Chapter b Cured

"Precisely. On forth: Venom potency 9.8 out of 10…" She glanced up and a disbelieving grin played on her face. Jim rolled his eyes and waved his hand at her. "Yeah, yeah… We'll repeat the test, but record every result!" He exhaled and applied pressure to his temple with his fingertips. "Consider this; unmoving stimuli is the weakest form of stimuli that we can use here. This subject's thirst response is immediately at 100% functioning upon viewing unmoving stimuli. The nutritional test showed us that he is not malnourished. So, I suspect that his thirst response is fixed, regardless of his body's requirements." Jim's tongue rolled over his hilly front teeth and his eyes blindly stared at the blank wall across the room. He smacked his lips. "He has two additional altered teeth and venom concentration of 9.8 out of 10. With such a sensitive reflex, he'd easily be sent into a massacre. With each bite, he'd break more holes and expose more people to the highest concentrated dose of the virus that we've ever seen." Jim folded his hands behind his back. "It wouldn't end there, either. The infected beyond him would most likely be just as unstable and potent as he is, especially if they are somehow related. Uncontrolled, IF17 has the probable future of infecting a great number of people within a short period of time. I believe I can say, he is the largest public threat since his father, subject FF01, after he escaped from containment decades ago." Jim's lips stiffened and then pulled back toward his ears. He looked at the monitor behind Maria's head and his smile transformed menacingly. Then he said, excitedly, "we've found the next candidate for my Foe to Friend program."

Maria looked up at him, and while her stomach growled, she spoke loudly to unsuccessfully cover it up. "That's wonderful news… doctor, but what makes you think that they will allow another trial. We've tried that program twenty seven times and the boards are spending so much time and money on the human health benefit programs. They're looking for candidates for the transplant series. Did you forget about that?"

Jim's hands settled on his bony hips, his shoulders lifted and fell with a breath. He turned his head, still glowing with excitement. The line in between his narrow lips bowed upwards. He shook his head and turned back to Maria defiantly, proudly, and he pointed his thumb into his chest. "I am the behavior specialist," he said proudly. "If I say that this is my ideal candidate, then I will get another trial, and they will support it. They want changed behavior, and I will get it done."

"But the other programs-"

"Forget about them! They're small potatoes compared to what I'm cooking up. Go on, put him out, and then file a financial claim report so that we can get things started."

Maria nodded once. "Sure, Doc. Any other last minute notes?"

Jim tilted side to side and turned around to face Iggy, again. He sighed with a finger pressed long down his cheek still fantasizing his own success. "Yes," he said in a distant tone, "add that IF17 has about an 89% average healing rate, and about a 94% caloric requirement. That would be… approximately four liters every 24 hours…" He turned and stood square to Maria who was viciously pounding the words into the keyboard. "Our goal will be to reduce the thirst response from 100% function to less than 20% through maximum desensitization. We also want to reduce his caloric requirements from 4,000 milliliters to 250 milliliters or less." He gazed down at Iggy's bare, restrained forearm. "Don't record this… but this specimen is of the new generation, so I'm going to mark him with an additional letter. Maybe it will inadvertently catch on."

Unable to look down at his own arm or the nearby side table, Iggy heard metal lightly clank against metal followed by a short rattling noise. Jim grasped the needle pen from the side table and flipped the switch. It buzzed against the skin on Iggy's forearm as Jim drew an X at the beginning of the existing label, making the tattoo read XIF17.

Maria stood next to him and peered down at the change. "An 'X'? For generation X?" She chuckled under her breath. "That's original. Will you go back and mark BF15 with an 'X', too? Since they are from the same family?"

Jim whipped his head and scowled at her mildly, like a Chihuahua with no teeth. "No! They might be family, but they definitely aren't the same. Haven't you learned anything?" He grumbled something else under his breath and turned back to the monitor.

Maria looked up at him passively. "Whatever you say, Doc. All I know is that I'm starving."

"Alright. Go ahead and put him out. We'll take him to the rehab room right away, and then you can take a break."

Unsatisfied with the work that still needed to be done, Maria dragged her feet to the side table from where she pulled out a syringe of thick milky fluid. She drew closer to Iggy until she was in reaching distance, then she swung fast and carelessly, stabbing the needle right into his thigh. The rattling noises from the plank and restraints were loud in Iggy's ears at first, but then they quieted little by little. The ceiling lights doubled, then quadrupled, and then vanished into silent darkness.

It seemed like he had only blinked, but before he knew it, he awoke even thirstier than before, and in another white room fastened onto a gurney. His body had been washed and redressed into paper thin white clothing without undergarments. To his side, light shimmered off of metal bars that lined the only exit to the small white room. Beyond the barred wall, there was a hallway running crosswise with identical holding cells lined left to right. He could slightly hear the neighbors.

The walls around him seemed to be completely flat; any lines looked like shadowy smudges, except for the wall directly across from him. A large sheet of black glass was embedded into the cinder blocks seamlessly. When he lifted his heavy head up to see, the glass on the wall became illuminated, exposing the fact that it was a television screen.

It started pure white, but then it flickered to pure red.

That was all that there was at first… the red. That was all that he could see. His entire vision was absorbed in it. His clenched muscles crushed his organs, the heat simmered in his throat, and the glass scraped away the inside of his stomach. He breathed in, but there weren't any smells or tastes in the air. He extended his tongue, searching for the only thing that he wanted, but there was nothing to lick.

The red flickered into a scene. A long masculine arm stretched across the screen with full muscles and pulsating arteries. A sharp blade entered the frame and pressed firm onto the forearm. It dragged downward, slicing the flesh like butter, and the blood ran down after it, puddling in the palm.

This scene was visually appetizing, but after the thirtieth time of watching it on repeat, his desire for it lessoned. His eyes were red hot and aching, too, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't force them to close. If they wavered from the screen only once, the picture would change into something even more gruesome than the video before it, therefore stealing his attention right back. The new images never ceased. Only more and more came. Hours and hours' worth. He could imagine the screaming. The blood, oh, such a gorgeous mess! Wounds. Shredding. Dismemberment. Beautiful brutality. Time became nothing more than the gory clips playing on the screen, a way in which to measure the length of his captivity.