Abram busts into the doctor’s office reception area, nearly ripping the door from its hinges. Splinters fly across the waiting room, but the Datura receptionist just minds her own business.
Inside his examination room, the doctor hums as he files a folder and tidies a few supplies.
His door flings ajar and smashes the wall behind it, puncturing a doorknob imprint into the plaster. Abram pounces and grabs the doctor by the throat before throwing him on top of the supplies.
“Zalmon runs on subordination!” Abram yells into the doctor’s face. His breath fogs the doctor’s glasses lenses.
“Sir?” the doctor manages with what little breath he’s afforded. He shakes in Abram’s hold. His arms are frozen at his sides.
Abram lets go of the doctor’s throat but looms over him with barely an inch of space between them. “One year alone! One year, for that girl, is more than the expense of three Final Years for seniors.”
“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the doctor says.
“Pardon?”
“Sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” the doctor whimpers.
Abram grabs the doctor’s shirt collar, whips him upright, then heaves him forward and back again, beating his head hard against wooden shelf corners.
“The forecast — for Mahlah Anah. You didn’t update it after I told you to do so.” Although Abram’s voice is calmer now, it elicits even greater fear and discomfort in the doctor.
“I … I’m sorry, sir. So sorry. I’m sure I … I thought I —”
“You’re sorry? You thought? Now we have to wait a whole year. Did you even stop to consider the costs? Let alone the risk to Zalmon if” — he lowers his voice for fear of anyone else hearing — “she passes unexpectedly? The risk of possibly having to silence another?”
The doctor shakes his head profusely. Words fail him.
Quietness lingers.
Then a shift.
“Speaking of silence,” Abram laughs, “perhaps I’ve made the grave mistake of trusting you.”
The doctor panics. “Sir, my deepest regrets, but I —”
Abram turns toward the high, barred cupboard and enters the complicated code into the keypad. “It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these myself,” he says as he reaches in for a tiny metallic piece and holds it gingerly between his finger and thumb.
The doctor tries his luck. “I’m sure there is some logical explanation, sir.”
Abram won’t have it. He pushes the doctor over a stool, and he lands on the patient bed. The doctor struggles to get back up, but Abram’s massive forearm pins his neck to the bed and holds him in place.
Abram’s pressure on the doctor’s neck stifles his vocal cords. The doctor gasps for air while his face turns crimson; blood rushes to his cheeks, nose, and ears. Sweat trickles down his forehead and into his eyes. He reaches frantically for an emergency button on the wall.
“Who you hoping to summon, doctor?” Abram laughs. “Your Datura receptionist?”
Grave defeat consumes the doctor’s eyes.
Abram kicks the doctor’s arm away from the alarm with the steel toe of his boot. Bones shatter. The doctor can’t scream, but his protruding eyes speak volumes.
Abram pinches the metallic chip between his index finger and thumb. He whispers into the doctor’s ear as he slices a razor-thin sliver into the soft bit of flesh behind it. “It was just a matter of time before you let me down.”
The doctor squirms like a fish on a hook. Veins bulge beneath the surface of his skin in deep shades of purple and blue.
“Seems I’m short on time, doctor. I’d have loved to call in anesthesiology.” Abram laughs as he jams the chip deeply into the doctor’s wound, past a layer of fat, and nestles it in a pool of tissue and blood.
The doctor passes out.
Abram lifts his forearm and checks the doctor for a pulse. He smirks and taps his cheekbones a few times.
“Why make things so difficult, doctor?” Abram asks facetiously. “You’ll be all right in the morning, and of course I’ll know it. I’ll know every little thing you say or do from now on.” He laughs again.
Abram reaches into a drawer for a surgical stapler. With bloodied fingertips, he folds two pieces of the doctor’s neck skin together and then pumps a few staples in.
“I’d run through all the Datura rules for you, Doctor,” Abram says, “but you co-wrote them.” He laughs once more as he walks over to the computer and types.
Finally, Abram takes a tissue and dabs away the blood from behind the doctor’s ear. He admires his work before he leans in closer and says, “Engage.”
Abram peeks over at the computer screen briefly, then continues. “Alpha ten, beta thirty-six, delta nine.”