It’s Working As Intended

Chapter One Sabotage and conspiracy were easier than Dr. Suzz, cofounder of Layton Corporation, had thought. Though it was thirsty work. Watching empires crumble required a cocktail in the evenings and some coffee in the mornings. Always important to stay well hydrated, regardless of the time. Something about watching her plans blossom and bear fruit made her mouth water, leaving an unpleasant taste on her tongue if not addressed. Still, that was a small price to pay for victory. And victorious she was. The fluorescent lighting of her lab created an unpleasant work environment, always casting flickering shadows and painting her work in a pale light. She and her creations deserved to be properly illuminated, with golden rays of light like those that shone on Mount Olympus. Not that she was comparing herself to a god, but—well, she was creating new species and punishing wicked men. So…not too far out of the realm of reason. But her colleagues, they were appropriately cast in the dim lighting. Petulant, shortsighted, lacking in vision. It wouldn’t be fair to call them stupid—they were some of the brightest geneticists and scientific minds in the galaxy—but “dumb”… Dumb was a good descriptor. When one is presented with the greatest opportunity of one’s life and neglects to fully seize it, that person is a giant sack of dumb. Dr. Terry, a balding man who refused to acknowledge that he was balding, wiped his glasses on his shirt, a move he thought made him appear intelligent. “Dr. Suzz, what are we doing here? I thought we settled all this?” Dr. Suzz tossed her long, dark hair out of her face and over her left shoulder. She pretended it was a whip, smacking across Dr. Terry’s smug, dumb face. “Your ability to follow through is severely lacking, Dr. Terry. As was reflected in your previous performance evaluation, I believe.” Dr. Terry’s pudgy face turned red. “Those are supposed to be confidential. I’m calling HR.” “You do that. But that confidential business doesn’t apply to me,” Dr. Suzz said. “Stop wasting my time. I need to discuss our future plans with the laytonmin.” A short woman with too many piercings in one ear and none in the other cleared her throat in a passive-aggressive attempt to interject herself. Dr. Suzz waited for her jewelry-laden ear to tug her to the side and send her head crashing to the floor. Sadly, it never happened. “Dr. Bordeaux, you have something to add?” Dr. Suzz spoke the heavily pierced doctor’s name with a heavy-handed indifference. Dr. Bordeaux matched the indifference and doubled down, like a teenager who tried way too hard to not give a damn. “What else is there even to discuss? We’ve engineered the implosion of Jasob and StrobeNet. Layton is clear to position itself as the dominant company in the market. We’ve won.” Bordeaux leaned back in her chair like she was a rock star. Dr. Suzz wanted to throw her coffee mug at her. “As always, Dr. Bordeaux, you are only partly correct. StrobeNet has collapsed entirely. Jasob has been crippled and all but removed as a competitor. While that does leave us at Layton Corp poised to take over the market, there is still one competitor standing in our way.” “Chrisoff?” The deep voice came out of the pepperoni hole of one Dr. Brett Dudeson. He was broad and loud and carried sticks of salted meat in his pocket. He stank like sausage and spoke like a professional wrestler. “Those noobs don’t stand a chance. I’ll break them!” Dr. Suzz winced at the sound of his voice. He was the most irritating thing she’d had the displeasure of seeing, hearing and smelling. It was easy to forget that he was a brilliant muta-geneticist. His skills only barely tipped the scale in his favor. “Reel it in, Dr. Dudeson,” Dr. Suzz said. Dr. Terry interjected. “But he’s right. Chrisoff is the smallest of the top companies. We could bleed them dry without even trying. Or we could just send them a crate of ShimVens and watch them get eaten alive from the inside out.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “While it is true that Chrisoff is small game, it provides us an opportunity.” Dr. Suzz projected a list of dozens of small and mid-level companies in the market. “When we take out the big game, we take our share of the market. Eventually, others will try to take some of that share for themselves. We will be challenged…unless we make a statement.” The other doctors looked on. Dr. Dudeson peeled open a meat stick and gnawed on it like a dog with a bone. “The ShimVens and Rapoo were perfect ways to hollow out StrobeNet and Jasob,” Dr. Suzz said. She ignored Dr. Dudeson’s chuckle at the mention of the Rapoo. “But we need to make it known to our competitors what will happen if any of them decide they want to try and fight us for their scraps. We need something more than a discreet box filled with genetically modified pests. We need a monster.” This elicited a round of oohs and aahs. Dudeson was still laughing at the word “Rapoo” as he chewed his meat stick, like a mentally deficient ape at the zoo. The proposal was sound, but it wasn’t totally forthright. Dr. Suzz believed in the scorched-earth approach, that her competitors needed to find a horsehead on their beds when they woke up the morning after Layton took charge. But it wasn’t her only reason for targeting Chrisoff for total obliteration. Nora Soff was the reason. She and Dr. Suzz had once been business partners. They created Layton Corp together. They laid the bricks upon which the company was built, and they’d been poised to become the most powerful people in the galaxy with the unveiling of their next big thing—a genetically modified weapon. But Nora Soff had experienced a change of heart. She didn’t want to get into the weapons business. She left. And she took all of her research and expertise with her, setting Dr. Suzz back a decade. This wasn’t about just crippling and intimidating the competition—this was personal. She wanted Nora Soff to suffer. She wanted Soff to feel pain, to feel what it’s like to have everything you worked for stripped away, and be totally powerless to get it back. To be pushed back to zero. “Okay,” Dr. Bordeaux said. “So what did you have in mind?” Dr. Suzz’s smile was full of wicked delight. She picked up her tablet and scrolled through the files. She dragged the correct one to the monitor for all to see. Their gasps were like birthday wishes. “I call this the lophius.” The model of the creature spun for the doctors to see. All three hundred and sixty degrees of horrible. It looked like a sea serpent, long and scaly. The tip of its tail had two feathery fins on it, and the same fins were found on either side of it. Sprouting from the top of its head was a thin, tendril-like appendage with a ball at the end that dangled forward, almost hanging in front of its face. The ball emitted a dim pulse of light. Its head resembled that of a snake, complete with a mouth full of needle-like teeth. Dr. Suzz breathed in the admiration. “The lophius can withstand the extremes of space and fly using dark energy. Much like the ShimVens, it can attack a ship from the outside as well as from the inside. And, like my other creations, this one is full of surprises.” The model of the lophius morphed into a current image of the loading bay. Two men carried a crate that shook violently from side to side. Shrieks that could crack glass emanated from it. A third man stood by a large metal container, waiting for the crate to be deposited. The two men set it down like it was full of nitroglycerin and the slightest jostle would detonate it. The third man slammed the lid shut, and they all frantically secured it with several latches and locks. The men loaded the container onto a dolly and carted it away. “That container is about to be shipped to a Chrisoff facility,” Dr. Suzz said. “And with it, the total annihilation of my enemies.” “You mean our competition?” Dr. Bordeaux said. Dr. Suzz turned off the monitor. “That’s what I said.” Dr. Terry raised his hand like he was a child in a classroom. Dr. Suzz glowered at him until he spoke. “Okay, so, you called us here to show us this new creation of yours, and tell us your plan, but…you were just going to do it anyway? You didn’t want any feedback or anything? I mean, you already had the guys loading it into the box and everything.” “Shut up, Terry.” Dr. Dudeson slammed his fist on the table. “Hell yeah!” Dr. Suzz pinched the bridge of her nose. “Reluctantly, I agree with you, Dr. Dudeson. ‘Hell yeah,’ indeed.” She walked to the viewport and watched the ship carrying her revenge leave the station.