Thicker Than Blood

Chapter 1: Any other day...

If today was any other day, I'd be dead. Luckily, luck was on my side, and I'm alive. But for how long, I couldn't say. I was deep in thought and deep in shit. I wasn't sure if we were making progress on what was required, or if we were just killing time. Probably just killing time.

"Harry! Earth to Harry! Harry, what are you doing?" Mitchell said right in my ear, startling me out of my wish for knowing the future. Maybe it was better not to worry about it and just focus on the tasks. Those tasks would keep me alive.

"Nothing, just staring at the screen, hoping something will make this all make sense." While looking for the anomaly, anything actually, that would lead us to discover what this project was about. The little bit we, or at least I, did know wasn't all that much. I couldn't say how much Mitchell knew, and sometimes I think it was better that I didn't know what he knew – let alone what all of it was for. The process made my stomach churn, but I knew, or thought I knew, it was for the common good. So, we'd have to flub our actual research methods, come up with signed consent and assent forms. Didn't matter to Mitchell, and it sure as hell didn't matter to our boss. I think that's the part that bothered me the most was that it didn't bother them. Looking over the students' heads, I waved Mitchell out of my ear and quietly "I think we have run across something amazing here!" At least I thought it was quiet.

"What have you got?" Mitchell said through mouthfuls of some sub he got at the grocery store, bits of tomato sliding down the side of his mouth. Everyone called him Mitchell, and he preferred that to his first name of Stephen. I threw up a little in my mouth seeing the bits of eaten food, he was after all one of the worst slobs I'd ever seen. The guy couldn't stand to not get some stain on one of his shirts; I guess trying hard to make sure he looked nothing like the typical nerd. It worked. But he was a wiz when it came to computers, and anything else that had to do with science. I guess women would have found him attractive; they seemed to because they were always hanging around him. That is until he walked into my office and nicely shut the door behind him reminding them of the nerd within. He had green eyes (I'm guessing here based on his driver's license that he showed me years ago) and had brown hair. He was at least 5-6 inches taller than me, and I was the average height of 5'11". He was the type of guy you wouldn't want to be alone in an alley with, unless he was on your side. But when he smiled, I could hear the girls and women all sigh and feel the breeze from them batting their eyes at him. All of them trying to have their turn with Mitchell, the majority never knowing it was a lost cause. I also didn't know where he got the energy and time to work out as much as he did, because he was here before me and left after me. But I guess when you're still in your thirties, 36 to be exact (he graduated high school at 15, college at 19); you've got energy to spare.

I, on the other hand, was more of a stocky build, 37. I had girlfriends, well once, maybe twice – depended on who you asked. But compared to Mitchell, everyone was batting zero. I had been told, I think more as a joke than the truth, that I looked like Brad Pitt, just with darker blue eyes and black hair that I liked to have hang in my face. Oh, and glasses too, thick, coke bottle type glasses. I was blind as a bat and never got around to buying those contacts that Mitchell made fun of me for not getting. He claimed it would help me with the ladies and of course his main reasoning - getting me laid. I guess he believed as a self-imposed ladies' man (although even I would admit that that is correct) that he had to take me under his wing and get me, as he so eloquently put it, some tail. I didn't really want that, don't get me wrong, I wanted sex, but only with one person, one particular person.

Right as I opened my mouth to speak about our new discovery, Rachel McKinsey knocked on the glass surrounding the lab we were in. Mitchell jumped. She was the only woman who could do that to him; I think it was because he kind of liked her too, although he'd never admit to it. He had tried once, but she turned him down and he never quite forgave her audacity. I think he still saw her as a conquest, because in his world, no woman could, or should, resist his charms. Although I did enjoy pointing out to him that there were indeed many others who had, for example, many of the women that taught at our school rejected or downright changed their schedules to be away from him.