The Legacy

symbol of all his power and success. He felt ill, felt tired, felt . . . scared.
    Power and success. Already it felt as if they were evaporating. He walked over to his desk and gripped it. Slowly he breathed, in, out, in, out. He would find an answer. He always found an answer.
    But even as he told himself everything would resolve itself, he found his mind flooded with doubt. For so long he had buried all thoughts of Albert Fern, of his protestations as Derek led him to his death. ‘ You don’t have anything, Richard . . . Without the exact formula you know nothing . . . The circle of life must be protected . . .’
    Richard shuddered. How he hated his former boss, his former father-in-law, the man who had treated him with such contempt, forcing him to undertake menial tasks in the laboratory when it had been clear he was meant for greater things. But Richard had had the last laugh. It had been an article he’d happened upon while at university that had convinced him he should go and work for Albert – an interview in which Professor Fern had made an offhand remark about his pursuit of the cure for cancer, saying that he feared they would cure ageing before they cured every strain of that terrible disease. He’d done his research and from what he’d read, Albert had seemed to be the real deal. So Richard had waited for an opening, for a job to come up in his laboratory. And when it had, he’d been ready.
    Everything had gone to plan too. More to plan than Richard had allowed himself to dream. Except . . .
    He moved towards his large leather chair and sat down heavily, then pulled out from his top drawer the papers he’d stolen from Albert’s desk on the day of his death – meaningless scribbles, equations and streams of letters that even the most brilliant scientists had been unable to interpret. All Richard could hear in his head was Albert’s taunts about the circle of life. The circle of life? What was it?
    Angrily, he let the papers fall from his hands back on to the desk. Several times over the years he’d almost thrown them away – they were meaningless drivel and he hadn’t needed them. Despite Albert’s protestations, his team of scientists had been able to recreate Longevity, as he’d named it, from the professor’s original sample. The drug had sailed through all testing and trials and had taken the world by storm, and Albert Fern had been recast in the history books as a genius who had died of natural causes before his great discovery had been accepted, adopted and legalised.
    Richard knew that the scientific community would never have accepted the story that he himself had invented the drug, and Albert’s ‘sad and untimely’ death allowed the drug’s genesis to be fabricated, manipulated and, most importantly, kept as opaque as possible. Meanwhile, he had taken his place at the helm of the most powerful company in the whole world. But now . . . now . . . now he needed the formula, needed to understand Albert’s scribbles. But instead of helping him, they were as impenetrable as ever. He could almost feel Albert mocking him from beyond the grave.
    Richard brought his fist down on the desk so hard that the papers jumped up in the air. ‘What is the bloody circle of life?’ he shouted. ‘Is it the formula? Where is it? Where is it? You bastard! You bloody sanctimonious, conniving bastard!’
    Even as he shouted, he knew he had to stop this momentary lapse of control. Anger would solve nothing. But this was anger that had been building up for years – anger and fear that one day Albert’s words would come back and haunt him. Richard always liked to have all ends tied up; it was why he had told Derek to dispose of Albert rather than lock him up somewhere. Neat ends enabled you to move forward. Opponents, problems – they had to be dealt with efficiently, not left to fester. And he had succeeded too, except for the formula. However much he had told himself that he didn’t need it, that an exact copy was perfectly adequate – more than adequate – he had always suspected, known even, that this ragged end, this unfinished business would come back and haunt him. When Dr Thomas had been blathering about viruses mutating, Richard had dismissed him immediately. He knew what the problem was. Derek knew too. He suspected that they’d both been half expecting it for years.
    He had to think. He had to think hard. He would find a way forward – he always did. And in doing so, he