In which the term 'test tubes' takes on a whole other meaning, things get actual names and Joe's DNA turns out to be quite regular.

So, maybe the dungeon Joe had imagined Kevin to be in –possibly tortured and starved to death— wasn't exactly the right conclusion. So much for brotherly instincts.

The building Joe was currently very nervously standing in front of was very far from the dungeon-vision.
In fact, it was very modern, with a lot of straight lines and blacks and whites. The occasional grey, even.
Stylish as Joe was (and he send a silent mental apology towards Stella) he didn't exactly find the colour schedule of the building interesting.
No, he was more concerned about what was inside the building.

He absent-mindedly stroked Elvis's head, more reassuring himself then the dog, but his furry friend-for-the-day kept on being nice and let Joe pet him.

"Here goes nothing…" Joe whispered and stalked on further, through a pair of automatic doors and the reception.

While doing so, he came to the conclusion that he had absolutely no idea what he was going to ask for.

"Hi, I'm Joe." – "Yes, you don't know me, but I'm looking for my missing, scatterbrained brother whose car is parked in the front…" – "No, no. Actually, my dog brought me here." – "No… seriously, I'm not crazy, I swear!"

That would go over well.

But he had to do something! Kevin's car was in the front, which meant that whether, Kevin was held captive in the place, or the strange woman, Macy –if he remembered correctly— who just had to know more, used this place as her hideout.
Joe swayed back and forth, staring at the reception, receiving weird glances from not only the bubble-gum chewing, mean-looking girl behind the reception, but also from multiple bystanders.

C'mon! He told himself. Get your act together! You're on a mission here!

Joe walked up to the reception, nervously fidgeting with the hem of his carelessly thrown on shirt and trying to flatten his hair (which didn't go well with Elvis, who bit his calve) and smiled at the girl behind the desk, who reluctantly smiled back.

"Hi, I'm Abby." The ginger-haired girl said, momentarily forgetting about her bubble-gum as she pointed to her badge. "What can I do for you…?"

She was dressed casually, still like a young person/late-teenager, but very neatly. Her badge showed off a green logo, probably of the company that owned this building. It was a strange kind of circle that formed a cross within itself. All black and it made Joe shiver, he couldn't help it.

"Err… yeah, I'm looking for…"

"Joe?"

"Her…"

He'd recognised the voice immediately, since it had imbedded itself in his brain over the night. But when he turned around, he was momentarily confused.
She looked different from yesterday; different from the vision she'd been in his strange dream.
This time, her hair was up in a ponytail, her make-up was basically none-existent and she was dressed in a white lab coat that reached her knees. She was also taller then he remembered, thanks to the high black heels that hugged her ankles.
But mostly, it was the look in her eyes, where yesterday she'd looked calm and happy; today, she looked stressed and almost sad. It screamed from her eyes.
Joe couldn't help but ask; "Are you okay?"
It brought a bit of a smile to her face when she answered. "Yes, I am one hundred percent fine. Thank you. What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for my brother. I'm sure it's his car you're driving." Joe said. Completely blunt and out of the blue, even to himself.
Needless to say Doctoress Macy Misa –as it said on her tag— looked genuinely shocked.

"Well, have a nice day." Abby sarcastically muttered behind him as Dr. Misa guided him to the stiff looking black couch in the opposite corner.

"Calm down, Joe." She urged, her hand on his shoulder.
She must've seen the panic behind his eyes. He wasn't great at hiding his emotions, nor was he good at lying in the first place.
"Now, deep breath and tell me what is going on and why the heck you are here!" The stress was back in her voice and that was enough to push Joe over the edge he didn't know was there until he reached it and it was too late to stop.
So he spilled, basically everything, to this woman he had only known for minutes, who was possibly involved with Kevin's missing and was also wearing the logo that gave Joe the shivers.
He told her about his brother, about how Kevin was known for wandering off on his own, the fact that he always came back up until that point. He told her that he'd been gone for 2 days now and that Joe suspected he was kidnapped, or at least forcefully kept somewhere. He told her about his brothers' love for beautiful things, how his way of thinking allowed him to see what others didn't, how smart Kevin actually was and that the car, standing outside, was indeed one of a kind. It was Kevin's.
He told the doctor how worried he was, how much he loved Kevin.

At that point, she had guided him to her laboratory –the only place, or so she'd claimed, where they could speak privately— since Joe's breakdown had send a lot of stares in their direction. Even a sympathising one from Abby the desk-girl.

"Shh." Dr. Misa soothed, almost motherly as she petted his shoulder, much the way he'd petted Elvis – Just, what was it, halve an hour ago?— and the gesture send another way of hysterics through Joe's body.

He didn't cry, mind you, but his breath hitched in his throat and his words sped up until he was babbling away.
Dr. Misa just listened.

Then, unexpectedly, she asked; "Does your brother have dark hair, brown eyes, curls and is he around five feet ten inches in height?"

Joe hadn't said a thing about Kevin's appearance, just his personality –which he loved, no matter what he'd ranted about it in the past— so this question caught him so off guard that he almost fell off the stool he was sitting on. He could only barely steady himself on the lab-table.

"Yes! How do you know?" He shouted, staring at the woman, hope rising like a balloon in his chest.

Dr. Misa's face seemed to drain of all colour for a second and she looked away, in the pale light looking even more stressed then she'd already been for a second, before she smiled. "Just checking if he indeed looked like you, so I can keep an eye out for him. I figured, since you're brothers…" she let the sentence trail off.

The balloon deflated with a strangely painful 'ppppprrrrrrrffffft'.

"Oh." Said Joe, leaning back on the stool, forgetting it didn't have a backside and almost falling off again. "Sorry, I thought…"

"No, no! It's fine, really!" Dr. Misa said. Her eyes flashed from Joe's face towards something in the room and back, after which they looked away again. Almost like she didn't wanted to look Joe in the eyes.

He tried to take a better look at her face in the dim light of the only lamp that was lit in the obviously quite large room (Joe could tell from the echoes of their voices, though he also found that there were a lot of objects, large objects, in the way of the echo) He was suspicious again.
Dr. Misa stood. She was now openly fiddling with her hands.

"Listen, Joe. I have a lot to do. I shouldn't have been talking with you in the first place." She said, walking to the door of the lab and he now suspected her of deliberately avoiding the light switch. Joe was a suckish liar, but because of that, he could also fairly well tell if he was being lied to. Dr. Macy Misa was hiding something. As in an instinct, Joe anxiously shot a look around the room, noticing that there was another light lit, in the back of the room, whatever it was hidden from sight by countless of massive objects, but before he could look closer, Dr. Misa cut him off.

"I'm happy that you came here and that you trusted me with all this. I'll certainly make work of this. But you should leave now." She said.
She smiled, a mixture of hopeful pleading and sadness.

Joe believed her and walked through the door. "Dr. Misa…" he tried.

"Bye, Joe!"

Then, the door was closed on him and he realised he should've taken a better look around the lab. Something was going on, he was sure of it. He still wasn't sure if Dr. Misa necessarily had something to do with it, but he was positive she knew something.

He wanted to punch the closed door, but decided against it; the door couldn't help it either and he instead tried to find his way back to the entrance hall.

"Goodbye!" Abby said. Her eyes having a 'sorry I was mean' look to them.

"Bye, Abby." Joe muttered. He could feel her smile in his back as he walked out. Elvis had patiently waited by the front-doors. Something he, once again, never did for Joe.

"Thank you." He told the golden retriever. Hoping it understood.
He guessed he did, when the dog walked out in front of Joe with a smug swing of his tail.

It couldn't make Joe smile. Something in the building had been off. Call it intuition, call it a plain thing his gut told him, but he knew something was hidden within those walls. He could almost feel it, like he felt that Kevin was in danger.
Dr. Misa had panicked when he'd confirmed Kevin's looks. She had grown even more stressed during the course of his hyperventilated story.

He fell back into the habit of kicking pebbles through the streets in the falling darkness, hitting trees and tires. His silhouette once again covered in shadows and his hands shoved deep inside the pockets of his jeans. Almost feeling them glide low on his hips, but he had no care in the world to pull them up again.

Suddenly, his phone started buzzing. It scared Joe senseless, but he automatically reached for it and answered the call.
It was Frankie.

"What's up?" Joe whispered in the phone. He felt like whispering was appropriate. He was still walking the familiar path towards home, just passing the park and there was no-one there that could possibly hear him, but he didn't want to take a risk.

"They found him…" Frankie whispered back.

Joe almost dropped the phone, but had the sense of mind to hold on to it, desperately clinging to the little device.

"Where?" Was his only question.

"In the park. Mom's headed."

Joe immediately started running, towards the gate of the park, only twenty or so feet away. Now that he was paying attention to his surroundings again, instead of his own thoughts, he now saw the blue flashing lights in the falling darkness, contrasting to the last golden sunbeams.

What was with him and the twilight and oh god! Was that an ambulance?

He was the first to arrive; he didn't saw his mom anywhere as he burst through the wall of cops, medics and other official looking people that were standing in between him and his brother.
They recognised him and let him through. One of the benefits of your father doing governmental work. Only one hand stopped him, resting on the same shoulder Dr. Misa had.

"Careful now, son, it's not the prettiest sight."

Joe didn't stop; he gulped, but kept on walking to the midst of the circle.

What he saw finally made hot tears, held in within the mysterious building, run over his face.

Kevin was lying on his back, obviously turned from lying face-down into the muddy ground. His clothes, the same he'd worn the morning Joe had last saw him, were ripped, harshly in most of the cases and some dried blood made his face seem crooked and strange, but Joe recognised the discomfort on his brother's pale face.
He dropped down on his knees, not caring it was starting to rain softly, not seeing the umbrella held above him as they quickly but carefully laid Kevin in the ambulance.
Kevin's skin was covered in weird scrapes and scratches, as if someone had attacked him with a slicer or a grater, scraping his skin off. There were cuts too and his hair seemed to be randomly cut in some places. Bruises decorated all the other exposed body parts, as far as Joe could tell.

"He lost a lot of blood." Joe heard one of the paramedics say as he without hesitation stepped into the ambulance with Kevin. "What in the name happened to this kid?"

Yeah, that was what Joe wanted to know too, as he stared at his elder brother's face.
Never in his life had he felt so much like the actual older brother. Not even with Frankie, who could take care of himself with better skill then Joe ever could. Kevin looked so fragile, so pale as he lay there, Joe couldn't help but smash himself up on the inside. He was Kevin's brother. Brothers took care of each other.

Then he saw it, through his tears. A tattoo. A nasty black irritated tattoo on the inside of Kevin's arm.
Joe immediately knew this was bad, real bad, not just because of the fact that Kevin would never have a tattoo, but because of the shape.
It was a circle that formed a cross within itself. It was the same logo that hung above the door of the laboratory-building. It was the same logo as on Abby's badge. The same logo as on Dr. Misa's tag.

The next day, morning.

With Elvis once again besides him –the dog hadn't left his side all day— Joe walked the now almost familiar path to the building he now knew to be named the New Industrial Laboratories. The N.I.L.
He walked through the automatic grey doors, into the slightly lighted entry-hall. He didn't greet Abby, who livingly told him hello and walked right through the white angled corridors, towards the innocent, closed door.

He banged on it, loudly.

Dr. Misa wasn't the one who opened it, as Joe had expected, but he wasn't about to let him be taken back by the large, dark skinned man in a too tight lab coat that was standing in front of him.

"What'ya doing here?" The man asked, roughly. He was bald and looked like a freaking body-guard, but Joe had a goal. An important one. A desperate one.

"I came to see Dr. Misa." Answered an infuriated Joe. He wanted answers and he wanted them now.
Kevin was lying in the hospital, fast asleep, alive, but hurt and plagued with nightmares. Joe had sat in the waiting room half the night, the other half spend by Kevin's side, comforting his mother and little brother and waiting for his father to come back from the police station and the hospital-offices to take over. He had slept a well counted one-and-a-half-hours, he was exhausted, worried and unknowing.

"I'm sorry." The man said. "I am not allow'd to let anyone in at the moment."

"Dr. Misa!" Joe yelled, knowing she was in the room and well able to hear him. "They found my brother!"

With this, Dr. Misa's soft voice called for the man to step aside. "Its okay, Rob. He's okay."

The big man send him another glare, before he stepped aside. Smiling kindly at the dark haired professor/doctor.

"They found Kevin?" Macy Misa asked. Staring at Joe with big brown eyes, her hair even more tangled then he remembered.

"Yes, they did." Joe said, staring at the woman with obvious aversion. She was slightly taken back with that.

"Was he… was he all right?" She asked nervously. She didn't seem like the trained professional Joe had met now.

"He's fine." Joe said shortly, gesturing he wanted to continue and flicking his not-washed-in-two-days-hair out of his eyes. "But he was mistreated, mangled and marked..."

He saw her swallow.

"Your logo was tattooed on the inside of his arm, so don't try to deny that something is going on." His voice got softer, became almost pleadingly now. "I know something's going on, that you know something. I know it was foolish to return, but I have to know!"
He gave the woman the best puppy-eyes he had, hoping, begging for answers now. Praying she would understand.

Apparently, she recognised the look, because for a second, she looked down at the dog at his feet, before her eyes looked into his again.

"You seem like a smart kid and I've done some thinking today. Yes, I do know some things that you don't. But I swear I had nothing to do with your brother's disappearance, nor with his current state of being." She spoke quickly, gesturing him to come inside. "No, its okay, Rob." She said to the man, who tried to block Joe. "He has the right to know."
Her voice sounded really tired. Almost exhausted. Some heavy thinking she must've been doing, Joe mused.

Joe walked in and finally saw the whole insides of the laboratory. It looked more like a science-fiction setting then he'd thought possible. Huge cupboards filled with books covered the nearby wall, as well as file-closets and the nearby floor was set for the usual lab tables, similar to the ones in Joe's biology-class. But the back of the room, and with that, the largest part of the room, was stocked with advanced looking technology. Joe guessed them to be computers or difficult machines.
There were also humongous empty glass things filled with strange lights and there were wires everywhere.
How he hadn't noticed this before puzzled Joe.
Luckily, the room was darkly tinted, so the bright light coming from the tubes and the lab-lights didn't blind his eyes.

"Do you know what the New Industrial Laboratories do, Joe?" Dr. Misa asked as she gestured him to the same stool he had been seated on previously.
The so called Rob went to stand on the other side of the table.

"Not really." Joe confessed.

"We are a governmental corporation that experiments with biologic tissue and the latest technologies like the nano-technology and artificial intelligence."

The answer was very straight forward; Joe liked it.

"Yesterday morning, I received interesting supplements of DNA." Dr. Macy continued.
Joe wondered how high of a professor she actually was, since she worked with such long, tongue-breaking words. "Around the same time my superiors gave me the car you claim to be your brothers." Dr. Misa raised her hand to silence Rob, who tried to say something. "Let me finish!" She told him, once again letting the stress slip into her speech.

"The DNA was obviously male, slightly older then yourself, with dark hair, brown eyes, curls and around five foot ten inches in height." The description she'd given him of Kevin earlier, could it be…? "I believe this to be the DNA of your brother. And I am truly sorry for not telling you earlier and the fact that it was apparently taken without his approval. I am also sorry of what I did to it, knowing he was obviously not in charge of it being drained from him." She said, making anger flare up inside Joe's chest, not directed towards her, but towards her superiors.
"I am however still pleased with the samples. They're unique, Joe. Because, as you told me, your brother is unique. His DNA strands are like exquisite ingredients to a cook. They're simply fascinating. The structure is perfect for what we are doing, the way it works almost strange. I won't go into the details, you wouldn't understand, just believe me when I say that they are and with that, I don't completely blame my bosses for not taking the chances of denial. But I am truly sorry, Joe."

Joe, not completely an idiot himself, though his DNA was supposedly regular, had caught on to the hidden meaning within her words. "Apology accepted." He replied, still a bit dazed from all the information he'd gotten. "But… What exactly do you use Kevin's DNA for?"

Dr. Misa sighed and Joe saw the big man Rob sending her a warning glance. "You cannot tell 'im, Macy!" he almost hissed. His voice raised, though it was still deeper then Joe's regular voice.

"He has the right to know, Rob." Macy– Dr. Misa replied. "It's practically his brother!"
Big Rob didn't have a reply to this.

Dr. Misa sighed once again and Joe felt Elvis press himself into Joe's leg anxiously. "The reason I was so secretive is in the back of the room, Joe. Why don't you… Why don't you go see for yourself?"

Slowly, Joe stood up from the stool and looked at Dr. Misa. Fright was most probably obvious in his eyes, but all the doctor did was send him a reassuring smile. A grunt from Rob startled him and he quickly walked towards the back of the room, around multiple large objects he didn't want to know the usage of right now, until both the persons behind him were out of sight and he seemed to be all alone with Elvis, who followed closely.

Cautiously, he walked closer to the back of the room. It was clear where he was headed. The brightest light, the light he'd seen the previous day, came from a large transparent sort of glass tube, towering above his head and twice Joe's width. It was attached to wires, some thin, some a big as his thigh.
Now that he was closer, the light was even brighter, but he could look through the glass and his stomach turned at the sight within.

Inside the massive thing flowed something that had the silhouette of a human being. And Joe would have thought it to be human; because it looked very much like a human, if it hadn't been for the shining, robotic plates that covered its chest. Joe would've mistaken it for a boy, not much older, probably younger then he was if it hadn't been for the blue light that shone through gaps in the pale skin –if it even was skin– and if it hadn't been for the jolts and wires that he saw, connected it's leg to it's hip.

What took him back the most, however, was its face, which was unmistakably human. It was pale underneath the familiar black curls, the same shade Kevin's had when he was sick. Its face was so familiar, yet so strange that he felt himself staggering backwards, almost tripping over Elvis, who –of course— curiously walked closer to the curled… whatever it was.
Joe gasped as he slapped his hand in front of his own mouth.

"His DNA strands are like exquisite ingredients to a cook."
"He has the right to know, Rob. It's practically his brother!"
"I don't completely blame my bosses for not taking the chances of denial…"And then his own question.

"What exactly do you use Kevin's DNA for?"

The answer floated right in front of him.

Because the tube contained some weird, impossible, robotic creature that looked similar to Kevin, that, as Dr. Misa had said, could've been Kevin's brother. It confirmed the realisation that dawned upon him.
It was made with help of Kevin's DNA!

"This is the outcome of years and years of research and investigations. Years and years of looking for the right DNA, I took the chance when I got it." Dr. Misa's voice softly spoke, warily and even more exhausted then before. "What you are seeing is the ultimate goal of the New Industrial Clone and Humanoid Organisation for the Living, Android and Silicones. The ultimate climax of the N.I.C.H.O.L.A.S. project."

Joe swallowed. He was mentally shouting.

No. no. no. no. no… no!

"This, Joe, is what we call a Humanoid. Held together by and partly grown out of your brother's unique DNA."

Then Joe was once again driven over an edge he hadn't seen before it was too late and he blacked out. The last thing he heard was an amused, deep laugh and the happy bark of a dog.

Iron-claws up for imaginary Sci-Fi science!
Oh and I'm awesome, this was nine pages straight, babynoids. That deserves a review… ;) Let's see how high you can get my stakes…
With love, of course.