DR. NELSON - SIDE FICTION

(One week before Orientation Day)

Dr. Stanley Nelson sat alone in his small office at the CIA satellite building in Boston. It was two in the morning. The only light came from a cheap desk lamp that buzzed faintly above a tall stack of blue folders.

He stared at the stack, shoulders slumped, jaw loose. His hands just rested on the desk, heavy and useless. His eyes burned from too many hours of reading. The room was freezing, the kind of cold that made his knuckles ache and his fingers go stiff.

The tired old doctor rubbed his eyes slowly, pressing hard with the heels of his palms, then let out a long, defeated sigh that seemed to echo in the quiet room.

“I can’t keep doing this,” he muttered.

He answered himself in a low, weary voice.

“You’re almost done, Stanley. Just one more.”

“Yeah… one more kid whose life I’m about to risk.”

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“What kind of man am I becoming?”

Thirteen hours of reading through desperate, broken lives, and he still had one more file to go. Fifteen subjects. That was the order from Agent Reynolds. Fifteen people willing to let them inject something into their brains that nobody would fully explain.

Nelson had started the Nexus Mind Research Center thirty years ago with real hope, curing Alzheimer’s, helping people remember their own lives. Somewhere along the way it had turned into this. Six months ago, when his lab in Western Massachusetts was on the verge of bankruptcy, the CIA had come knocking. They offered funding, new equipment, and a chance to keep his research alive. All he had to do was run their trial for something called Formula 35C.

They never gave him the full formula. Never explained the real risks. Just “It’s for the brain.” And somehow he had convinced himself that was enough. For the greater good, he kept repeating in his head.

The old man flipped through the last few applications. Most were exactly what you’d expect from a Craigslist ad promising three hundred dollars a day: broke, reckless, or too stupid to care about the fine print. Then he landed on the file for Jake McCoy.

Nelson paused. High school dropout, but the aptitude scores were surprisingly strong. Gambling addict. Deep in debt to the Manzoni family. Father, an ex-hitman, doing twenty-to-life. The kid was smart enough to be dangerous and desperate enough not to ask questions.

This one could be useful, Nelson thought. Maybe even the perfect variant.

He tapped the folder once, then dropped it on the completed pile.

“To hell with it,” he whispered. Fifteen. Done.

His bladder had been screaming at him for the last twenty minutes. He grabbed his cold coffee and the stack of folders and headed for the door. Halfway down the freezing hallway he gave up and ducked into the men’s room. He set everything on the counter, stood at the urinal, and let out a long groan of pure relief as he finally pissed.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “That might be the best thing that’s happened all day.”

After washing his hands, he caught his own reflection in the mirror. The bags under his eyes looked like bruises. The deep wrinkles on his forehead seemed to have gotten worse overnight. He looked like a man caught in trap, and he was.

“What the hell are you doing, Stanley?” he asked the mirror.

The mirror didn’t answer. It just stared back with tired, guilty eyes. 

He picked up his stale coffee and the folders and continued down the freezing corridor. It was dead winter outside, yet somehow it felt even colder inside. Agent Reynolds kept the whole building cold enough to hang meat, and the bastard actually seemed to enjoy it, like he was cold-blooded or something. All the other agents walked around in their winter jackets, teeth chattering, but too afraid to complain. Nelson had lived in Massachusetts his whole life and was used to brutal winters, but this place was something else entirely. Dr. Nelson just wanted to be home with his wife.

He could already see Marge sitting in her favorite chair by the fireplace, wrapped in that ratty blue robe she refused to throw away. Two mugs of hot cocoa would be waiting on the table, one with extra marshmallows just the way he liked it. She’d look up when he walked in, give him that tired but playful smile, and say, “Stanley, if you keep coming home this late, I’m gonna start thinking you’ve got a younger girlfriend somewhere.”

He’d laugh, kick off his shoes, and sink into the chair beside her while she teased him about his “secret life with the government.” For a few minutes the weight of the day would lift. Just firelight, her voice, and the smell of cocoa.

But tonight there was no fire. No cocoa. No Marge waiting up for him.

Just this goddamn icebox.

The doctor knocked on Reynolds’s door with the hand still holding the coffee mug. A few drops of dark roast splashed onto the dull gray paint. He didn’t bother wiping it off.

“Christ… get it together, Stanley,” he muttered tiredly under his breath.

Before he could even lower his hand, a flat, emotionless voice answered from inside.

“Come in.”

Nelson stepped inside and immediately felt the blood drain from his face. Reynolds sat behind the desk in his usual black suit. The man was very tall, even while seated, with gaunt features and a pale, almost cadaverous face that made him look like he had never seen sunlight. His frame seemed unusually lanky, as if someone had stretched him out too far.

"Have you chosen the subjects?" Reynolds asked without looking up.

"Yes, sir. Fifteen, as requested."

Reynolds glanced at him with deep penetrating eyes. "Leave the folders."

Nelson set them down carefully. "What’s the next step?"

"You wait for further orders."

Nelson nodded and turned to leave, but Reynolds's voice stopped him at the door.

"Doctor."

Nelson turned back, heart beating faster. “Yes?”

"Why these fifteen?"

Nelson hesitated. He felt the guilt rising in his throat like bile. These weren’t volunteers. They were broken people he was about to feed into a machine he didn’t understand. For a moment he almost told the truth, that he was terrified, that he knew this was wrong, that he was selling lives to keep his dream alive.

"Because they're all desperate or dumb enough to sign whatever we put in front of them. Some would sell their soul for the money. The rest wouldn't read the contract even if it was tattooed on their forehead."

Reynolds stared at him for a long second, face blank. Then he sat down and went back to his papers on the desk.

Nelson took that as his cue and slipped out the door.

Out in the hallway he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, downed the remaining sips of cold java and let out a long breath.

"Well, Stanley," he muttered to himself, "you may be in deep CIA shit... but it's all for the greater good."

​He almost believed it.
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