Part 16 - May 21 - Coleman Towers - Boston

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Coleman woke up with a pounding headache. He had drunk himself into a state of oblivion the night before. He rolled off the bed and stumbled to the restrooms. Once he had relieved that discomfort, he made his way back to the café. The morning air was chilled, and he wished he had a coat. At the café, he made some coffee at the self-serve counter, then took some of the pastries at the next counter. After helping himself, he sat down at the counter and looked around at the bodies. The headache was starting to subside a little, and he decided to head back to his building and then to the basement labs, where Veer had created this mess.

He trudged up to the entrance of his building, carefully stepping around the bodies. He found his way to the maintenance stairway, which was in the back of the building. He had only visited this area of the building once since it had been built. He took several wrong turns before he finally found the damn thing.

He climbed down three levels to reach the secure lab levels. When he finally entered the dedicated computer room where Veer had set in motion this plan to control the worldwide market, there sat Veer, frozen at his desk, like all the rest of the bodies he had encountered so far.

Coleman glared at Veer, his body slumped over his computer station. Coleman exploded into a complete raging frenzy; he attacked the man sagging over in his computer station, face planted on the control screen. He screamed and grabbed the scientist by the shoulders and violently shook the man, but his screaming, swearing, and physical abuse had no effect on the computer specialist. Veer remained unresponsive. Coleman, his rage finally exhausted, slid down a wall to sit on the floor, spent.

Coleman stared at the programmer lying on the floor across the room, where his twitching body lay still, posed in a sitting position where he had landed during Coleman’s rampage. He studied the body for some time when he noticed the wireless shunt behind Veer’s ear. Wasn’t that the link he used when he accessed his damned program? Coleman slowly stood up and walked over to the man, bent over, and jerked the shunt out of its port. Veer’s body convulsed, and his eyes flew wide open as he gasped in a deep breath. Veer lay there panting and twitching while Coleman stood over him, glaring down.

“What the hell happened?” screamed Coleman.

Veer turned over on his back, wide-eyed, staring up in confusion at Coleman’s rage-contorted face. “What?” he gasped. “I don’t understand.” He looked around, dazed. “How did I get down here?”