Supply chain

Posted on Wed Jan 10th, 2024 @ 11:59pm by Lieutenant Acacia Thomas & Marina

593 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Ethics, Morals & The Prime Directive.
Location: Lower levels below Promenade.

A number of various scents rolled through the room, warring for dominance in the tiny space. She was going to have to keep this formulation, as the scent of the mixture even before it had been crystallized was making her breath catch in her throat. That boded well for the sale of the final product. Even a bad batch would make her a fortune, but a good batch would leave people not only feeling good but wanting more. She was not in the habit of selling the bad products, the ones that didn't turn out perfect. She knew people that did, of course all for the love of the bottom line.. She personally did not want to harm the people that bought her product.

Marina had arrived at the very beginning of the process this time, which was beneficial to her as she could make corrections before the crystalization process began. This time, she decided that she didn't need to make any adjustments. She wanted to see what this formulation would come out to without any outside assistance.

This was the time where some poor fool had the pleasure of mixing various chemicals into giant aerosolizer. Looking at him, she knew that he wasn't careful enough in his work to live through the process. Not that that could be expected from him in his current state however, with his fingers blackened and burned from the chemical reactions and various angry lines of red on his arms. He was coming to the end of his service to her.

Good.

He was naked, because he had displeased her, her ire stemming from the fact that he had sampled her wares without permission. While she sometimes rewarded her toys with samples of the products that they provided, theft was dealt with with immediate, almost feral retribution. He was probably in the mixing room given the signs that he was a long-term user. Passive transfer meant that he was likely at overdose levels, for his entire shift. At least he would be high until he died, and she imagined she didn't have too many batches left in this toy. It wasn't as if she couldn't seduce another one into stupid and dose him. However long it took him to fall apart.

Vaguely she remembered that he was a CPO in the engineering department, and that he was notorious for not showing up for his delta shifts. How long would it take them to discover his body when he succumbed to it? Long enough for her to erase her traces on him.

There was a crackle of electricity, and for an instant the acrid scent of ozone hung in the air. A fine particulate powder was raining down from the tiny clouds that had once sparkled with liquid. The room glittered, as if glazed with sugar. The crystalline powder caught every mote of light, as the creeping chemical reaction caused the tiny window that she had built to frost over. Resting a single perfectly manicured fingernail on the window she left a single fingerprint in the icy crystals that were covering the other side of the wall. That Was just enough of a signature, that her people would know that she had inspected this batch.

She'd had to hide, after the first overdose had left a body on the promenade. She was trying to keep an ear to the ground as to the investigation, but she hadn't managed to get his close to it as she would have liked.

They are going to pay...

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