The flask screeches and bubbles in protest as Anthony, like its torturer, dials up the flame beneath it.
If someone is to have a breakthrough in this particular science, it’d better be him. The mere thought of that blonde researcher from the Sterling Institute stealing his thunder for a second time washes over him and the mocking spectre of her face curdles his own into a frown.
From across the laboratory with his feet up on the sofa, Constantin lowers his tablet. “Is it supposed to sound like that?”
“It’s just the pressure,” Anthony says. “It’ll hold.”
Constantin accepts the scientist’s truth as his own, but decides not to come any closer to investigate. At any rate, the confusion of piping, beakers, and condensers strewn out on the bench means little to him, but is its own language to Anthony, who darts between the equipment like a mother tending to her children.
“Can you get me a stir bar?” Anthony asks.
Constantin’s eyes flick back to the other man. “I don’t suppose it’s labelled, is it?”
“Long, white thing. Looks like a pill.”
Setting down his tablet, Constantin struggles to his feet through short breath. He knows roughly which draws to open in fruitful searching, and works his way through the rows of glass rods, metal tweezers, and plastic things. He eventually picks out something long and white that one could conceivably call pill-shaped.
“Is this it?” Constantin moves over to Anthony and sets the object down on the side when the other man nods. Thankfully, it’s not a particularly large laboratory by the College’s standards, but it’s certainly one of the nicer ones. Constantin once peered into the Department of Physics and discovered those poor sods still have old dry-erase boards, ostensibly because it reminds the decrepit professors of their childhoods. That is presumably why Archaeology still uses chalk. Over in Genetics, in Anthony’s domain, it’s a young man’s game, full of starry-eyed kids looking to change the world, one genome at a time. More immediately enjoyable for Constantin are their fancy holographic boards. There’s a certain appeal in scribbling the word asshole down on them, plucking the characters straight off the glossy surface, and flicking them across a room at someone trying to concentrate.
Anthony’s hands are full as the word salope floats over his shoulder, so he can’t waft it back whence it came. The glowing cursive letters come to rest behind the tangled apparatus and sit proudly before their subjects. Anthony drops the stir bar into one of the flasks and sets it on a metal plate. Like magic—or science, rather—the bar begins to spin.
“Need to leave that now,” Anthony says, pointing to the everything on the desk, “and then I need more blood for the slides.”
Constantin hoped he could get through another day without donating more than just his time to Anthony’s work. He resigns to removing a cufflink and rolling up a sleeve as Anthony prepares a needle. The marks of previous samples given willingly aren’t unsightly, but he prefers not to remind himself of their existence, necessary as they may be. It’s some consolation that Anthony’s getting better at this with practice. It’d be extremely inconvenient if he weren’t.
Constantin winces as he’s jabbed and loses a little more of himself. It’s a familiar feeling, as is the numb throb that comes and stays for a few minutes. He doesn’t roll down his sleeve for fear of dirtying the crisp off-whiteness with deep, wispy redness.
“That can go in there,” Anthony says, depositing Constantin’s blood in some manner of tube-contraption the latter neither understands nor cares for, “and I’ll just label it… uh, blood.”
“Oh, is that what it is?” Constantin says through beautifully expensive teeth.
Anthony holds the sample against the overhead lights and pretends to squint through it. “Think so. Might be a bit of ethanol in there too. When was your last drink?”
“Two days ago, at Elizabeth’s party.”
Sarcasm piques Anthony. “Oh, Christ. You were smashed.”
“Was I really.” Constantin steals his tone.
“This”—Anthony dangles the tube—“is probably flammable.”
“Why don’t you try it and see.”
“I don’t want to blow up the whole lab.”
“Just… that little drop?” Constantin leans against one of the benches to steady himself, suddenly feeling unwell.
“With what you drink,” Anthony says, turning to set the blood-tube down in a rack, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole building went up in smoke.”
“What can I say?” Constantin shuts his eyes and tilts his head backwards to stop himself passing out. Knowing when the bouts were coming on was one of his better-practised skills. To the casual observer of his condition, there was no rhyme nor reason, but for Constantin himself?
No, still no rhyme, but certainly a reason. One that was worsening in his late twenties.
“You good?” Anthony asks, eyebrows raised. He learned quickly not to patronise the man with doting touches and tentative graspings. It’s apparently more dignified to topple over than rely on someone else to serve as a living, talking crutch.
Constantin waves him off with his free hand. “I’m fine. It’s my head, been really—”
Explosion. The tortured flask detonates. Anthony drops to a knee.
* * *
A cloud of twisting vapour hangs low over the remaining equipment on the bench. Anthony opens his eyes and presses his right hand to his ear. His left is bleeding. Comes the pain, from his wrist to the back of his neck, to his shoulder. Stabbing, fragmentary pain.
“Hey! Are you okay?”
That’s Constantin’s voice. Anthony shakes his head. There’s glass all over the floor.
“The fuck.” Anthony carefully brings himself to his feet and ignores how everything feels warm. “Did the thing just burst?”
Constantin takes a deep breath, fouled by the acrid smell of boiled hair. “I—I think. The one you were heating!”
Anthony turns to his once-experiment and finds a shattered puddle of has-beens. The rest of the apparatus is scorched or scrambled. His dry mouth is wet by anger. He takes his pencil and sifts through the mess with it.
“You’re bleeding,” Constantin says. His dizziness is going, replaced with breathless concern.
“Shit, I think—” Anthony flips over what remains of the flask’s bottom. “But it should’ve been able to handle the pressure.”
“Hey! You’re bleeding.”
Anthony physically bites the anger before it snaps out his mouth unfairly. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Christ!”
Another deep inhale steadies Constantin. Now was not a good time for his body to do its usually endearing sick-schtick. “How bad is it?”
“What? How am I supposed to know—” Anthony knocks down his nastiness. “I’m fine. It’s just bits of glass. Fucking hurts though.” He reaches behind his head and pulls away a little granule of the former flask. Very hot to the touch. That will leave a mark.
Constantin’s world has stopped spinning, so he goes over to the sink and wets a paper towel. Something crunches underfoot. “Come here.”
“Did it get you?” Anthony says. He tries to rub the space between his shoulders. Pain.
“No, I don’t think so.” Constantin looks down. “I’m feeling lightheaded, is all.”
After a little ushering, Anthony complies with Constantin’s outstretched, dripping towel, and lets the man dab away the worst of the red. It won’t come out of his shirt at all, but Anthony was right: it’s just bits of shattered flask. Fortunately, they weren’t making real explosives—at least, not intentionally—or the shrapnel might have had some velocity to it. While Constantin understands precious little of the research, he is fairly certain it shouldn’t culminate in a grenade.
“What was supposed to happen?” Constantin says, folding the paper towel over itself to reveal a fresh side.
“A certain type of reaction.” Anthony keeps it brief. “We’ve not found a way to speed it up safely.”
“So that was the unsafe way?”
Anthony turns his hand over for Constantin. “Heat makes it go faster. That was too much.”
It’s not the matter-of-factness that amuses Constantin, but the blasé-ness.
“I should probably get checked over,” Anthony says, wincing as Constantin unpicks a shard of something from his wrist. “But I need to clear this up before Theodora sees it.”
“Your supervisor?” Constantin meets his gaze. “Don’t accidents happen?”
“She never signed off on this particular test.”
Constantin pauses. “Am I… complicit in something?”
“The College keeps raising ethics concerns for… well, no reason.” Anthony grimaces.
“So you’ve said. For DNA testing?”
“It’s because it’s technically human testing.” Anthony nods at Constantin.
He muses his lab-rat status. “For a good cause, though? Isn’t that enough?”
Anthony sucks his tongue as Constantin accidentally catches one of the bleeding scratches. “You have to jump through lots of—Christ!—hoops.”
Constantin realises what Anthony means, and holds his own. Hoop-jumping means time, and that’s the one luxury he didn’t inherit from his parents.
The disaster-experiment made more a mess of the side than it did Anthony, and the wet towel is serving well enough until Anthony springs without warning from where he’s standing, and flicks a switch on the wall. He looks upwards at something known only to him before drawing his eyes across the ceiling, like he’s chasing a fly. Constantin raises his hand in empty question.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
“Sorry—turning off the sprinklers. The smoke might trip the system,” Anthony says.
Constantin tosses the stained paper towel into the sink and flaps his hands semi-dry. His uncuffed sleeve rolls down and he realises he can’t remember where he left its cufflink. “Should probably open a window.”
Anthony agrees and fumbles with one of them, the sensation of using the wrong hand quite unnerving in its own alien way. Outside, the air is fresh, and deliciously cold in the nose.
“I’ll get a glass bin for that lot.” Anthony gestures to the floor and bench. “We’ll have to set it up again tomorrow.”
“Have you got all the equipment you need?”
“I should be able to cobble the set-up together if I get some stuff from Chemistry,” Anthony says. “You might need to buy another ball valve.”
Constantin collects his tablet from the couch and, after a second of swiping, starts typing. “One. Ball. Valve.”
“Same one as that.” Anthony points towards where the valve should have been, had it not split apart.
Constantin looks up and just hands his tablet to Anthony; the man works his magic for a second and hands it back. He’s brought up a purchase page for some manner of device that’s grey and has tubes connected to it, and that looks substantial enough to be used as a weapon in a pinch. To be fair, most of the equipment in Genetics looks vaguely like what a child would imagine a doomsday device to resemble, and Constantin considers that thought with pertinent, newfound clarity. He saves the order page for later. He can’t be bothered to check the price. It makes no difference.
“How long will it take to deliver?” Constantin says, scrolling through its specifications and pretending to gleam from them something.
“If you pay for express delivery…”
Constantin nods without looking up.
“…About two days, maybe three.”
“That’s not bad.” Constantin locks his tablet and sets it down again, folding his arms and beginning to brush some of the glass into a pile with his foot. “Get me a broom, please, and I’ll help you.”
“You want a broom?” Anthony pauses.
“Fine, a dustpan and brush. I don’t mind. The exercise is good for me.”
“I mean, I was gonna use the air lance.” Anthony points towards one of the cupboards, as if the two men can see through its door.
“The what?”
“Here, watch this.”
Watching is all Constantin can do, albeit with a cautious step backwards, as Anthony opens the cupboard and unveils what looks like a pressure washer. Judging by its name, it’s compressed air that comes out the nozzle, not water. Constantin isn’t sure which would be worse, given the floor is covered in shards, chunks, and grains of glass.
The man goes from on edge to outright concerned when Anthony hands him a pair of goggles.
* * *
The rains are here again, more ferociously this time.
It’s not unpleasant, the smell of petrichor, of dirt whetted in the air. The streets are slick, and slick with people in coats and jackets. Some carry umbrellas in anxious anticipation of another shower that’s not yet come to pass. Constantin passes a group of women either staggering to a night out at eight o’clock in the evening, or staggering home from what would have been the night before. He silently applauds their dedication in any case. They not-so silently cheer at him and wish him well in the ten or so seconds they know each other. Would that be the last time?
He closes his eyes at the idea, at the concept.
The lights change and the cars start moving again. Every light shines twice, once from itself and once off the wet roads than nearly glow as neon things might do in the night. It’s so bright in the dark. Constantin turns another corner, narrowly avoiding crashing into someone as he does. It’s easier in the fresh air.
At the end of the road, one building extends upwards into the sky, a ball of glass atop a thin column of whatever the architects were using these days. An exotic type of metal, probably. Made to look like marble, or perhaps it was. An exotic type of marble. Something, anyway.
From his angle, Constantin considers that it looks like a great pin stuck into the Earth, the assembly of a cosmic hatmaker keeping an unseen ribbon in place on a scale nobody in the city could conceive of. It serves, obviously, as a place to get drunk. All the well-designed buildings do.
Security checks his name against the guest list and unclips the rope, and it’s not long before he’s shooting up the central pillar into the sphere proper. It’s no more special than any other sky lounge he’s been to. Indeed, halfway around the world, they’re trialling floating hotels. Those should be fun, as should the inevitable lawsuit when one falls through the clouds and lands on a school or hospital.
Constantin is ushered to his table by a woman in a fantastically tight power suit, and she leaves him to admire the view from one of the very best seats in the house: the intimate top of the globe. While the velvet and dividing curtains with tassels are pretty in their own right, the way the city merges with the horizon and disappears into the dark takes what little breath he has for itself. From so far above, everything is reduced to little more than squares and circles of different-coloured lights, as endless ant-rows of two red orbs and two white orbs filter between in a grid.
The power suit returns with his wines and tries to offer champagne as well, but he declines. She strikes him as the sort of person who prides herself on pronouncing the items on the drinks list properly while failing to notice she does not read the names as he does. Constantin thinks little of it, but gives her an obligatory merci to chew on as she walks back to the kitchens. It might shake her worldview a little.
Not ten minutes later, the curtain to Constantin’s table is pulled back again and Elizabeth emerges from behind it like a performer entering a stage. She looks good.
“Evening, mister,” she says, stopping him from climbing to his feet for a hug. She bends to his level.
“How is that for a view?” He points out the window-wall.
“I knew it would be pretty wild, but…” Elizabeth sets her clutch down on the tablecloth and walks over to the wall. She leans against the glass in a way that sets his stomach into a routine from the Cirque du Soleil.
“Tallest building in this city, according to you,” Constantin says, rotating one of the bottles to read it.
Elizabeth takes her seat. “Was I really going on about this place that much?”
“You were a few glasses in. Anthony thought it was hilarious.”
She crosses her legs. “Funny you should say.
Constantin looks at her. “Why?”
“One of the guys there, the one who’s always in the green polo shirts—”
“Mike.”
“Yeah. Apparently, I got a little touchy.” Elizabeth says.
Constantin offers the red wine, and she hands him her glass. “Did he say something he shouldn’t?”
“No, I mean… touchy.”
Constantin’s eyebrows creep up. “Damn. Isn’t he seeing someone?”
“Got a message from her. Don’t want to open it.”
Pouring wine without a drop snaking its way down the bottle and pooling on the stark white cloth is an art that Constantin has down to precision, courtesy of his alcoholic parents. Even the way he holds his glass—what his mother would have called the correct way—stands him apart from most.
Elizabeth simply grabs hers by its bowl and toasts the screaming fibres of his body. He returns the clink, careful not to catch her fingers.
“So, how’s it going with you two?” Elizabeth asks.
“Not bad. We might have a little setback on our hands.”
“How so?”
“Anthony accidentally blew up some of the equipment today.”
Elizabeth stops herself from backwashing into her own wine, lest she be disinvited from future expensive outings. “He… blew it up?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Something got too hot. I had to pick bits of glass out of him. He’ll be fine.”
“Hope he didn’t burn himself. What about you?”
The subtle emphasis doesn’t escape Constantin. “I was on the other side of the room.”
“Generous of him to shield you with his body like a hero.”
Constantin nods and wipes his lips. It’s a lot quieter where they are than the lobby some floors beneath them. A little bit too so, with the drapes and curtains and fabric everywhere. The word anechoic comes to mind.
“Do you feel any better?” Elizabeth says.
“In what sense?”
“Is Anthony’s research… working?”
“I mean, I don’t feel any worse—well. I don’t feel a lot worse. It’s hard to tell.”
“He explained it all to me, but it just went in one and out the other.” Elizabeth shrugs.
“Same here. He did give me a shot of something a few weeks ago that made me feel less… tight, for a bit, but since?” Constantin trails off.
Elizabeth visibly brightens. “Maybe it’s just a slow process.”
“Let’s hope so.”
With that, the conversation dies, and the two take turns sipping at their wine which to Elizabeth’s taste could be a lot worse and Constantin’s a lot better. Nonetheless, the view more than makes up for it, or elevates the drinks even further, depending on perspective.
Where they are, they have plenty of that.
* * *
With the bill settled for a truly eye-watering amount that Constantin cares not a jot for, a dressy member of staff politely leads them, some hours later, back into the elevator with its crystal buttons and deposits them on the ground floor—the human equivalent of a dumb waiter. The image of the waitress flashes into Constantin’s head at the thought.
It started to rain before they finished their appetisers, and didn’t stop as they worked through the rest of their food. The gentle patter against the great glass wall made for a pleasant ambience, and it twisted the skyline into something streaky, something fluid. As the neatly-dressed guard opens the main door for them and the brilliant chill wafts inside, Constantin offers Elizabeth his coat. He notices her brain break for a second as she debates with herself over who needs it more. She relinquishes her concern once he begins to insist the coat across her shoulders.
The cold isn’t pleasant, but being able to breathe properly in the crisp air is, and that makes the journey from the lounge to Elizabeth’s flat all the more pleasant. Not passing out on the way is usually the starting point that most take for granted and that Constantin had robbed from him by virtue of his own existence. Try as he might, fresh air alone won’t assuage the issue, but it lessens it, as does drinking. In a way, the booze is self-medication. That’s what he tells himself, anyway.
“If you know of anywhere else you want to check out, let me know,” Constantin says as they pull up to the building Elizabeth lives in—a thoroughly uninspiring block of concrete with too-decorative glasswork for his taste.
“Now you mention it, there was a tapas bar that one of my friends went to a week or so ago.” Elizabeth hands back his coat and luxuriates briefly on what looks and feels to be a pure silk lining. “I’ll see what it’s called.”
“I’m all ears.” Constantin pauses for a second to reflect on those words and the mess they represent.
Elizabeth gives one of her overly gentle hugs that he doesn’t really appreciate and bids him goodnight. He watches for a second as she disappears through the door after waving her fob at the reader until it realises it’s supposed to open the door, not merely register her presence with beeping.
Constantin pulls his coat tight and Elizabeth’s perfume clashes with his own in the drizzle. He starts making his way back, electing to take the road less travelled and more scenic instead of retracing his steps exactly. He looked at the cobbles intimately for the last thirty minutes. He can’t bear to do so again.
One particularly choice cut through the grand park at the centre of the city comes to haunt him quite immediately, as Constantin realises the path—for the rain—is more akin to mud than well-trodden dirt. The oak trees don’t shelter the ground as well as he believed, and soon his shoes are caked in a way that will never come out of their fine stitching, no matter how hard he scrubs.
Just as he exits the semi-solid, iron-railed deluge, Constantin notices a familiar gait up ahead, silhouetted against the streetlights and lit by glittering rain.
“Anthony?”
The man some way down the street stops and peers over his shoulder, and it is indeed who he believed. Anthony stops where he is and meanders a little towards Constantin as he awkwardly speeds up his pace as if to close the distance meaningfully faster.
“You lost?” Anthony says. It’s a box that he’s holding.
“I was just walking Elizabeth home.” Constantin gestures for them to keep walking. “We went to that new sky lounge thing.”
“The big lollipop?” Anthony points towards it. It’s visible everywhere in the city, and brightly lit, too, no doubt to the great enjoyment of those living near it, whose apartments must be losing their value in near-real time.
Constantin nods. “It’s okay. I’ve been to better.”
“Imagine you have.”
“Where did you lift that from at this hour?” Constantin points his chin towards the brown box.
“It’s a replacement ball valve. Friend had one. Just picked it up.”
Constantin can’t remember looking at the price, but in his experience, none of Anthony’s work comes cheap in any way. “Do you not need me to order one, then?”
“Could you still get a new one as a spare? This one should work, but…”
“Do you not trust your friend?”
Anthony grins in that slightly acidic way people do when agreeing with the unfortunate realities of their predicaments and the two men continue walking while the rain abates to reveal the city is much less charming without it.
* * *
The large, brown box sits on the counter in a pool of its own latent water as Anthony locks his apartment door and peels himself out of his suede jacket. A poor choice, really, given the moisture will stain it.
From within the plain package, a squeak.
Anthony opens his fridge and discovers it rather lacks for beer. The bottles on the side should have served to remind him of that, where now they merely stand in rank like mocking soldiers. He regards the expensive Prosecco still in its box that was a gift from some party-goer from a few months back. It’s too early in the evening to commit to such bubbly, so he settles for a coffee in the hopes it will steady his hands. For whatever reason, one perhaps he of all people should know, caffein has always calmed his nerves—to a point, of course. Drinking espresso by the jug might still light a fire under his arse and have him bouncing off the walls.
Another squeak, and Anthony opens the box to reveal a smaller one inside, labelled in bold, red capitals with the words live specimen.
Good. He hasn’t been stiffed.
Unpacking this second layer, the rat flurries about the plastic container as it’s brought out into the breakfast bar’s harsh lights. The coffee machine on the side dings. His drink is ready.
By the time Anthony has retrieved his mug and added sugar, the rat has already exhausted itself, and is quite out of breath. It lies down, weak and dizzy.
Perfect.