Chapter 106. Demoralization
"Selina, do you realize you're looking at those lab techs the way a starving cat looks at terrified mice?" I asked without taking my eyes off my steak, my voice calm and completely matter-of-fact.
"I'm just looking out for your comfort, actually," she said with a dismissive wave, her sharp, appraising gaze continuing to sweep the cafeteria as though she were browsing for the juiciest, easiest prey. "One of those young geniuses would make the perfect guinea pig for your new ability."
"Selina, I was willing to let the Pentagon volunteers slide," I said, carefully setting my fork and knife on the edge of my plate before fixing my eyes on her. My voice turned firm enough to pull her attention away from the hunt. "If there are flag-waving patriots out there who are happy to suffer for their country, that's their choice. But what you're doing now crosses a line. Making your employees do things that aren't part of their job description is a straightforward abuse of authority."
"Tom, what got into you?" She shot me an irritated look, then covered her mouth with an elegant hand, barely suppressing a laugh. "Oh, I get it! Your traumatic office memories are kicking in. Let me guess, your awful boss used to make you change the light bulbs in the restroom and haul water coolers around? You poor thing..."
By the end, her voice dripped with exaggerated, theatrical sympathy. She even reached over and gently patted my head like a mother comforting a first grader who had just fallen off a bike.
"No, nobody ever dumped the janitor's work on me," I replied evenly, without so much as flinching or acknowledging the jab. "But I worked overtime all the time because management buried our department under more work than anyone could reasonably handle. I couldn't say no because I was terrified of losing my job and falling behind on my mortgage. So I know exactly how those kids feel when you're planning to use them as test subjects."
"There you go again, making me out to be the villain." Selina let out an exaggerated sigh and folded her arms across her chest. "When, if we're being honest, the only real bad guy at this table is you."
"Give me one good reason."
"Who was planning to test [Demoralization] on a completely innocent homeless guy just a couple of hours ago?" She put on an expression of sincere disapproval. "Picture it. The guy's minding his own business, sleeping on a park bench, finishing the last sip from a discarded beer can, enjoying a beautiful day. Then you show up, looking all sneaky, and without asking, you shove the poor man into an existential depression. Tell me that isn't pure villain behavior."
"First, the mental effect lasts exactly sixty seconds," I replied in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. "Second, I would've left him a ten-dollar bill to make up for the inconvenience."
"Oh, listen to that. Now we're making excuses." Selina smiled with smug satisfaction as she leaned closer. "Not so fun getting called out for having double standards, is it? I have to listen to your lectures all the time."
"You still haven't given me a single legitimate argument," I said, refusing to budge. "You're still planning to pressure one of your employees into participating in an experiment."
"You make it sound like I'm about to lock someone in a steel cage and starve them," she said, rolling her eyes.
"For an ordinary employee, an order from the boss can feel exactly like a cage."
"All right, enough with the pointless debate." She dismissed the subject with a graceful wave of her hand. "If I find a lab tech who volunteers without any pressure or threats, will you finally let this go and stop complaining?"
"Only if there's no hidden pressure and not even a hint that saying no could cost them their job."
"Oh, Tom, please." She lifted her chin with effortless confidence. "I'm not some cheap businessman squeezing free labor out of people through fear. I'm a respected scientist and an incredibly attractive woman. I don't need intimidation to get what I want."
There was an obvious loophole in that logic, and I almost pointed out that emotional manipulation and seduction ought to be off-limits too. Then I stopped myself. In the end, there was not much difference between someone willing to sacrifice themselves for their country and someone willing to do it for the smile of a beautiful woman. Either way, the "hero" was acting out of pure foolishness.
Selina froze like a cougar waiting in ambush, scanning the cafeteria where the junior staff were devouring their lunches like pigeons swarming over bread crumbs in a park.
Finally, her gaze landed on a loud group of guys who looked about twenty. One of them, whose appearance and mannerisms reminded me uncannily of a slightly older Ted, was enthusiastically telling everyone within earshot about how he'd picked up a real supermodel at a bar over the weekend. The story was packed with cheap swagger and had no value beyond ordinary youthful bragging.
"Hey, you! The guy making enough noise for the whole cafeteria!" Selina called out in the crisp, commanding tone of someone used to being obeyed.
The room fell silent instantly, and every conversation stopped.
The storyteller froze, then awkwardly pointed at his own chest, all his swagger evaporating in an instant.
"Yes, you, smart guy," she confirmed with the faintest hint of mockery. "Come over here."
"Sure thing, boss. What's up?" The young man stood, casually brushed off his lab coat, and sauntered over with the relaxed swagger of someone who thought confidence could solve anything. Without waiting for an invitation, he dropped into the empty chair.
Maybe he'd been caught off guard for a second, but he was clearly the kind of guy who relied on sheer audacity to get through life.
"Remind me of your name and what department you're with," Selina said, studying him with a piercing look.
"Steve. Radio Engineering and High-Frequency Systems," he answered, trying to sound as casual as possible.
"Excellent, Steve. I've got a very tempting offer for you." Selina tilted her head ever so slightly and flashed him a perfectly aimed flirtatious smile. "How would you like three fully paid days off?"
"Seriously?" Steve grinned and leaned closer. "Only a complete idiot would say no to that."
"I like the way you think." She nodded with satisfaction. "You'll have to earn it, though. Nothing dangerous. I just need to record a few dynamic readings of your brain activity. It'll take about five minutes."
"Is it gonna hurt?" Steve narrowed his eyes as a flicker of self-preservation finally surfaced.
"For exactly one minute, you're going to feel... let's just say, not very good," Selina answered honestly, her pleasant smile never fading. "After that, you're free to go. Pack up and head home."
"Wait, right now? I don't even have to finish my shift?" Steve laughed, slapped the table, and grinned from ear to ear. "Hell, I'm in! Where do I sign?"
"I knew I wasn't wrong about you being practical." Selina smiled and glanced at her phone. "Be in Room 208 at exactly three o'clock. Don't be late."
"You got it, Miss Langstrom!" Practically bursting with excitement, Steve hurried back to his coworkers to brag about the unexpected stroke of luck that had just fallen into his lap.
Selina, meanwhile, looked even more pleased with herself.
"See, Tom? No pressure. No intimidation," she said with quiet satisfaction, leaning back in her chair. "The right financial incentive can solve just about anything."
There was no point arguing. I'd seen enough in the corporate world to know one simple truth: everyone has a price. The only question is what kind of compensation gets them to say yes.
About an hour later, an express delivery van rolled up to the main gate of the engineering complex. After pocketing a two-hundred-dollar bonus for the rush delivery, the courier unloaded several large cardboard and wooden crates right at the entrance.
"Why are you all just standing there?" Selina seemed to appear out of nowhere in front of the boxes, her arms folded across her chest. "Were you expecting me to carry all this myself? Get everything to Room 208. Now."
"Yes, ma'am!" the guards answered in unison.
The gate detail, a couple of janitors who happened to be free, and I, the only person present without clearly defined responsibilities, spent the next half hour as an impromptu moving crew.
The next hour disappeared into unpacking, assembling, and calibrating the equipment. Selina worked with cables, sensors, and software with remarkable precision. Considering how calmly she had treated my injuries and performed the alien autopsy, the fact that she had extensive medical training did not surprise me in the slightest.
At exactly three o'clock, someone knocked on the door to Room 208.
"Whoa... Is that a real MRI with built-in EEG?" Steve stopped in the doorway, staring at the scanner's gleaming housing. "I've been working here for over a year, and I had no idea we had equipment like this."
"Stop admiring it and stop wasting time," Selina said without taking her eyes off the control monitor. "Take off anything metal, your belt, your watch, then lie down on the table."
"Yeah, I know how an MRI works," Steve said as he quickly unclasped his watch and set it on a nearby cabinet. "But you said I'm gonna feel awful for about a minute. What exactly does that mean?"
"See that grumpy guy standing by the wall?" she said, nodding casually in my direction while continuing to enter scan parameters. "He's the one who's going to make you feel awful."
Steve froze halfway through unbuckling his belt and stared at me with obvious unease.
I swallowed my irritation. Even in the middle of a serious experiment, Selina could not resist tossing out a deliberately misleading joke just to watch someone's reaction.
"I'm not going to lay a finger on you," I said evenly, stepping away from the wall. "The effect is entirely mental. There won't be any physical contact."
Steve relaxed a little, although the suspicion in his eyes never completely disappeared. Still, he clearly was not about to walk away from three paid days off.
Stripping down to his underwear, Steve lay on the narrow examination table. Selina pressed a key, and the motor smoothly slid the platform into the scanner. The pumps hummed softly, and the first three-dimensional images of his brain appeared on the central monitor.
"Steve, how are you feeling?" Selina called.
"Doing fine. Ready when you are," Steve answered cheerfully from inside the scanner.
Selina gave me a brief nod. It was time.
I fixed my eyes on Steve's feet sticking out of the scanner and activated [Demoralization] for the first time. It felt nothing like releasing S-Power. Instead, a dense, tightly focused pulse of psychic energy burst from somewhere deep inside my mind and shot straight toward its target.
"Hell... I feel awful," Steve's voice instantly lost all its energy, becoming flat and heavy. "Everything's buzzing... The walls are closing in... Get me out of here. I want out!"
"Hold still!" Selina barked, carefully watching the dramatic spikes racing across the data displays. "If you ruin the scan by moving, you'll lose your bonus and your days off!"
I kept my eyes on the monitor. The instant my ability activated, dark, pulsing regions of reduced activity bloomed across the projection of Steve's cerebral cortex. Exactly sixty seconds later, they vanished as abruptly as they had appeared.
Selina kept Steve inside the scanner for another five minutes, running a series of follow-up tests. Once she confirmed that his neural activity had returned to normal, she shut the system down and rolled the table back out.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Fine... if you're asking about my health." Steve climbed off the table and hurriedly got dressed, throwing wary sidelong glances in my direction.
"What about mentally?" Selina was already typing notes into her phone. "Tell me exactly what you experienced."
"I remember everything, but... it feels like it happened to someone else." Steve paused, searching for the right words. "You know when you get completely wasted, and the next morning your friends tell you about all the stupid stuff you pulled? You vaguely remember it happened, but you know you'd never have acted that way if you'd been sober. Just thinking about it makes you feel incredibly ashamed."
"So it felt like being drunk? Interesting." Selina thoughtfully bit her lower lip. "How would you describe the emotional state itself? Anxiety? Apathy?"
"Dread." He scratched the back of his head while buttoning his lab coat. "That sick, creeping kind of dread. Like you're about to make the biggest mistake of your life and ruin everything. All I wanted to do was hide in a corner or run away before anyone saw me."
"That's fascinating."
Selina questioned him for another fifteen minutes, squeezing every last detail from his memory until she finally ran out of follow-up questions.
"See you Monday, Miss Langstrom," Steve said hurriedly before practically rushing out the door, clearly wanting to put as much distance between himself and me as possible.
"So, what's your take?" I asked as I walked over to the desk and studied the complex brain scans.
"It's too early to draw any real conclusions," she replied without taking her eyes off the neural activity maps. "I need a representative sample. At least three or four more tests on different personality types."
"And you've actually got time for all this? Doesn't your real work need your attention?"
"Tom, this is my real work," she replied sharply without even turning around. "Any anomaly can lead to a scientific breakthrough, especially one tied to your biology. I made a dozen discoveries just by analyzing your immune system."
"Since I've apparently done so much for your research," I said evenly, "isn't it about time I started seeing some returns? I'm talking about helping me with my next stage of evolution."
"To submit an official request for biomaterial from awakened Loz'an specimens, I'll need approvals from a whole stack of agencies," she said with a dismissive wave, still absorbed in the data. "That'll take anywhere from a couple of days to a week. I'll call you once the containers arrive at the main gate."
"I don't need alien biomaterial, Selina. I'm interested in the natural evolution of the human body."
"Natural?" Her fingers stopped over the keyboard, and she slowly turned to face me.
This time, I had her full attention.