Days of Survival

0-2 days, Sweden

The ticking from a huge clock in one of the corners bounced from wall to wall in the sound proof room. After spending several hours, if not days in there Sebastian took no notice of the sound. To him it had become a part of the room itself, a sound that belonged in there and without it he wouldn't be able to concentrate. His mind occasionally drifted away towards the late summer evenings, the evenings he was missing by being inside his lab. He hadn't seen the sun for days and he missed it. He missed the warm embrace the sun provided, he missed the brown colour sunlight gave him after hours of exposure. Now he was just a shadow of his former self with hollow cheeks and pale skin. His once blond hair had grown past his shoulders and lost its lustre. A start to a beard covered his thin chin. He had always had difficulties with growing one, no matter how hard he tried he never succeeded. He would never get more than a few strands before giving up and shaving it off again. He remembered looking at men in catalogues and feeling jolts of jealousy if they had beards. As he reached the age of eighteen when his friends started to grow beards he felt left out. He was the one who couldn't get one, the outsider and it wasn't just the facial hair he lacked, he barely had any body hair as well. Thin eyebrows only made his dirt brown eyes look even bigger than they were. As he prepared the yellow liquid, making it perfect, the clock kept ticking and hours flew away, away to never come back again. If the liquid was a success time wouldn't matter anymore, not to anyone, deadly sick, old or tired. Everyone would have all the time they needed and more. The best part, he would be rich, so rich that his grandchildren nor their grandchildren would have to work.

A loud "bong" woke Sebastian from his dreamless sleep. He had fallen asleep over the counter where he worked. Luckily he didn't tip over the precious jar containing his only sample of the liquid. A bit risky but he couldn't wait to try it and for that matter he didn't have time to wait. The body he had gotten a hold of could die any day now and then it would be too late. He couldn't go through the process of getting another body that was still breathing. It had been a pain in the ass to find the body of an old woman he currently used. He had been forced to find the darkest and most horrible sites on the internet, the sites where you could buy assassins and kidnapped babies. It had taken him weeks to find the right person but he had found a body, a woman in a coma. If he failed she would die but that wasn't a big deal, death is better than being in a coma. He loaded a small syringe until it was full, a single drop dripped from the needle and landed on the counter, quickly drying and leaving a horrible stain on the stainless steel.

Sebastian injected the yellow liquid into the old woman laying on a table in the middle of the room. With a determined push he slid the syringe into the soft skin behind her ear. She moved slightly but didn't wake up, now it was just waiting left. In the next couple of hours he would know if he had succeeded or not. He would know if he would become rich and the world would thank him. Different scenarios played within his head as he waited, everything from big houses to women to ultimate fame came and left in his head. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, enhancing the view inside his head. A huge smile were plastered on his face and he couldn't wait for his new life to begin, a life in luxury.

He spent the entire night or was it day, he didn't know and he certainly didn't care. He could finally be done with his experiments, experiments that had taken him years and years of isolation. He couldn't risk anyone else finding out what he was doing. As the clock hit the hour on top of the dial he saw movements in the woman's eyes. They were still closed but they moved nonetheless. Her eyes crumpled together as if she were in pain and seconds later her entire face showed signs of discomfort. As she grimaced more and more a smile spread over Sebastian's face. He started to laugh the moment she opened her eyes and stared right at him with bright eyes. "Eric, You have to see this. I think we finally made it!" Sebastian shouted through the door into an empty corridor. Minutes later he was joined by a young man who recently had turned twenty. He was bald, not a single hair grew on his round egg shaped head. "Are you sure this time, Sebastian?" Eric asked carefully while he stared at the woman. She was moving her fingers and she made weird noises as if she was trying to speak but had forgotten how.