Michele was conceived against her mother’s will.

The rapist kept the woman for five days in his run-down single wide. She used a Home Depot bucket for a toilet, careful to not knock it over with the chain padlocked to her left ankle. Another bucket with water was for drinking and washing.

On the sixth day, the man tossed a cellphone at her and produced a pistol from the small of his back. He spoke to her for the first time. ‘You would have taken by now if you was going to.’ His voice was high, more feminine than his large body suggested. ‘Call for help. My task is over and done. One last thing, then I can sleep.’

Without hesitation, he shoved the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The rapport was incredibly loud; he stood there for a second or two before his body toppled forward. The back of his head was gone, splattered against the far wall and low ceiling.

The woman sat in shocked silence, her ears ringing, the smell of blood and gunpowder stinging her nose. A loud fart escaped the man’s body, and it startled her, bringing her back to reality.

Mary felt surprise at her disgust for the fart.

She dialed 911.

Eight months and twenty days later, Michele was born.

*****

Michael grew up never knowing material needs. His parents were biochemists who held research positions, with tenure, at a prestigious university. His mother returned to work soon after he was born.

He was raised by hired help.

His needs were emotional. He felt unseen, and even though the staff treated him respectfully, they did so with deference.

He was starved for interaction.

Michael was a difficult baby, and many caregivers came and went. Mary stayed the longest. She cared for him for most of his childhood, from his sixth to his fifteenth year. She brought her daughter, Michele, with her on weekends.

His parents did not mind; they probably never knew. They would say good morning using the intercom in his room, and as soon as Mary was there, they left through the garage.

They left without that knowledge more than a few times, especially after his tenth birthday. Their research was the only thing they ever thought and cared about. They were always working, even when at home.

***

Michele was a year younger than Michael, but taller and much stronger. She never spoke, but she was not mute. She just did not have anything to say. Six-year-old Michael learned this after he teased her and called her a dummy. She took him down hard. Sitting on his chest, with his arms pinned under her knees, he calmly informed him of this fact.

That was the only time they ever fought. After this incident, Michael had someone to talk to on weekends, and Michele enjoyed listening to his jabber. When Michele started school, the bus would drop her off at Michael’s house. Michael was homeschooled and could barely wait for Michele to show up.

When they became teenagers, they knew they loved each other. Mary knew too and often looked at the pair with barely concealed concern. She was afraid for her daughter, worried that her heart would be broken. The class divide was just too large in Mary’s head.

This thing was going to end in disaster, she feared.

She was right, but the disaster was for another reason altogether.

***

When Michael was fifteen and Michele fourteen, Mary was fired. Michael’s parents disapproved of his relationship with Michele and blamed Mary for allowing it. They had a new security system installed in the house and saw video recordings of the two teenagers kissing.

Michael was angry and very vocal about this event. Michele did not say a word. Mary was given a large severance, and she and Michele moved away.

***

Three years passed.

During this time, Michael tried his best to connect with Michele on social media, but she had no digital presence.

When Michele was seventeen and Michael eighteen, she showed up at his house unannounced. She rode a Greyhound bus for two days and walked the last ten miles. She knocked on his window, and Michael let her in without a word.

She spent two days with him before her mother showed up, looking for her.

She left with a cell phone Michael gave her. For the next year, she and Michael communicated using text. Michele was much more verbose when typing and very adept at using the internet for research.

She learned about her mother’s rape and that the rapist, her father, was part of a study at the university where Michael’s parents work.

Michele’s curiosity was piqued. She wanted to know more.

***

Michael’s parents use a server at home where they backed up all their essential documents, and he has long learned their password. It was “qwertyuiop[]\0987654321”. It was not very secure, but his father visibly enjoyed entering it by dragging his finger across the keys of his laptop, unaware that his attentive son noticed.

Finding information about Michele’s father took him a while. The server contained many Terrabytes of data.

His name was Aaron Hernandez, and for a brief time, he worked for his parents as a gardener! Aaron volunteered to be part of a study at the university. His mother, three months pregnant with Michael, managed the effort.

His parents were developing drugs that could be used to facilitate behavioral modification. This research was funded by the defense department. The government has deep pockets, and the defense department has the deepest.

Michael was appalled by what he saw. Twelve of the sixteen volunteers committed suicide. Four others were unaffected and are currently incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay!

All the deceased subjects involved committed brutal acts of violence before taking their own lives.

Michael’s mother kept meticulous notes. These ‘test-subjects’, as she referred to them, were instructed to do the things they did!

There were several videos of sessions where the test subjects were drugged and then told what was expected of them. Suicide was the final instruction, but only after they successfully completed their assigned tasks. The goal of the study was to see how deeply they could program someone to learn the boundaries of the drug. The potential of this drug seemed limitless!

Learning about Aaron and what he did to Michele’s mother shocked Michael to his core.

He searched the files for Michele’s name and was stunned to find journal entries about her childhood in this house. His parents were curious about her, interested to see if she somehow would be different because of the drug in her father’s system. She turned out to be a normal teenage girl, albeit very smart, but quiet. The last entry about her ended with: ‘That little bastard needs to go before my son impregnates her. ‘

This was the week before Mary got fired, and it was written in his mother’s meticulous hand.

***

‘What do you think?’ Michael messaged Michele. He had shared all the files with her. He watched the scrolling dots as she typed her response. The scrolling stopped and started again a couple of times. He expected a very long message, but simply got, ‘They are monsters!’

Michael has always considered his parents as ‘other people’. He felt no love in his heart for either of them. Knowing the destruction they caused made him feel hatred towards them. They care more about the drug they produced than they do about people, including him!

This drug is older than him! He could not even imagine what they might be working on now.

‘What should we do?’ he responded.

‘I want to make them pay, ‘ she replied immediately.

‘How?’ he sent.

‘Murder-suicide!’ she answered, ‘just like their victims!’.

***

The plan was brilliant but straightforward: obtain the drug, administer it to its creator and scribe, and send them on a mission.

The hard part would be obtaining the drug.

Security at the university was good, and the additional layer of protection at his parents’ laboratory was even better.

Michele was convinced they would not have to go there to get it. Judging by the files and videos being kept at the house, there have to be samples of the drug somewhere in the house. Michael’s mother would consider their archives incomplete without the fruit of their labor.

***

Michael started searching the house while Michele was on her way.

She would procure tasers and duct tape, preferably bought at separate stores. Studying the video recordings revealed that many of the test subjects became combative when their sense of right and wrong urged them to resist.

His parents’ quarters were not locked. The decor was sparse, clinical, and very Scandinavian. Their living area consisted of a large bedroom, with two queen-size beds, two separate bathrooms, a large living room and their shared office. Michael found it interesting that they shared an office, but not their bed and bathroom.

He headed for the en-suite office. If they had the drug here, it would be there.

The office had a rectangular desk in the middle of the floor. It looked more like a kitchen island than a desk. It had drawers all the way around, from top to bottom. A lighted square, flush with the tabletop, was in the middle of the desk. It was 12 by 12 inches and seemed deep. Inside a stainless steel tube with a screw top was on display.

It resembled an urn used for keeping the ashes of a cremated loved one.

It had to be it!

There was no visible button or latch to access the tube, and pressing on and around the glass top did nothing. Michael opened drawers, hoping to find a hidden release. None of the drawers were locked, confirming that the tube must contain something valuable.

He considered breaking the glass. Rapping on it with his knuckles suggested that it was thick plexiglass, and he had nothing he could use to break it.

A piece of modern art was displayed on the eastern wall above a small refrigerator. It stood out because all the other walls were bare. There was no picture or painting, except for this: a square made of metal, with three holes in its center, like those on a bowling ball.

He grabbed it and placed it on the square glass with the holes on top. It was a magnet, and as it snapped into place, he heard a loud click, like a latch falling away. Pushing his fingers in the holes, he grabbed the metal square and pulled upward, and the glass section rose from the desk.

***

The glass rectangle was refrigerated. Inside the tube were several vials containing a blueish-green liquid. A name was printed on each: ‘Motivation’. It was the drug, no doubt. The name seemed juvenile, not befitting of its potency. In the center of the tube was a smaller cylindrical object designed to fit the vials. He saw this being used in the video recordings. The delivery mechanism. It is simple to operate: You load a vial and press the end against whomever you want to motivate.

Michael removed the tube’s contents, then placed it back in the glass box and pressed it back into the table. Sliding the magnet off resulted in another loud click as the locking mechanism activated. He hung the ‘art’ back on the wall and went to his room.

Once Michele arrives, they will execute their plan.

***

Michael nursed his bloody nose, and Michele’s left eye was swollen shut. Tasers do not knock people out! It simply locks up their muscles, allowing you to subdue them. They did not know this, and Max, Michael’s father, attacked them the moment Michele let go of the taser’s trigger.

Michele managed to tase him again, the prongs were still stuck in his back, but not before he landed a few punches on them both. It was hard to use the duct tape on his convulsing body, but eventually he was bound.

Ava, his mother, fell hard when tased and offered no resistance.

‘They look like half-wrapped mummies!’ Michele made a rare joke, and an even rarer giggle escaped her. Both adults had their mouths taped shut. There was no room for negotiation, and no quarter will be given.

When Michael produced the tube and loaded a vial into it, understanding dawned in his father’s eyes. Ava must have known what they intended to do all along, as her expression never changed.

They used three vials. After the first vial, Michael removed the duct tape from their mouths. They knew the programming was successful when the two adults started planning their task. They discussed it matter-of-factly, like people talking about the weather or the state of the economy.

Michele removed the tape from Ava, and the moment her hands were free, she started freeing her husband. They were oblivious to Michel and Michele; they only cared about performing their task.

It was like watching a movie. The two scientists got to work and prepared what they needed using the ample supplies from a hidden store room. Ava seemed in charge and gave clear and firm instructions as her husband measured various chemicals and mixed them. Max obtained firearms from a chest, evil looking assault style rifles, and four extended magazines taped together, ironically with the same color duct tape they were bound with earlier.

Michel’s mouth hung open when Ava expertly loaded the magazines, slammed them home and racked the slides. He looked at Michele and realized she had the same thought. They might not have been so lucky if Ava had attacked them earlier. She is definitely the brawn in this duo.

Ava and Max gathered the rifles and carefully placed the tubes of chemicals into a backpack. They went to the attached garage without a word and left in their Range Rover.

***

The massacre at the University made national news. Ava and Max waited all night in the lab. They wore their lab coats and acted like they did every other day, waiting for all the staff to show up, even making small talk. Once everyone was present, they started the slaughter.

Ava shot one of the male scientists in the face. The man was talking to a group of women, their backs turned to Ava. At first, the women just stood there, stunned by the sight of their faceless colleague. When Ava fired a burst of rounds into the back of one of them, panic set in. Everyone in the laboratory ran away from the gunfire towards the nearest exit. Ava did not shoot at the running people, but walked among the desks and calmly executed those she found hiding.

Max waited until most of the staff were jammed against the locked exit door before he hurled one of Ava’s improvised bombs at them.

The bomb consisted of two large glass tubes taped together, each containing a liquid. When mixed together, these liquids produce a powerful reaction. The glass tubes broke against the wall, and the blast vaporized everything within a thirty-foot radius.

Max was knocked off his feet, and he landed on his backpack containing more bombs, breaking some of them. This second explosion killed everyone in and around the 4 story building, causing the building to collapse, destroying most of their research.

***

A few days later, the cover-up started when an unknown whistleblower revealed that the research team was working on a new fuel type, and the blast was accidental.

The site was cordoned off for weeks as military personnel combed through the wreckage, presumably looking for anything salvageable.

Michael and Michele removed everything from Ava and Max’s home offices, formatted the data server and security system, and flushed the remaining drug down the toilet.

***

The authorities descended on Max and Ava’s house. All of them it seemed. FBI, CIA, Military, Navy, local and state police, and even a group who looked like the men-in-black.

They found nothing. The tube was finally retrieved. It took them 8 hours to figure out how to open the compartment. It was full of chilled bourbon, and they tossed it aside, disgusted about the time wasted.

Michael did not want to remain in the house. He suspected that the authorities were spying on them, and they had plenty of time to install surveillance. Michele agreed that it would be better to move elsewhere.

It was his late parents’ house. Never his.

His home was Michele.