I was thinking of uploading this later but changed my mind! :P :) Enjoy!

Thick eyelashes fluttered as Cordelia blinked her eyes open. She saw a pair of sapphire and a pair of coffee orbs staring down at her anxiously. It took her a moment to remember where she was and why she was there.

"Oh, what happened?" Cordelia murmured as she sat up, already knowing the answer.

"You fainted," Joe told her. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, quite," she smiled weakly. "It's not unusual for me to do that, so don't worry too much about it."

"Oh, okay," Joe nodded. He couldn't help but be more concerned about finding out what she knew of Frank's whereabouts. "Listen, not to sound callous or anything, but we've been really worried about Frank. Do you where he might be?"

"Um," Cordelia frowned. "I think we both have the same problem. I left home to look for him."

"Cordelia, right?" the man with the hazel eyes asked. She looked at him and almost gasped. She had completely overlooked him, who because of his striking resemblance to Frank, she now assumed to be his father. She nodded. "We need your help if we're ever going to find my son. Why don't you start off from the beginning? Tell us how you met and when."

"Of course," she nodded slowly, her brows furrowing as she concentrated, determined to help. "It was a couple of weeks ago. I live with my mother on Mulberry Estate."

"That old mansion out on Brickwell?" Fenton prompted. She nodded.

"My mother had brought him with her when she came back from… well, I'm not really sure, I mean… she didn't exactly say. What she did tell me was that he was looking for a cure… for a friend of his." She paused when she saw Fenton and Joe exchange looks. "What my mother didn't know was that Frank had no sick friend."

"He was lying," Joe confirmed. "It was really Frank who was sick."

"Yes, he told me," Cordelia told him. Joe's eyes widened in surprise. "I told him I wouldn't tell anybody, that he could trust me especially because he and I have the same sickness."

"What?" the two men before her chorused.

"He told me about the headaches, the nausea—everything… everything that I've been going through since I could remember."

There was an audible sigh as Joe breathed out in relief. He had been preparing himself for news of his brother's death, but the girl sitting on their couch now was living, breathing evidence that Frank's chances of survival were much better than he had originally thought. It was only a moment later that he noticed her frowning at him. Great, she must think I'm a cold-hearted—

"I didn't mean…" Joe stammered. "It's just that… I thought that Frank's illness… I thought it might kill him and—"

"No, it won't," Cordelia said, tearing her gaze away. "It won't kill him. Only give him a lifetime of suffering and pain and…"

"That's no life at all," Fenton commented.

"But my mother," Cordelia said, wiping at her eyes. "She's been working. So hard. She's a scientist, chemist, a doctor… she's been working to find a cure for me. So that I can finally live a normal life."

"No…" Fenton breathed. Joe and the girl looked up at him questioningly, but Cordelia suddenly gasped.

"Wait, you don't think—"

"Cordelia, is it possible your mother could have found out about Frank and his illness?"

He gagged again, feeling the burning in his throat accentuate. It seemed like years since he was last inside the somewhat protective embrace of the water tank. Now he was staring into the toilet—

and not for the first time.

"Are you finished?" a voice behind him rasped, at the same time grabbing the back of his shirt and shaking him.

"Y—yes." He croaked, wiping off some remaining bile from his lips. He was about ready to pull out his own hair. His captors were unpredictably fiendish, he decided. One minute he's eating the food they've given him, and the next their stuffing a tube down his throat and he's gagging on warm salt water. Pumping his stomach, they called it. It was then that he realized they must have been prepping him for the next antidote.

"Finally," the man said, yanking him onto his feet. "Worried I was going to have to call in the cavalry case you puked yourself inside out."

"S—sorry t—to disappoint," Frank growled as he was shoved forward at every other step. He cringed at the sight of the white door. Before he could muster up enough energy to shout protest, the man had him by the arms and was throwing him unceremoniously into the room. The white room. White walls. White floor. White ceiling. White light. Sprawled on the floor, the warmth of his breath moistening the white tiles, Frank felt his stomach lurch. Not again, he thought as a sinking feeling settled itself in his stomach. He felt his arms grabbed once more from behind and bound with the fast becoming familiar zip tie. The man then flipped him onto his back.

"No, please, not again," Frank murmured as his vision throbbed in and out of focus. By the sounds he was hearing, he could tell that the man was prepping another syringe, filling it with… more of Moore's "trial" antidote.

"Hush now, my little guinea pig," the man in the scrubs said with a sneer. "This will only hurt a moment."

"Enough," Frank rasped. "Please…"

"Shh…" the man was now swabbing Frank's arm. The boy's murmurings were starting to irk him.

"W—why are y—you helping—h—her?" Frank gasped as the needle pierced his shoulder. "This isn't r—right!" He gritted his teeth and then relaxed when he felt the needle withdraw.

"What can I say," the man grunted. "Pay's good, health care's more than decent… I've got needs you know."

"I do too," Frank hissed. "But I… I d—don't go helping der—deranged scientists… kidnap and e—experiment on p—people." The man froze. He stooped and whispered gruffly into Frank's ear.

"Who made you the judge of me?" Without another glance, the orderly left the room, leaving Frank sweating and writhing under the powerful gaze of the white fluorescents that ruled the ceiling. The youth could feel a strange heat creeping down his arm. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but they eventually shut and he fell unconscious. Ten minutes later, his eyes flew open, the brown orbs pained and dilated. The earlier writhing returned, and eventually turned into a wild bucking as his body rejected the antidote with a passion. A fire was licking his insides and rushing through every pore in his body. The room's temperature seemed to rise from the heat emanating from its captive's body alone. He opened his mouth and let out a feral scream. "NO! UGH. PLEASE!" His head rocked left and right, a violent shaking of the head, desperate to convince himself that the pain was not real. It could not be real. Not this… It went on for thirteen minutes. The voice screaming, sobbing, moaning. The body writhing, bucking, and convulsing. The walls and ceiling mocked him, closing in on him and then swaying back. The lights were a painful haze—each drove their brilliant glare into his retinas with the potency of a nail gun—even when he shut his eyes. After thirteen minutes, he began to fall quiet. His body and mind numbing themselves. His last coherent thought before consciousness took pity on him, he articulated with great effort, and with great hope. "Dad, Joe, Mom… please, find me… take me back home."

"I thought everything would be much easier now that I have the perfect subject," Nadine Moore murmured as she reviewed the tapes for the umpteenth time that day. "Seems I was mistaken."

Fuller was standing by the door silently as his employer steamed, jabbing at the remote, rewinding, playing, rewinding, playing. It was today's feed, and it was no different from the footage from yesterday, the day before, and the day before that. It was the same whiteness framing the tortured body in the middle. Frank Hardy. The name was quickly etching itself into his brain, refusing to let him forget, refusing to let him justify his own actions and inactions. He knew what they were doing was illegal, was immoral—inhumane! But he could not abandon her. Moore would not let him off so easily.

"I want him prepped again," Moore said finally. Fuller shook his head inwardly, knowing that giving the boy another stomach pump brought them one step closer to killing him. "Fuller, quit gawking and get on with it!"

He snapped to attention and nodded quickly, afraid to say anything. He exited the woman's office and trotted glumly down the hall until he got to the white door flanked by two men in scrubs. With great anxiety, he beckoned for them to open the door. The men nod; it had been the same routine for days now. They prepare the boy, bring him to the room, give him the injection, and then wait for the doctor's orders to do it all over again. The men unlocked the room and entered, ignoring the rise in temperature.

"Another pumping?" one of the orderlies prompted as the other hoisted the prone body over his shoulder. Fuller stared at Frank's clammy, paled face with gut-wrenching emotion until the orderly cleared his throat. The doctor jumped and nodded quickly.

"Yes, Dr. Moore's orders," he said slowly. The man carrying Frank exited, leaving the doctor and the other man alone in the warm, white room.

"Are you alright, Dr. Fuller?" the man asked.

Fuller opened his mouth to assure the man but then stopped and frowned, his hands coming up to rub his temples. "No. No, I'm not alright."

"What is it, sir?"

Fuller looked up and clenched his jaws uncharacteristically. "Never mind. Let's just get to the prep room and get this over with." And with that, Edward Fuller erased all doubt from his mind—just as he had with every "subject" that had had the misfortune of landing on his operating table—Frank Hardy should and would be no different.

tbc