Titanium Alloy

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Dedicated to an amazing scifi author! I look forward to reading more of the Saurian Chronicles!


Trigger Warning: Skip to the next bolded line should one suffer from queasiness.

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"You're a life saver."

In a lab located deep in the restricted section of the Academy, a female scientist reluctantly delivered a sealed vial into a trusted colleague's arms.

"It better be worth it for all the trouble it cost me," murmured Dr. Hamilton, a biology professor, underneath her breath. The slime stored in the vial could only be found on the black market on Earth if one were not provided with the proper license. Expensive but effective, it served as the revolutionary cornerstone on organic lifeform preserver. Theoretically, people claimed it could sustain human life itself.

However, the government had yet to prove that bold claim. Customs would not bring it into the United States, but the cheapest place to procure it legally happened to be Thailand.

Were it not for her prestigious colleague's connections, she might have never been able to sample it. Alas, foreign countries and airplane travel did not sit well with her; flying a rocket had been enough of a headache.

Her colleague sheepishly grinned at her, tapping her hand as a sign of gratitude for gifting it to him. Motioning to an open container, he tipped his head as if to ask another favor.

Pouring into the container, she eyed a basin in sight, yet did not ask the other doctor what it was for. Throughout her years of service, she had become accustomed to not prying into matters above her clearance level. If this helped develop a vaccine, what was it to her?

"Thank you," said the doctor, watching her back as the sliding doors slit shut behind her. Checking that she had left, he strolled to a side room laid out with medical equipment where a young black man lay naked with only a white sheet to cover him.

"Let's take this from the top, shall we?", said the doctor to his unwilling subject.

PTOOEY.

Wiping the saliva off his chin, he smirked. "Enjoying this, are we?"

"Leave. Me. Alone," he forced out with a Central American accent as English was not his first language,. The patient's lungs, filled with fluid, could barely conjure up enough air to speak. Although, to the doctor's chagrin, that did not stop the Panamanian from trying.

"It is futile to resist, my dear West African descendant," nonchalantly stated the health professional, pulling the victim by his hair till drops spilled onto the marked test tube.

"AHH!", Tito cried.

"I'll need to collect hair samples as well," the doctor muttered. "This happens to be the fastest way to do it."

"Insane," he squeaked out.

"Me? I'm not the one that claims not have West African ancestry when it is clearly written on your DNA."

"Panamanian," Tito squeaked. It irked him to no end as he was not African.

"Yes, that is where you were born, and where your family is from, but genetics doesn't lie," said his captor. Injecting a paralyzing tranquilizer into the victim, he patted the body and proceeded to lecture the student as any professor would do.

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