The Stars All Flicker

"I know how you work, Doc. Believe me when I say that I will not hesitate to Claire Danes' Juliet myself right here and right now."

The room was lit by a window, artificial street lights casting beams across the concrete floor. Between Alexander Hilbert and the door leading to a rapidly accelerating car carrying important medical laboratory work was a wooden desk, and Doug. The car was gone, undoubtedly driven by Isabel, and gone as well were the multiple guinea pigs, a bottle of antivirus, and a small girl with severe genetic modifications to make her suitable for Decima experimentations.

It was frustrating that it had come to this- watching the already slowly deteriorating test subject across from him put his life in even more danger for the child made Hilbert increasingly angry. The door across from him was locked, slammed shut by the mother program of the laboratory once the call had been announced that the girl, and Eiffel, was missing. Of course, that was far after the man had managed to get her out of it and into a car driven by the craziest ex-captain from the Space Force, he'd all but shoved the girl into her arms, and slammed the door to keep anyone from getting out of the lab. There was more than one man in pursuit, and he knew it. Doug was also aware that Goddard Futuristics didn't take kindly to prisoners; especially not escaped test subjects.

"Take the gun out of your hands, right. Now." His Russian accent was heavier with stress.

Eiffel watched Hilbert with a scared, slightly panicked gaze. "What are you going to do, Hilbert? Let them torture me, because you can't kill me yourself?"

The gun in each of their hands were not happily there- Doug knew that he'd rather give up sleep then kill himself- he wanted so very, very badly to live to see the next Ghostbusters movie, to make sure the little girl he watched get poked and monitored every day along side him grow up as normal as possible. He wanted to keep getting kisses from Doctor Hilbert behind drawn medical screens and in quiet hallways in the complex. Eiffel wanted so badly to think about him every day, and know that while the whole situation sucked, that his participation in these genetic and viral tests were against his will, that he could love him. Hilbert considered the pistol that his lover test subject had trained to his own head, and lowered his.

"I am going to assume that the girl is..."

Doug's tense posture dipped a little in relief. "She's in wonderful hands. Wish I could say the same."

"You can. Put the gun down, Eiffel. Come to me and maybe Cutter will spare you."

"Hilbert, have you ever been tortured by a Goddard Futuristics specialist?" The haunted look in Doug's eyes proved his case. It made Hilbert so very sad.

"Eiffel, whatever has happened. I'm sure we can figure this out." Doug slid the casing back, and a bullet slid into the chamber.

"There's no way to get that door unlocked. You have to turn me in, or you lose everything, and the Men In Black will be crashing this prom in less than two minutes."

"You- Eiffel, please. Let me walk away from this one. We can still make this okay-" The doctor was angry and aching and it was all going so fast.

"Not unless you make it seem like you weren't here already. Not unless you give me chance to escape. That's the only way I can see that you will be scot free and I'll be gone."

Hilbert felt lightheaded. "I don't want you to be gone!"

"I can't care at this point! Do you even know what they'll do to me, what they HAVE done to me?" The gun was still pointed at Eiffel's head. "Believe me. Any bullet in any place would be a mercy."

"Doug, when you put the gun down, they'll take you, maybe rough you up little, and we'll go back to normal-"

"I NEVER WANTED THIS ANYWAYS!" He screeched. "All my time here has been just a worse punishment than rotting in jail- all it's been is a lie. I'm not helping scan the skies, which was at least a good excuse, instead you're making me as sick as that girl, and I'm not allowed to ask questions."