Small drabble/or fic!flash from my prompt: 26 - forever:

"How long does this infection take?" he'd ask his sister while she was examining the blood samples through the dual glass; she told him no, and without negotiation that it won't last long; but the final result is forever for the injured party.

Rating: PG-13

---the war planet---

John shivered, leaning back against the counter, his arms out - facing palms to the ceiling. His eyes stared at the way his veins suffused with blood, plumped up and swollen beneath skin. Moments ago, his sister had just injected him, and she gave him that look to be strong. The same look she had given him when he took off for training to a hostile planet. She went another direction: her abilities as a researcher and scientist was needed, and she wanted to save the world her own way. Today was the day that their plan to save one another was not going to fail. She trusted him completely, and knew him better than herself.

"Samantha," he rasped, swallowing the bile that rose to his throat, "I want you to get away as soon as I black out, okay?"

"No. I won't leave you, John." She said this through wet tears, fighting back the urge to cry. As strong as she was, her heart was beating loudly in her chest, adrenaline pumped through her body. In appearance, her face was the perfect demonstration of frigid calmness; but in truth, beneath, she was fighting to survive this.

"I mean it, Sam!" John's teeth gritted down, his chest heaving, "I don't want you anywhere near me! If I start to attack you, I - I don't know what...god!" His voice broke, feeling the visceral response to the drug, making him blink his eyes rapidly.

"Alright..alright," she whispered from her position at the straight back chair and the cold long aluminum table, her hands were steady, pulling out all the glass strips that held blood samples. She hurriedly labeled them, setting them aside so she can safely place them in a square heavy-duty metallic container. Her fingers pushed the numbers on the computer screen on the left to activate the lock, promptly shoving the strips carefully inside the boxed container. The cold blast of air that greeted her gave her satisfaction that the energy fueling through this was produced by an emergency generator.

At last, she could attend to her brother, her laboratory coat stained with streaks of dried blood from Dr. Cormack's body and previous victims. Her heart fell as she saw the severe condition of her twin's manifestation. It would be very soon. It was taking a little faster than she had expected, considering how the other victims had turned into walking zombies, with the power to kill or feel compassion.

"You promise?" He asked, once his body was up against the hard surface, tracing a path down to the ground, "promise me, Sam...promise."

He looked at her through the haziness, and through reddened eyes. His blood pressure was climbing, and surprisingly enough, it dropped as soon as it lifted. His body jerked, twitched a little, as if he were in a deep sleep pinched by aching muscles. The beads of perspiration from his forehead ran lines down his temples, and the cold seeped into his veins. John swallowed. He felt like dying, and he trusted his sister that this would be the only course.

"John!" she called out to him, alerted by his condition, and her hand ripped off the white surgical glove on her right. Her blue eyes lined with worry - she believed in this, because this was the only way to have him survive. "John! Hang on. Hang on..." she kept saying, and her voice was fading...

For a brief moment, he could feel the warm touch of her hand on his forehead, the casual tenderness of her other hand on his bare arm.

He could hear her last words, "I promise..."

When he woke, the silence greeted him and there was an unusual heartbeat he thought was not his own. He called out for her, but she wasn't there. Good. John needn't worry too much where she went: she was nothing but extremely wise and intelligent, more so than him, and he smiled. What he first noticed that there wasn't any pain, not in any sense that was accompanied with humans; there was a surging heat flowing through like a insensate emotion, it was almost as if he were drunk on the god of wine and not drunk at all.

John crawled out of his stupor, finding renewed strength, moving into the action organically.

He remembered everything. It was what was significant about his manifestation. He looked down at his hands, his palms, and reached up to touch his face.

Everything was as it should be: he was in his human form, and he hadn't turned out like some of the freaks he had encountered. But his vision was intense: he could see everything, from the way his blood vessels ran a path over his skin, and over the way he could see past the security doors, almost transparent.

John's reaction was between a noise that hovered between surprise and approval. His hearing was intense as well, magnified a hundred times; and although it should have been annoying it wasn't - it kept a balance of keeping what he wanted to hear, and what he did not.

What he did hear was the calling of his name. And the obscenity of the commanding voice belonging to a former comrade. He fisted his hand, the rage inside had not destroyed his ability to think - to rationalize. John walked with long strides towards the direction of his caller.

It was time to prove his sister's theory.