Page 61 of Natural-Born Cullers

“Okay. Good.” Baseman nodded. “So what’s your suggestion for correcting the process?”

Light stayed level with the petri dish. “Make the magnetite from scratch.”

“With what?”

“Ferric chloride.”

“With the relevance of that being?”

“Once you’ve poured the ferric chloride into a beaker, you add in some steel wool that allows the wool to react and soak up the ferric chloride, reducing the iron (III) ions to iron (II) ions.”

“Because?”

Light sighed. “Because you’re left with more volume of iron (II) than iron (III), and later you’ll have to mix the pure iron (II) solution with more iron (III).”

Baseman snorted a smile. “Excellent.” He tilted his head. “Now can you put all that theory to the test?”

Light straightened, but as he picked up the petri dish, he knocked into a storage cannister, sending it spinning to the floor.

“Bastard.” Instead of picking it up like Baseman tried to, Light kicked it, sending it tumbling across the floor on the back of a louder “Fuck.”

“Light.” Gray eased off the doorframe.

A look came his way, and something else entirely settled into Light’s look, and that look there was where all the problems lay.

“Take the walk back to the summerhouse. Now,” said Gray.

Light’s look didn’t shift from his, not even as the security guard went over. Hands going on the table, Light spread his legs as the guard patted him down, then keeping his look on Gray, Light took off his lab coat and gloves and tossed them on the table. The goggles were chucked in the guard’s direction.

Giving a wipe at his nose, Light headed Gray’s way before pushing through the door. As the guard followed Light out, Gray went over and picked up the tub.

“Ease off. He has far more patience than you had at that age.” Baseman took it off him and put it down. “And I thought I always taught you to wear gloves handling these kind of chemicals, Mr Raoul.”

Gray snorted a smile. “Chemical peel,” he said as he read the label to the container he’d picked up. “It’s actually good for the skin from what I remember on the basics. Just don’t use it beyond what the doctor prescribes.” Baseman had been Gray’s tutor, and yeah, they’d clashed many a time in his own youth. But like with everyone else here, Baseman wouldn’t be around Light if he was a pushover.

Baseman gave a heavy sigh as he looked at the bottle. “That’s not my prescribed medication. Just a test on Light’s part.”

Gray cocked a brow. “Last time I checked, chemical peel wasn’t part of the composition for ferrofluid either, neither is—” He checked a few containers stood next to the chemical peel. “—Acetic anhydride and naphtha. And you want to tell me why they’re not labelled properly, with only their chemical symbol written on it?”

“Like I said: a test on Light’s part.” Baseman flicked a look to where Light had left. “Have you ever observed him work, and I mean start to finish on a project?”

Gray offered a smile, his kind of employed you to do that offer, and Baseman grunted a smirk.

“He makes no notes. None at all.” A frown found Gray. “Like with the ferrofluid, no matter what else I put in front of him, his pure focus is on one thing, and his look…. I’ve made experiments go wrong that you can’t tell are incorrect by any sensory means, but it’s like he hears something I can’t.”

“More sees.” Gray looked at the line of odd chemicals, seeing how Baseman had gone in with disruption in mind to see if Light could still work it out in the mix of chemical symbols. “He’s used to seeing shifting colours with regard to people and anything that makes a sound. The I-dosing opened him up to how he really reads life around him. Same with his music. He doesn’t need to press the play button to hear how good or bad a music score is.”

“Whateveritis that he sees and hears, he’s damned clever, Gray,” added Baseman, “and I don’t mean that as a plus in his direction. He’s tuned to dangerous degrees when it comes to chemicals, but not just that, he was assessed a year back and settled into a second year of undergraduate study at Shenstone University, yet he’s well into postgraduate here. You don’t make that kind of jump in eight months. That means he’schosento play his intelligence down to fit a mould. I can’t understand why.”

Gray glanced back to the door. “He only wanted to focus on the lighter side of chemicals. All that kept him close to family.” He understood that more than most.

“Piece of professional advice off me, then?”

Gray looked at Baseman.

“Keep family close to him.” He narrowed his eyes. “Nature makes chemistry complicated as her natural defence. It’s rare to find someone who can unravel some of her secrets by colour chart alone, so when she creates someone who can, you need to step back and reason why. But let him go…?”

Gray gave a hard sigh. Yeah. And that had been the issue all along.

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