Lawrence

Lawrence had a strange idea of comfort. While most of us associate it with open fields or bright sunshine, he craved dark spaces like a fungus. As such, his punishment had been rather soothing. His act of bravery had landed him in a jail cell. When Mr. Roland had found him stuck under Patricia’s bleeding corpse, his expression had been one of pity rather than accusation. There was no malice in his eyes, no ill intent or desire for revenge. Even as the guards were escorting him to his cell, the big man looked almost sorry for him. That hurt Lawrence more than any broken rib.

Tiny rays of light peeped through the cracks in the brick wall and poked at his eyelids, waking him from his best nap in years. As he stretched to melt away the soreness from his steel bed, his bare feet felt damp from the undergrowth. “Honored guest, my ass,” his brain taunted him. I regret nothing, he replied. “Give it some time,” it said.

He heard footsteps. They were firm, methodical, like a stallion on a morning trot. Lawrence tried craning his neck between the steel bars of his cell but to no avail. Of course, they wouldn’t make it this easy. His brain laughed at him. “Regret coming in three… two… one.”

The door was unlocked. Lawrence stood slack-jawed against the back wall as none other than Justin Roland set foot in his cell. The big man held a tray overflowing with mashed potatoes and boiled rice in one hand and a walking stick in another. The beams of light caressed his golden smile.

“Got yourself in quite the pickle there, Larry,” he said, handing him the meal.

“Sir, what on Earth happened to you?”

“Same as you, Larry. I made a mistake and got punished for it.”

His brain laughed at him. “You’re done for. That’s what he’s here to tell you. You’re finished. Thanks a fucking bunch, idiot.”

Roland exhaled sharply. “Surely, you must’ve heard about what happened last night.”

“Err not much, sir, to be honest. The guards… they were talking about some disaster at the temple.”

Roland chuckled. “Yeah, might as well call it that. The whole affair was a fucking disaster. We lost a lot of good men. The server went kaboom. And just to add salt to the wound, I broke my favorite leg.”

Justin Roland looked ready to crush a boulder with his teeth. He slammed the steel bed with such anger that he nearly put a dent in it. His eyes raged with a storm Lawrence didn’t dare to approach and yet, his smile was unshakable.

“Sir, I’m sorry about Patricia. It was… Well, I want you to know that…” He gulped.

“Let me take a stab at that.” Roland cracked his knuckles. “Patricia became frustrated with me for… obvious reasons. She couldn’t live with the guilt anymore and decided to end it by taking my life. You, beautiful man that you are, stepped in before she could do something foolish and she lost her life in the ensuing scuffle. Say nothing if that is our narrative.”

Lawrence remained silent as a grave.

“Excellent. Don’t worry about the formalities. I’ll have you out of here in no time.”

The comfort of the dark room vanished away in the blink of an eye. Lawrence felt like a million tiny rocks were pricking his skin at the same time. His throat, parched from the night of confinement, was ready to pop out of his neck and write a signed confession declaring his guilt.

On the inside, he was screaming. It was me. I was the mole. I leaked the files that got Dr. Boon killed. I was working with Patricia or Caroline or whatever she called herself the entire time. I am the biggest traitor of all! And yet, he said nothing. There was only one way to make up for everything he had done. And it started by paying with his life.

“I never told you about the man I’m after, did I?” asked Roland.

“No, sir,” he replied, inching away from his boss step by step.

“Well, you might as well know about it. After all, you’re dirty now. That makes you one of us, Larry. Besides, I want to feel like I still have a friend.”

Lawrence plopped down upon what felt like a seat of poisoned thorns and listened with intent.

“God, where do I even start?” Roland wondered. “I guess, I should start at the beginning. About twenty years ago, I was part of this, without mincing any words, pack of complete nutters. You might know them as Prometheus, President Norton’s company. Us on the inside, we called it the New World Order. Our only goal? Looking out for the planet and making sure no harm ever comes to its people, regardless of the cost.”

Regardless of the cost, Lawrence remembered Trent saying that exact phrase once. He gulped and kept listening.

“And the Order had a huge problem on its hands. The planet was getting colder. Deathly cold. Numbers said it would kill all life on the planet in just fifty years. So, they gathered the best and brightest minds to create a solution. That’s where they came up with the cryoelixirs. One sip of Blue and you’ll be immune to the cold for a week. It was the discovery of the century.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Something felt off. Lawrence coughed and spoke, “But sir, the elixirs today they… they only last about an hour. Is it… it can’t be.” He gasped. “You mean, in just twenty years…. We-”

“Hit the nail on the head, Larry.” Roland shook his head. “It’s crazy how fast the human body develops tolerance. You give a man a glass of gin for the first time, he’ll cry about its bitterness and how it makes his head all dizzy. Give it a few years and the same guy will complain about how even three bottles aren’t doing it for him anymore.”

Lawrence ran the numbers inside his head. Twenty years ago, one sip gave us a week of cold immunity. Nowadays, we need one whole vial to function for just an hour. At this rate, in just a year or two, the Blue will completely lose its efficacy. He shuddered to think of the consequences. In Lucidea alone, there are forty-five million people.

“As you can probably guess,” Roland continued, “time was of the essence. Then one day, the answer came crashing into our very laps. It was the archaeologists in Regalia that first found them. Humanoid creatures buried beneath the Earth. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t even know if they were from Earth at all. But one thing was clear to us: This was a sign from God. Or at least, that’s what the Order wanted us to believe.”

“Forgive me, sir. Do you mean to tell me that you found aliens buried underground?” Lawrence shook his head to make sure he was hearing things correctly. Surely, he was losing his mind. Maybe, it was a slip of the tongue. All of those things were within the realm of possibility. Far more than aliens, for crying out loud.

“I dunno, Larry.” Roland shrugged. “We were just as puzzled as you are. The bodies were surprisingly well-preserved too. Who knows? Maybe they wanted us to find them, whoever they were. Well, their bodies, at any rate. We called them Atrians because of their gigantic cardiac muscles.”

“I’m… I’m… well, forgive me, sir, but what do these Atrains have to do with the man you’re pursuing?”

“More than you’d think. You see, Norton had his men working around the clock. Seeing if they could find some use for their DNA. And find a use they did. Atrian blood was magic, Larry. And not that street performer sleight of hand crappery either. Actual magic. It was the Holy Grail of biochemical research. I don’t recall a single scientific community that wasn’t shaken by our discovery. Of course, our top priority was to stop the Frost. Or at least, find a way to make us immune to it.

“That’s where I stepped in. Norton had me lead what they called the Darwin Project. The next evolutionary step for mankind. The idea was to combine Atrian DNA with our own. It wouldn’t just make us resistant to the cold, but stronger in every way imaginable. Picture it, Larry, a human no longer plagued by sickness or disease or any ailment that comes with growing old. What a fucking pipe dream!”

“Sir?” asked Lawrence, his expression more confusion than awe.

“Of course, it didn’t work.” Roland laughed. “No human was ever meant to have that kind of power. I spent years of my life creating the perfect lab, making the best possible machine but when I finished it, I found that fucking humans weren’t compatible with Atrian DNA. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the fatality rate lower than fifty percent.”

“So, that means, if this machine was used…”

“Half of all humans would die,” Roland spoke with quivering lips. “I couldn’t do it. Fifty percent. I could lose anyone. My friends, my family even. I just… I just didn’t have it in me, Larry. Turns out, someone else did. Someone I considered my best friend.”

Lawrence braced himself to hear his old boss’ name. It was the same name that used to send shivers down his spine. The same name that had tormented him for the last six months of his life. He shut his eyes, tightened his fingers, and bit his lip as he waited for the big man to utter his accursed name.

“Her name was Lisa,” said Roland with a sorrowful smile.

When Lawrence opened his eyes, he saw tears rolling down Roland’s cheeks. Lawrence could hardly believe his eyes. Justin Roland, the man with the unshakable smile, the leader who had built himself up from nothing to create the most powerful brand in the world, was crying.

“She was my best friend. One of the best people I knew. Of all the people in the world who could’ve opposed me, it just had to be her.” Roland wiped his tears with a handkerchief. He sniffed and continued. “It was fifteen years ago. I still remember it as clearly as yesterday. She had a daughter too. Poor girl must’ve been two maybe three years old when it all went down. As for the rest of the Order, we were at a meeting where I brought up the results of the Darwin Project. I said it had to be scrapped. That the cost was too great. They wouldn’t have it. Said they’d rather let half the people die than all of them. Morons, every last one of them. Talking about literal genocide like it’s child’s play.”

“Was that… was that when you ran away?” Lawrence inquired. He recalled Trent mentioning something about a coup.

Roland shook his head. “The plan was to gather everyone opposing the Darwin Project and bring down the Order from within. It was a bloody night. I knew we’d have opposition but fucking hell did they force my hand that day. I still remember all of their screams. But it had to be done.” He chuckled. “We just wanted surrender but, again, they wouldn’t have it. So, I did what had to be done. It was their lives weighed against half the planet.”

Lawrence kept retreating into a corner until he couldn’t back away any further. Even then, he searched long and hard for every last inch he could put between himself and Roland. The cold floor felt like iron nails scrapping against his bare feet. He swallowed and shivered as he looked at the stone-faced man before him. Only now, he knew it as the face of a mass murderer.

Roland clicked his tongue and smiled. “I don’t blame you for being scared, Larry. But always remember one thing, that day the world needed me to be the bad guy. And if I had to do it a second time, you can be damn sure I’ll gladly do it again.”

“W-what happened to Lisa?”

“Lisa wanted to protect her daughter and husband,” he said. “That day, she made a terrible choice. The coup was successful. We’d dealt with most of the members and Norton, well, he had run away with his cronies. And then, out of nowhere, I see Lisa standing next to the activation switch for the Darwin Project.”

“Oh no…” Lawrence said softly.

“I tried to reason with her, God knows I did. Told her to think of the risk, what she could lose, and what will be sacrificed. Every single reasoning tactic inside and outside the book you can think of, I tried it. But she would not have it. Said she’d rather risk her daughter having a normal life than having no life at all.”

Roland choked for a moment. His hands trembled like they had fresh blood on them. “So, I did it. I pulled the trigger. I… I killed my best friend. Because that’s what it took to save the world. And now, her husband wants to destroy everything I’ve created. Every last ounce of research I’ve put towards finding another solution, every drop of blood, sweat, and tears that has gone into finding another answer, a good answer, will be lost if he isn’t stopped. I tried, Larry. I tried reasoning with him. And look where that got me. Fifteen years of research nearly lost and a broken leg to boot. Some people just cannot be reasoned with.”

Lawrence rose from his corner and met the big man’s gaze with large hopeful eyes. “So, what will you do now, sir?”

Roland took a deep breath, cupped his palms, and sighed as he peered at Lawrence with an interrogative glint. “The better question is, Trent’s mole, what will you do now?”