Just Desserts

Engees stood, helplessly moping at the smouldering remains of what used to be his testing facility.

Only last night, he’d shared on his Whatsapp status the progress he’d made in reaching the precipice of unlocking the genome in the DNA sequencing of vitiligo. He was on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that was going to reverberate across the scientific world and place him among the greatest ever. His findings, were he to achieve the laudable objectives he set for himself at the onset of his research, could even lead to a full-blown reversal of the patches of unpigmented skin which characterised the condition and often blighted the lives of those who had it. He required only about a week's more work to attain that feat.

But that was last night.

Now, all that was either ashes or cracking embers of fire, the final remains of an all-out conflagration that consumed his entire lab and adjoining sections of the building housing his lab. And he’d refused to use cloud storage for his work ever since the previous hacking made him part with a substantial amount to retrieve his work from hackers. He'd settled for local storage in backed up files on his laptop. And 2 external hard disk drives. He observed, as he looked about, that all the anti-inflammables he installed to protect sensitive materials appeared to have been overpowered by the ferocity of the explosion.

He knew better than to attempt to touch anything. Getting his fingers singed will only worsen his situation and he was already in a foul mood as it were. In fact, “foul mood” was grossly understating his state of mind. It was, at this point, murderous.

Maybe even that understated his state of mind.

He’d gone red in the eyes with the rage building up from his insides. He had a suspect for this burnt-out lab. It indubitably had to be the handiwork of the baddies at LEONA BADRI LABS, LBL for short. They had negotiated with him for the sponsorship of his work when the results of his pilot study gained international acclaim after it was published in the Johns Hopkins Journal of Curative Medical Practice three years before. He’d staunchly rejected their offers – three at the last count – and emphatically told them off when they brought a reworked offer to add him to their staff strength. He made it clear, as he’d done each time, that this was his baby and there wasn’t an offer big enough to buy it from him.

LBL was not used to being rejected. Anyone who wanted to be a force to reckon with in science and tech worked for them (or better put, was bought over by them). And seeing their bids rejected so many times must have rubbed them off the wrong way. So, they must’ve thought he needed to be dealt with. And this was how they believed it had to be done.

Engees also believed he knew how it was that they were successful. It had to be with the connivance of that new cleaner. If only he’d followed through on his intuition and removed that guy from the picture as he knew how to do. Maybe, just maybe, he’d not be in the box he was in now. He clenched his fist, feeding his blood stream with the bile that was poisoning his mind. If he’d simply used one of the toxins in his supply on the cleaner after the man had aroused his suspicions with the way he snooped around Engees' labs, being nosey about what was not his concern, if he’d just served that man a dose of hepatotoxin, the man's liver would’ve brought an end to his sleuthing on behalf of LBL.

Engees breath came in stops now. Even his teeth were clenched. Eyes were bloodshot. Shoulders bobbed up and down in tandem with his infuriated breathing. Those LBL peeps had messed with the wrong snake. And they were going to find out just how wrong they were in due course. His mind was at work already. Maps were being constructed with schemes ensconced in schemes to make them pay in a way that will ensure they knew who was responsible for the mishaps that were sure to befall them soon. It was going to be such that in comparison, the ashes of his lab will look like paradise. Oh, they will hear from him. Loud and clear.

But first things first. Engees unclenched his fist and retrieved a piece of paper from his wallet. That cleaner had to be cleaned up. He smiled his evil smile at the irony as he unfolded the paper to read the contents. Though he had no need of the paper as he’d committed the info it contained to memory, he did it by sheer force of habit. As he went through the options on the piece of paper, he recalled how he’d used a couple of them for some other victims in the past. Each one he’d taken out before had been purely a scientific endeavour. He’d not taken any delight in the affair. It was purely business, in the furtherance of science and nothing more. This time around? He was going to enjoy it. This time, he was invested in making it pleasurable for himself.

He didn’t have the right equipment to expose the cleaner’s body to about 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit of heat. At that level, irreversible heatstroke ensured fatality. He considered exposing the man to about a 40-degree Fahrenheit of cold submerging for half an hour enough to rid a human body of prerequisite body heat but that involved a long trip to the small border town between Lagos and Ogun States where that temperature was engineered in a unit at a facility to which he had access. He went through other options from memory even with the piece of paper in his palm containing all this info. And then, he settled. LBL labs had a training facility just down the street. What would happen if it were to suddenly burst into flames? After all, accidents like the one that his lab suffered happened every day. Now, if the cleaner happened to coincidentally be in the building when it ticked off and blew up, wouldn’t that be two birds downed by one stone? Coincidences, like accidents, occurred every day too. He’d ensure the burn degree went upwards of 300 Fahrenheit and was burning longer than 10 minutes. That was easy peasy.

And then, it’ll be time to devote to the best way to pay the rest of LBL in their own coin. But he knew that was nothing to worry about. He had time. And when he put his mind to it, there was …

“Excuse me, sir,” someone’s voice broke his train of thought.

Engees turned around in shock. His mind was so far away, he didn’t hear anyone come close. It was the cleaner.

“Yes?” Engees fired back in a voice dripping with malice.

The man’s face contoured in confusion at the bite in the voice but he went on. “Sorry about your misfortune.”

Engees eyed him with derision without replying.

The man didn't show he noticed. “When I saw the fire start, I knew I had only a short time to act. So, I dropped everything I was doing and ran straight into your lab.”

Engees frowned. “You …”

But the man was still talking. “I have watched you doing your work and admired your dedication. If things were different, I’d have been a scientist too.” Then, he reached into his thick overalls and retrieved a laptop. “I saved this for you,” he finished as he presented it to Engees.

Engees eyes widened in an admixture of shock, self-recrimination and gratitude. He grabbed the man in a bear-hug. He didn’t even know he was shedding tears.