Page 56 of Dark OZ

He glanced over the seat at Thea and then back at Danny. “Did she act like she was hallucinating, too?”

I cracked a chemical ice pack open and shook it. “She was flip-flopping between mauling me and screaming.” The plastic bag quickly became chilled, and I placed it on her forehead before cracking two more and placing them under her arms.

He leaned over Danny, thumbing back his lips and murmuring a string of soft foreign curses.

“It had to be the pie. It’s the only thing I can think of.” I tried to remember exactly what it had tasted like when I licked the filling off of Thea’s lips. Fuck, that had been so damn hot. All I could remember was how badly I’d wanted to trace my tongue along an entirely different part of her body. Stupid fool that I am, I thought I’d be doing exactly that right now.

“Check the inside of her lips. What color are they?”

“You know what this is?”

“So do you, if you think about it. It was the almond aftertaste, but it wasn’t almonds, it was poppy seeds. I knew I recognized something. I just didn’t place it. Maybe if the two of you weren’t so fucking distracting…”

My stomach churned with what he was saying. Praying that they were their usual perfect pink, I flipped her lower lip down. The skin was a deep shade of purple with velvety blue edges.

I was going to be sick.

Nick groaned, seeing what I saw. “Mother-fucking Morphan.” The more lethal, less fun cousin to the designer drug, Morphea. The same drug that Nick’s father built his empire on.

“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “This isn’t happening.”

A string of Italian curses spilled colorfully from Nick.

I couldn’t look away from the how her lips were slowly turning blue. She was smaller than Danny. The Morphan was probably burning its way through her system faster than it was in him. They maybe had an hour. It all depended on how much poison they’d laced the pie with? From how quickly she’d gone from abusing me to pawing at me, it was a lot.

There was so little time, and we were out here on a random stretch of highway.

“I refuse to let her die. Look at her, Nick! Whatever she’s seeing, she’s terrified.” Thea’s eyes shook, tears leaking from their edges. Her mouth twisted into a silent scream, and her fingers tore at the upholstery.

“That’s the dream state, it’s the last stage before the drug sucks you under.”

“That’s not a dream state, Nick.” Thea looked like she was trying to crawl out of her skin. “It’s a fucking nightmare. There has to be something we can do. What about…” My mind was firing out of control, running quickly over everything I knew about the substance. Paralysis followed the dream state. We had to do something before her heart stopped beating.

I shook with the memory of my older sister, Vanessa, twisting in agony on the floor. My vision flickered between Thea and Vee. She was one of the unlucky ones, an unhappy ending to her quick and dirty side affair with Salvatore. She had long legs that opened easily, and he had access to her next fix. It was no surprise the day she made me go to a playdate with Sal’s son or when she brought me back day after day after day.

Salvatore brought the last of his Morphea supply with him when they moved to Oz. The tiny pill swept through the quadrants. People were hooked on the way it made your body feel like it was made of cotton candy and made your lucid dreams even sweeter. The demand for it was unreal.

Before long, Nick’s father had planted tracts of poppy fields. Unlike back in Italy, here they grew in the wildest, most beautiful array of colors. Nick and I spent hours that first summer playing in the rainbow fields.

Everything seemed like it was going perfectly. For the first time since our parents died, Vee was happy. Sal even went as far as to promise an engagement before the next holiday. We were happy. Harvest came and went. The flowers refined down quickly. The entire process only took a couple of months until there was a pretty new pill in hand. One my sister was all too eager to try.

Vanessa was the first.

It was more than the color of the poppy fields that weren’t the same. The soil in Oz held a chemical that mutated the poppies on a genetic level. The Morphea made from the Ozmandrian Poppies came with deadly consequences. Instead of creating euphoric dreams and hallucinations, it elicited terror. Instead of gently falling to sleep, the user fell into a fear-filled paralysis. Their entire body seized, one system shutting down after another until their heart gave out.

“What about what they used on the processing floors for exposure overdoses?” I scrubbed my face, trying to make the memory of my sister vanish. “Maybe that would be enough to hold it off until it burns out of her system.” My shaking hand took Thea’s. It was clammy and limp. “I can’t watch it happen again, Nick.”

It took many rounds of experimentation, but eventually, Nick’s father and the other chemists managed to make a refined version of the drug. The unstable original wasn’t without its uses, however. Renamed Morphan, it was a powerful poison. The best part being that it took very little to be fatal, and in the autopsy, it would read as heart failure due to a drug overdose. Just another junky who couldn’t handle their high. It was the perfect poison. The only visible difference was the slight discoloration of the inside of the lips. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would miss it. In a country like Oz, where overdoses were as common as the flu, medical examiners rarely gave them a second glance.

Nick tapped his hand nervously on the seat, glanced back down at Thea, then yelled, “Fuck.” He spun around, throwing the shifter back in drive. “Hold on.”

Quickly, he tore back onto the road. Flooring the gas pedal. “If we can find a pharmacy, then I might be able to do it. Open the med kit and pull two adrenaline syringes out. We might need it… If her heart stops.”

I pulled open the drug panel and filled two long syringes with the clear fluid. Then I leaned down to listen to her heartbeat. It was erratic but still beating.

“Hang in there, Beautiful. Just keep fighting.”

Chapter 26

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