Sometimes, I wished that I would just die and get it over with. I was sick of the pain, sick of the fatigue, sick of being sick, and at the moment I was really sick of the IVs, the tubes, and the beeping of the heart rate monitor. What can I say? Leukemia sucks. At least I probably wouldn’t have to wait much longer. They gave me six months to live, three months ago.

Chemo hadn’t been effective so far, unless you count it making me feel even worse. The worst part was, I wasn’t even sure why I was still fighting it. I was so tired and every day was just more of the same; more weariness, more pain, more staring at the ceiling of the hospital room, and more meds to keep me ‘comfortable’.

Comfortable and I have never been in the same zip code as one another, not even before the ravages of terminal illness took up residence in my body. Depressing I know, but I’ve always had issues with depression. I guess that’s not really surprising though. Have you ever felt like something is wrong, but you just can’t figure out what? That’s been my life for as long as I can remember.

My body, my entire life, felt wrong and I just had no idea how to make it feel right. It made it hard to feel invested in life; as if I was watching it all play out in black and white in a theater with no subtitles and a broken sound system. Whenever I tried to make myself feel something genuine or do the kinds of things that normal guys are supposed to do it felt even worse though. It wasn’t just the soul-deep pain that I couldn’t explain, it was like everything around me was muffled and distant, like there was a barrier of thick, dismal gray cotton between me and the rest of the world.

I was forcibly extracted from my depressing thoughts by a nurse speaking from the doorway to my room. “This is Jonathon Chan, aged nineteen.” Just great, it was Lindsey. She was young, pretty, friendly, and perky and for some reason that I couldn’t explain, I hated her. “Jon, are you awake?”

I managed to croak out, “Go ‘way.”

“Jon, this is Emily Shaw from the Pierce Foundation, she would like to talk to you for a few minutes. I’ll give you some privacy, just press the call button if you need anything,” my tormentor said in a far too cheerful voice.

“Hello, Jon, it’s nice to meet you,” Emily offered cheerfully. Just fucking fantastic, another pretty and cheerful woman, I wished that I had the strength to reach out and strangle that smile off of her face. She wasn’t as young and perky as Lindsey though and she was dressed in a sort of skirt-suit. “As Lindsey said, I represent the Pierce Foundation, we’re a charitable organization for Cancer research.”

“And I have Cancer, how perceptive of you. I’m sure that the research is going well with people like you on the job,” I retorted sarcastically. Don’t judge me, let’s see how well you do when you’ve been slowly dying for months and snark is your only defense mechanism.

She almost frowned for a second before taking a deep breath and deciding to just get down to business. “Mr. Pierce, the founder of our organization, is very passionate about finding a cure for Cancer. Recently, one of his research centers developed a possible new treatment and they’re beginning human trials. We’re looking for volunteers.”

“And you thought of me, how sweet,” I muttered in my hoarse whisper.

“Jon, you’re only nineteen, you should have your whole life ahead of you still. With this treatment, there’s a chance that you still can. Now, we would usually want to contact your next of kin to have them involved with this decision but your file doesn’t list any,” she said as she looked down at a folder in her hands.

“That’s because I don’t have any,” I snapped. “I’ve never met my father and I only know one thing about him; he fucked off before I was even born.”

“What about your mother’s side of the family?” she asked, a bit too eagerly for my comfort.

“None,” I spat irritably. “Mom was one of those Chinese orphan girls. She came here to make a better life for herself as soon as she was old enough. Some better life, she was shot by some gangbanger four months before I was diagnosed.” Fuck, I didn’t think that it would still be so painful to think about her.

“I think that your mother would want you to live, Jon. We can give you a chance at that. I’m going to be honest here, this could either save you or just make your death that much quicker, but it’s a better chance than you have now. Is there anyone else, anyone at all that you would want to know about this? Anyone that you would like to say goodbye to in case things don’t work out?”

“Nobody,” I lied, “Where do I sign?” I wouldn’t have been able to contact Maddie and her parents anyway. They were all who-knows-where at the moment on some job or another and they were just as likely to be back tomorrow as they were months from now. I never really knew where they were going, what exactly they were doing, or when they’d be back but I was used to that kind of thing from their family.

Madeline MacArthur was like a big sister to me. More like a big brother, actually. She always had been a tomboy as far back as I could remember. My mom worked for her parents since before I was born, first as her nanny and then as a housekeeper once Maddie got older. We grew up together since her parent's work took them away from home a lot and Mom and I lived under their roof. Three years ago, when Maddie turned eighteen and graduated she started going with them and was away from our home in Miami as much as she was there.

In truth, I was hoping that this treatment might just end my suffering. Maybe I was just a coward and didn’t want to let them see me waste away. I hadn’t told Maddie and her parents when I was diagnosed either, I didn’t want to worry them since I was dead anyway. I just toughed it out until they went on another of their work trips two months ago.

Thanks to Mom’s savings and insurance policy, I had enough put away to cover what my health insurance couldn’t when I woke up in the hospital six weeks ago after passing out and falling down an escalator in the mall. I didn’t think it would be long now and they wouldn’t know that I was gone until after they got back. It was better that way.

I felt bad as I signed the forms for the Pierce Foundation and the ones to get me discharged from the hospital and put into their care. It wasn’t just that strange feeling that I had just made a deal with the devil either. I felt bad for not telling Maddie and her parents and even worse for breaking my promise to her. After my mom died we had promised to always be there for one another, we had sealed it in ink, and I couldn’t keep that promise. That guilt faded away along with everything else as they sedated me for the trip to the research center.

My head was fuzzy and I felt like I was floating. I kind of felt healthy too, for the first time in months, but strange too. I felt weird sensations from all over my body but they were dulled. It was like I was coming down from some really good drugs. I was tired and lethargic and as fuzzy as my head was, I couldn’t remember where I was or how I had gotten there at first. It took a moment for me to get my mind working enough to remember what had happened.

I had been taken to a research center and there were almost forty other Cancer victims like me. It was kind of strange because there were only guys, not a single girl in sight except for a couple of women among the group of people in labs coat who had come to bring us something to eat and feed those who were too weak to feed themselves. The food was some sort of sushi and steamed veggies with a bottle of a green liquid that I was told was a vitamin supplement. As nice as it was to have something that wasn’t hospital food, the sushi tasted strange, it wasn’t like it was going bad or anything, just not like any that I had tasted before.

Maybe I had been wrong about it not going bad because within the hour I had been doubled over in agony. The pain started in my gut and seemed to get worse and worse as it spread through my body like a raging wildfire. Mercifully, I must have passed out at some point, and right now I was feeling no pain. What kind of drugs did they have me on anyway?

I smelled or maybe tasted something strange, I wasn’t quite sure which. There was a cacophony of noises around me; beeping, movement, bubbling, and machine sounds coming from all around me. It was making it hard to focus on the one thing that caught my ears that I actually wanted to hear. The sound of voices and they were coming closer, two men if I was hearing right. Maybe my fellow patients?

“…ly two survived, Sir. Jona… other is Dylan Gre… state pri… victed for rape and aggravated assault,” I caught from the first voice.

“Why… this one…” I barely heard from the second voice. I didn’t like the sound of him. He sounded cold and uncaring.

“I don’t know, Mr. Pierce,” The other replied as I tried to filter out all of the other sounds and focus just on the voices. “The process seems unpredictable.”

The second voice seemed to snort in disgust before replying, “All the more reason to quit while we’re ahead, this is a waste of resources. Give these two more of the sedative, it looks like they’re waking up. Put the females in the large pool together but cuff them so they can’t use those spines. We want our stars to be used to socializing and I want to bring in a proper trainer for them. The marine park in Orlando will be ready to open in two months and I want them tamed and ready to perform before we transfer them there. I’ll have to have my PR people come up with names for these creatures, something whimsical for the children.”

“And what about the male?”

“The male we’ll use for breeding,” was the reply. “Extract samples from it and then put it in the solitary pool with subject alpha, it’s been a week since the most recent extractions and the beast should be mostly healed, and if we can get it pregnant then it will be useful for something. Hopefully, the male will retain its aggressive instincts and teach subject alpha its place.”