Azzie's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Azzie lined up her scale gloss on the counter. Twelve bottles. She had spent all night mixing them, one at a time, over a hot plate. Her arms ached. Her display stood empty behind her, an ornate showcase built for fifty bottles, maybe more. Twelve looked like a joke. She could not stock a shelf this way. She could not build a brand this way. Grey pressed the bell for customers she did not have. "You need help," she said. "You need someone who makes things in big batches." Azzie knew one person who did. She grabbed her keys. Vanessa Bancroft ran the lab that kept every calmed monster calm. She was the scientist who turned raw monster tissue into medicine, gallons of it, day after day. Azzie found her at a steel table, filling vials with steady hands. Platinum hair spilled over her lab coat. She did not look up. "I make one bottle at a time," Azzie said. "I need to make hundreds." Vanessa set down her pipette. "Show me your gloss." Azzie handed one over. Vanessa unscrewed it, rubbed a drop between two fingers, held it to the light. "Simple base. Cheap to scale." She pointed to a machine in the corner, a wide steel drum with a mixing arm. "That runs a batch in an hour. Two hundred bottles." Azzie's heart jumped. "You'd let me use it?" "After hours," Vanessa said. "Not during. My work comes first." She said it flat, no room to push. "The supply I run keeps monsters from falling apart. Your gloss does not." Azzie flinched, then nodded. "After hours. Deal." They ran the first batch that night. The drum hummed. Gloss poured into bottle after bottle, a river of it, clear and shining. Azzie filled a crate, then another. By dawn she had two hundred bottles, then four hundred. She stacked them until her arms shook with joy instead of ache. But a woman had been watching from the doorway. She wore a purple dress and hoop earrings, arms crossed, one eyebrow up. Azzie did not know her. "Well," the woman said. "Somebody's busy." "Who are you?" "Nancy. I keep the records here, honey. Every batch this lab makes. Every drop of tissue that goes in." She stepped closer to the crates. "Funny thing. I count what Vanessa uses. And tonight the numbers don't match." Azzie went cold. "We only used the mixer. Not her supply." "You used her base," Nancy said. "Her stock. Her power. Her time." She smiled, slow. "I'm not saying I'll tell anybody. I'm saying I know. That's a different thing." She let the words hang, then turned and walked out. Azzie looked at her four hundred bottles. She had solved it. She could stock every shelf now. But her whole brand ran through a lab she did not control, watched by a woman who wrote everything down and forgot nothing. The shelf was full. The ground under it was not hers.