The tall man and his short sidekick stood in the second-floor hallway of DarkWinds, their mouths open in shock. The kids suffering from Sebastian’s secretive experiments would continue to suffer. The one drug that might make it better was too expensive for the citizens of Garland Grove, Chase thought, and Sebastian definitely had Jack Kent and Matilda in his back pocket.
Helen’s brilliant mind was going a million miles an hour. “Come on,” she muttered, tugging on his arm. “We’re going back upstairs.” The look on her face rivaled that of a mama grizzly bear defending her kids. There was no way she would give up this mission.
Chase followed in silence. DarkWinds was eerily empty for this time of day. Not much had changed in the laboratory since Chase was a kid. The hallways were long and clean, and every few feet was another station meant for collecting samples and testing products. It was all coming back to him. The neuro and CT labs were in the west wing, and in the south wing, they handled manufacturing and production. It felt like the few times he went back to his mom’s house to take care of her when she was suffering from her addiction.
For Helen, she hated being back here. In her early years of university, she shadowed a DarkWinds scientist, but Helen never liked being holed up in some dark, dull laboratory. She wanted to be out in the field connecting with patients. DarkWinds felt like a ghost town to her, and not just because the researcher she had shadowed had mysteriously disappeared and never been found.
“What are we looking for?” Chase asked Helen as they moved from station to station, peering at little vials of plant matter and pressed yellow tablets.
“Any papers mentioning Panodipine, headaches, insomnia, or memories. Whatever Sebastian is doing, I bet it has something to do with his Memory Maker.”
“But the celebrities don’t have any negative symptoms,” Chase said.
“Yeah, that’s what concerns me. What if they don’t get side effects because they have money?” Helen wondered aloud.
As she shuffled through papers, Chase jogged to the west wing neuro lab. It was a large room portioned off into two sections: one for conducting MRIs, and the other for studying images on computers. Papers were littered all over the desk and printers. Chase turned over the most recent print-out, and the paper sent shivers up his spine. It was a diagram of a contraption, which could attach to the skull with electrodes. Scientific jargon was typed in the margins. Chase stuffed it into the pocket of his black trench coat, hoping it was important.
When he returned, Helen was skimming a paper about Panodipine. The furrow in her brow betrayed her concern. The drug had a chemical structure she had never seen before, and a short list of side effects that she hoped to study later. She heard footsteps and turned slowly around, hoping it was Chase.
It wasn’t.
“I could have you in jail for this.” A bald man in a finely-tailored suit stepped out of the shadows.
Footsteps came from the other direction, and from across the room, Chase exclaimed, “Jack Kent!”
“You infiltrate my workplace and steal my blueprints, and you don’t even have the dignity to call me doctor?” Jack said bitterly.
“We’ll leave,” Helen said, the Panodipine packet clenched in her fist. “I just want to help my patients.”
“You’re not leaving yet,” said Jack Kent. “Who are you?”
Helen’s courage was slowly leaking out of her. Jack Kent was the sort of famous person who everyone knew and called by their first and last name. “I’m Dr. Helen Wiseland. I did my training here at DarkWinds,” she said, her voice taking on a shaky tone. “That’s Detective Chase Chalmers.”
“Chalmers,” Jack said, his beady eyes lighting up with recognition. He turned on Chase, who stood several yards away. “An officer of the law. This changes things.”
“You’ll let us go?” Helen said hopefully.
Jack laughed and took his sweet time thinking about his next steps. “Two options. Either you both spend a decade in prison, or Detective Chalmers here can do me a favor.”
Chase said, “What’s the favor?”
“I need a man locked up. You throw him in jail, and you can have any information you want. Full access to DarkWinds. You can RUN DarkWinds for all I care! Unfortunately, this man has half the city under his control, including the police department. He’s hard to pin down. You tell the whole world he’s a rat, and his little rat army will crawl out from the woodwork and shut you up.”
“Why can’t you do it yourself?” Helen asked skeptically.
“I CAN do it myself, I just don’t want to. I’m lazy. It’s urgent. Do we have a deal?”
“No,” Chase said. “I’m not going to arrest a random innocent citizen!”
Jack laughed, and Chase was overwhelmed by rage. He stormed forward, reaching for his gun to end this power-hungry maniac who…
“Sebastian Mulgraves? A random innocent citizen? Good one, Blake. I mean Chase. You sound EXACTLY like your father.”
Helen watched every human emotion flash across Chase’s face. He was conflicted, enraged, confused, delighted, and deeply broken. She didn’t know everything that was happening in Chase’s life, but Jack Kent had clearly struck a nerve.
“What’s the decision, kid? Prison food, or payback against the man who wants to destroy Garland Grove from the inside out?”
Why was Jack Kent helping him? Jack was evil. Unless… What if Chase was on the side of the bad guys? He was speechless.
“He’ll do it,” said Helen. She walked aross the room and wrapped an arm around Chase’s shoulders. He recoiled from the touch, but Helen clung on, leading him to the stairwell.
“Next time, I encourage you to make an appointment with my secretary,” Jack said, leaning on his cane.
“Come on,” Helen murmured. “Let’s go finish our coffees.”