Leonard watched intensely as the young boy, at most seven or eight, cried over the formerly alive bodies of his parents. Waiting with bated breath, he leaned ever closer to the one-way mirror, eyes wide with hope. The boy buried his head in the shirt of his late father, sobbing.

He leaned back in his chair with a disgusted grunt, then stood up. The two guards and Lance Ironson, standing behind him, waited in trepidation. It would come sooner or later.

It came sooner. Leonard snarled, slamming his hands into the table with a loud bang. Sweeping the half-empty glasses away, he picked up the nearly empty pitcher of water and pitched it at the wall. It shattered, sending glass raining down on them. The man gripped the underside of the table and heaved upwards, overturning it, then kicked at it, shouting. "This is absurd! Nine experiments, and not a single success! That's not a ratio, that's a carking failure! What am I doing wrong?"

Lance and his two bodyguards didn't so much as flinch, opting instead to give Leonard a hard stare.

Wheeling on them, Leonard pointed a scalpel at them, his hand shaking in fury. He'd taken to carrying the knife around, although no one was quite sure he'd retrieved it from. He'd been trying experiment after experiment, using everything from different variables to different rooms, and nothing had been working. "This is your fault!" He shouted at them, his voice cracking.

Lance kept his face as neutral as he could. There was no reasoning or understanding Leonard when he was like this, so it was best to simply ride out the storm until it was over.

He hadn't slept... well, pretty much at all over the past four days. The faces of his dead employees rose to his mind every time he closed his eyes. Now? Now, he was reduced to little more than a wall decoration. The board was confused, asking questions about him, and all he could say was that he couldn't tell them anything about it. Morale was at an all-time low as people started asking questions about the missing employees, and his company was floundering in the wake.

Leonard calmed down suddenly, picking up the table and righting it, lining it up until it was perpendicular to the wall, then stabbing his knife into it and placing his hands splayed out on its surface. "It seems," he said slowly, his head hanging, "you have outlived your usefulness. Nonetheless, I am a man of my word." Lifting one hand at an excruciatingly slow pace, he removed a small remote with two rectangular buttons on it.

Lance's heart jumped, but he kept his face blank. Was this really it? Was this when he got his family back?

Turning to him, Leonard handed him the device, eyes flicking back and forth between his bodyguards. "It's fairly short-range, you'll have to be very close for it to work. The bottom one disarms the microbombs. The top one activates them, and then you have to press it again to detonate them. Don't do that unless you want to kill your wife and sons. When the green light appears, you'll know they've been disarmed. I shall take my leave, and dearly hope you snap your neck in some horrible accident. You useless person."

He swept past Lance, ignoring him. The CEO was staring slack-jawed at the remote as though it was made of diamond, and then looked up at Leonard. "Wait! Where are they?"

One hand in a grandiose flourish, he jerked a thumb down the hallway. "In one of the experimentation rooms. I wanted to put them in a place you wouldn't want to go, and there are no cameras down here except for the ones I bring. They're tied up with one-inch salted rope, and the knot is fairly easy to undo. Be sure to press that detonator correctly, all right? I'd hate for you to end up killing your own family."

Lance snapped a glance to his bodyguards, then sprinted down the hallway, checking every room. He found the right one six doors later, his wife and sons wrapped securely in rope. They were gagged.

He should have felt a surge of rage at the sight, but he was all out of fury. He could only feel senseless, overwhelming joy as he threw the door open.

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His family, his family, saw him and started making muffled sounds, eyes wide as tears began to stream from their faces. Lance's hands fumbled with the large knot, the tears in his eyes blurring his vision so he could barely see. Mere seconds later, it came undone and Amy launched himself at him, bringing him to the ground. "Lance! Oh, Lance, you have no idea what we've been through! A man took us all, Lance. He took us and told us to stay here! We've..." She trailed off into hysterical sobs as she simply buried her face in his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her.

His two sons were next, and he pulled them into the hug, slumped on the floor. He ruffled their hair, smiling tiredly. "Ohhh, John. Allen. I've missed you so much." John, the older brother with tousled red hair, didn't say anything. He simply cried silently, his face hidden in shadow. Allen was more vocal, but unfocused. He simply babbled on, talking endlessly right into Lance's ear.

His suit was getting wrinkled and spotty from tearstains. He didn't care.

Sitting back for a moment, he held the remote out. They all stared at it for a moment, and then Amy whispered, "Is that..."

He nodded, his eyes hardening. "Yes, it is. We're going to be safe from now on, all right? I'm going to retire and we'll live out in the country. How does that sound?"

John rubbed his eyes and smiled anxiously, and Allen slumped against Lance's shirt, holding onto his father's larger hand with both of his. Amy wiped a tear from her eye. "That sounds like a good plan. I'm - I'm ready to go home, Lance."

He smiled. The nightmare was over. "So am I, darling. So am I."

He pressed the button to disarm the bombs.

Three controlled explosions filled the room.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Leonard was watching with a crooked grin, observing the situation inside from behind the one-way mirror, when something crashed into his jaw. Stumbling to the ground, he blinked hard, his vision spinning. 

“You said you’d let them go!” 

Wiping his chin, Leonard was surprised to see blood. Somewhat curiously, he asked out loud, “You hit me?” 

Evidently, the guard on his right had bashed him in the chin with the butt of his gun. He shouted at his face, aiming his gun as he did. “You murdering piece of-” He fired, drowning out whatever he’d been about to say. The bullet shot through the air and impacted a thin, previously invisible layer just in front of Leonard, deflecting away and sparking into the concrete wall. 

Springing to his feet and lunging forward, Leonard slashed with his scalpel, and cut the guard across the throat. A spray of blood sprayed from his neck, and the guard went down, eyes wide as his hands went to his neck, convulsing on the ground.

“Oh - oh, HRRRGGHH…”

Seizing the gun, he spun around and aimed for the second man. The guard had one hand on his gun, but the other was on the floor as he threw up, a spray of chunky yellow liquid spreading across the floor. Wiping his mouth, the guard looked up, and his eyes widened. 

There was a short moment, then Leonard told him calmly, “You can go.” 

The guard, lifting his weapon, blinked. “What?”

Leonard indicated the door with the barrel of the gun. “You can go. I have no need for you. I won’t kill you unless you tell someone what happened.” 

The guard’s eyes flicked to his companion’s body, at the bloody mess inside the examination room, and then to Leonard. He made his choice in an instant, making a break for the door. Leonard aimed at the man’s head and fired, puncturing the back of his head.

He removed a small oval device from his coat pocket, taking a good look at it and smiling. “Well, you were worth every penny.” He slipped it back into his coat, then frowned as he remembered the other person in the room.

Turning, he stood over the guard with the slitted throat, who was staring at him with wide eyes, both hands over his neck. They were coated in red. "You know," he began, speaking softly. "I could shoot you in the head and end your misery right now. It would be quite a lot less painful than what you're going through. But I am not a merciful person to traitors." He walked past the guard, stepping on his wrist and twisting his shoe as he did.

Moving over to the window, he looked inside and smiled widely. "Finally," he said gleefully. "a success."

Lance was gone. A massive flesh-colored shape filled most of the room, slumped over the bodies of his family. It was only vaguely humanoid and was slowly absorbing his family, pulling their bodies into its mass and increasing in size. No facial features were visible anymore, and even the blood spattered across the walls was beginning to move across the surface to be sucked into the giant form.

Leonard sighed happily. "You look so much nicer like this. And so much more..." He smiled with all of his teeth. "...agreeable."