Vial of Fireflies
When you can't hide the truth, weaponize it.
Alex pressed her back against the rear of the dark janitor’s closet and slid into a squat. Her eyes darted across the sliver of light reflecting off the lab’s wax-polished tile floor beneath the door. The high-pitched hum of silence droned in her ears.
She waited. No shadows disrupted the strip of light. No sounds pierced the silence. Alex relaxed, sat cross-legged on the floor, and retrieved a plastic cross with a vial protruding upward from where the two beams intersected.
She stuck the long end of the cross in her mouth, exhaled, pinched the ends of the crosspiece, and sucked. The coppery vapor washed across her tongue and down her throat. Her body convulsed to rid itself of the burning in her lungs, but she fought against the cough and inhaled the rest of the vial.
Fireflies swarmed her vision.
“No... way!” she said, panting and dropping her hand to the side, sending the plastic cross clattering into the darkness as the Brilliance broke her blood-brain barrier. “I... know... Italian and—”
“Is someone there?”
Alex swallowed the end of her sentence and held her breath.
The squeak of cheap-soled loafers chattered across the lab floor towards the door. Alex pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them as a shadow began to dance along the wavy glow beneath the door, growing darker with each footstep.
Alex shielded her eyes as Sebastian Scott twisted the knob and pulled the door open, flooding the closet with a fluorescent glare. His Ramsey Research Scholars Program badge hung from a lanyard around his neck, sporting a photo of him ten years younger and thirty pounds lighter.
“What are you doing in here?” Sebastian said.
“I have a migraine, so I—“ Alex said, rubbing her eyes. “The dark helps.”
Sebastian noticed the expended plastic cross on the floor and stooped to retrieve the inhaler.
“What have you done, Alex?” Sebastian said, clicking his tongue. “Huffing Brilliance? You could be expelled from the program for this.”
Alex staggered to her feet and tried to snatch the cartridge away from him through the fireflies.
“Ah, ah!” He said, jerking his hand away.
“Give it back, Sebastian!”
“Or what?”
“Samonakuba, omai ha chiimu kara hazusu.”
“What is that, Japanese? I don’t speak Japanese.”
“Oder du fliegst aus dem Team.”
“I don’t speak German, either.”
“Or, you’re off the team,” Alex said as confusion charged across her face.
“Wait! You suck down a top-secret, experimental, mind-enhancing drug, violating every ethical process and safety protocol, and think I’m not going to report it?”
“I won’t let you blackmail me.”
“Blackmail? Never. I’m only pointing out your lack of options, Alexandria; you can either step down, hand me your position, and stay in the program, albeit at the bottom, or you can be expelled, and I may get it anyway. I think my offer is generous,” he said, smirking. “Don’t you?”
“It won’t help you, Sebastian. There’s a reason you weren’t selected to be the project lead. You’re a cog, not a motor. Just let it go.”
“That’s why I’m going to hang onto this,” he said, patting his pocket, “You’ll help me succeed.”
Alex grabbed her head with a wimper and slid down the wall to sit on the floor again as the drug unlocked her mind.
“Ah, poor, perfect Alex,” Sebastian said with glee. “Can’t you handle the idea of finishing college as a nobody?”
Alex moaned.
“No accolades?”
“Shut up, Sebastian!“
“Reduced to an *et. al.* on our team’s research papers?”
Alex gasped for breath. Her pupils began to dilate, nibbling first at her irises and limbal rings before swallowing her sclera whole, leaving her eyes looking as if they were filled with ink.
“O... K... You win. I’ll... call—”
“Wise choice,” he said, tugging at his badge.
Alex pulled her phone from her pocket, tapped the screen, and held it to her ear.
“Hello, Professor Maddox? This is Alex,” she said, glaring at Sebastian as he bounced from foot to foot in anticipation. “I... I took Brilliance. It works.”
“Do you know how to beat a blackmailer?” Alex asked as she ended the call and slipped her phone back into her pocket. “You take away their leverage.”
“Wha—? You’ll... You’ll be asking people if they want fries with that, Alex!”
“I doubt it, considering the vast amounts of funding we’re about to receive. You didn’t think of that, did you, little cog?”
Sebastian grabbed tufts of hair in both fists and screamed in frustration.
“Oh, you won’t be needing that anymore,” Alex said as her eyes cleared. She stood and made a come-here gesture with her index finger. The spent cross ripped through Sebastian’s pants and flew into her hand as she pushed past him and exited the closet.
