Brian was a mess.
“We sedate him whenever he wakes up because starts throwing things and blames everyone but himself for the fire. He has a reason to be angry, of course, being disabled waist down, but these screaming fits are over the top, you know?” one of Brian’s nurses told me when I finally saw him.
So now I had to go to the award ceremony alone. When my family realized what I had made, my dad informed my boss, Strio, that I made and saved a working invisibility potion. Strio had known what we were working on, but hadn’t given it much attention, so he was amazed at our work and called for an immediate award ceremony.
I dreaded the ceremony. Even though we succeeded, Brian was right. We started a fire, like he’d said we might. With all triumph must come a tragedy.
We worked with my vocal cords every day thereafter, soothing it with teas and just speaking. My ankle definitely wasn’t healed, so I would walk onto the stage with crutches and a cast.
In no time. I was standing by a stage and a man I didn’t know, was giving a speech about how great of a person I was and how amazing my accomplishments were. “Let’s welcome Anthony Taryn onto the stage!” The whole assembly was thrown together last minute already so unprofessional.
I walked on the stage at the sound of my name, and saw the biggest crowd I had ever seen in front of me, waiting to hear what I was going to say. The applause was like thunder.
Finally, I started, “Well, it’s nice to be here today, but a lot has happened to come to this.” The crowd silenced. “Two years ago, at 15, I was hired here to be a scientist at Brines Laboratory. Since Brian and I had been friends for years and he was hired here too, it would’ve been stupid if we weren’t partners. We decided we wanted to make an invisibility potion, because on a certain trip to the Alps a few months after we started, Brian quite litetallu bumped into an object we couldn’t see. But just because we couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. On further investigation, the thing Brian bumped into was an animal. And it’s foot was stuck in the ice! On the stroke of good fortune, we took its DNA and tried to recreate the invisibility portion of it. The DNA pushed the boundaries of our understanding of the building blocks of life, so it took a long time to get here. But we're here, without even dying..”
I didn’t say it in a humored way, but the crowd started laughing. Once the noise died down, I continued. “Finally, we were able to distinguish two organic compounds that were in the DNA that together made things transparent. But it wasn’t enough. We kept adding other elements to see what would change it, and many helped. The thing we needed was fire. Brian warned me that it could be dangerous, and I didn’t listen. The match we used was dropped when we were so surprised about our success, and it started a fire.”
The crowd gasped in union. “
I was only barely able to save the potion.”
I pulled the potion out of my pocket and showed it to the crowd. There were oohs and ahhhs and gasps everywhere. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Test it out!” Then the whole crowd was chanting, “Test it out, test it out!”
I dipped my pinky into the potion. To the people in the front, my pinky faded and disappeared. For the rest of the crowd, cameras zoomed in and broadcasted the image. Everyone silenced, then all in one they broke into a deafening, vivacious cheer.
I squirmed. All those people made me nervous. The presenter hissed at me, “Who would you like to thank?”
I cleared my throat, “I guess I’d like to thank my sister Taylor and Brian for being so supportive.”
More applause. The man nodded for me to get off the stage. Thank goodness. I muttered another thank you into the microphone and lumbered off the stage. The assembly continued behind me. “Hear that? He was hired at 15! He must be a genius!”
“Genius,” I snorted to myself. “Then every kid must be a genius, since everyone in Caporr is hired to a full time job at 15.”
Along the edge of the stage was a line of security guards. Must’ve been to make sure nobody tried to steal the potion from me.
I hopped down the stairs. When I reached the guards, one of them thrust a sticky note at me. It read, “Join me in my office ASAP. Strio.”
Strio’s office was only a minutes walk away, even on crutches. I hobbled to the building behind the stage. The corner of the building, where my lab had been was crumbled and in pieces. The walls to the building were white. The main door airlocked, and made a satisfying hiss as I opened it. Strio’s office was on the opposite side of the building where mine had been. His office contained a desk, a small wooden chair, and opposite the desk, a bouncy armchair.
Strio said in his deep voice, “Take a seat Anthony.”
“Why weren’t you at the ceremony?” I asked him.
“I hate crowds.” He replied. I sighed, but that was Strio. He didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.
I slowly lowered myself into the armchair. “Why did you call me here?”
“With Brian out of business, you need a new partner. His name’s Rewen. I need you two to recreate the invisibility potion.”
My eyes widened in shock. “But we haven’t even figured out how to fix it!” I showed him my pinky. “This is invisible until further notice!”
“Incredible…” he whispered. Strio waved his hand over the seemingly empty space and hit my pinky. After thinking for a second, he said, “No. We need this potion now.”
“Why?”
“The president wants some.”
“The president.... Of Brines?
“The president of Caporr.” Strio corrected. “And I can tell you, he wants a lot more than one of your tiny vials.”
I noticed something odd. “I.. I can’t remember..”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s memories missing, I can’t remember what we put in the potion.”
“What do you mean you don’t remember what you put in the potion!?” Strio screamed suddenly. I backed away from him, then repeated what I said.
“We need Brian.”
“The nurses told me he’s gone crazy.”
“Well.. we’ll just have to figure it out. You want the potion, and he’s got the memories.”
“I have a feeling you’ll be more successful than I will in convincing the nurses he’s okay. Let’s go. Rewen can wait.”
I hopped in Strio’s truck, and we went to the hospital.
When we stepped through the doors, Capri was waiting. “Do you know where Brian is?”
“No, we were just coming to get him.” Dread started to fill my stomach. Was he missing? He was the only way we could recreate the potion...
“Well, he left, without permission. We assumed he came to see you guys, but if you’re here…”
“We need to get back to the lab,” I said.
Just as Strio and I were heading out the doors, Capri called out, “Your voice is sounding real nice by the way, Anthony.” She giggled.
For the first time since the fire, I went back to the lab. It was in pieces, and Brian wasn’t there like I thought he would be. We needed to keep looking for him, but Strio thought he’d come back here at some point, so we stayed and looked around for anything that survived. Since my crutches wouldn’t have been able to maneuver around the wreckage, I stood in the doorway.
A small notebook, edges burnt but not fallen apart yet stuck out in a pile of debri. Strio picked it up first “Whats this?” he asked, flipping through the pages.
He handed it to me. “I’m not sure…” Then I saw it. Invisibility potion. I frantically scanned the page, hoping for something, anything to help me recreate the original potion, but all the page said was different elements that hadn’t worked. Then a thought popped in my head.
“Is Rewen still waiting for me?” I asked.
“Probably. You better go see.”
Rewen was a huge man, two inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. He was asleep. “Rewen!” I snapped. He awoke.
“I’m so sorry I fell asleep, you were taking so long…”
“I don’t care that you fell asleep. Go home. I won’t be working on any assignments for a while, and it's pointless for you to stay here.”
Rewen’s face contorted in confusion, but he just shrugged and left.
“We should probably take watches tonight, to watch for Brian.” Strio insisted when I returned. I agreed. The night got later, and I took the first watch as Strio slept soundly. No one came by. Finally, around 3 am Strio took his watch and I fell asleep.
ns 15.158.61.54da2
