"Dr. Pickett!" Nathan exclaimed, as he and Megumi approached a large white and royal blue laboratory.
The inside had three large long tables in the center of the room, all with al sorts of various scientific instruments lined along them. There were two long L shaped royal blue counters both on opposite sides of the room, with gold trimming around the sinks and white tile on the counter tops.
In the middle of the room however, stood a tall and lanky form huddled over, and switching between, what seemed to be a small machine Megumi couldn't make out from where she was standing and a notebook, frantically scribbling on the pages.
Dr. Pickett looked up, their dark features covered by the large safety goggles on their face, then set down their pen as they greeted Nathan in return. "Yes Nathan?" Nathan gestured flamboyantly to Megumi. "Our new assistant, just came in! Megumi from- uhh, which university are you from again? Sorry, I forgot to ask." Megumi bit her tongue to stop herself from making a venomous retort.
"JHU." She said simply.
"Ah, good school," Dr. Pickett commented, lifting their safety goggles so Megumi could see their face. "You know I used to go there around thirty years ago, one of my old classmates and colleagues is a professor there too, which of course I'm sure you know as he's the one who contacted me amount your internship." Megumi nodded, a sinking feeling in her gut. It was as if the universe was trying to remind her that she was about to do something that was going to betray both of their trusts in her, and also slightly illegal.
After a few moments of awkward silence, Megumi realized she should probably say something.
"Uhm, yes- Professor Maynes has helped me out quite a lot with getting more experience in the field." Dr. Pickett nodded, setting down the pencil in their hand. "I saw on your form that you interned with Dr. Margret, right?" Megumi felt her eye twitch. "That's right." She said through slightly gritted teeth. Nathan glanced at Megumi curiously, but didn't say anything.
Dr. Pickett on the other hand, was now staring off into space, not noticing anything awry with Megumi's demeanor. "She's definitely gone off the rocker now…" Dr. Pickett trailed off. Megumi and Nathan stared silently at the doctor, waiting for them to continue. "Created a massive breakthrough for science though.. However at the expense of so many innocent people.. man I feel bad for them.."
Megumi swallowed. "Yeah, the damage that's been done to the city and the people in it has been really starting to show itself these past few months." "No not that," Dr. Pickett said, their dreads swaying as they turned to face Megumi. "I'm talking about all those villains! Everybody knows she kidnapped and brainwashed those people!" Dr. Pickett was exasperated, but Megumi couldn't help but feel relieved.
"I know.." She said, a huge weight behind the words. "It's awful."
Dr. Pickett nodded. "And nobody can touch her! Police can't do anything because she done turned herself, and even if someone manages to stop her, it'll only be a matter of time before somebody else gets ahold of that information, and uses it to do the exact same thing she did! Those who know history become inspired by it after all." Megumi nodded, the weight of Margret's formulas feeling heavy in her bag.
Dr. Pickett looked at Megumi, giving her a long stare before asking in almost a whisper. "How did you manage to get out unscathed?" Megumi bit the inside of her lip. There was no way she could reveal herself. But under Dr. Pickett's concerned gaze, "I didn't." Megumi replied softly. "Not completely anyways. She still used me back in the early days of her experiments, but a death within my family stopped her from testing on me any further." She told them, unaware of Nathans hawk eyed stare on her.
Dr. Pickett hummed sympathetically. "So sorry for your loss.. But if she was using you.. Does that mean?" Megumi's face contorted into an uncomfortable expression. "I don't know. And I don't want to know." She hated lying to people who didn't deserve it, but she had to protect her cover right now. "All I know is that I'm lucky to have gotten out of there alive, those other people though, they aren't as fortunate."
That was the truth. Megumi knew that some of the villains were too far gone to go back to their normal lives once Margret was out of power. She knew that some of them came from backgrounds that made having power dangerous for those old people in their lives. She knew a lot of the villains liked the power they had now. They thought they could do anything, Megumi bit the inside of her lip harder as Dr. Pickett continued to rant, but she was stronger than they were. Physically, mentally, she was the only one who was conspiring against Margret after all, she was the only one mentally strong enough to have not given in to her false promises of fame and power.
"Well, enough about all that," Dr. Pickett sighed at last, looking back over to their research. "We have quite the specimen today, did Nathan tell you about it?" Dr. Pickett asked Megumi. Nathan? Megumi looked over, completely forgetting that he was there, which, given their first meeting, Megumi didn't think it would be possible to forget he was in a room.
He was looking at her now with an odd look in his eye, one that Megumi wasn't quite sure she liked. But she had no time to drawl on that now, she had more important things to focus on than whatever his problem was.
"He mentioned it." Megumi said simply. This made Dr. Pickett laugh. "By 'mentioned it' I presume he gave you the entire backstory on the project and went off on three different tangents by the time you got to the fifth floor?" They asked. This made Nathan snap out of his weird trance as he flushed. "Hey!" He exclaimed. Megumi snorted. "Just three?" She asked, making Dr. Pickett laugh and Nathan splutter further.
The doctor shook their head. "Come over here and look at this stuff, it's incredibly interesting." Megumi did as she was told and walked to the opposite side of Dr. Pickett, Nathan doing the same, and looking down to see what the doctor was looking at. There was a large metal tray on the table with a small metal ring in the center, holding what looked to be a pair of glowing cockroaches inside. Megumi's eye twitched again. She hated cockroaches.
"We found some previous experiments that had been done on different insects and animals with the Barium during the time Dr. Basil was still alive, some of the animals have since died- by what means I'm still not entirely sure, we'll get more into that later though- there were only a few insects that survived, of course some being these roaches here." Megumi nodded, Nathan wearing a similar expression of apprehension at the cockroaches.
Megumi repressed a shiver. They carried so many diseases…
"Now I know what you may be thinking- why would the previous scientists have used cockroaches for this experiment? Now I've found some old notes, which is what I was looking at when you came in, and turns out they chose cockroaches for the first experiment because they're so durable." Megumi's eye twitched further. "So they decided to make them even more invincible?" She asked. Dr. Pickett laughed. "That's where this gets interesting."
Dr. Pickett picked up a pair of long metal forceps in one hand, and an elongated pair of tweezers in the other, using the forceps to pick up the cockroach, Dr. Pickett grabbed the cockroaches head and pulled, Megumi blinked expecting Dr. Pickett to just pull the head right off, but the cockroach actually stretched and extended, like a piece of melted taffy in the sun.
"It can't feel this." Dr. Pickett said, letting go of the cockroach's head with the tweezers which caused the insects body to spring back to its normal shape, and after Dr. Pickett set it down, went back to walking along the metal tray as if it hadn't been pulled like a glob of slime. "How long have they been exposed to the barium?" Nathan asked, bewildered. "I speculate it had to be before Dr. Basil had come into contact with the full element, if they were able to break pieces off of it the element couldn't have been fused with her."
"So maybe two or three years ago?" Megumi asked.
Dr. Pickett nodded. "I found some old research papers and notebooks that were documenting the development of the barium element but," Dr. Pickett pulled out a few aged notebooks that smelled like the inside of someone's grandparent's attic. They picked up a hefty black journal and began flipping through the pages. "As I was reading all of the research and experiments done you'll imagine my surprise when.." Dr. Pickett held the book limply in their hands, giving Megumi and Nathan a clear view of what they meant.
Nathan gasped; Megumi felt a cold breath of air pass her lips.
The pages of the book had been torn clean out, and from what Megumi could see, they were torn on a page about the long-term effects of barium, cutting off infuriatingly on whether or not barium could reverse physical ailments.
"Could I see it?" Megumi asked. The doctor handed the book to Megumi, who flipped through the pages, finding that there were multiple sections that pages had been torn out of, confirming the obvious conclusion that this was intentional. Megumi's eyebrows furrowed as she took note of the topics that had been cut off. They were so incredibly specific, as if they were begging Megumi to put the pieces together.
"Was the person who ripped out the pages the same that stole the element?" Nathan asked. Megumi looked up at this, this was important information after all. Dr. Pickett sighed, leaning back on the table. "We think so, we're just not sure who would've done so and why. We speculated that it was one of the scientists that stole it, but a thorough check of everyone's homes and belongings proved that they hadn't stolen them, and during the night of the theft a majority of the scientists had made it outside the building, and all the security cameras had been damaged due to the destruction."
Megumi knew about the accident and that the element was stolen, but she wasn't sure of what lead to the initial crisis.
She closed the notebook after getting to the last page. "What caused the accident that night?" She asked quietly.
Dr. Pickett shifted slightly. "There's no proven cause. Out best bet wasn't that it was one particular thing, but rather a multitude of different scenarios that led to the initial disaster…."
*
The buildings usually white walls were a bright blaring red that quickly shifted to crimson as the facility went into lockdown.
Screams and yells were heard all throughout the building, drowning out the emergency message playing from the overhead speaker. The building shook and rumbled, the sounds of glass shattering were coming from both the inside of the facility and outside from the façade of the building, creating additional hazards for those who were running outside. Occasional flares of green light sprouted from the room, a woman's screams of agony echoing from the inside.
A large man in a security uniform was ushering people out of the building, starting from the farthest end of the facility and finally making his way down to the room of the screaming woman, quickly helping up a woman who had fallen down and was clutching her head. He thought she may have been concussed, but the closer the man approached the door, the more he understood about why the woman had fallen. There was something coming from inside that room that was emitting some sort of blaring sound waves, screaming inside of the man's mind like a wailing siren, making his head grow sore withing just seconds of contact.
"Don't go in there!" The woman shouted, staggering and stumbling as she did her best to run away. It was too late. The man had run in, and while the woman's screams had ceased temporarily, the flashing lights grew brighter, the loud static whine had become louder, and the building began to shake so rapidly that support beams from above began to fall from the rafters. After it seemed like the chaos wouldn't stop until the building had been fully destroyed, the flashing lights has stopped, and the man and Dr. Basil were never seen again.
*
Megumi and Nathan remained silent after Dr. Pickett's retelling of events.
They had only heard a few pieces of the story from the news stations that covered it, but they didn't know the full extent of the tragedy. Dr. Pickett sighed and set the sabotaged notebook down, setting their hand on top of the offending item. "Well now you know the full story," They said. "And now I'm sure you can understand why someone would want to steal this element, or why governments around the world are offering a pretty penny for even a smallest bit of it, and most importantly-" Dr. Pickett looked back at the research notebook before looking back at Megumi and Nathan. "-Why someone would want to hide it away."
Megumi resonated heavily with their last statement. Margret getting a hold of the element would be detrimental for reasons she didn't need to explain. Megumi looked back at the notebook, taking in all of this new information. Even if it was small, at least it was something to help push her forward. During this entire inner monologue however, what Megumi didn't notice was the wary look Natan kept sending her way.
--
A few hours after their initial conversation, Dr. Pickett had Megumi and Nathan help them decode some old notes and clean out the lab, finding more small animal corpses tat had been exposed to barium three years ago.
Megumi let out a soft sigh as she leaned back against the cool metal wall of the elevator, tying her long hair into messy bun while trying not to fall asleep. It had been a while since Megumi had done any hands-on research, and while of course she enjoyed it, she had to admit she was incredibly tired, though she enjoyed not sitting in a lecture hall for eight hours at a time.
Megumi sent sideways glances to Nathan the entire elevator ride down. He was a chatterbox the entire day and no he was suddenly as quiet as a mouse. 'Finally wore himself out I guess.' Megumi huffed amusedly to herself. The elevator dinged as they reached the ground floor, the floor rumbling slightly as the doors slid open. Megumi stepped out of the elevator hoping Nathan didn't want to say anything to her-
"Megumi?" Nathan called. Megumi closed her eyes and let out a quiet sigh.
She turned around to face him. Nathan had that odd look in his eyes from earlier, making Megumi narrow her eyes at him. "Yes?" She asked. Nathan pursed his lips. Megumi raised an eyebrow. "Nothing." He said at last. "Enjoy your night." Megumi's eyes darted across his face. It wasn't nothing. What had she done that made him suspicious? Or was he just being weird? Megumi tried to brush away her nerves. Suspicious people only have their concerns confirmed when you start acting like a guilty person.
Megumi felt her expression let up. "You too." She replied, then made her way past a different group of receptionists from earlier and walked out of the glass doors, the cool night air hitting her like a sigh of relief. The first day went well, she even managed to get some notes and information that might help her locate the element. Now all she had to worry about was Nathan finding out a bit more than he should. Megumi felt her eyebrows furrow as she let go of the glass door, which closed smoothly behind her.
He doesn't know anything. Megumi told herself. You're just being paranoid because you don't want to be found out.
As much as she tried to reassure herself, she couldn't help but notice the pit of uneasiness deep within her gut. She gripped her sling bag's strap tightly. She needed to find a way to get Nathan off of her trial before this became a real problem.
Megumi stared up at the night sky, hoping for nothing more than to go home and have a quiet evening.