Without stopping to put on any clothes, I padded over to my computer and logged in to work. I was barely awake enough to remember my four-digit passcode after typing in the six digits from the ever-changing security tattoo on my wrist. But coffee could wait. I was eager to check on the results of my experiment.

The shiver that went through me, when I saw the data collected automatically last night, had nothing to do with the cool air against my bare skin. If the results were correct, I was halfway to helping a lot of people live longer lives. I’d have to go in and check my mice in person, but it looked like the gene I’d modified had caused seizures right on schedule, and two of the mice had died overnight. If I knew how to cause the disease, I knew how to cure it.

I couldn’t wait to get to the lab! I planned quickly: I could skip breakfast. Putting on some clothes would be a good idea. I’d already had a shower before going to bed, and slept in a fresh pair of shorts. I hadn’t jerked off last night (I guess hitting 40 has a few compensations) so I just pulled on some jeans over my shorts, and grabbed the first shirt I came to, a green T-shirt with a pocket.

I was halfway out the door when I remembered it was Saturday. I hadn’t missed my weekly visit to my grandfather in years. If I went to the lab first, I’d be sure to lose track of time.

It was a bright, sunny autumn day, just the kind Grandpa had always loved. On days like this, I normally used to find him on a bench somewhere on the nursing home’s wooded grounds, enjoying the last of the warm weather. This past year or two, though, he’d been increasingly forced by illness to stay indoors, missing more and more days like this. It was sad. I could still remember when he was vigorous enough to carry me around on his shoulders and playfully toss me into a pile of bright, crispy leaves.

I didn’t see him on the front lawn, so I checked my compass watch. I’d given him one of his own for his 91st birthday, so my watch automatically pointed to his location as I approached the building. He was upstairs in his room. I sighed, knowing that it meant he wasn’t feeling well.

His door was open. He looked pleasantly surprised when I came in.

“Nick!” he greeted me warmly. “Is it Saturday already?”

“Yes, Grandpa. Didn’t your watch tell you I was in the building?”

“I’ll never learn how to work this fool thing. So, what’s new?”

I sat down and told him excitedly about my experimental results.

He looked blank. “Why would you want to cure mice of seizures?”

I started to explain. Then I saw the twinkle in his eye and realized he was teasing me. He wasn’t that far out of it.

“I hope you think about things besides work sometimes.”

“Well, sometimes I think about it.”

“Ah yes, that young fella at the lab. When are you going to ask him out? At least he’s a nice Jewish boy; your mother will like that.”

“Yeah, right!” I laughed, wishing she were half as open-minded as her own father. “Besides, I may have the Jewish part pegged right, but the gay part is probably wishful thinking.”

“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” he said. “Not like the old days.”

“Tyler’s, like, half my age.”

“Yes, you’re such an old man,” he scoffed. “You’re how old now? 35?”

“I wish! I just turned 40. Remember, you all took me to dinner last month, and Mom asked if I’m ever getting married—”

“Oh. Right. Anyway, let me show you something.”

He rummaged around in a dresser drawer and found a photo album. The old-fashioned kind: a book with hardcopy pictures. He leafed through it and pointed to one faded picture. “Would you say I look older or younger than you here?”

Except for the old-fashioned clothes, it could almost have been a picture of me. “A little older, maybe.”

“I was 31 when this was taken. So you’re doing pretty well.”

“Well, people in the 20th century aged prematurely. They didn’t know about nutrition, and the sun…”

“Not to mention all those new-fangled expensive medicines you take nowadays,” Grandpa said dryly. “Not that I don’t pop a dozen pills a day myself. If only they’d invented that stroke medication in time for your poor grandmother.”

“Or if only she could have held on a few more years. Medical science is making amazing progress! By the time you’re 100—”

“I should be so lucky! I’ll be satisfied to enjoy my few remaining years… It looks like a nice day outside. Why don’t we take a walk?”

“Are you sure you feel up to it?”

“Truthfully, the doctor told me to stay in bed. But if I can’t enjoy a beautiful Saturday morning with my grandson, what’s the point of still being alive?”

“I told you. Hang on just a few more years—”

But he was already out of his chair. He took two steps, then suddenly collapsed. I leaped from my chair, but I can’t move as fast as I used to. He fell to the carpeted floor.

I pushed the button to call the nurse. He arrived quickly. He was a new guy, dark and muscular. I almost suspected Grandpa of faking his seizure to give me a chance to meet this guy.

“He’s had one of his atonic seizures,” I explained, “triggered by orthostatic hypotension.” I helped him pick the patient up. Grandpa’s shoulders felt like sagging bags of kindling. Sad to think this was all that was left of those strong shoulders I used to ride on so often as a little boy.

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” said the nurse as we laid Grandpa on the bed. “You a doctor?”

“Just a research assistant at a biotech firm. But I’m working on finding a cure to this very condition.”

“That’s great! It’s probably the biggest cause of death for men over 90.”

“The biggest one left, yeah.”

“Well, we’d better let him rest. He usually sleeps for hours after one of these drop attacks.”

I leaned over my grandfather and said, “I’d better get to work now, Grandpa. Hang in there!”

“You have the lab almost to yourself this morning,” the uniformed security guard, Steve, commented as I pressed my thumb on the reader and waited for the green light.

“Almost?” I asked, waiting for a new passcode to fade in on my wrist.

“That grad student is working this weekend. Tyler. Hard-working kid.”

I hoped Steve didn’t guess why it took me three tries to key in my passcode correctly.

My wristwatch compass showed me where Tyler was; I’d exchanged locator codes with all my coworkers. I made sure to pass by the door to the lab he was in. “Morning, Tyler” I said.

“Oh, hi, Dr. Rosenblum,” he said with a friendly grin that made my heart pound.

“Hey, I told you! Call me Nick.”

I’m a fool, I told myself as I let myself into the high-security lab. At best, he looks up to me. He’d never going to see me as a buddy, an equal. Let alone what I want.

Speaking of cute young guys, the janitor, Juan, was changing the lining of my mouse cages.

“Dos murió,” he reported sadly. He never seemed to understand that some of the experimental mice were supposed to die.

“Es bueno,” I assured him.

I’d been on friendly terms with Juan since his first week here. Some lazy researcher had left confidential documents in the copy room for someone else to shred, and Juan had been about to cart them away with the ordinary recycling. I’d known just enough Spanish to explain his error, and he’d seemed delighted that I was trying to speak to him in his own language. Now he did most of our shredding for us, and cleaned cages, on top of his general cleaning duties.

Two hours later, dissection of the dead mice and a blood sample from the living ones had confirmed everything I’d hoped for. I called Rick, the researcher I worked for. “Senior” researcher, though he was younger than me.

“That’s fantastic,” Rick said.

“You sound out of breath.”

“Jogging.”

When I’d described my findings, he sounded excited. “Do you think we can develop a drug stable enough to be delivered as an aerosol under battlefield conditions?”

“Huh?”

“It has to be practical for biowarfare applications.”

“Warfare? I was hoping this would lead to a cure!”

“Oh, sure, I guess a medical application would be possible too. But the company needs to bring a product to market now. You know how long clinical trials and FDA approval can take.”

Biowarfare? I pictured hundreds of healthy young men in foreign military uniforms, all suddenly collapsing to lie helpless on the ground as our troops descended on them.

“Besides,” he continued, “you’re closer to a drug that can cause seizures than one that can cure it, right?”

“But—”

“We’ll talk more on Monday. Good work!”

I hurled my phone at the wall, but it was so lightweight, it stopped short and fluttered to the ground. Whatever happened to good solid receivers you could bang down? To make up for it, I stormed out and slammed the lab door so hard behind me that it bounced.

After pacing aimlessly around the building awhile, I decided it might help to talk to someone. My compass showed Tyler was still in the low-security lab I’d seen him in.

But strangely, that room was empty. I found his compass-watch hidden in a drawer. Mystified, I headed back to retrieve my phone—and was dumbfounded to find Tyler in the high-security lab, rifling through the cabinet where we store small batches of prototype drugs that are ready to send to clinics for testing.

I tried to sneak up behind him. Stupid: I should have blocked the way out. I was halfway across the room when he whirled around, swore, and made a dash for the door. He was way too quick for me.

I scooped up my phone and ran after him while voice-dialing the security desk. I was already out of breath by the time Steve answered, but I managed to gasp out “Tyler’s stealing some pills!”

Tyler ran down a hall that would lead him to the fire exit. I used to be good at track in high school, but there was no way I could catch an athletic guy in his 20’s anymore.

Then, as he rounded the corner, his feet flew out from under him. I skidded to a halt and damn near landed on my ass myself. The floor had just been mopped. What a stroke of luck!

Tyler tried to scramble to his feet, but winced and went down on one knee. I grabbed his arm. The burly guard came trotting up behind me, breathing hard. I hauled Tyler to his feet.

“Ow! I sprained my ankle.”

“You’ve got worse problems than that, punk!” Steve snarled.

We half-carried him down the hall, his arms over our shoulders, to an unused lab. Steve insisted on stretching him out on the table and tying his arms to the table legs. We used Steve’s belt for one arm and Tyler’s own belt for the other.

Steve reached into our captive’s shirt pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag containing a few dozen pills. I recognized the color coding. “Those are our diabetes drug candidate, for next month’s Phase I trial.”

“What?” cried Tyler. “I thought they were hydrocodone. Fuck!”

“Vicodin,” I translated for Steve.

“You were going to sell them on the street, weren’t you?” Steve snarled. “Stupid kid!”

“I needed the money.”

Steve examined the pills. “You’re lying,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “why would he think we were stocking hydrocodone?”

“Not only that, the street price of nine pills has got to be less than he makes here in a week. But stealing our drug candidate for our competitors: now that would pay well.”

“No! I swear!” Tyler looked very young and scared, lying there helpless.

Steve backhanded him. “Who hired you?”

“Hey!” I grabbed Steve’s arm.

He shook me off. “Watch him. I’ll see what I can dig up on him.” He rolled the kid onto his side and took his wallet.

I got a wet paper towel and dabbed at the blood on Tyler’s cheek. “Your lip was bleeding. But it’s stopped.”

“Thanks,” he said, pathetically grateful.

“How’s your ankle?”

“Not too bad.”

“Let me check.”

“No, leave it alone.”

I gently removed his shoe and sock. “Strange. No sign of swelling. Is it the other one?” Ignoring his protests, I bared his other foot and carefully massaged both ankles. “Does this hurt?”

“Not much. Guess I just twisted it.”

He looked at the door. “Is he going to come back?” he asked, sounding even younger than he was.

“I’ll call Rick. Steve will listen to him.”

But I immediately got forwarded to Rick’s voice mail. I didn’t feel comfortable describing the situation in a voice message, so I just asked him to come in as soon as he possibly could, explaining that we had an emergency to deal with.

Steve came storming back in. “OK, punk. Who are you?” He turned to me and explained, “His id is a fake. His university never heard of him. There’s no record he exists.” He grabbed a handful of Tyler’s thick hair and yanked his head back, exposing his throat. Then, to my horror, he pulled out a knife.

“What are you doing?” I cried.

“Relax. I just need a DNA sample. I should take it out of his hide, but…” He cut off a lock of soft brown hair and handed it to me.

This lab didn’t have any equipment, just a sink, a refrigerator, and a supply cabinet. I reluctantly left Tyler—or whatever the kid’s name was—bound and helpless, in Steve’s hands.

I did the DNA sequencing in fifteen minutes flat. And I was right to be uneasy about leaving them alone: by the time I brought the results to Steve on a data coin, he'd stripped the kid to the waist and was whipping him with a length of rubber lab tubing. Tyler’s chest was crisscrossed with welts, angry red against otherwise perfect skin.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Leave him alone! I’ll call the police!”

“Fine. Be sure to tell them he said he’s a drug dealer. The local cops beat an accused drug dealer to death just last month.”

He had a point. “Here’s his DNA sequence,” I said, just to get rid of him.

He handed me the rubber tubing. “See what you can get out of him.”

The kid kept himself in great shape, I noted, feeling a twinge of envy tinged with desire. My grandfather always said that youth is wasted on the young. I exercised more than I ever did at Tyler’s age, and I was still losing the battle.

He was breathing hard, and looked at me as if terrified that I’d continue his beating. I tossed the tubing aside.

“Maybe I should put something on that,” I said gently.

“No thanks.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling solid muscle under the supple skin. “Are you really a spy?”

“I’m just trying to make enough money to finish my degree, sir.”

I hate it when young guys call me “sir.”

Steve returned. “This doesn’t make sense. His DNA matches Sidney Wolf, VP of Business Development at Spiagen Bionanomics. “

“Isn’t that the company that’s trying to buy us out? Wait... VP, at his age?”

He showed me the screen of his laptop, which was displaying a picture of a gray-haired, balding man with heavy jowls. “This is the most recent picture I could find, taken seven years ago. He’d be 68 now.”

“He’s in pretty good shape for 68,” I said facetiously, surveying Tyler’s perfect, scarless body. The lash marks were fading to pink, I noticed.

“Nick, please! Let me go, man!”

I wanted to. But the beefy security guard had his own ideas. “You’re not going anywhere until you explain why your DNA says you’re the fucking VP in charge of Hostile Takeovers at our biggest competitor.”

“All right.” He drew a shaky breath. “I’m Wolf’s clone. He had ten of us created so he could harvest spare parts when he needed them.”

“My God!” I whispered.

“He’s already taken a kidney from me. And killed my favorite brother for his heart.”

The thought of a rich old man carving up this innocent young guy like a tender piece of meat, helping himself to his organs, was obscene.

“That can’t be legal,” Steve said.

“Rich and powerful men like him make their own laws,” the kid said. “After I escaped, I tried to hide behind a new identity.”

“We’ve got to help him, Steve!”

“You might have asked, kid. Instead of ripping us off.”

“I thought you’d turn me over to him.”

“Never!” I promised, patting his chest. “Only…”

“What?” Steve asked.

“Only, he’s too old. It’s been, what, 25 years since Dolly the sheep was born? No one could have cloned a human being over 20 years ago.”

“That’s what they wanted you to think.”

“He must be Wolf’s clone,” Steve said. “How else do you explain the matching DNA and fingerprints?”

A chill ran down my spine. “Fingerprints?”

“I compared our records to the DMV. They match Wolf’s fingerprints.”

I forced the words out through a tightening throat. “Even identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints. He must be…”

It didn’t seem possible. I stared at our captive, trying to imagine an advanced medical treatment that could restore wrinkled, sagging flesh to the supple, leanly muscular condition of the body now stretched out shirtless before me, glowing with youth. That firm square jaw, lightly covered with stubble, showed no trace of the jowls in the old picture. On the other hand, his chest showed no trace of the lash marks it’d had minutes ago, which would have taken a week to heal on another man’s body.

But what convinced me was the change in Tyler’s expression when he saw he couldn’t fool me any longer. His eyes were as clear as ever, his face just as unlined, but suddenly there was more cynicism behind those eyes than any man should be able to accumulate in only 25 years.

“You son of a bitch!” I said softly. “All that bullshit about the rich and powerful doing whatever they want, and it was you all along!”

“He’s Sidney Wolf?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“What were you trying to do?” Steve demanded. “Sabotage us, or steal our secrets?”

“Why not both?” our prisoner said with a smirk.

“You’ve found the fucking fountain of youth!” I said. “How long were you planning to keep it to yourself?”

“Who do you expect me to share it with?” he asked mockingly.

“Everyone!”

“Don’t be a fool! Do you have any idea what would happen if the whole world had access to longevity treatments? The overpopulation in this country alone…”

“What gives you the right to decide that you deserve a long life and no one else does, you selfish bastard?”

He just smirked his superior smirk.

“We should call Rick,” I told Steve.

“I already talked to him. He’s on his way over.”

“He may be able to reverse-engineer whatever they did to make him young. We could sell it.” I started hunting through the supply cabinet. “I can run some basic tests on a blood sample to give him a head start.”

“I have excellent patent attorneys,” Tyler said smugly as I jabbed the needle in his arm.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law in this business, pal,” Steve reminded him.

I had just started some automated blood tests running when Rick arrived. His blond hair was damp, as if he’d taken a quick shower. He’d changed out of his jogging clothes, but in a hurry, apparently: He wasn’t wearing his usual T-shirt under his button-down shirt.

“What the hell’s going on?” he demanded when he saw Tyler bound and bare-chested.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Steve said. “First of all, it turns out Tyler is a spy. And his name isn’t really Tyler. But it gets better. He’s actually a VP of Spiagen Bionanomics.”

“He looks a little young…” Rick said uncertainly.

“That’s the interesting part,” I put in.

Steve showed him the picture. “This is what he looked like seven years ago.”

“Whoa!” Rick exclaimed. “I’d heard they’d done some proprietary research in regenerative medicine. But this! Are you sure?”

“Could I borrow your knife, Steve?”

He looked surprised, but handed it to me. I used it to cut a shallow slash across the naked chest of our prisoner, who just swallowed hard and glared at me.

I watched the blood trickle down his chest, tracing out the contours of his muscles. I wondered whether the treatments that had restored his youth had automatically given him that sculpted body, or if he was just more motivated to take care of it now. Then I went to the sink and wet a paper towel with warm water. Once I had sponged him off, the only sign of the cut was a pink line where healthy new skin had sealed it. Rick was practically drooling. And unlike me, he didn’t usually drool over the sight of bare-chested young men. I showed him the blood tests, and he eagerly disappeared with it into his private lab.

Steve seemed to have calmed down. After an uncomfortable silence, I said, “Maybe we should give him his shirt back.”

“What for?”

“Why not?”

“We can’t, anyway. I cut it off of him. Didn’t want to untie him.”

Half an hour later, Rick returned, talking excitedly about stem cells and drug molecules.

“Anything I can do to help?” I asked.

“Yes. What would really help is to see the breakdown products of these molecules I found circulating in his blood.”

“So you want me to take a sample of…”

“His urine. Yes.” He went back to his lab, obviously eager to continue working.

I’d never taken a urine sample from another man before, and certainly not from an unwilling shirtless hunk strapped to a table. But who was I to argue with the boss?

“You wouldn’t dare,” the prisoner said. I ignored him and got a cup.

Wordlessly, I unbuttoned his fly and reached in. His undershorts, hidden under his grungy grad-student clothing, felt like they were made of silk. Obviously he hadn’t counted on being captured and having his underwear pawed through.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, you fairy?” Some old attitudes should be allowed to die with the people who hold them.

I pulled his cock out through his fly. Hmm. And here I’d told my grandfather that Tyler was “a nice young Jewish guy.” Wrong on three counts out of four.

We twisted him into a position that allowed me to hold his limp cock against the inside of the cup. Tyler held out for ten minutes before filling the cup. Then again, lots of guys would’ve had trouble urinating while tied up, with two men watching, one of them holding onto their cock.

“Back in a minute,” I told Steve. “Keep your hands off him, okay?”

“I’d sooner have your goon beat me to a pulp than have your filthy hands on me again, faggot.”

“Don’t make me make you drink this,” I said cheerfully.

Rick was too wrapped up in work to do more than mumble an acknowledgement. I hurried back, passing the young janitor, Juan, going about his business. I wondered if he’d seen or heard anything, and what he made of it. I didn’t know enough Spanish to explain something this delicate, so I just exchanged a smile with him as I passed.

I was getting just about impatient enough to check on Rick when I glanced at my compass and saw that he was heading back to the room. He burst in, saying, “I think I’m on to something! There are signs of genetic manipulation. If only we had a close relative so I could get a baseline genome!”

“Look, “ I said, “if you’re talking about kidnapping his family members, that’s where I draw the line.”

“No need. There’s another way. I’m betting they would only have modified his somatic cells. If I could compare them to his germ cells, I could look through the differences and figure out what they did.”

“Makes sense,” I said neutrally. “One sperm sample, coming right up.”

Somehow, whenever I’d visualized what it would be like to pull Tyler’s pants down around his ankles and give him a hand job, I’d always imagined it being under friendlier circumstances. I’d never pictured holding down his struggling, naked torso with my free arm while a burly, uniformed straight guy pinned his hairy thighs to the table.

Well, okay, maybe that’s not entirely true.

“This isn’t going to work, faggot!” he screamed yet again. “I’ll never come with a filthy pervert groping me.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said, cupping his balls lightly while stroking the underside of his cock with my thumb. Despite his protests, his cock had already hardened.

“How can you help that fag do this to me?” he appealed again to Steve.

“Shut up!” Steve told him.

“Look!” I said, exhausted, “I didn’t ask for this. I’m not doing this because it turns me on.” Even if it did, a little.

“Liar!”

“Fine. Steve, you’re straight, right? Switch places with me.”

“Uh…you’re doing just fine.”

“He’d rather have another straight guy do it to him.”

Eventually, Steve agreed. We switched places. Tyler’s thigh muscles felt very solid in my grip, but his struggles had gotten weaker.

“That’s it,” I said encouragingly, watching Steve uncertainly take the prisoner’s cock in his fist and begin sliding his hand up and down the shaft. “Pump him for information. Milk him of every secret he owns.”

Steve grinned fiercely. He seemed to be getting off on this, in his own way. I think he secretly enjoyed having control over another man’s pleasure. As for me, the sight of a beefy straight guy jerking off another straight guy, stretched out naked and helpless between us, was almost enough to make me contribute my own involuntary sperm sample.

“Almost there!” I said, keeping up the infield chatter. “He’s going to shoot whether he likes it or not!”

Our prisoner’s 25-year-old body was on the verge of betraying him, but he’d apparently learned a lot in his long life about delaying ejaculation. In the end, I had to help. As his straight captor continued to tease his cock and play with his balls, I moved to his side, putting most of his naked body within my reach. Tyler twisted around desperately, trying to escape my questing fingers, but that only gave me access to fresh territory. Suddenly, he moaned in despair as his fluids gushed out in spasms, bearing the genetic secrets he’d tried to deny us.

“It’s all over his chest,” Steve observed. “None of it got in the cup.”

“Guess we’ll have to start again,” I said, provoking a whimper from our vanquished prisoner. But I took the cup and scraped the hard-won fluid from his chest and belly. He offered no further resistance.

As I was pulling his pants back up, I noticed something in his pocket. Loose pills. I showed them to Steve. “These are our other drug candidate. Some kind of super adrenaline booster.” I slipped them into my T-shirt pocket.

“We should have searched him.” Steve ran his hands along Tyler’s legs, then stopped and pulled his pants down again. “A secret pocket!”

The inner pocket proved to contain a pipette with a blood sample. “Is this from my mice?” I asked.

“That does it!” Steve said, taking out his knife. “I’m going over every seam in these.”

I left him busily slicing up Tyler’s pants.

Rick’s response when I brought him the sperm sample was, “Never mind that! Take a look at this!” He steered me over to the microscope. “Nanomachines, programmed to repair damaged cells! I’m sure of it!”

Eagerly, I took a look. And for the next hour, I worked with Rick, forgetting everything else in the world—even nearly naked young bodies stretched out helpless on tables at the mercy of sadistic security guards.

Eventually I had to excuse myself to urinate. Then, on the way back from the men’s room, I made a detour to check on our prisoner.

He was gone! In his place, Steve was stretched out unconscious on the table, wearing only dark green boxer shorts. There was no sign of Steve’s uniform, but his shoes and socks were on the floor, along with the shreds he’d made of Tyler’s clothing. Tyler’s shoes were gone.

I touched his sinewy neck and felt a strong pulse. His well-muscled, hairy chest was rising and falling slowly. Having now seen both men in their shorts, it was hard to picture Tyler overpowering him. He must have taken Steve by surprise. And apparently drugged him: I couldn’t wake him up by shaking his shoulders, or even by slapping a wet towel on his face and chest. He didn’t stir even when I stuck an ice cube in his armpit.

I thought about alerting the police to look for a male in his mid-20’s wearing a security uniform much too big for him, but decided to consult Rick first.

But Rick wasn’t in the lab. I almost panicked, and thought about running to ask Juan if he’d seen him. I’d passed the janitor a minute ago, wheeling a huge garbage can full of shredded paper. Then I calmed down enough to remember that there were better ways to track people nowadays.

My wristwatch compass led me to the kitchenette. I felt silly. Rick was probably having a cup of coffee, or an instant meal.

But Rick wasn’t in the kitchenette. Only his shoes and socks. Bending over, I found his watch stuck inside one shoe. Then I heard the door shut behind me. I whirled around. There was a pair of dark green boxer shorts hanging on the doorknob. I picked them up. They were soaked in something. I sniffed them, trying to identify the medicinal odor.

The last thing I remember was my vision blurring as I fumbled for the doorknob.

I woke up in a basement. Shredded paper clinging to my clothes, and a freight elevator nearby, gave me a good clue of how I’d gotten here.

I was strung up by the wrists, tied with strips of some guy’s shirt to a pipe running overhead. My feet were bare, and my ankles tightly bound together. Rick, Steve, and Tyler were strung up from another pipe, facing me. Rick was barefoot but still dressed, while Tyler was clad only in his silk boxer shorts, and the muscular security guard was completely naked.

A man was standing with his back to me, with the logo of the janitorial service across his back. “Oh, you’ll tell me, all right,” he was saying to Rick . “I broke your musclebound security goon; I can break you.” Steve just hung there like a side of beef, looking utterly defeated.

I recognized our captor, even from the rear, as Juan. Speaking perfect English.

He ripped open Rick’s shirt and began attaching electrodes at various points, even over his small pink nipples. It was state-of-the-art equipment; the wires trailing across Rick’s pale chest looked as wispy as his nearly invisible chest hairs. They led to a small handheld controller. Once the electrodes were in place, Juan pressed a button, and Rick gasped, writhing in pain. Obviously, the electrodes weren’t just passive sensors.

“Again: What’s your passcode?”

“OK!” Rick cried out. “2570.”

Juan glanced at his controller. “That registered as a lie.” He pushed a button, and Rick moaned.

As I watched helplessly, Juan forced the correct passcode out of Rick. Then he grabbed his prisoner’s bound wrist to read what his tattoo currently displayed. He sat down cross-legged on the ground and picked up a laptop computer. “Bueno. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He tapped away intently for a long time. Finally he said, “So that’s what your other drug candidate is. A super-soldier pill. No wonder Wolf wanted to steal it.”

“That’s not exactly what it is,” Rick said hoarsely.

Juan consulted his hand-held display. “You’re lying,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which means that’s exactly what it is.”

He paged through more material. “Ah! These must be the tests you did today on your, ah, ‘intern.’ Interesting. Evidence of genetic therapy, maybe even nanotech.” He read silently for a long time.

“Sperm sample. That would explain some of the noises!” he chuckled. “And blood work.” He was silent for a long time. Then he stood up and examined his youngest-looking prisoner. “It’s true, then. I didn’t believe it, until I saw the DNA match and the blood work.” He ran his finger down the perfect skin of his captive’s chest and belly. “It’s one thing to slow down the aging process. But to actually reverse it!”

Tyler shivered at the touch, but kept his mouth shut.

“You’ve done a very thorough job on him for one day, Rick. I’ll keep Wolf to experiment on, but you’ve saved me lots of work.” Giving Tyler’s chest one last proprietary thump, he returned to his laptop. “And your assistant has made a breakthrough on a drop-attack drug, I see.” He glanced back at me. “Oh good. He’s awake. I may need his password to delete his data. Your account only seems to have read access.”

He stood up and stepped over to Steve. As Juan reached out to him, the naked man whimpered. “15921592159215921592…” he mumbled.

“¡Pobrecito! I just need to check your tattoo again.” Juan twisted his prisoner’s wrist to get a better view, and returned to his laptop to type it in.

“No luck.” He got up again and advanced on me. “Sorry, Nick, I need your password to delete your data.”

“Please!” I begged. “It took me years…”

“Que lastima. Tough!” He yanked my T-shirt out of my pants and began pulling it up. Reflexively, I glanced down at my exposed belly—and noticed the pills in my shirt pocket. The super-adrenalin boosters Tyler had tried to steal! I’d forgotten I had them. As my shirt came up over my head, I quickly ducked my head down and thrust my tongue into the pocket. Somehow, I managed to suck a few of the experimental pills into my mouth.

Then I watched helplessly as Juan removed the electrodes from my boss’s bare chest and transferred them to my own. “You don’t understand,” I pleaded. “My seizure work’s not meant to be a weapon.”

“It should bring in a lot of revenue, however it’s marketed,” Juan said, pressing the last two electrodes firmly in place over my nipples.

“Please! I’m only hoping to find a cure for my ailing grandfather!”

“Yeah, right! Couldn’t you come up with something more orig— Huh…” He was staring at his hand-held device. “¡Hostia! That’s actually true?” Juan’s brown eyes were filled with what seemed to be genuine sympathy. “Sorry, man. But it’s not like I’m destroying your work. I’ve got a copy. In five years you can buy the treatment from my company, ¿no?”

“But you don’t have the expertise. I do.”

“Tell me your password, and I’ll hire you.”

“Go to hell!”

“All right. We’ll do this the hard way.” He pressed a button.

I steeled myself for an electric shock. But it was nothing so crude as that. It felt like someone was applying crushed ice all over my chest.

Then it ended abruptly. “The password?”

“Never,” I gasped. If I could just hold out until the pills took effect!

This time it was fire instead of ice. Somehow he was able to stimulate my nerves however he pleased.

He stopped the torment and asked again. I managed to remain silent.

This time my body was wracked by intense pleasure, more unbearable than pain. Worse than if he’d been playing with the head of my cock right after an orgasm.

“Tell you what. Just tell me the first digit. I can’t do anything without the other three.”

I shook my head. When he pressed the button again, it felt as if there were dozen mouths all over my chest, nibbling gently. Then not so gently. Then it started to hurt.

“Six!” I shouted. The pain vanished. Juan looked at his read-out and nodded. “Good. Now the second number.”

“You said only one,” I protested stupidly. I felt a wonderfully warm sensation enveloping my chest, like a warm bath. Then a hot bath. Then scalding.

He got two more digits out of me. Then he gently wiped the sweat and tears off my face with a paper towel and squeezed my bare shoulder. “I get five wrong entries before it locks me out. That gives me a 50-50 chance of simply guessing the last digit. Why not make it easy on yourself and just tell me?”

I was breathing so hard I could barely speak, and my heart was pounding. I told him.

Now that my ordeal was over, I felt as if a great weight were lifted. The other defeated men still hung limply, but I felt full of energy. I felt as if I could… Hmm.

As Juan turned his back on me, I bent my arms, levering my body up, and kicked out at him with my bound feet. He stumbled and whirled around. I kicked him in the belly, barefoot, and he doubled over. The bonds on my feet had ripped loose. I pulled myself up to where my teeth could reach the cloth strips tying my wrists, and was free before he could get up. I grabbed my erstwhile tormentor by his shirtfront and hoisted him off his feet. His flailing foot kicked me in the gut, but I barely felt it.

“You swallowed the pills?” Rick asked. “Hurry and untie us! We don’t know how long they last.”

“In a minute.” I tore Juan thick uniform shirt into strips and used them to string him up beside Tyler.

“I meant what I said,” my captive panted. “I’ll hire you to find a cure for drop attack syndrome. Rick just wants to sell it as a weapon.

“Don’t believe him!” Rick said.

“Shut up,” I told Juan. “I should gag you.” I grabbed his undershirt. It shredded like so much tissue paper.

“I’ll give you anything you want, man! I swear!”

Was he lying? It occurred to me that I had a way of telling. Thoughtfully, I began peeling electrodes off my skin and sticking them to Juan’s smooth brown chest.

Five Years Later

As I ran effortlessly along the wet sand, I could tell from all the admiring glances that I must look as good as I felt. It’s true: youth is wasted on the young. I’d never kept myself in such good shape the first time around.

Nevertheless, I was getting left behind. The footprints I was following were already getting eroded by the surf, and their owner was nearly out of range of my compass.

I passed a toddler finishing a sand castle with his middle-aged grandfather. I smiled nostalgically. That part of my life was over. I glanced back once, to see the man lifting the boy onto his shoulders.

It was exhilarating to be able to run for miles, feeling the warm sun on my bare skin. I slowed down only to admire a pair of athletic college-age guys dunking each other in the breakers.

The faded footprints seemed to veer off. My compass agreed, pointing away from the ocean. I navigated through the sea of beach blankets and umbrellas and found myself at a small shack at the edge of the sand. He was in there. The door was ajar, so I walked in.

It seemed to be a storage shed used by lifeguards for stashing equipment. The blond man on his knees looked young and well-built enough to be a lifeguard—both guys did—but what he was performing was definitely not mouth-to-mouth.

“Hey!” the standing man complained good-naturedly. “Nick! Didn’t your mother ever teach you to knock?”

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to turn off your locator watch if you want privacy?” I retorted.

“Someday you’ll have to teach me how to work the fool thing.”

The lifeguard was looking me over, in a way I was still getting used to. “Whoa. Are you guys, like, twins?”

Even the cock that had been in his mouth looked just like mine—or like mine used to, before I’d let my foreskin grow back. “Close relatives,” I admitted.

“You know what would be hot? If you guys could stand close together, I could alternate—”

“Um, sorry,” said his original object of desire. “I’m a little old-fashioned that way.” I wondered if I was blushing as much as he was.

“Whatever,” the lifeguard said, and went back to what I’d interrupted.

“I’ll wait outside,” I said uncomfortably.

Ten minutes later, my “twin” came out, looking smugly self-satisfied. “Race you to the surf!” he called, and I had to sprint after him.

When we were chest-deep in water, he playfully splashed me. I didn’t splash back.

“What?” he teased. “Upset that I didn’t share that fella with you?”

“No! It’s just…I thought you were straight!”

“Truthfully, this wasn’t my first time. My best friend in college…Well, back in those days, we were expected to get married and go our separate ways. So we did.” He looked wistful. “If things had been like they are today…You don’t know how lucky you are, kiddo.”

“OK, here comes another lecture about the bad old days,” I chuckled, though my mind was still reeling.

“No, I mean you’re lucky that I didn’t stay with my friend. Then I would never have married your grandmother.” He brightened. “Hey! Betcha you can’t carry me ashore on your shoulders!”

So I dove between his muscular legs and picked him up, and started walking to shore. I relished having a back strong enough to support another man, even once his full weight had returned.

Whooping, he yelled, “You owe me about a hundred of these rides, you know!”

 

© 2004 Mark Apoapsis - Contributor's Bio