Cosmic by celeste, p.19
Cosmic by Celeste, page 19
Inside, the smell is less chemical than mechanical: cold steel, recycled air, and the endless haze of ozone from fluorescent lighting. Everything is painted gray, even the safety posters, as if the color itself has been quarantined.
Celeste signs in at the front desk, exchanges nods with the night manager, a man with the posture of a sleepwalker and a nervous tic in his left eye, and lets herself be led past the security gates. Her badge is still valid, a relic from her first visit years ago, but he walks her anyway, ticking off a checklist on a battered clipboard. At the production floor, he leaves her with a muttered “good luck” and an aversion to eye contact.
The interior of the plant is a catacomb of pipes and pressure gauges. Each workstation is cordoned off by color-coded tape, with the benches arrayed efficiently: rows of clean glass, racks of pipettes, and every surface labeled in the passive-aggressive dialect of regulatory compliance.
She sheds her coat, pulls her hair into a knot, and shrugs on the disposable lab jacket from the wall dispenser. The fit is wrong, made for someone broader and taller, but she tapes the sleeves anyway, then cinches the hood and adjusts the goggles until her eyelashes brush the polycarbonate. She takes a minute to breathe through the mask, to remind herself of the order in things.
A short, neat man in a pressed white coat is waiting at the far bench, cross-referencing two sets of logbooks and periodically clicking his pen like a metronome. She recognizes him from a previous site audit: plant chemist, PhD from Rutgers, rumored to time his own piss breaks with a stopwatch.
“Dr. Bellamy,” he says, his accent nasal and precise. “You know you are early?”
“I have a flight back tonight,” she says. “Let’s get it done.”
He nods briskly and hands her a pair of nitrile gloves, already the correct size.
They begin with the audit, reviewing batch logs, lot numbers, and chain-of-custody forms for every raw ingredient used in the last week of production. The chemist hands her the sheets, and she scans them, marking discrepancies in orange and cross-referencing each with the digital printout. It’s not even a challenge - no missing vials, no swapped lot codes, and no anomalous temperatures in the cold room. Every signature is legible, and every timestamp is aligned to the minute.
Still, she reads every page. It’s the ritual that matters.
When the paperwork is complete, they proceed to the next step. She inspects the reactors, the filtration tanks, and the filling nozzles. There are Cosmic bottles, dozens of them, queuing up in the holding area. Each bottle is hermetically sealed, capped by a robot with more personality than most middle managers, and labeled with a code that traces back to the second it left the line.
She selects three at random, wipes down their surfaces, and carries them to the micro lab.
“Would you like to observe?” she asks, already knowing the answer.
The chemist shakes his head. “You have your own protocol. I don’t want to bias your result.”
She almost likes him for this.
She sets up a shoebox-sized isolation chamber with negative airflow and a laminar hood in the micro room, so new that the protective film still clings to the stainless steel. She preps the work surface, snaps pipette tips onto the auto-pipettor, and lines up the test tubes in size order, smallest to largest. The process is automatic: she could do it in her sleep, has done it in her sleep, and yet she forces herself to narrate each step in her head to keep the panic at bay.
It isn’t the first time she’s conducted a recall audit, but it's the first time the batch in question is hers. Her baby. Her signature. Her name is on every document.
She draws samples from the three bottles, vortexes them, and plates them on agar for microbial count. She spikes controls with known contaminants and sets the plates in the incubator. Next, she extracts a second aliquot, prepares it for GC-MS analysis, triple-wraps the vials, and programs the instrument to run overnight.
She logs each move in the notebook, writing in block capitals for once, refusing to let fatigue distort the data. She eats her protein bar at the hood and refuses the vending machine’s chips and sugar. She listens to the slow hiss of the airflow, the way it turns even the tiniest movement into a weather event.
At 07:16, the chemist pokes his head in. “You need anything?”
She doesn’t look up. “The standard solvents. If you have a clean bottle of acetonitrile, I’ll take it.”
He brings it in, sets it beside her elbow, and hesitates. “If it matters, I don’t believe the story.”
She looks at him. “Which story?”
“That you would spike your own formula. Or that anyone else would dare here. This place is not the city.”
She smiles, brittle. “People do stranger things for less.”
He shrugs, not arguing, and leaves her to it.
The rest of the day consists of repetition: waiting, checking, and calibrating the GC-MS with fresh standards, as well as reviewing the baselines from the previous run. She calls Maya once and asks for a copy of the latest board correspondence. Her assistant forwards it within seconds, the subject line flagged 'URGENT,' but the body is full of legalese and ass-covering. Richard is pushing for an immediate outside review. Thad, in reply, asks for a full analysis before involving the press. Natalie is cc’d but says nothing, which means she’s working on the problem on her own channels.
Celeste puts the phone down, finishes the test run, and looks at the peaks. They’re perfect, no spikes, no outliers, nothing but the clean, signature curve of her own creation.
She waits for the microplates to finish. No growth, not even in the spiked controls.
She takes photos, saves the files, and emails the results to herself, Natalie, and Thad. In the cover note, she writes: “Batch is clean. Will bring samples and chain-of-custody logs in person tonight.”
The phone rings. It’s Natalie, voice compressed with static and stress.
“Tell me you’re bringing the evidence.”
“Already packed,” Celeste says.
A pause, then, “He’s got Thad cornered. At the manor, with three board members. Says he’s calling an emergency vote.”
Celeste feels the world tip, like the moment before a car crash.
“I’ll be there in two hours,” she says, already stripping off the gloves and shoving her things into her carryall. “Keep him on the line. Don’t let him sign anything.”
The call ends. Celeste logs out, signs her name in the visitor book, and strides down the main corridor. The chemist is gone, but she leaves a thank-you scrawled on a scrap of clean paper.
Outside, the day is cold but sharp, the sun bleaching the sky to white. She skips the taxi, walks to the corner, and calls for a car. While she waits, she checks the Cosmic bottles in her bag, making sure none have shifted or leaked.
As the car pulls up, she buckles in, her thumb hovering over her phone, ready to share her findings with the media, the board, and anyone who will listen.
But she waits.
She’ll give Thad the chance to fight it himself. Allow him to win.
She closes her eyes as the driver merges onto the turnpike, the city already waiting on the horizon, ready to eat them both alive.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The study is the one room in the manor that always feels too full, even when empty. Tonight, it is packed to the rafters: Richard, three board members, a lawyer in a slate suit, and Thad, the reluctant epicenter of their collective attention. The lamps cast sharp shadows against the wainscoting. The curtains are drawn, thick enough to deaden the streetlights and the last traces of evening.
Richard stands by the fireplace, one hand propped on the mantle, the other holding a glass of club soda. The pose is casual, but his eyes are surgical, already dissecting the outcome. On the coffee table, a manila folder with binding clips and a stack of loose-leaf printouts; on top, a letterhead so expensive you can see the watermark from three feet away.
Thad sits in one of the armchairs, its brocade cushions still holding the ghost-shape of his mother. He’s still wearing the same jeans and Henley from the morning, but someone has convinced him to put on a navy blue sports coat, too broad at the shoulders, with sleeves rolled up as if he’s allergic to formality. He picks at the frayed seam of the cuff while Richard talks.
“Let’s not pretend this is a surprise,” Richard says, smiling for the benefit of the board. “We all know how difficult the past year has been for you. The press, the product line, the transition. No one blames you, Thaddeus. But the board agrees the best way forward is a professional hand guiding day-to-day operations.”
Thad’s fingers drum an agitated rhythm on the armrest.
“Sign these,” Richard says, sliding the folder across the table, “and you retain your equity, your figurehead role, and the ability to weigh in on major strategic decisions. Meanwhile, the grownups,” he pauses, glances at the lawyer, “run the company in your name. Win-win.”
The board members serve as the supporting chorus, each playing their respective roles. The silver-haired woman with a sharp voice nods, eyes flicking from the documents to Thad’s face as if measuring the odds he’ll sign. The man in the tortoiseshell glasses offers a half-smile, the kind that says, 'I hope you do the right thing,' meaning the thing we have already agreed upon. The third, a finance professional in an expensive shirt open at the collar, tries for empathy and ends up somewhere between an apology and a threat.
Thad leaves through the documents. The language is velvet, but the implications are iron: total control over product, marketing, R&D, and even the right to change their title if they so choose. He is a mascot, a logo, and a walking footnote.
He looks at the lawyer. “What happens if I don’t?”
The lawyer shrugs, all the warmth of a desktop calculator. “Nothing tonight. But if the board determines you’re acting against the best interests of the company, they can call a vote of no confidence. You’d lose most voting privileges.”
“So this is this? A courtesy?”
Richard’s smile is all teeth. “Think of it as a gentle nudge in the right direction.”
The woman on the board adds, “You could always form a different company, but you’d be locked out of the branding, the IP, the legacy. We want to keep you in the family, Thaddeus.”
He is supposed to be grateful.
He stares at the pages, the words swimming, then steadies his gaze on the painting above the fireplace. His mother, done up in oil and pigment, hair wild, eyes fixed on some distant future only she could see. For a moment, he could almost hear her voice, the way she’d cut through pretense and tell him to “stop feeling sorry for yourself and do the thing you actually want to do.”
He wonders, not for the first time, if he has something he actually wants to do.
Richard pours himself another glass. “Thad, we’re not your enemy. We all want what’s best for Chic Alchemy. No one expects you to do this alone.”
The words hang, sticky, and sweet.
Thad sets the pages on the desk and stands. The movement is too fast; the chair scudds back and nearly topples. He paces the length of the rug, hands in pockets, then turns to face the room.
He opens his mouth, but the words don’t come. Instead, there’s only the tightness in his chest and the sound of his own heartbeat, dull and massive.
The finance guy breaks the silence. “You don’t have to decide tonight. But the sooner, the better, for all of us.”
Thad nods, the gesture a sign of surrender.
Richard claps him on the shoulder as he heads for the door, gripping a little too tightly. “Take some time. Sleep on it.”
Thad barely makes it to the hall before his hands start to shake. He stands there, back to the room, breathing through his teeth and blinking away the heat in his eyes.
Behind him, the voices pick up again, small, satisfied, the sound of a done deal.
Above the fireplace, Jocelyn’s gaze stays fixed, unwavering, on her son’s receding silhouette.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
It’s well past midnight when the taxi deposits Celeste at the curb. The manor is a black silhouette against the February haze, its windows dark but for the faint glow from the east wing. She hauls her carryall to the door and doesn’t bother to ring the bell. Her key still works, the kind of detail Jocelyn would have seen as both a security risk and a gesture of trust.
Inside, the silence is total. No staff, no music, the distant pop of radiators, and the wet tick of snowmelt dripping from the eaves. She crosses the marble foyer, her footsteps echoing up the stairwell, and follows the only light to the study.
Thad is there, curled in the old leather chair, a glass in his hand and the decanter still sweating on the side table. He’s hunched forward, tie loosened to a noose, eyes red and unfocused. The papers on the desk are spread like the detritus of a failed experiment.
He doesn’t look up when she enters.
“Did you do it?” she asks.
He shrugs. “I didn’t sign. But I didn’t sign. They’re giving me until morning.”
Celeste sets her bag down and moves to the desk, scanning the pages. It’s exactly as she expected: a coup in legalese, the softest possible knife to the heart.
“You should eat something,” she says, mostly to buy time.
He snorts. “Is that a French thing? Confrontation means croissants?”
She sits on the edge of the desk. “I brought you proof,” she says, lifting the ziplock of sealed vials from her bag. “Cosmic is clean. No one can argue the data.”
He looks at the vials, then at her, then away.
“It won’t matter,” he says. “They don’t want science. They want a brand. A face. And mine’s already been memed to hell.”
“Brands are fiction,” she says. “Science is fact.”
At some point, the night stops pretending to be night and becomes the liminal hour, too late for sleep, too early for breakfast, the manor holding its breath between one kind of disaster and the next. The fire in the study has burned down to a bed of embers, casting a red glow that’s less illumination than the memory of it. Celeste and Thad are still at the desk, the dregs of their planning notes scattered in a half-moon around the whiskey bottle.
It happens fast, with no orchestration, no foreshadowing, a shift in gravity that pulls them closer than the air between their bodies can buffer.
Her teeth catch his lip, and there’s a heartbeat of surprise before it becomes deliberate, slow, then urgent, then something that can only be described as a hunger that’s been starving for years. He tastes like whiskey and exhaustion and the mineral tang of fear, and she knows she’s probably giving as good as she gets.
She’s never seen him this way, unguarded and feral, the mask of self-loathing gone and replaced by something rawer. He slides his hands into her hair, fists tight at the base of her skull, and yanks her forward until she’s straddling his thigh, knees biting into the cushion. The force is almost violent, but never cruel, like he needs proof that the world is still real, that she is, and that he hasn’t hallucinated this entire night.
She bites back a sound, digs her nails into his shoulders, and answers with her mouth.
Thad moves her to his lap, the old chair creaking in protest as their bodies wrestle for purchase. She feels the length of him, hard through the denim, and grinds down until his breath falters. He doesn’t bother with finesse. His hands fumble with the buttons of her blouse, tearing one loose and popping the next two in a rush to get to her skin.
She shrugs the blouse off, bares her chest, and arches her back to make him reach for it. He does, palms splaying over the curve of her ribs, then thumbs circling her nipples until she gasps. He bends his head, mouths her left breast, tongue flicking the tip, teeth grazing shy of pain.
It’s messy, almost transactional, but when she claws at his belt and gets it undone, he laughs, a quick, nervous sound that makes her smile even as she’s shoving his pants down. He hitches her up, lifts her enough to slide his cock free, and she wraps her hand around him, feeling the heat and pulse and slickness at the head. She positions herself, hikes her skirt, and rides him until she’s sinking down on him in a single, desperate slide.
The sensation is instant, nuclear, her cunt already wet enough that the only resistance is the shape of him, the fit, the way he fills her so completely she has to squeeze her eyes shut to process it.
He grips her hips and guides her up and down, but she takes over, using his body like leverage. The chair rocks, the desk rattles, and a pen rolls to the floor. He leans back and watches her move, his eyes black in the low light.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says, voice rough.
She laughs, leans in, kisses him until neither of them can breathe, and then bites his ear hard enough to mark him.
He swears and fucks up into her, faster, until she’s clutching his shoulders for balance, the edge of the desk digging into her spine. She’s close, has been close for minutes, the tension wound tight from days and months of waiting, and she lets herself go, moaning as the first wave hits. She clenches around him, milking his cock, and he groans, fighting for control.
He comes a few strokes later, shuddering, face buried in her neck. She feels the heat flood inside, then trickles out as she lifts off him, thighs trembling.
For a second, there’s only their ragged breathing and the sound of the fire.
She slides off his lap, kneels between his legs, and licks him clean. He strokes her hair, gentle now, the violence gone. She kisses her way up his chest, neck, and jaw until they’re face to face again.
He pulls her into a hug, tight, like he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he lets go.
“You’re not leaving,” he says, a statement, not a question.
“Not a chance,” she replies.
They move to the floor, collapsing onto the fur rug before the fire. She curls against him, head on his chest, and he strokes lazy circles on her back. The cold drafts from the windows can’t touch them here.
“Tomorrow’s going to be hell,” he says.
