Make a wild guess

Risks be damned, you'll use however much of the chemical you feel like. One of your university classmates rambled to you once while they were very drunk that somebody had to do the experiments for the first time without knowing the ideal quantities in order to establish what the ideal quantities should be, so you convince yourself to go with your gut feeling and just use an amount that feels right.

You get home, taking a small detour to the local pharmacy to pick up some tooth whitening powder, two different types of painkillers, and a medication claiming to "fix male infertility". When at home, you grind up the pills into a dust and mix them all together for a minute. You follow the article you found online to the letter, you'll just have to hope it works out.

You fall asleep in front of the TV, and you dream of a world where you've created a pheromone that makes you irresistible to any woman whom you want to see you as irresistible, and when you're rudely awakened by your alarm in the morning you make a mental note that to keep up your new habit of looking at your superior's computer screens in the hopes that they just happen to have something like that. You can dream.

As you perform your daily ablutions and travel to work with the make-shift chemical in your backpack, you start to get excited. There are so many unknowns here, there's no knowing what could happen. You're taking a pretty big risk here, it could backfire and make whoever you test it on really aggressive and make them want to kill you, but that's probably quite unlikely to happen. You hope.

You get in to your office deliberately early, and set about adding the chemicals that were delivered to you by DICO and by your colleague into the Mix Machine you have in your office. The machine is a small, cylindrical silver item that sits on a small table and looks like something from a science fiction movie.

When it comes to the last chemical, you grab a decent amount of it and drop it into the machine without a second's thought. Gut instinct, after all. When you're done, you see a green light on the side of the machine, signifying it's ready to mix. You close the machine's lid, there's nothing left for you to do now but wait. A display on the front bluntly informs you it'll be 1 minute and 52 seconds until it's done.

You idly shuffle papers around your desk while you wait for the **** to be mixed and entered into the syringe for administration to your test subject. While it's mixing, you tackle the thorny issue of whom your test subject should be.

A friend or family member is out of the question; if it went wrong people would notice they were missing and the authorities would launch an investigation most likely resulting in bad things happening to you. You have an old school friend on Facebook who's done **** trials in the past but they wouldn't work for this since they're already mostly insane.

A thought hits you: DICO has an internship program where students at international universities can apply and will basically be the company's **** for a few months. There should a handful of interns working here right now, and you resolve to scout the break room at lunch today for whichever intern looks the poorest and skinniest.

You make a decent wage, so you could comfortably give some starving kid a couple of hundreds in exchange for their consent to putting some weird **** which you don't even know what it does in their body.

It's still not optimal, but it'll do. You look up at the clock on the wall of your office and see it's nearly lunch time. Convenient. On the way into work this morning, you stopped off at an ATM so your wallet is sufficiently padded. Feeling only slight moral doubts about what you're about to do, you leave your office and head in the direction of the cafeteria.

Most of the interns sit together, which makes your job a bit harder because you really need to get one on their own so you can pitch the idea to them.

After scanning the room a bit more diligently, you see a particularly timid looking Asian girl sitting alone, eating sandwiches and nervously looking around her every few seconds.

Dressed sharp and with a sense of co-ordination, you think she might be trying to look like someone better than a lowly intern. She's wearing a smart, white, button down shirt with a light grey blazer on top with the buttons done up. On her lower half, she has on a loose fitting, pleated skirt which matches the colour of her blazer and stops a few inches above her knees. She's got black tights on her thin, long legs and simple black shoes with a small heel.

The outfit wouldn't be loose on anyone else, in fact it would hug her curves if she had any. She's very much on the skinny side and thusly undeveloped in those finer areas, but you don't care much about trivialities like that right now.

You take the seat next to her and open your mouth to speak. "Hi there. May I sit here? There's not much space anywhere else."

The girl looks at you with terror in her eyes as you talk, almost as if the last thing she expected was anyone to actually talk to her. When she finally responds, she speaks in a hushed tone you strain to hear. "That's fine. I'm Ami."

"Hi, Ami. That's a nice name. Are you new here?"

"I have only been here for 3 weeks. I'm struggling with getting to know anyone." She speaks quietly, like someone who's taken English as a secondary language. You hate yourself for thinking it, but the fact that she hasn't gotten acquainted with anyone yet works in your favour; less people to miss her.

"Well, you can get to know me a bit. I'm Lewis Smith, I'm quite junior myself too." You motion to your badge. "Ever since I was young, I've dreamed of working here. Now I am, I'm not very happy with it."

She studiously looks over your ID. "Do you work with Dr. Caster?"

"Used to." You look around, making sure nobody else is within earshot, and you drop your voice to be extra sure nobody hears what you tell her next. "He's kind of an asshole."

She quickly gasps, blushes, looks down at her feet, and shakes her head for a few seconds. “I like him.” She stops, looks off somewhere beyond you, pondering what she just said. After a few awkward seconds, she laughs and continues, “No, I agree with your statement. He is mean.”

“Right? I was his assistant, and I’d never hated anything more.”

“I am his assistant now.”

“I hope you aren’t for much longer”, you make a bad joke to hopefully break the ice a bit.

Conversing with her is a bit awkward, and it’s become even more apparent that English isn’t her first language because, each time she speaks, there’s a few seconds of delay while she considers her words.

DICO has a lot of employee benefits, but one downside is irritatingly short lunch breaks, so you figure you should just cut to the chase. “Would you like to help me with a little experiment of my own? I’ll pay you generously.”

When she hears the word ‘pay’, her eyes lit up. The poor girl must be starving because the company pays its interns pennies, so realistically there wasn’t any chance she’d turn you down. “What do you need me to do?”

“After you’re done here, come to room 3199. It’s perfectly safe, but I would like you to come alone.” You need to make sure she comes, because it’s vital to your plan. You decide to give her an offer she can’t refuse and quietly add, “I’ll give you at least $100.” She nods once, the gesture’s so small you almost didn't notice it.

Neither of you need to say anything more. You get up from the table and walk off, your nose guiding you towards some delicious lunch as your stomach growls indignantly. The cafeteria is doing calzones, so you get a cheese & tomato one that smells particularly good. You lose yourself in the hearty meal, enjoying the rest of your lunch break sitting at another table with two colleagues you vaguely know, idly chatting.

It isn’t until 5 minutes before your break is due to end that you remember your plan for today. Your lunch was nice, and it’s noticeably bolstered your mood. You spent the 5 minute elevator ride to your office pondering what the effects the **** will have on Ami, and by the time you’re in and sat at your desk to set the experiment up, there’s a slight bulge in your trousers. You do your best to conceal your boner. After all, you don’t want her to get the wrong idea. Not that it’s very far from what you have planned, but still…

Three quiet knocks on the door, followed by “Lewis?”, said in the loudest tone Ami has used so far, kick you back into reality. You open the door for her and usher her inside, offering her a seat. Your tiny office only has one chair, so you stand as you talk to her.

You aren’t really sure what to say, so you just stick to the simple things. “I’m going to inject you with this. It won’t hurt, and you’ll get paid after. Okay?”

She nods, and her doing so encourages you. She doesn’t say anything, probably because she’s too shy.

You take the sterile syringe out of the plastic wrapper it was contained in, and swab the area of skin you’re going to inject it into to make sure it’s clean. A few seconds later, the **** is flowing into her veins. She didn’t even flinch. Once the syringe is empty, you throw the empty utensil into the hazardous waste bin under your desk.

All you can do now is wait.