And you thought this story was dead. With a break from clinics, I'm back into it.

Rachel was already home and reading on the couch when the familiar triple-rap on the door came. She tabbed to book, got up and opened the door only to see Nelson with his eyes fixed on the ground.

"Hey." She stepped aside the let him in, but he didn't budge. "How….did the scan go?"

"I don't think I should be coming over here anymore."

His eyes didn't move from the ground. Rachel blinked in surprise, watching him stand there, unmoving, trenchcoat flapping in the breeze over his thin shoulders. For a minute it was two statues standing opposite, until she shook herself out of speechlessness.

"Nelson?"

"I thought I'd just tell you in case you wondered where I was."

"Nelson, what happened?"

But he had already turned and was walking back down the steps.

"Hey!" Rachel reached in and snatched her coat from the hook by the door and followed his quickly retreating figure. "Hey! You can't just do this without telling me what's wrong."

They walked in unison down the stairs and out onto the street, with Nelson never moving his eyes from where he placed his feet except to pull out a cigarette out of a pack with his teeth and commence to light it.

"Is this something to do with the scan? Nelson, you have to tell me."

"No, I most certainly don't." He managed, successfully lighting the cigarette and shoving the lighter down into the pocket of his coat. She would have expected some snarl in such a phrase, but his voice remained flat.

"Nelson, please." She hurried to keep up with him. He walked as if he knew exactly where he was going, and was late to boot. "Nelson, this isn't fair!"

"what isn't fair, exactly?" He stopped, so quickly that she almost ran into him. Their eyes locked and Rachel immediately saw what was wrong. There was a reason he had his eyes fixed on the ground.

Something was very, very different about them. It reminded her of the time she found him slumped against the desk in a state of dreamlike semi-coma. The color was right, the shape was right, the pupils were right. But not all of it was Nelson. There was something else in there, something else that gave that blue iris just a tinge of glint that was unlike anything she recognized as being normal self.

It was like watching one person entrenched in the body of another.

"what…just please, tell me what happened?" Her voice quavered a bit. In all honesty, she wasn't sure who she was speaking to.

"Nothing happened. I just came to a decision that it would be better if we just ignored each other, since we became so good at it over the years."

A tiny bit of fear began to hatch in Rachel's stomach. Something had definitely happened, and no matter how much he denied it, she knew it. He had never been good at hiding things. Well, except one thing.

"They found something, didn't they?"

Nelson let out a small, angry noise around the filter of the cigarette and continued walking. She followed, unable to be annoyed anymore. This wasn't just nasty behavior, this was the slow-burn-Nelson-panic. Like a dog that separates itself from the pack because it knows it's going to….die? Oh, God.

Rachel hopskipped ahead and stood directly in front of him, forcing him to stop. "Tell me. Now."

He didn't answer and his eyes returned to the ground.

"Please, Nelson."

They stood in silence for a few seconds, as Nelson blinked and took short breaths, as if he was trying to start a sentence but wasn't sure which words to use.

"It's….they found something they didn't expect to see, but that isn't why I'm doing this."

"And?"

"A mass."

"As in tumor?" Rachel's head immediately went into medical mode, scanning all of the neurological tumors she could think of. None of them good.

Seeing as to how he had let the proverbial cat out of the bag, Nelson resigned and the clipped tone disappeared. "Maybe. They don't know. But it doesn't matter, because it's happening to me and not you."

Rachel was at a total loss. What do you say to someone who was just told they have brain cancer? Jesus. I'm sorry? Are you kidding? That doesn't even begin to cut it.

But she didn't have time to think up an appropriate response, because Nelson kept walking. This time, she didn't follow.

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The door to his apartment swung open and he was greeted with the familiar, cold smell of paint and emptiness. He shrugged off his coat, not bothering to hang it up, and headed straight for the bed, flopping down on his back in a demonstration of complete resignation.

This can't be happening.

But it is.

And the worst part is, it doesn't explain everything.

Nelson's entire thought process was, and had always been, cause and effect. A leads to B leads to C. But there was no linear relationship to all of this. Sure, they were related, but there was no medical causality. He hadn't told anyone else about the silent mental spats he had been having with whatever was in his head. It was reminiscent of paranoia, schizophrenia, or another one of the multiple disorders that eventually sent people off to the bughouse. The voice was disjointed, and it didn't appear to be speaking English. Yet, he could understand it. And even though he had removed anything that had even a small metal component from the apartment, he knew that the strange movement occurrences weren't gone either. It happened occasionally at Rachels's place, and he was becoming terrified that every clang of something falling or being thrown on the street was due to him.

Nelson closed his eyes and began murmuring under his breath. What he needed to do now was get a grip and sort this out. Letter by letter, point by point.

Differential diagnoses, grouping symptoms, this was what he was trained to do.

One: Peracute brain mass

Two: The voice

Three: Paranoia

Four: Things flying around and moving when I get upset

Five: Blacking out

Everything could be explained by physical illness except number four. And the fact that number four happened made everything else in the diagnosis back up for grabs. Everything has to fit for a diagnosis to work. Or at least, it has to fit somewhat. This didn't fit at all.

Are we wandering into the realm of the supernatural here? Why not? Didn't the experiment dive into the land of a supernatural? There was no logical explanation for any of that, was there ? No, I imagined all of it. There was no Billy Mahoney, I was imagining all of it. Were they imagining all of it? Even if there wasn't a physical presence, can't a supernatural force invade the mind? Make you think things? Speak to you?

"Balls." Nelson whimpered, throwing his hands up to his face and pressing them against his forehead. A year ago he would have considered himself to be thinking nonsense and gone to take a cold shower. But in his current state of desperation, it made sense. It was then that his phone rang. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the high, tinny, electronic jangle. For a second, he feared the voice in his head might actually be finding other ways to speak now. Stop it. That's ridiculous. He squirmed off the bed and cautiously approached the phone, then lifted it out of it's receiver which an almost inaudible click. "Hello?"

There was nothing on the other line.

No dial tone, no static.

Nothing.

He fought the twist of fear in his stomach and cleared his throat. "Hello?"

Nothing.

And then, suddenly, a sound that could only be described as screeching metal combined with electronic feedback blasted into his ears with the intensity of a freight train. It was so loud it felt like something popped inside his brain, something broke. "Damn it!" he shrieked, tossing the phone across the room.

It skittered along like an insect until it came to rest against the opposite wall.

Silent. Nelson stared at the phone, unable to control the shaking in his legs. What in all the levels of hell was that? His mind began running in a million different directions, telling him he was crazy, telling him he was getting a sign, telling him it wasn't real, telling him anything but something he believed. He took several steps backwards, keeping his eyes on the phone, until he felt the bed against his knees. He sat, and only then did he realize the extent to which his muscles had tensed.

He laid back, legs dangling over the edge of the bed, and stared at the ceiling with a dull, catatonic look in his eyes.

Nelson?

It came again. But this time, he was too tired to ignore it. His mouth moved automatically.

"Yes."

And the conversation began.

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"I still can't believe you two are doing this." Dave watched Steckle hang up the phone and turn off his computer speakers, which had been turned to almost full volume. Joe looked away.

"I don't like it either, but it's either have all of us handed over, or we can try and fix this." But even Steckle sounded unsure of himself. "If we can just increase his stress level to a certain point, he can reach a break and that'll be the end result….we're just hurrying along whatever outcome would happen anyway."

"And you know that for sure? You know for sure that doing this is just hastening an outcome, not changing it? I knew you were full of it, Randy, but I didn't think this much. This is dangerous, I'm not kidding."

"Of course I'm not sure of it," Steckle hissed aware he was losing ground, "but a lot of literature points to it. I'm not doing this just because-"

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not!"

"Dave, come on –"

"Shut up, Joe! As if you have EVER done anything useful for ANYONE in your entire man-whoring life!"

"Screw you!"

"Dave, listen to me!" Steckle's voice had gone up a few pitches. "Dave, I'm scared, all right?"

Dave scoffed "I'm sure you are."

"Yes, I am. I'm seeing my friend go down the ultimate Slip'n'Slide of mental derangement, and I'm trying to do something the only way I know how, without getting him kicked out of medical school at the same time, which definitely would put him over the edge! Look, we have three options. Option one, we blow this all out into the open, force him to get help - "

"Get him AND us kicked out of med school –" Joe grumbled

"Right, get him and us kicked out….right before we finally get our degrees…come on Dave, you know Nelson as well as I do, and you know that getting kicked out would drive him over the brink and past it. Medicine is his LIFE. It's everything he's ever wanted to do. It's mental suicide, and possibly physical to follow."

"And your other options??"

" We can sit tight and watch him slowly degenerate, because there is no way he's going to get help on his own, you know that."

"Or?"

"Or we can push him. Give him a chance to just break out of it. It's the only way Dave, and I don't like it any more that you do."

"I bet it'll make a great chapter in your book." Dave turned away and headed for the door, his voice grating.

And for the first time in his life, Randy Steckle completely lost it. He hurled the dictaphone at Dave, hitting him square in the back of the head and rushed him, pummeling the taller man across the face with a large fist. Joe immediately dove into the fray and separated the two before Dave could even register that Steckle had hit him.

"Guys, cut it out! Now!"

"Don't put this on me Dave! Don't pretend you're the only one who gives a shit about Nelson, because you're not! I've known him just as long as you have, and he's just as much my friend despite the huge stick shoved up his ass, and so help me God I'm trying to do the right thing! Don't act so fricking high and mighty when you were just as involved in this entire ordeal as me! In fact, you were more so - I was the only one trying to tell you idiots not to do it! So get off your high horse and SHUT the HELL UP!"

There was a long silence as Dave looked back at him, flabbergasted. Steckle composed himself and disengaged Joe's arm from his shoulder, turning away and curling his lip in anger. "If you're not going to help, then get out of here Dave. Go back to school, or Rachel, or whatever you want."

"Randy, come on, I'm sorry."

"Then help me try to fix him."

Dave closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. This was insane. And the fact that Steckle was making sense was even more insane. But what else could they do. He took several deep breaths and looked from Joe, to Steckle, to the phone, and back again. "You swear to me that you're doing this with good intentions?"

"Dave, if we knew of anything better to do, we'd do it. If this all gets found out, everyone's career is ruined, because we'll have to explain everything." Joe murmured.

"And that would mean the end of our success, but it'd end up likely being the end of Nelson's life. This is the only thing we can do besides watching him slowly spiral down. He has a chance this way." Steckle finished, still a bit on edge as if he expected Dave to come back in swinging.

Dave nodded, ever so slightly.

"All right."