth.
She straightened up a few seconds later after fixing the second pill, took a deep breath, and carried the tray through the door into Korse's room.
He was lying in the only bed, having received a private room, and sat up as Airi came in. He was looking a bit better, much to her dismay: the color was coming back into his face and he hadn't had a coughing fit for several days. "Hello, Airy," he greeted- mispronouncing her name, as usual.
"Hello, Korse," she replied. "I brought your medicine." She brandished the tray at him, and as he rested it on his lap, glanced around at the camera mounted near the ceiling. The light was off, meaning it wasn't working, just as she'd planned.
News repressed a grin (the drugs were starting to make her feel more optimistic already) as her boss downed each of the pills, filled with white powder identical to what she'd ingested.
Superficially identical, at least.
"Korse," News began, smiling sweetly. "I never got the chance to tell you two things." At his questioning glance, she went on, "First, my name's pronounced 'aylee,' not how you've always said it; you could've at least looked up basic Japanese syllable structure before you hired me."
Korse looked almost affronted at her criticism, and tried to say something, but she didn't wait to hear if it was apologetic or angry; she continued, "And second…"
NewsAGoGo broke into an honest smile at the sound of Korse's increasingly labored breathing. "…When you meet Cherri Cola in Hell, tell him I said, 'hi.'"
Her boss's eyes widened in shock and the inevitable realization that she had been a traitor all along. But his toxin-weakened state, combined with the fast-acting poison spreading through him, rendered him helpless to do anything but stare at her, psychic horror reflected in his eyes.
As the convulsions began, News leaned in and whispered, "Sayonara."
She waited a full ten minutes by the corpse's bedside before pressing the button to call for help. The second action the doctors took, after checking Korse's vitals and finding him dead, was to call the police to arrest her. She didn't mind, though. The aftermath was, after all, secondary.
And she'd hidden the evidence, anyway.