The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 40

Ziggy was cooking. He’d been at it for a while because he didn’t have big enough containers and had to work in small batches. Between every batch, he used his laptop to check up on that man.

The man had arrived early in the morning with his dog and titanic bodyguard. The blond woman was there, but the office had stayed curiously empty for a Monday. It looked as if everyone had been given the day off. That made today the perfect day.

He dumped white pool chlorinator crystals into a Schlenk flask. The faint odor of bleach rose from the open top, but the smell dissipated when he put the flask into his makeshift smoke hood. His kitchen fan had been running all morning. That was his only worry, really, that someone would see the leftover tendrils of yellow-green gas escaping out into the New York sky. Plenty of other toxins went out there unremarked, and up to now, no one seemed to have noticed Ziggy’s contribution.

He attached a pressure-equalized dropping funnel to the tapered top of the flask, then fitted the hose over the flask’s side arm. The hose would deliver most of the gas down to Ziggy’s latest storage container.

Then he donned a gas mask, goggles, and gloves. This gas wasn’t something to fool around with. Carefully, he lifted the measured hydrochloric acid and poured it into the funnel. He turned the stop-cock to let acid drip down on to the pool chlorine.

The reaction was immediate. The solution bubbled and fizzed and released a pale yellow-green gas. Pressure forced the gas up to the level of the hose and the gas drifted down to the storage container.

He touched the vial in his pocket. He had a dose of Algea ready. He would introduce Tesla to his personal goddess of sorrow and grief.

The chlorine gas he was manufacturing would ensure that the man understood the choice.

He stared at the gas. It was a lovely pale color, like aerosolized gold. It had first been used in World War I, but it had been abandoned because it dispersed with the wind and often ended up killing an equal number of soldiers on both sides.

Ziggy didn’t have to worry about that. He’d be using the gas in a contained room, diffusing it at a slow enough rate that it wouldn’t get out of control. It would only affect its target.

The gas was impossible to ignore. Tesla would probably recognize it by sight or by smell. Even if he didn’t, his symptoms would tell him that he had to take Ziggy’s choice.

Either way, his death would be the result.