A warm jet of steaming water poured like fiery rain from the ceiling mounted water fixture of a spacious open concept shower, tiled in dark black marble. There on the floor with arms curled around knees sat the miserable husk of one Dr. Cherish, fully clothed. Former Dr. Cherish it was now, or maybe just Mr. His eyes were unfocused and hazy as he watched the water swirl around the drain at his feet before it disappeared into the tangled depths of plumbing and into the sewers, much like his career. How apropos, he thought. Many of his nights ended like this now, with him feeling sorry for himself in some dramatic way or another. He cursed the powers that be for not understanding his work, for calling it ‘disturbing’ or ‘lacking empathetic value’. He cursed his colleagues for conspiring behind his back to have him removed from his position at the laboratory. He had been so close to discovering something truly unique and even now, as the news channels and scientific community slandered him and his former associates worked to destroy all of his hard work, he knew the real brutality of it all was their lack of vision. Out of an entire world of intellectual thinkers, not one had the observational acuity to see beyond all of the red tape and scandal. None understood his motivation or the benevolence behind it. Genetic engineering was really quite a simple concept at this point, prevalent in more places than the general public might wish to know. They demonized it in many forms and the limitations and regulations imposed on it served only to hinder his vision. He sought only to bypass wasted time. Laboratory animals and mutated vegetables could only get one so far.<br/><br/><br/>Images of his youth appeared as flashes before his mind’s eye, so fully formed that he could almost smell his mother’s fragrant perfume when he hugged her goodbye for the last time. White amber and cattleya orchid. His father’s aftershave clung to him after his cheek was kissed and even to this day he could not stand the smell of bergamot. Perhaps had they been stronger then he would not be in this very predicament... No, blaming his parents for his own shortcomings served nothing but his own sorrow at being caught. He should have been more careful. Maybe if he had allotted himself more time to sleep he would not have been so delirious and forgotten his keycard at his desk. Maybe if he had been more aware of his surroundings he would have noticed that Dr. Harman was a nosey fucking bitch who had a rather disgusting habit of touching things that didn’t belong to him. Van slammed his fist into the hard black tiles below him, hurting only himself in the process. Those patients were already half dead in any case, there was nothing anyone could have done to legitimately save them. It was the only reason he was not rotting away in a solitary prison cell this very moment. Why hadn’t he called it an early night? Why wasn’t he capable enough to have completed his work before that fatal error? Was it truly an impossible feat?<br/><br/><br/>Govannon barely heard his phone ringing in the other room, he ignored it. It rang again. No one ever called him, not these days anyway. He had no family to speak of and none of his former ‘friends’ had anything but nasty insults to throw at him, though even those calls had stopped after only a couple weeks of unending abuse. Eventually the man picked himself up off the shower’s warm tiles and removed his soaked clothes, leaving the expensive garments in a heap on the floor to sour and dry. He caught his reflection in the mirror, a haggard, unshaven and diminutive version of himself. He knew it was only a trick of his mind, a fabrication of his mental state playing tricks on his eyes. He always looked tired, this he knew, but he also knew that he was handsome to others. Quite a few others. Only now that everyone thought he was just another crazy psycho doctor ... former doctor ... with a penchant for human experimentation (sacrifice the news had called it) the dating pools had quickly dried up. He did not feel alone, nor did he feel lonely. He never had in all of his thirty-two years of life. Even after his parents had died. He missed them terribly for a while, yes, but he was young and time had a funny way of softening even that sort of grief after some years.<br/><br/><br/>He meandered completely nude and dripping wet into the adjacent master bedroom of his high rise penthouse, leaving a trail of little dark spots along the plush gray carpeting to his bed where he picked up the slim black phone that had once fulfilled a huge role in his life. Now it was just a reminder of everything he’d lost. Why hadn’t he rid himself of it yet? He picked up his glasses from the nightstand and slipped them on before flicking his finger across the screen. Pale light illuminated his face in the dark room, the number was private and no voicemail had been left. A mistaken call most likely. Or someone getting more creative with how they contacted him for yet another verbal bashing, not that it mattered. The police weren’t on his side either. They wouldn’t even file an incident report after someone had vandalized his car. Smashed in every window, mirror and light they could find. ‘MURDERER’ written in all caps with brilliant red spray paint. Not even the actual color of blood ... amateurs.<br/><br/><br/>Van tossed the phone into the trash can by his door. A tantrum. He would likely fish it out later before his maid showed up. Even she was wary of him, but he paid her well for the variable nothing she did when she came two days out of the week. His cable bill was a testament to that. She had a strange obsession with the ‘rent now’ feature attached to his subscriptions. It never bothered him much, he never had time for TV but it was just something that people had and he thought his apartment would feel strange to others if he did not own one. At least someone was getting some use out of it. Once he had air dried somewhat he slipped into a pair of soft cotton sweatpants and settled in front of his laptop, flipping it open. Much of his time now was devoted to punishing himself further by reading and rereading various news articles and comment sections while he was experiencing his fifteen minutes of infamy. In truth he was hoping for some likeminded individual to cut him some slack, though each time he looked it was usually more of the same. He reveled in his own bitterness, which he knew to be unhealthy, but what did it matter now that his life was effectively ruined?<br/><br/><br/>Before he could open his browser a small notification window opened up, an email. There were many emails but this one was recent. It looked to be from a bot with nothing more than an email address composed of an untraceable serial number. Had someone sent him a virus? He moved to delete it but the subject line caught his attention. “Do you want to continue?” He mouthed and eventually his curiosity got the better of him. This was his old work laptop, it held nothing of importance in it now. He clicked ‘read’ and just a moment later his eyes widened. A proposal... an under the table proposal. Somewhere out there was a person that wished to see him complete his research. It had to be a trap, he was so much smarter than this. “Meet me in Glover Park? You’ve got to be joking...” He snapped dryly. He closed his computer with a click and walked over to one of his bedroom’s floor to ceiling windows looking out over the vast expanse of city lights to a dark congregation of trees; a man made natural habitat set smack in the middle of the eastern ward. ‘For someone with a degree in psychology you are such a fucking idiot’ he thought to himself.<br/><br/><br/>He left his house the next day under cover of first light as instructed, wearing a terribly ineffective disguise composed of a baseball cap, sunglasses and trench coat, all very expensive and all very conspicuous indeed for someone who truly didn’t want to be noticed. He didn’t know any better really, that he looked like an undercover cop from a movie. He lurked for some time in the shadow of a large oak, leaning against it as he watched passersby, looking for all intents and purposes like some kind of pervert flasher waiting for a pretty lady to expose himself to, though he was in fact completely dressed underneath. No one approached him... no one even looked suspicious, aside from him at least. He was on his way back to his downtown apartment when a figure flashed in his peripheral and pushed him into a dark alley.<br/><br/><br/>-<br/><br/><br/>Govannon was unassuming by nature. He was marginally attractive by modern standards with his ashy blonde waves and honey brown eyes. His nose was proportionate to his face with a slightly impish curve to it and his lips were full and wide. He wore a pair of rounded copper prescription frames, plain as not to be mistaken for a fashion statement and they sat high on his face, slightly veiling a spray of subtle freckles. It was all genetic happenstance as far as he was concerned and served only to make his life a bit easier given the image of what people believed to be beautiful thought he intentionally did not seem to be aware of the fact outwardly.<br/><br/><br/>He smiled when it was appropriate and frowned even for reasons he didn’t truly believe to be worth the extra facial muscles utilized to proclaim his agreement. He had once attended social functions and moved through a crowd easily enough. He wasn’t exactly charming, but he exuded a sense of confidence that paraded him as being charismatic and empathetic. He would likely have been a good spy in another life, though he had no taste for such things. He was like a walking glamour, the illusion of a normal man to all around him which was perhaps why his hidden endeavors had made him so widely publicized in the first place. In public he had been a pretender, a man of many masks that hid a dark desire for self-gratification. He played that game well though most of his outer shell had fallen away over the events of the past month. He felt a certain sense of freedom in not having to speak unless he wished to, and being able to avoid people through his own will instead of hiding behind his goals and ambitions.<br/><br/><br/>The woods were dense and the shifting colors of early autumn flashed beyond his passenger seat window. Fall was by far his favorite season were he forced to choose one. The transformation of the trees as they shed their leaves for half of the year only to bloom and flourish once again in the coming year was like a silent kind of poetry that he felt in tune with. Trees lived forever outside of very specific extenuating circumstances. They were a model of self sustaining life that he found to be quite amazing. He would have perhaps become a botanist were his career path not so painfully decided for him by natural catastrophe. Just as he had this thought the car curved around a bend and passed a lightning struck tree. It lay broken and dead over a small portion of the narrow hidden road, if you could even call it that. Raff had invited him to this concealed location with the promise of continued work. He didn’t know why he trusted the man, maybe it was the way his eyes looked when he spoke of his dying friend, the apparent owner of the property in which he was to be spirited to under cover of night. They had driven for hours and Van had fallen into an uneasy sleep a number of times, so many that he actually had no idea where they even were or how far removed from the city he truly was. This fact should probably have disturbed him more, but the excitement he felt at being able to touch medical instruments again had him throwing caution to the wind. Just the thought of those baby blue nitrile gloves snapping around his wrists sent shivers up his spine. Had it been so long? A month perhaps since the feeling of a gauzy surgical mask had tickled the bridge of his nose.<br/><br/><br/>Before he had time to gather himself or his thoughts they had arrived along a wide driveway. The sound of gravel crunching and popping beneath the car’s tires had brought him back to his senses. The narrow space opened up to a rather lovely view of a large manor house, modern in architecture but with a kind of old world charm that was difficult if not impossible to capture in the bustling light polluted city where he had lived most of his life. Even then, though it was in good repair, it still reminded him of a place where a particularly creative and wealthy serial killer might bring his victims to slowly torture them to death. In any case, he had come willingly for some reason (one reason) and with so short an explanation of what he was to accomplish. Perhaps the man in question, even sickly, was a bit of a shut in. Living largely on inherited wealth as was his own situation, though this man was in possession of a great deal more than what he had grown up with.<br/><br/><br/>He stared blankly at Raff when asked to follow closely behind him in case his soon to be patient lashed out at him for showing up unannounced and his mind immediately manifested a shot gun. That was what people who lived in remote rural areas used to defend there land, or so he had assumed. “You said that he might not particularly enjoy my arrival, but you made no mention of me possibly being shot at.” Or worse, maimed and dismembered... he shook his head of the absurd thoughts. He had dealt with difficult hosts before, many of his patients before he opened his own practice had been wealthy self-serving pricks who thought too highly of their own worth or upper echelon business men who took one look at him and assumed he was too young to be actively practicing medicine on his own despite his actual age. It was nothing he couldn’t handle. “He sounds lovely...” came Van’s quiet and nonplused reply as he prepared himself for a preemptive bullet to come wizzing past his skull at any moment. He didn’t want to die so close to his goal, if that was what in fact lay in wait for him beyond the large manor walls. He took in the grounds as they pulled towards the house and he felt as if he were being watched. Not an unusual feeling for someone who lives there life under the almost constant scrutiny of cameras with blinking red lights, but this time it felt a touch more sinister. As if he were encroaching on some private domain.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Van gave Raff a wary look at his remark about killing for his friend but said nothing. He knew the moment he stepped out of the vehicle that his life was going to change forever. Call it intuition, or even fate. Something in the air around him whispered for him to run. Subconsciously it was likely the sense of danger he felt emanating off of his chauffeur for the night. Attractive Italians were always a thing to be wary of, but this one seemed more intense than others he had met ... or slept with. He was like a tightly coiled rattle snake or the silhouette of a wolf in the distance, not that he had ever seen anything like that before. He just knew from some strange sensation in his stomach that this Raff and likely the man inside the huge house were something to be feared however unassuming they might portray themselves to be, which was not so much the case with recent information.