Sharp pangs pierced his arm forcing him to steady himself against the countertop. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was stars bursting. He blinked deliberately trying to get his vision back.
Once the stars dissipated, he continued his search for a syringe. In the fifth drawer, he struck gold. Again, using his teeth and good hand, he tried to rip open the foil packaging that housed the clean needle. Having watched his father work over the last sixteen years, he had a pretty good idea what to do next.
He punctured the top of the vial with the needle, tipped the whole thing upside down and pulled the syringe’s plunger down, extracting the fluid from inside the vial, filling the syringe. He only stopped when he saw the syringe was beginning to pull in air instead of fluid. He separated the syringe from the vial, held it up to the light and tapped it against the corner of a cabinet, forcing the bubbles to the top. Cole then squeezed the plunger back in slowly forcing the air out of the needle tip. There was exactly .5ml of the serum in the syringe. That sounded like a good amount to Creed, who was just trying to hold himself together long enough to get this serum into his bloodstream.
Cole yanked his short-sleeved shirt up higher, exposing the flesh at the top of his left shoulder. His whole left arm hurt so badly. Cole’s last human thought was: The faster I do this, the sooner I will stop feeling so much pain.
He quickly jabbed himself and pushed the plunger down, emptying the contents of the syringe into his muscle. He yanked the needle out, felt an uncontrollable wave of nausea, began shaking violently and saw blackness close around his line of sight until there was nothing.
Some forty minutes later, when Theo, Margo, Evan and Alik came running into the lab with Farrow barely hanging on to life, they nearly tripped over the body of Cole Andrews. It didn’t take but a cursory glance at the scene to realize what Cole had done to himself.
THE END