(Photo by Chokniti Khongchum)

Smythe lay on the floor of the lab, blood pooling rather quickly around his head. Everyone was frozen in place, shocked by the abrupt and unexpected outburst. Chester was only slightly less surprised than the others. Resistance against the neural gel wasn’t supposed to be possible anymore, but mister Hark was living proof that there was still work to be done.

Then, as if the reality of the situation caught back up with everyone at the same time, the necrologists all leapt up as one and began treating Smythe’s injury.

“I’ve got a medical response team on their way,” Chester announced while the others wrapped a gauze bandage around the injury. “Just keep him stable until they arrive.”

“Why’d he do that?” Tamara asked.

Chester wanted to slap her for giving him such a meaningful look along with her question. If no one was suspicious of Chester before, seeing Tamara’s face would certainly give them a reason to reconsider. Fortunately, everyone was looking at either Smythe or Chester.

“Mister Hark’s hardly the first necrologist in the lab to have some sort of mental breakdown,” Chester said, making sure to keep his eyes away from Tamara and instead focused on Smythe. “First with the stress of being the newest member of our team, then taking that big risk with his formulation of the neural gel. Now there are these attacks, it’s any wonder more of us aren’t struggling.”

At that moment the medical team arrived, saving Chester from having to say more on the subject for a while.

“He just stood up, screamed while holding his head, and then collapsed,” Chester told them. He left out the part about Smythe pointing at him, or the fact that Smythe threw himself down rather than simply collapsing, but he hoped he could re-frame it this way and possibly lead any of the other necrologists to doubt what they’d seen.

“Anything else about his behavior today that seemed off to any of you?” the leader of the medical team asked.

“It looked like he was having a hard time concentrating,” one of the other necrologists said. “Maybe he’s had an aneurysm, or a stroke?”

“We won’t know for certain until he’s been scanned,” the medical team lead replied.

With Smythe now held down on a stretcher, they maneuvered him out of the lab and left.

“In light of today’s events,” Chester said with his eyes still on the door and the medical team’s parting words ringing in his ears, “I think everyone should take the day off. Decompress and relax. I’ll make sure psychological trauma counseling will be provided to everyone. See you all tomorrow.”

Slowly, they gathered their things, offering words of comfort or wondering out loud about what had happened to Smythe. All the while, Chester sat at his work station, his mind racing as he tried to think of a way to prevent Smythe’s brain from being scanned.

“Um, sir?”

Chester snapped out of his thoughts and looked around. Tamara stood beside him, clutching her things tightly to herself as if trying to keep them safe. Everyone else was now gone from the lab.

“What? Sorry, I was…just thinking.”

“Of course,” Tamara wavered back and forth before continuing. “I was just wondering, with Smythe, if maybe a scan would, you know, be…

She trailed off and Chester nodded.

“I’m aware,” he said.

“I think the Solar King could announce that he’s found evidence against Smythe. He could be one of the saboteurs.”

Chester quickly thought back to see if he’d told Tamara that Smythe was indeed one of them, but he was fairly certain he had kept that a secret. He’d only shared the Solar King with Tamara so there was no way she could have accessed Smythe.

“That’s a good idea,” he said and sent just such an instruction to the Solar King right away. “We can explain Smythe’s actions as a sort of fail-safe against being caught. Some alarm had been set off and he realized he’d been found out. Then he activated some hidden device in his head which was meant to kill himself.”

Tamara looked like she was going to be sick as Chester spoke.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Well, it’s just, I don’t want to mess up the real investigation, is all.”

“It won’t,” Chester assured her.

He’d elected not to tell Tamara anything about the saboteurs early on and he’d been keeping all of the related meetings and things with the Solar King to himself. Tamara only handled the more regular, day to day business. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have handled more, but Chester had learned his lesson the first time around with Smythe Hark. The less Tamara knew about the Solar King’s, and therefore Chester’s, secrets, the better.

“I do want you to know,” Chester said before Tamara could leave, “that your work, everything you do here, is exceptional. I especially appreciate your willingness to assist me with the Solar King situation, as well as for, um, forgiving me for my own lapse in judgment the other day.”

She bobbed her head nervously and then left. It was hard to tell what exactly she’d meant in that non-verbal reply. Was she still worried Chester would turn her into a drone like he’d done with Smythe? Did she think he’d forced Smythe to behave that way? Did she worry, as he did, about the process not yet being perfected? Did he, Chester, need to worry about her telling any of the others about what she knew? About what Chester had done?

He stayed there, sitting in his chair in the lab until a small notification pinged in his mind, letting him know the security search team had found the evidence he needed in Smythe’s home. A second security team was already at the medical facility and they’d be making sure that all information regarding Smythe would be kept secret. The doctor’s short term memories would be handled with the usual pharmaceuticals, and now it was just a matter of waiting to see if Smythe survived well enough to still be useful or not. There were a lot of things modern medicine could heal, but brain damage was still brain damage and that was an impressive maneuver Smythe had performed.

“How’d he do it?” Chester wondered to himself. It should have been impossible. They’d isolated the earlier problem they had regarding heightened emotional states and fixed it. This was something else.

He called up the data flow report from the neural link for the last few minutes before Smythe’s outburst. There was the steady flow of input from his own neural link, instructing Smythe to maintain his cover as a loyal citizen and to work on developing the new neural gel. No interruptions of problems there. On Smythe’s end, however, there were several spikes that made no sense.

The data flow wasn’t a brain scan, so it didn’t tell Chester which parts of the brain were being activated or what the impulses meant specifically, but it did show whether or not those impulses were in line with the instructions Chester was sending, if they were contrary to what Chester was sending, or if they were unrelated, like if he was hungry or something.

None of the spikes were marked as being overtly contrary to Chester’s instructions.

“That might be good news,” Chester muttered.

It may be that his instructions were just not good enough, or left too much room for interpretation by Smythe. He’d not, for instance, barred Smythe from hurting himself. Chester updated the instructions for the others under his control, not to do anything they knew Chester wouldn’t approve of them doing, and to do nothing that could reveal the fact that they were under his or anyone else’s control.

Some static flashed in Chester’s mind as Smythe’s neural link began to be repaired. He’d have to wait to update Smythe’s instructions and just hope that the added security around Smythe would be enough to keep him and his secrets contained.