Another Milktec facility shut down today amidst allegations of more misconduct and malfeasance.
Over two hundred hucows and roughly seventy-five bulls are being transferred to new facilities as a result.
While government inspectors have spearheaded the investigation, Milktec itself chose to close the facility and redistribute the volunteers and staff.
As this site was designated as a chemical development location, one of only five such licensed facilities, authorities were concerned about the safety of any experimental serum.
The serum is highly valued on the black market both domestically, where it is sold to competing companies, and abroad where it is sold to competing governments.
If you or anyone have any information regarding such illicit material contact your local authorities immediately.
This news alert has been sponsored by Milktec Milk.
Drink Milktec.
It
's delicious, and good for you.
--
Kevin turned off the radio and glanced nervously at his closet. What had he done? A month ago, it started as a joke. One thing led to another. An old buddy offered to introduce him to a guy who brought him to another guy who gave him a number to call. Before Kevin realized how far he'd gone, he was meeting a man in a diner with $100 in his pocket to trade for a vial and a syringe. Even then he tried to back out, but the man was not the kind you turn down in a deal. A day later, it sat in a shoe box in his closet, weighing on his conscience.
What would his family think? Same as all the other families like his. His parents would call him a pervert. Disown him as publically as possible and demand he join the military to pay off his sins. He wouldn't have much choice either, not since he'd blown all his money on an illegal drug to use for who knows what. Kevin punched himself in the leg.
What was I going to do? Put it in her coffee or something
?
Then what?
Hope she
's so grateful that she decides to fuck me?
God help me, this got out of hand.
The girl occupying his thoughts lived only a single wall away. Elizabeth dominated many of his waking thoughts and all of his dreams. How many nights had she come home after riding around with one of those high school boyfriends of hers while he waited in his room reading comics? She treated Kevin kindly. Brotherly. And otherwise did not think of him at all. Despite living together for almost two years, he didn't think she'd ever even visited his room.
Their odd living arrangement came together at an unusual time due to troubling events. Elizabeth's father and Kevin's father knew each other from the war. Growing up, Elizabeth and Kevin treated each other as cousins, who didn't care for each other very much. Elizabeth always wanted to spend time with the adults while Kevin enjoyed rolling in the mud with the other boys. Elizabeth's mother died and her family grew distant from Kevin's. Until her father was arrested for espionage. Rather than doom his daughter, he begged Kevin's family to take her in. No one in town knew the circumstances except for Kevin and his family. So far as everyone else knew, Elizabeth was a cousin who came to finish her last year of school before staying on to help Kevin's mother around the house.
Two years passed. Both Kevin and Elizabeth graduated with the latter becoming the favorite of not only the town, but of Kevin's own family. Popping up out of no where, Elizabeth levied her city education against the rural school to quickly become a straight A student. She went on to grab every other accolade available — fall dance queen, captain of the cheerleading squad, and even assistant editor of the school newspaper. By comparison, Kevin felt like a disappointment. He muddled through school, struggled to keep friends, and, while Elizabeth melded into the small town society, Kevin always stuck out, as though he shouldn't belong.
He knew his parents thought pretty much the same things because of their less than subtle suggestions about joining the army. His mother would often leave pamphlets lying around while his father would spend whole meals regaling the table with fantastic stories about his time in Europe. Dear old dad never liked talking about the nightmares, though. Or things like trench foot. Or how no one really knew where the army's lines were or if the Soviets were even still fighting. Instead, his father loved to rumble on about how ol' Boris was on the back foot now that so and so's son was on his way over.
As Kevin was a single son of a single son, he qualified for deferred and non-deployed service. This special qualification allowed him seven hundred days after graduation before he needed to report for stateside training. He would then be relegated to working in a clerical office for six months before being allowed to return to society while listed as reserved. Meanwhile, all his school chums competed for college deferments which would provide similar exemptions. Those who failed to get one would be shipped to basic training and subsequently off to fight the Soviets for reasons no one really ever bothered to explain.
Elizabeth also planned to go to college. In some ways, it relieved Kevin to know they wouldn't be confined to the same space for much longer. In other ways, his heart pounded with anxiety to think about not seeing her every day. Even the hope of glancing her in the bath would be gone. "I'm such a creep," he said, to the empty room.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He wasn't unattractive, but boyish and immature in face. All the girls, not only Elizabeth, had passed him over for being scrawny or freckled.
Football players spent all day in the weight room, now they
'll spend years in trenches.
If they come back, I'll have seniority over them.
They''ll have to lick my boot to get a job.
The bitter thoughts brought him no solace. He sighed.
Kevin believed he had once been different. Elizabeth changed him. Before her, he lived a dumb life, uncaring and ignorant to the ways of the world. When Elizabeth came, Kevin began to want things. He wanted her. To get her, he needed popularity or muscles or a car or a future. An inability to get those things soured him, but now he had a way.
He peeked out of his room and listened carefully for the sound of anyone else in the house. All quiet. All still. He closed the door with a creak and clicked the lock shut. Though he thought it silly, he crept on tip toe over to the closet and withdrew the shoe box. From within, he took out the case, a wooden box meant for reading glasses, the kind old ladies always lost in their purses. Again he paused to listen for any noise, the case clutched against his chest.
Everyone knew the stories. The bulls of Milktec Industries took a shot and suddenly became Greek Gods, champions of men and conquerors of women. Kevin imaged the drug worked like one of his comic book origin stories.
Captain Neutron, being exposed to neutron waves, goes from mild mannered scientist to leader of the Atomic Brigade.
Strong enough to lift boulders and stand against hails of bullets.
It seemed impossible such a small thing could make such a tremendous change to a man or woman's body.
He pulled the vial out of the case. The glass container looked about two inches tall, similar to the drops he'd been given for an ear infection once. This one had a cork cap for a syringe and not a dropper, though. The label read "MILKTEC INDUSTRIES SERUM 1562 GRADE AA #42311." A plastic seal covered the top to indicate it had not been tampered with. The man who sold it to him made sure to mention that. Kevin guessed it eased some people's worries. Kevin wasn't sure which was worse, it actually being the serum or dying from injecting arsenic into himself.
"Guess there's no going back now," he said. His parents left for the weekend, and he didn't expect Elizabeth home for hours.
Carefully, he peeled away the plastic and readied the needle. The man said to inject up to the third line, so Kevin stuck the needle in and pulled the plunger until the liquid swirled up to the third line. His hands shook with nerves, and cold sweat ran down his back. With great care, he put the needle on the top of his dresser. After unfastening his belt and dropping his pants, he pulled down his briefs to expose his right buttock. He never thought his medic training in school would be useful anywhere other than the war.
The needle slid in painlessly. He took a deep breath and pushed down the plunger. He held the breath until it stung his lungs, waiting for the shot's pain to go away and some kind of radical change to come over him. Nothing happened. He pulled out the syringe and carefully cleaned it with alcohol. Instead of returning it to his closet, he stowed the case in the top drawer of his dresser, figuring if he started to die and needed to show the medics what he had done to himself, the drawer would be easier to reach than his closet.
Leaving his pants off, he looked at himself in the mirror again. This time he stepped closer, scanning his features for any subtle change. Nothing. Maybe the man had sold him saline. Kevin felt no different other than a subsiding excitement and a growing knot of dread and shame. Sullenly, he went over to his bed and flopped down. Grabbing one of his comic books from nearby, he started to read, but quickly fell asleep.
***
Kevin woke.
Something
's wrong