Carla patted on one final sweep of powder and gave herself a critical look in the mirror. Not bad for someone who’d skipped a night of sleep. A few eye drops to remove the red, concealer to remove the dark circles and voilà! Fresh as a daisy. At least, that’s what the outside world would think.
She left her room early, intending to get breakfast before she reported to building eight. But as she walked on the pathway toward the caf she remembered the purpose of building eight and felt a surge of dread, thick and hot like lava, oozing into her stomach and taking with it any remnant of an appetite. She swallowed back a rush of bile and sat down on a nearby bench. She was flushed with heat and sent a silent prayer of thanks heavenward that she hadn’t forgotten her deodorant. She sat for several minutes, getting her breathing under control, when Lisa Martin walked by.
“Carla?” She stopped and leaned down, peering intently at her. “Are you all right?” She frowned with concern, shoving wavy brown hair behind her ears as she took a place on the bench. “You don’t look well at all.”
Carla gave her a weak smile. “I’m fine.”
“You’re white as a sheet. Should I get you some water?”
“No, it’s okay.” She shook her head. “If you could just sit here for a minute I’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course!” Lisa sat back on the bench and eased Carla back as well. “Just rest here for a minute. You look kind of like you’ve had a scare.”
“Well, I have, in a way.” Carla let out another breath, feeling once more under control. “Listen, I don’t want to make you late. If you could just point me in the right direction to get where I’m going, I’ll be fine.”
“It’s no problem for me to walk you there, Carla,” Lisa said as they both rose. “It’s not exactly like we’re on the clock around here. Where are you headed, anyway?”
“Building eight.”
“That’s where I’m going! C’mon, I’ll show you.” Lisa’s enthusiastic smile reached all the way to her warm brown eyes.
They turned onto a path toward the building. “So you’re seeing the snakes today. Wow. I’m impressed.”
“Impressed?”
“Definitely.” Lisa let out a whistle. “Jackson usually makes interns wait a lot longer and do more beyond what you’ve done before they’re allowed anywhere near the cobras.”
“Guess I’m lucky,” Carla replied. Was Jackson giving her some weird kind of punishment for last night, secretly blaming her for what happened? He knew her deep fear of snakes. It seemed far-fetched, but she couldn’t help but wonder.
Carla took a deep breath; let it out. “Actually, the snakes are what caused my reaction back there.”
“The snakes? What do you mean?”
“I’m afraid of them.”
“You are?”
“Yes. Very.”
Lisa stopped walking. “Then what in the world are you doing here?”
She explained the purpose of the fear assignment, not surprised to see confusion washing over Lisa’s face.
“Huh.” Lisa frowned. “Well, I’ll be. So what happens if you can’t control your fear?” “Nothing good.”
“Wow, so this is a big deal, then?” “You could say that.”
They resumed walking, Lisa turning them off the main path and toward a low, white building nestled among soaring live oaks.
“That’s building eight. The enclosure for the snakes is behind it; you can’t really see it from here. But the main entrance for the enclosure is through the building. There are other entrances around the perimeter, but those are generally used just for emergencies.”
They walked up the few steps to reach the front door and stepped inside. The room they entered was filled with row after row of computers and printers, an enormous server room off to the side, and countless large monitors, like in a TV newsroom, mounted to the walls.
“Very high tech,” Carla commented as they found seats in front of a couple of monitors.
“It’s the best in the country,” Lisa said as she began studying the data on the screen. “Jackson’s invested a fortune in this facility, and it shows. We all feel really lucky to work here.”
“He told me all of you believe in his cause, finding a cure for MS.”
“Absolutely.” Lisa nodded with enthusiasm. “There’s so much research showing king cobra snake venom’s unique properties could be used toward a cure. We just have to find it.”
Her energy and unshakeable conviction were catching, and for the first time since she arrived, Carla found herself having some curiosity about the snakes instead of just pure dread.
“So how does this all work?” she asked Lisa. “Can you show me?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Lisa said with a bright smile. “We rotate shifts in this facility and I’m here all day today, so I’m all yours. Come on, let me give you a tour of what we do.”
For the next two hours, Carla was rapt with awe as Lisa took her through the monitoring system, record keeping, and data analysis that happened in building eight. She pointed out the sterile room where they kept some of the venom samples, how they needed to be stored at a certain cold temperature and kept in specific containers. She also showed her the vessel the handlers used to extract venom and the room where they did it.
“It’s open right now,” Lisa explained, “because we’re not extracting until this afternoon, so come on in.”
They entered the room. A stainless steel table dominated the middle of it. Hanging on the wall, like pool cues, were a number of long metal instruments.
“These are used by the handlers to carry the snakes from their containers over to the table, or to hold them down when they’re on the table. Every extraction involves two people. You ought to watch it sometime.”
“I…” She swallowed, stomach churning as a wave of terror engulfed her. “I don’t know. Just the thought of a snake being on this table is giving me goosebumps.”
“Honestly, nothing will help you overcome your fear better than to confront it. And isn’t that the point of your fear assignment? To test you in an actual situation you’re afraid of?”
Carla gave her a wan smile. “You sound like my boss. Or my mother.”
“Ouch!” Lisa laughed. “I’m guessing that’s not a good thing.” They turned to walk out the door and go back to the main room.
“Actually, it is a good thing,” Carla said once they’d taken their seats in front of the monitors again. “My mom’s great, but she can be demanding.”
“Mine, too.” Lisa glanced at the monitor and typed at the keyboard. “Well, there you are!” Carla couldn’t see what she looked at, but whatever it was caused her new friend to smile.
“Come over here.” Lisa motioned to Carla. “I want you to see something.”
Carla rose from her chair and walked over to where Lisa sat.
“All of these monitors,” Lisa gestured to the one in front of her as well as the myriad ones mounted on the wall, “show different areas of the snake enclosure behind this building. We’ve got all kinds of cameras installed within the enclosure so we can find our snakes when we need them. Through the computer we can click on any camera and control it remotely. So it allows us to turn the camera in several different directions to capture as wide an area as possible.”
Carla stood behind Lisa and peered at the monitor.
When she saw what was on it, she gasped, heart pounding like a herd of stampeding elephants. She whipped her head sideways and shot her gaze to the floor, the chairs, anywhere but the monitors.
“C’mon, Carla. Conquer that fear and look at her. She’s beautiful.”
“I can’t. She’s a snake.”
“She’s a pregnant snake.” She glanced at Carla who still stared at the floor. “Allow me to introduce you to Mariah.”
Carla’s head turned fractionally to look over at Lisa. “Mariah?”
“Sure. We love to name our snakes, and that one seemed to fit. Here, I’ll put the view of our girl up on one of the large wall monitors. Have a look.”
She could hear the slight hint of a command in Lisa’s voice and knew she was right. She was behaving like a little girl and not the high-powered rising executive she fancied herself to be. She let out a deep breath and looked up.
The female king cobra was coiled in what looked to be a nest. Surrounded by bits of grass, leaves, and twigs, she’d made a secure place in which to gestate and await the birth of her hatchlings.
“She’s lying atop her eggs,” Lisa explained, “and she’ll stay that way until they hatch. If we look around with another camera—” She tapped a few keys and another view came up. This time they spotted a larger snake, coiled as well, fairly close to the female’s nest. “That’s her mate, Drew. He’ll guard the nest until the eggs hatch. It’s an unusual arrangement within the snake world, this complex nesting and rearing behavior.”
“How long until they hatch?”
“Gestation period is sixty to eighty days. Then, once they hatch, both Mariah and Drew will leave the young hatchlings.”
Carla leaned forward for a closer look at the monitor. Despite her fears, she found herself fascinated by what Lisa told her, but she frowned at this latest bit. “Leave them? Why?”
“To make sure they don’t eat them.”
“Eww. Eat their own young?”
“It’s more common than you might think in the animal kingdom. But instinct makes the mother leave the nest. Same thing with the father. It’s really pretty fascinating when you think about it. Once the babies hatch, they’ve already got the same amount of potent venom as their parents. And they know instinctively how to raise themselves and how to hunt. It’s amazing.”
Carla returned to her chair, considering what Lisa had just said. Now that she was getting used to seeing the snakes on the monitor and her roaring heartbeat had settled, she could appreciate a researcher’s passion for all the crazy dynamics found in nature. Lisa’s enthusiasm was slowly — slowly — catching on.
“So, when the handlers extract the venom, I take it they first have to enter the enclosure to get the snakes out?”
“They do, yes. That’s why we have this complex set of cameras, so we can find the snakes. We’ll keep them in glass cages for a week at a time while we extract, then we put those snakes back in the enclosure and bring in different ones. Jackson insists on this rotational method so as not to stress the snakes through excessive extraction. He believes allowing the snakes to be in a natural setting will give us the purest venom samples. I have no cause to question him. He’s a brilliant scientist and he’s also the one who had the vision for this place.” Lisa looked around. “I feel really lucky to be working here.”
The respect Lisa had for her employer could not be mistaken. When she spoke about Jackson her face lit up, as if she were describing a rock star. Maybe, Carla thought, within the world of king cobra research, that’s what Jackson is.
“How long have you been here?” she asked. “Well…” Lisa looked away from her monitor and sat back in her chair, thoughtfully sipping coffee from the travel mug she’d brought along. “I actually first came here to conduct coursework related to my doctorate. Once I completed it I stayed on as a research assistant to earn some money while I wrote my dissertation. The research I did here went into my thesis. That was three years ago. Jackson made me a full-time staff member once I’d defended my dissertation and was awarded the degree.”
“So once you first came here you never left?” “I guess I just fell in love with the snakes.”
But hopefully not with their owner, Carla thought, embarrassed by the spear of jealousy piercing her heart. She didn’t know whether Lisa and Jackson had ever had a relationship; in fact, for all she knew they could be having one now. But that was none of her business. It shouldn’t matter. It definitely shouldn’t.
“You like him, don’t you?”