"You still think...

"You still think this is gonna be no sweat?" Darius wasn't all that interested in talking to Alex at the moment, but the silence was starting to bug him. "This isn't some ordinary drug test. This feels way too serious for that."

"I know," Alex replied. "I'm sorry I got you into this mess."

"Let's just hope we don't end up with another set of arms or something." Darius smiled slightly.

"Nonsense," Dr. Tiberius said from the doorway. He stood there with a metal tray in his hands and an amused look in his eyes. The tray held a bunch of medical supplies. "Giving you four arms would be a waste of my intellect and, I might add, quite ludicrous. Now if you'll both be so kind, I'll need you to lie back so I can put in your IVs."

He gestured awkwardly with the tray in his hand. Something that looked important almost took a tumble off the tray. Miraculously, however, Dr. Tiberius was able to save it at the last second by tilting the tray this way and that. He let out a breath of relief and then carefully set it down at the foot of Darius's bed because it was the closest one to him.

Alex and Darius got into their respective beds and laid down as instructed. They had drawn, anxious looks on their faces. Alex's blood went cold with fear and Darius's heart started beating much, much faster than normal.

Dr. Tiberius went through the items on his tray, picking up only specific things he would need for the trial like the IV needle, its tubing, and a bag filled with saline solution. When he had everything he needed, he began his work.

He started with Darius.

He wrapped a thick rubber band around Darius's arm, just above the elbow, selected an appropriate vein, and then plunged the IV needle in with expert precision. There was a bit of pain and then it was over. He taped the needle to Darius's arm, secured it there, and then hung the IV bag from a pole beside his bed. When he was done he gathered up identical items and headed over to Alex. He repeated the process, running into a snag when he couldn't quite manage to get the needle into any of Alex's veins. After two more tries, each one a special kind of torture, Dr. Tiberius got the needle to actually go in and taped it liberally to secure it.

"Sorry. Some veins can be tricky little devils." He laughed to himself. It was a quiet little chuckle but it made Alex angry. His arm was still throbbing from the doctor's repeated attempts to insert the needle into one of the "trickly little devils."

Tiberius went back over to his tray and grabbed a test tube. Then he came to stand next to Darius and stuck a needle into the rubber nub at the very beginning of his IV tubing. Then he pushed the test tube into it. Blood squirted instantly into the tube, filling it up fast. Dr. Tiberius took it back out, pulled a label off a printed sheet, and rolled it onto the tube. He did the same thing to Alex and put the vials into one of his pockets.

"What's the blood for?" Alex asked, curiously.

"I need these to run against the samples I take after you have received the drug. At that time I will do a side by side comparison so I have an accurate picture of how well my drug works on the both of you," Dr. Tiberius explained.

"This drug of yours gonna hurt?" Darius asked, wanting to know but at the same time realizing he could live with his ignorance.

"I have only conjectures at this point," Dr. Tiberius responded casually. "I have never exactly tested my drug on humans before."

"That's not reassuring, Doc," Alex said.

"So you don't know?" Darius asked.

"No. I do not. So please be sure to describe the experience as thoroughly as possible when it is over. I am fairly certain, however, that the electric shock could be…shall we say…uncomfortable."

"Shock?" Darius and Alex asked at the same time.

"Um…I'm sorry. I must have forgotten to mention that part," he replied, looking thoughtful. "In any case, the shock is, simply put, a matter of necessity. It is a crucial catalyst in the bonding process."

"Bonding?" Alex eyed the doctor warily.

Dr. Tiberius waved the question away in an impatient gesture then turned to leave.

"I'm sorry but I must see that the experiment gets under way, gentleman. I have been forced, quite rudely I might add, to work on a rather annoying deadline. But not to worry, my formula is sound." He called that last bit to them as he left the room.

Darius turned his head back to Alex after Tiberius was gone and glowered spitefully at him.

"I know. You're going to kill me, right?" Alex asked sarcastically. There was an exasperated look on his face. "We just have to get this over with and collect the money. Then we're out of here. It's probably not as bad as we think it's gonna be. We're just psyching ourselves out. And he was probably just messing with us about all that electric shock stuff. It's probably nothing."

"Save it," Darius replied. He laid his head on his pillow and stared at the ceiling.

After more waiting and painfully awkward silences, Dr. Tiberius finally walked back in. In his hands were stacks of what looked like forms of some kind. Darius saw them and let out a bitter, angry sigh. He restrained the urge to reach for something, anything, that he could grab and throw at the wall. He'd hoped the drug trial wouldn't take up too much of his day but so far, things didn't look promising.

"Here we are. I do apologize. I almost forgot about these." Dr. Tiberius glanced over the forms one last time to make sure he hadn't missed one. "I tend to lose track of things when I get involved in my work. These forms are just a standard formality one must fill out for this kind of thing. Here you go. And remember, they're all standard. Nothing to worry about."

Alex didn't like the way Tiberius kept repeating the part about "the forms being standard," followed by a "nothing to worry about."

Darius didn't either.

Despite all the reservations they had, both of them took the forms and looked them over. They took their time reading through every last word, making sure to go over even the smallest detail. What they read wasn't very encouraging. The first was a form stating that they waived any and all rights to a claim against Dr. Tiberius or his sponsors if they should die, become mentally or physically impaired, become gravely ill, or a number of other equally terrifying fates. The next was a nondisclosure agreement. After that one was a privacy act form, stating that all findings and records of their health before and after the test were completely private. The last was a more in-depth nondisclosure agreement. It stated, in no uncertain terms, that they were forbidden to talk to any and all persons on subject material relating to the experiment and its results in any way, shape, or form.

As they signed each form, the tension and anxiety continued to build up.

"Don"t worry, don"t worry," Dr. Tiberius said quickly, noticing the concerned looks on their faces. He tried to pull off reassuring but it sounded fake. "The drug will either work or nothing will happen at all. Well, it might impair you mentally but definitely not physically. Actually, technically speaking, it could cause physical disabilities, but I put the odds of that happening at about 1 in 200,000. It is very slim."

"Weirdly enough, that doesn't do much to inspire confidence in your skills," Darius replied. Frankly, he was surprised he needed to tell him that at all. Dr. Tiberius might be a genius, but his skills with people were severely lacking.

"I agree," Alex chimed in. "I'm not really a big fan of the whole physically or mentally impaired, gravely ill, and especially the death parts. Not to mention the countless other things I left out."

"Gentlemen." Dr. Tiberius tried very hard to placate them. "These forms are merely a formality, as I said before. I am a genius after all. You are in very capable hands."

He gestured at them to finish up with the forms. When they were done, he snatched them up with an eager greediness. He picked up two plain folders from the tray, one of them marked Subject I and the other marked Subject II. He placed the forms inside their respective folders and set them back on the tray. Then he grasped it by the handles and eyed them both.

"Now, if you will excuse me, I'll be back momentarily to start the procedure." He turned and walked out.

Once again they were waiting. They'd been waiting so much it was starting to feel like a sick prank Dr. Tiberius was playing on them. It was hard enough to trample the fear that kept popping up like a nasty infection and taking so long to even get started was making it harder to deal with.

The minutes ticked by as slow as possible, as if time itself had a grudge against them. Alex looked over at Darius, only to find him once again staring at the ceiling, his face an emotionless mask.

"Why aren't you bitching anymore?" Alex asked, mostly to break that oppressive, awkward silence.

"Not really sure," he replied, still looking at the ceiling. "It could be because I'm secure in the knowledge that if this completely sucks, I get to kill you."

Alex laughed at that.

"I like how you think I'm joking." Darius smiled back.

Alex quit laughing suddenly and stared at the ceiling too.

"I am sorry. I know how mad you are I got you into this."

Darius sat up and looked over at Alex.

"Look, the truth is that I'm as much to blame as you are. I could have backed out. I could have stopped you from making me do this. I let you talk me into this crazy ass plan of yours, so now I have to lie in the bed I made, same as you. And for the record, I know you're sorry. You don't have to keep saying it."

"I know," Alex told him. "Just wanted to make sure you got the message."

"Don't worry. I'm done blaming you. Besides, how bad can things possibly get?"

As if in response to that, Dr. Tiberius came back in wheeling all the equipment he would need for his little science experiment on a large metal cart. On top were adhesive electrodes, their wires running into what resembled, more than anything else, a large car battery (except for the two dials sitting on top of it). The sight of that sent more ripples of fear through them and Alex felt his mouth go bone dry. Two IV bags were also on the cart. They were filled with blue liquid. It was an intense shade of blue the same color as lightning. Along with the clutter of instruments and the drug itself there was a small handheld video camera.

The sight of the video camera unnerved Darius the most because it showed how much the Doc didn't know about his own experiment. He had no idea what the drug was going to do to them.

What the hell did I get myself into? he asked himself.

His heart hammered in his chest, but thoughts of Anna popped into his head and he started calming down. He saw her smile and the way it lit up her eyes, making them look like beacons that called only to him. Thinking of her felt good, but he quickly realized it also hurt. It hurt to think of her like...that. Remembering her like she was back then as opposed to her present reality felt like getting shot in the heart multiple times with an assault rifle. She'd been so full of life and love. Now she was empty. She was empty in a way that he could and couldn't define and it drove him crazy.

He let those thoughts drift away and focused instead on watching Dr. Tiberius separate all the electrodes into two piles of six. When he was done with those, he fitted the IV bags filled with the lightning-colored liquid to the poles by their beds. Finally, he positioned the video camera so that it was trained on both Alex and Darius and ready to record.

It was almost time.

Dr. Tiberius grabbed one pile of electrodes and started to attach them to different areas of Darius's body. He stuck them to either side of his temples, on the forearms of each arm, and one in the middle of each shin so that he had wires sticking out along the length of his body. When he was done with Darius, he moved on to Alex and repeated the process. After his two subjects were sufficiently wired with the nodes, Dr. Tiberius glanced over his work for a final double check. When he looked assured that everything was in order, he clapped his hands together, rubbing them furiously in what looked like an odd celebratory gesture. Next, he went to the blue bag containing the serum and hooked its trailing tube into the IV in Alex's arm. He went back to Darius and did the same thing.

Free of its IV bag prison, the blue liquid raced down their tubes.

It wants out, Alex thought wildly. It wants the freedom it'll find inside me.

A second later and it found that freedom. Alex watched the liquid get sucked into his arm. He wasn't sure what he expected to happen. Most of him thought nothing would, he supposed.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

The minute the strange liquid went into his body, he felt a deep, penetrating coldness start spreading through him from the point where his IV was inserted. The drug felt like it came straight from the Arctic Circle. When it started spreading more completely through his body, Alex bucked in fear. He turned his head, his heart beating so fast it hurt, and saw that Darius was going through much the same experience.

"Ungh…that's uncomfortable," Alex complained, squirming and writhing as the...coldness...continued to spread. His face had a hard look of pain and his eyes were scrunched closed. His lips were stretched so tight they seemed to disappear right off his face.

"Aahhrrghh," was all Darius managed to say on the subject.

Dr. Tiberius regarded them with intense scrutiny, his hand palming the little video recorder so hard his knuckles turned white. The lens was trained on his test subjects and there was a blinking red light on it indicating he was recording. Sweat glistened on his forehead. There was a look of intensity to his eyes as he watched what his drug would do.

Alex saw that intensity, even through his own discomfort and pain, but he saw something else lurking in them too.

A hint of fear.

Fear? Alex thought, confused. Then it hit him. Because we might die.

"Subjects I and II are experiencing feelings of intense discomfort," Dr. Tiberius droned, his voice monotonous and slightly robotic sounding.

You son of a bitch! Darius screamed in his head, over and over again. He thought he might be screaming it out loud too, but wasn't really sure.

The cold that sank into their flesh abruptly switched gears, turning from freezing to burning hot in seconds. Instead of arctic water running through their veins, it now felt like molten lava. The pain was horrible and it seemed to set fire to everything it touched inside them. Every nerve ending sang with that pain. Every muscle clenched and unclenched as hundreds of spasms wracked their bodies all at the same time. Their heads exploded with intense, fiery pain. For however long, and neither one was sure how long it was, that pain became their world. For that stretch of time, it was all they knew or thought about.

They couldn't feel or even think about anything else. They had no idea their bodies were flopping around on their beds like fish dropped on dry land. They didn't feel when, every so often, one of their clenched fists would bang into the metal railing of their beds, or the wall behind them.

Alex lost himself in that pain. Instead of blacking out, like he would have expected, there was a spreading pool of pure white across his vision. Darius had a similar sensation but he kept something of himself as he whited out. It was the mental picture of Anna that he saw, the colors in negative, but still there.

Their bodies suddenly went completely limp at the same instant. Neither one moved again and Dr. Tiberius realized they were unconscious.

Then, the monitors beeped loudly.

Dr. Tiberius hurriedly raced to the sides of each bed, checking Alex's and Darius's necks for their pulses. He found them, stuttering weakly, but there. The drug took effect much more quickly than he anticipated which was a bit unnerving for him. He'd seen similar reactions in the rats he'd tested the drug on previously, but for them, it took more than thirty minutes to start. For these two, the reaction had been nearly instantaneous. Also, in the rats, they did not appear to display any sense of pain or discomfort. There'd been only a series of small, almost inconsequential, spasms. That's why he never expected his two subjects to be in so much agony. Their reactions to the drug, however, spoke of a pain that bordered on torture.

A little voice inside his head condemned him for what he was doing but he pushed it aside, swatting it into the back of his mind like an annoying bug. He had a job to do, a job that might save a lot of lives in the future, and he intended to go through with it. He grabbed the video camera and swiveled it around so that it picked up his face.

"Subjects I and II were rendered unconscious during Phase I of the process. Commencing with Phase II." There was a long pause. "God forgive me."

He set the camera down after training it back on his test subjects, and then went over to the battery looking object. The dials on top were already pointed to the voltage he needed to ensure his drug bonded correctly to the DNA of the host subjects. The green button next to the dial on the right glowed faintly. He set his finger above it and hesitated. The part of his mind that already condemned him argued against pushing that button. If the drug worked like it was supposed to then it could be one of the single most dangerous discoveries of his time, on par with gun powder or TNT. It could create monsters the likes of which the world had never seen before. The subjects lying on the hospital beds could easily be the first of them.

Don't push the button, a voice whispered inside his mind. Don't push it. Tell the people who paid you that something went wrong. It'd be easy to do. All you have to do is burn one tape, the tape in that camera. Burn it and it could all be over.

He shook his head roughly.

If he didn't press the button, if he didn't bond the drug, then it could kill them. Despite his many placating words that the drug wouldn't cause any harm, that was only in cases where the catalyst had been administered. In cases where he did not administer the crucial bit of electricity, all his test subjects (which had been rats), eventually died. From the autopsies he'd conducted on their corpses, he was able to ascertain that the drug ate away at the rats from the inside out. He wasn't completely sure that would happen in human subjects, but he was reasonably sure that if he left the drug in its inert state, a similar fate would most likely await Subjects I and II. The chemical makeup was volatile enough to deteriorate living tissue. The only thing that changed it, that would make it do what he intended it to do, was the electricity he was about to send coursing through them.

He pushed the button, harder than he needed to. The tip of his finger bent back painfully but that pain barely registered on him as he focused on what .

A second after he pressed the button, their limp, unconscious bodies jerked up, their backs in a high arch. He could see the muscles in their jaws constrict and clench and he hoped they didn't bite into their tongues. The monitors beside the subjects blared with sound. Tiberius saw that both mens' heartbeats got faster and faster and their blood pressures were climbing at an alarming rate. A second later and their vitals completely skyrocketed, higher than any normal human could survive. He half expected their hearts to explode right out of their chests.

He watched now with no emotion, his face slack and his eyes far away. The simulations and models he ran before he got to the human testing stage gave him a highly accurate duration for the electricity to do its job. A full minute. It didn't seem like that big of a deal but as he watched the two men flop around, that minute stretched out and out into what felt like hours. Guilt rose up in him but he had to swat that away too.

He still had a job to do, after all.

The only consolation to all the suffering he was causing these two young men was that once the bonding was complete, the pain would stop.

It should stop for a very long time, he surmised. Possibly forever.

Although the doctor looked as if he were in a trance, it was the clock in the middle of the two beds that drew his attention. He watched it with intense concentration as the skinniest of the clock's hands ticked away the seconds. When the minute was up, he let out his breath in one great whoosh, not even knowing he'd been holding it in.

He pressed the red button, this one glowing at him as well, and his subjects collapsed onto their beds in a heap of limp arms and dangling legs. Their heads both rolled drunkenly before coming to rest on their sides. They were completely still but every few seconds a random limb would give an involuntary twitch from the aftereffects of the electricity abuse Dr. Tiberius subjected them to.

Dr. Tiberius once more picked up the video camera and turned it to face him again.

"Phase II complete. Subjects I and II's vitals climbed to levels far exceeding normal limits. They have survived regardless of that fact. They are now stabilizing and tapering off to more normal perimeters. First tests of the serum on human subjects have so far proven fruitful. Further conclusions will not be able to be drawn until they regain consciousness."

He shut off the camera, stowing it back on top of the metal cart. He picked up a clipboard and recorded their latest vitals. After that, he left the room, wondering the whole while if he did the right thing.

If he was right to let them live.