Fates Collide

Prologue - The Cure

In the dank basement of the University Hospital, as the florescent lights flicker in and out of darkness, as the rats huddle together in one corner, as water drips from the exposed pipes in the ceiling, the doctor is hard at work. 

It is not his first experiment. In fact, he has been attempting this experiment for the past decade. In doing so, he has lost everything and everyone he loves. His wife. His children. His house. He has even been demoted to a position that in his mind equals to the bottom of the doctor's food chain, an ER doctor. 

Every morning, after his graveyard shift, he retreats to the hospital's basement. To him, this is home. To him, this is where his real work begins. 

On the tables before him are beakers and test tubes along with a few Bunsen burners, set up in an elaborate manner with details beyond anyone's imagination. He often spends days and sometimes weeks preparing for the trial runs of his experiments.

A decade ago, with dark brown hair cut just below the ears, the doctor was handsome and young. All the nurses at the hospital would stop and stare whenever he walked by. Now, with his salt and pepper greasy hair lengthening to almost his shoulders and wrinkles plus freckles covering his face, he often attends his shifts unshaven, uncaring, making him look like a combination of Albert Einstein and Victor Frankenstein. 

A genius doctor with great plans and full of mental issues. 

Wearing black latex gloves that extends all the way to his elbows, the doctor limps to the corner, bends down, and picks up a rat. "Come to papa," he mutters in a wicked voice. 

The chosen rat squirms in the doctor's hand as he returns to the table. Beneath the flickering lights, he strokes the rat and as the rat calms down, his squeeze around the rat's little neck becomes tighter. "Thank you for your sacrifice." 

Crack!

The rat's head falls sideways. It no longer struggles. It no longer moves. It is dead. 

He places the rat beneath the microscope and with a incredibly thin needle, he begins extracting the rat's blood. "You are the star." Calmly and hypnotically, he speaks to the dead rat. "You are the most important part of this experiment. Without you, this whole thing would not be possible."

Upon extracting the blood, the doctor clumsily limps to the other end of his elaborate experiment set up. There, into the large beaker resting on the table, filled half-way with a light-blue liquid mixture, the doctor empties the vial of freshly extracted rat blood. At once, the liquid turns into a purplish color. 

With a flick of a switch, the experiment begins. The purplish mixture begins to flow from the plastic tube in the large beaker up to a test tube containing clear liquid. Below the test tube is an empty beaker. The liquid turns black in contact and begins to bubble. 

As the black liquid bubbles and thickens, the beakers and test tubes begins to wobble. Standing on the sidelines, the doctor watches his experiment with delight and fascination. In the dark corner, the rats too watch with curiosity as they mourn the loss of one of their own. Even the lights watch without so much as a flicker. 

Pop pop pop.

Cracks begin to run along the test tube's sides and in an explosion, the test tube explodes but due to the doctor's genius design, the black slush from the test tube lands nowhere but the empty beaker below. 

Experiment continues.

The blackened slush is transported from the beaker to a test tube clamped overhead through a plastic siphoning tube and a pump. The slush is to be heated over a burner so the mixture can be thinned and reduced. The doctor watches, rubbing his hands with anticipation as the thinned slush travels through a series of tubes like a roller coaster. The slush goes through the heating and cooling process several more times. Its volume decreases dramatically before arriving to its final stage. 

A corked test tube filled with yellow liquid stands upright at the end of the experiment. By the time the slush arrives at the final test tube, its color has changed to bright magenta while the mixture has reduced by fifty-percent of the original amount. 

The magenta color enters the corked test tube through a plastic tube plugged into the hole on top of the cork. The magenta fluid does not penetrate the yellow liquid. Instead, the magenta fluid floats on top like oil and water. 

After the final drop makes its way into the test tube, the doctor loosens the clamps that keep the test tube upright, holds the test tube to the light, and swirls the liquid. Surprisingly, the liquid gradually goes from magenta, purple, yellow, and then clear. 

As though he's been holding his breath, the doctor sighs a breath of relief. Then from his medical kit, he pulls out a syringe and fills the syringe with the clear serum. "Experiment strain 1001, here we go." 

He removes the glove and rolls his left sleeve to just above his elbow. There, he positions the needle over a vein. A deep breath, he inserts the needle and pushes down on the plunger.