Dr. Worthington is fascinated by the life of Dr. Thomas Eakran. He first met the man about a decade ago when he was well into his experiments with parasites. They didn’t work together often over the years of their acquaintance, but when they did, Eakran would teach Worthington ways to stabilize his creations with chemical compounds that made them easier to control. Though Worthington’s association with Eakran had been limited, he was a target of recruitment for the Consortium of Human History and as such, his work and his whereabouts were meticulously noted by the COHH’S spies. The result is a thick file of information that includes details of illegal drug trafficking that would make him a fugitive of the law enforcement following the drug operations along the east coast if they were actually doing their job, and purposefully not pursuing him because of the influence of the COHH.
The COHH has known about Eakran’s secret since 1980 and they have unsuccessfully tried to recruit him for their efforts since they first learned about him, though Eakran is not a man who does well within Earthling organizations.
From the COHH file, Dr. Worthington was able to read all about Eakran’s work creating synthetic drugs that allowed him to seize control of an entire drug trafficking organization, though he was never the face of this organization. Even within the shady circles where the heads of drug trafficking organizations dwell, Eakran is not well known, but he has had personal contact with every major east coast player in the trafficking business since the early 1990s. The COHH was only able to deduce that the man Darker was the former head of this east coast organization before his death because of the amount of time that he spent with Eakran which gave him access to the mysterious drugs that Eakran was known to manufacture. Eakran used Darker as his proxy in the drug world, and when Darker was killed, he took another, a much younger man named Yuri James.
“Where am I today?”
As he buttons his shirt, he shaves in a mirror. He had yelled the question, he is the only one in the bathroom, and his voice had echoed in the perfect acoustics of his bathroom that made it possible to hear him from any room on the second floor of the house.
“Huh?”
The cuffs of his shirt hang open around his wrists and he forgets them when he is done shaving. He tosses the razor on the sinktop and leaves the bathroom.
“Niggas actin’ crazy, I can’t believe it,” he says as he enters his bedroom. He is still shouting. “Nigga had the nerve to tell me I couldn’t fuck his sister. Like that bitch ain’t grown. You know the one I’m talking about?”
All of his shoes are neatly arranged in his walk-in closet. It isn’t a huge closet, but he can sit down inside when he chooses his shoes, and he does; he sits on a small ottoman while he kicks off his slippers and chooses a pair of shoes. His pants hang above the rows of shoes, folded in half on hangers so that he can see the color to compare to the shoes. He wants to wear his red sneakers, with the blood red soles and shiny silver foxing and toe caps that wrapped the bottom fronts. The silver was steel, like work boots.
He slips a hand into one of them and holds it next to his face, smiling as he rotates it before his eyes.
“Where am I?!” he yells suddenly, loud enough to rouse anyone in any corner to the house, on either floor. When he doesn’t get an answer, he pulls on a pair of dark pants and tucks in the tails of his shirt, then slips the shoes on. He rushes from the closet while he buttons his cuffs, and into the hallway to the stairwell and he stares down at his living room. It is neatly decorated with leather and darkly stained wooden furniture and his tv hangs impressively on a wall.
“Where…” he starts and he realizes that he is alone. Then it hits him, “Ohh fuck,” he says and races down the stairs and to his kitchen. A chair is jammed against the doorknob of his pantry door and he pulls it away and then opens the door. There is a young woman, just nineteen years old, sitting huddled close to herself and gently sobbing.
“Sorry,” he says and kneels down in front of her. When he tries to touch her, she jumps and shrieks; her body is visibly shaking. He smiles to himself.
“I completely forgot I had to lock you in here last night. I’ve been yelling at you all morning!”
“Can I please go home?” The young girl asks. “I thought you liked me Yuri.” She slowly looks at him like he is the sun, like she has to shield her eyes from his oppressive shine, but really she is petrified that he will punch or slap her in the face. Sometimes he didn’t like when she made eye contact, sometimes he demanded it. Right now, he is just relieved that he hasn’t killed her. Sometimes he forgets if he has recently killed someone and if not for his housekeeper, who has the day off today, he would have definitely been discovered with a corpse, or one would have been found in his car by now.
“Chau isn’t back until tomorrow,” he says, “and I need somebody to talk to. She told me to make sure I kept somebody around. When I don’t, I tear up the house and she gets mad at me.”
“I wasn’t gonna leave, but you still locked me in here,” the girl says.
“Don’t worry, I won’t need you tomorrow, so you can leave tonight. Or maybe you should worry,” he says, thinking out loud, “because I don’t need you tomorrow, and Chau knows how to disappear bodies. Maybe if you don’t shut the fuck up and go get dressed and be my assistant today, then you might should be really worried. I’m gonna eat some breakfast. In about thirty minutes, I need somebody to read me my fucking schedule and you better be ready in the living room. Chau always wears a nice business suit, you’re about her size. Don’t go in her fucking room!”
Yuri heats up the breakfast that Chau had left for him and the young woman slowly emerges from the closet. When she is standing in the kitchen, Yuri is sitting at the table, eating and scrolling through the news on his phone. The young woman seems to be frozen and contemplating her exit as she stands in the kitchen, but then Yuri says,
“That’s a tight thirty, don’t make me end you. I’ll be mean because you’ll make me find someone else…”
She dashes for the door while he talks and then suddenly, metal bars appear in front of it, like she is in a jail cell. She whimpers and then screams. Then her mouth is covered, a ball gag jammed inside. She struggles at it, trying to take it off.
“If you ain’t professional and ready in thirty minutes, I’m gonna kill you. You can struggle all you want.”
The young woman sobs on the floor for a minute and then she picks herself up and finds the first floor bathroom. She finds clothes in the bathroom as well and she stands in the living room softly crying to herself as Yuri finishes his breakfast.
“He is definitely unhinged,” Dr. Worthington says to Adam and Manuel who are in the employee lounge. Business hours are done and they don’t man the gate after five in the afternoon. Worthington is sitting with a file filled with papers and he mutters out loud as he reviews the information. Adam and Manuel play ping pong and they half listen to Worthington who only came to the lounge to talk at someone who would listen and only speak when asked to do so.
“It’s so hard to know what to believe these days,” Worthington says and puts the file on the table in front of him. Adam and Manuel stop their game. “No, no, please continue, the sound is soothing” Manuel serves the ball and the two are locked in a rally while Worthington paces the room.
“This young man, Yuri James, has a reputation that precedes him, and I don’t know how I can approach him to partner with him like Eakran did. Maybe you two can help me, that makes sense. We will go to Knoxville together, if he is there. But what if the stories are true? What if he can make things appear out of thin air? Then we will need the man, Kevin.”
Adam and Manuel look at one another. They both have strained looks on their faces. The name Kevin feels familiar to them both, but since Worthington scrambled their minds with the hope of stripping them of their memories, they can’t connect the name to anything specific and they both let it go. The leeches dangling from the backs of their heads make sure they can’t remember too much.
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