3 days earlier...

Professor Vallard was working on his chemical injection in the Pluto Laboratory. He manually labels all of his substances that he creates. After the work day, he usually stays behind to experiment with possible compounds the Pluto townspeople might like to buy. He was recently working on two special substances that happen to look the same in appearance, but they, by all means, do not have the same effect. He sells these side mixtures to other people, so he can get money because the government doesn’t pay him very much.

The substances that he has been working on are: (IDI) Instant Death Injection and (SIE) Situational Intelligence Enhancement. When the Instant Death Injection reaches the blood flow it immediately stops the heart. It is a quick and easy way to commit murder and there is no way for the autopsy to figure out what happened. Out of all of the test subjects, there was not a single malfunction, so this mixture was ready to hit the market.

Meanwhile, the SIE was not complete. Currently, all the SIE does is gradually boost a human’s problem solving and situational intelligence. It boosts comprehension and computation skills but the social intelligence stays the same. So this mixture makes the person super smart when figuring out problems and strategizing but explaining and interacting with people stay the same. Professor Vallard was trying to figure out how to boost social intelligence, so the mixture was not complete.

Professor Vallard had a dozen vials of the IDI, and there was a line of about 25 people waiting to buy the IDI. He didn’t have enough to sell it to everyone, even after the latest batch of the dozen, so he went to the back of his lab to get more unlabeled bottles. He quickly labeled them and went to the door to illegally sell his mixture. Each bottle retailed for $40 dollars, and by the end of the line, each bottle was sold.

When Professor Vallard went back to his desk to work on the SIE, he couldn’t find his only remaining bottle. He instantly knew what had happened to the bottle. He must’ve accidentally given in to one of the people in line.

He grabbed his hat and sprinted out of the door.

Present time...

Willow was walking home from her new job at the PED. She decided to cut through one of the major tunnels to get to the residential mountain. She then found her boss Zayne unconscious and lying on the ground. She bent down to see if he was alright.

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“Zayne? Hello?” Willow called out to him while she was in the process of shaking him to make sure he didn’t just fall asleep.

No response came from Zayne. Willow was very nervous, she had gone to school with him and had viewed him as one of her friends.

A professor came running down the tunnel, he appeared to be in a hurry, and he definitely had a clear objective in mind. He appeared to be in his late fifties and was starting to bald. He had been running all throughout the town to find the SIE. He had not tested it on humans quite yet, and he was sure it could have detrimental effects. Then he shrugged off that thought because he was also the one to create a deadly injection.

He decided that the real reason he was after it was because he forgot to write down the proportions of the ingredients. His plan was to have a finished product and use his substance copier to make duplicates of the mixture. He was the only person that knew which ingredients were used in it, so he would just put those into the machine and copy it, and the machine would spit out an exact copy with the correct proportions.

The professor spotted Zayne, and he breezed passed Willow and kneeled down next to Zayne. Vallard suspected someone used the IDI on the young man on the ground, so he reached out to his neck to check his pulse, which he expected wouldn’t be there.

Instead, the professor felt a rapid pulse.

“Who are you?!” Willow exclaimed.

“Vallard. Professor Vallard.”

“What do you want?”

“To save this young man.”

Vallard put Zayne on his back and walked away leaving an awestruck Willow behind.

Willow got up off of her knees and sprinted to keep up with Vallard.

“Where are you going?” asked Willow.

“Um... to my office... is there a problem?”

“Well... you kind of have a person behind your back, and you act suspiciously.”

“Pshhh... don’t mind that, follow me and tell me all you know about this man.”

Vallard thought perhaps this man was the one that was injected with the SIE. He also pondered that he also could be unconscious from being beaten up, he did look hurt.

Willow and Vallard had made it to Vallard’s office, and Zayne was somehow still alive, but he was not conscious.

There was a television on in the lab that reported many deaths with unknown causes all within an hour of each other. The injection must’ve worked.

Zayne was put on the table so Vallard could test him. Vallard put a needle that he stole from the health department into Zayne.

“Ouch!” yipped Zayne, “Why did you do that?!”

Willow and Vallard froze...