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Boris sat in his dark, gloomy “office” deep in the subbasement tunnel of the old MCV Hospital. Most of the tunnels were closed off years ago when they built the "new" Main Hospital. Recently the Critical Care Hospital had been built and renovations of the Cancer Center and Pediatric Hospitals had pretty much destroyed MCV’s extensive underground transport system. His deep subterranean office was safe and isolated. He doubted anyone knew it was down there. There was only one way in and he had to take two flights of stairs to get all the way down. He always laughed when he passed stretchers he knew had been in the tunnel for over twenty-five years. One stretcher had the skeletal remains of a patient who’d been waiting in the tunnel for thirty years too long. He guessed no one had missed the guy.
Boris loved his subterranean world. Sometimes he stayed there for days on end, leaving only to grab a sandwich from one of the fast food restaurants in the hospital’s atrium. He had an old hospital bed, a television, a little refrigerator and microwave for when he worked late. But far more important, he had his fully equipped lab next door where he concocted all kinds of bad stuff. Boris experimented with antifreeze, cyanide, and plant poisons. They were his favorites. If he ever needed laboratory supplies, he went upstairs to the huge, fully accredited pathology lab and helped himself to anything he needed. Of course, this wasn’t his main lab. That wasn’t on the hospital premises. This was just a lab where he worked at night after his “day” job as a laboratory assistant. His main lab was in town where he kept his reptiles and aquarium.
He moved over to his workbench to the poison he’d be working on. This time he’d made it even stronger. He'd dissolved ten milligrams of poison in a hundred milliliters, or a little over three ounces of water. On a good day that ratio of poison to water could easily kill a thousand adults and probably twice that many children. He rubbed his hands in anticipation. He had a whole new scheme figured out and locked in his mind. He wasn't sharing it with Snake. He was angry with his partner who, to quote the Americans, was much too “big for his britches.” He dreamed of the day he could kill “The Snake,” a man he’d first heard of years ago.
The loud ringing of his cell phone jerked him out of his daydream. He checked the digital display and saw it was Snake. He turned the phone off and decided to take a nap. The seventy-year-old iron hospital bed with the yellowing sheets looked inviting so he hopped in. That’s what he loved about his subterranean hideaway. Nobody would ever find him. Screw Snake. He’d deal with him later.