Chapter 5: The Clinic
The darkness in the van was total, a suffocating blanket thick with the scent of their own sweat and panic. The metal floor was cold against Mordecai’s cheek, the vibrations of the engine traveling up through the layers of his face fat. He could feel Rigby’s soft, heavy form pressed against his back, shivering.
“You okay?” Mordecai whispered, the words swallowed by the rumble of the road.“My gut hurts,” Rigby whimpered. “I think I landed on my keys.”
They didn’t speak again. Time dissolved into a slurry of fear, discomfort, and the nauseating sway of turns. Mordecai’s mind raced, scenarios spiraling from bad to worse. They were being taken to some organ-harvesting ring.They’d be found weeks later, deflated and empty in a dumpster. Or this was about the supplements.It had to be about the supplements.
The van slowed, turned sharply, and stopped.The engine cut out, leaving a silence ringing in their ears.
The door slid open with the same jarring clang. Harsh fluorescent light sliced into the dark, making them both flinch.The two masked figures stood silhouetted in the doorway.“Out. Now.”
It was even harder to get up from the floor of the van. Mordecai had to roll onto his back, a turtle stranded, his vast belly rising like a pale moon. He had to rock several times to build momentum, his soft flesh wobbling violently, before he could heave himself into a sitting position.The men didn’t help.They just watched, their eyes impatient above the masks.
Once upright, the exit was a cruel joke.The floor was a foot down. Mordecai pivoted, letting his legs dangle, and pushed off. His landing was a controlled collapse, his knees buckling, his whole body compressing like a slammed spring before settling into a wide, unstable stance. Rigby followed, groaning as he hit the concrete.
They were in a loading bay, all gray concrete and echoing emptiness.A single white door stood ajar. One of the men gestured with his chin. “Through there.”
They waddled, the motion more a shuffle now, their bodies sore from the dragging, their minds numb.The hallway beyond was long, white, and buzzing. The lights overhead flickered slightly, casting a sickly, pulsating glow. The air smelled clean, sharp—like rubbing alcohol and something else, something coppery and faint.
The door at the end of the hall opened into a bright, cold room.
It was an examination room, but one stripped of any comforting pretense.The walls were bare white cinderblock. A single steel table, topped with cracked vinyl, stood in the center. Cabinets with foggy glass fronts lined one wall.A large, tarnished mirror took up another. And in the center of it all, standing with her back to them as she arranged instruments on a metal tray, was the doctor.
She turned.Mordecai’s breath caught.She looked exactly like Dr.Greta. Same gentle face, same smart glasses, same white coat.But the eyes behind the lenses were different. Colder.Sharper.And her smile didn’t touch them at all.
“Mordecai.Rigby.So good of you to join us,” she said. Her voice was a perfect mimic, warm and professional, which made the disconnect even more terrifying.
“Who are you?” Mordecai managed.His own voice sounded small.“You can call me Dr. Greta.It’s easier that way.” She gestured to the table.“Please. Make yourselves comfortable.”
The table looked like a torture device. “No way,” Rigby said, trying to puff out his chest, a gesture lost in the slope of his moobs.“You kidnapped us! We’re leaving!”
One of the masked men shifted behind them, a subtle threat.
The woman—the doctor—smiled wider.“You’re not prisoners.You’re investors. And you’re about to see an excellent return.” She picked up a syringe, tapping it with a gloved finger.“You two are quite special. Your metabolisms, thanks to our formula, have achieved a state of… hyper-lipogenic efficiency.You don’t just store fat.You manufacture it. At an astonishing, beautiful rate.”
“Our… what?” Rigby whispered.
“You’re fat factories,” she said, her tone clinical, almost admiring.“Walking, talking bioreactors. Most subjects just get morbidly obese.A messy, useless condition.But you? Your bodies are prioritizing the production of a very specific, very valuable lipid compound.We call it Adiposine-X. It’s the active ingredient in the supplement. And it’s incredibly lucrative to harvest.”
Mordecai’s head swam.The “Gains” powder. They weren’t consuming it.They were becoming it.“Harvest?” he repeated, the word tasting like bile.
“A simple extraction,” Dr.Greta said, moving closer.The syringe gleamed. “We drain the excess, purified Adiposine-X from your subcutaneous tissue.It’s a painless procedure. You’ll feel much better afterwards. Lighter.”
“You’re gonna suck the fat out of us?” Rigby screeched, backpedaling until his broad back hit the chest of the masked man.“Not the fat.The product. Think of it as… taking the cream from the top.The rest is just byproduct.You’ll retain your basal mass, of course. The process is iterative.The addiction, you see, is chemical. Your bodies will crave the supplement to replenish what we take.And we’ll be here to provide it.A closed loop. You get your fix, we get our raw materials. Everyone wins.”
Mordecai finally understood the website, the unlabeled bottles, the too-good-to-be-true promise. They weren’t customers.They were livestock.“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t do this.”
“It’s already done,” the doctor said softly. “You walked right into the stable.Now, hold still. This will just feel like a pinch.”
The masked men moved in.They were strong, efficient. They didn’t fight muscle, because there was none to fight. They simply manipulated the bulk, pinning Rigby’s flabby arms, holding Mordecai’s lanky but soft-limbed frame against the cold table. The resistance was pathetic, their bodies offering only weight, not strength.
Mordecai felt the cold swipe of an alcohol pad on his thick neck. He saw the needle, impossibly long, hover in his peripheral vision.He strained, a feeble protest, his belly shifting heavily on the table.
“Margaret,” he breathed, a plea to no one.The needle pierced his skin. There was a sharp sting, then a spreading cold. The world softened at the edges, the buzzing lights melting into a warm, welcoming white. The last thing he saw was Rigby’s round, terrified face going slack, his eyes rolling back.Consciousness returned like a slowly brightening bulb. Mordecai blinked.He was on the steel table, on his back.The vinyl was cool through his shirt.
He felt… strange.Unburdened. He pushed himself up on his elbows, and the movement was effortless.No heaving, no desperate swing of counterweight.He looked down.
His blue t-shirt, once strained across his middle, hung loose. The fabric draped softly where before it had been taut against the drum-tight curve of his gut. He tentatively poked a finger at his stomach. It met the faint, lingering softness of a normal paunch, not the dense, water-filled sphere that had lived there for weeks.His chest felt flat. His arms, when he lifted them, were slender again, the skin loose but the underlying fat gone.
“Whoa,” a voice said, raspy with sleep.Rigby was sitting up on a neighboring table. He was staring at his own hands, turning them over.His face was thinner, his jawline visible. His trademark distress faded into simple, stunned confusion. He patted his own torso, his hands sliding over a soft but significantly smaller belly.“Dude. We’re… we’re us again.”
The door opened, and Dr.Greta walked in, sans syringe. She held two small paper bags.“Excellent.The procedure was a complete success. You’ll feel some drowsiness, and you’ll be very hungry. That’s normal.”
Mordecai swung his legs off the table.They moved easily.The floor felt stable beneath him. “You… you took it from us.”
“We harvested the surplus,” she corrected pleasantly.“You’re free to go. Your bodies will naturally want to re-achieve equilibrium.The craving will return. Probably within 24 to 48 hours.It will be… pronounced.” She held out the bags.“Here. A care package.A fresh change of clothes. Your personal effects.”
Rigby snatched his bag, peering inside.“My phone! And my GameGirl!”
Mordecai took his bag numbly.He felt hollow, in more ways than one.“When the need becomes overwhelming,” Dr. Greta said, producing a simple white business card from her coat pocket, “call this number. We’ll arrange a delivery.A new batch, refined from today’s harvest. It will be more potent. The results, even more dramatic.” She placed the card in Mordecai’s limp hand.Her smile was a professional line. “We’ll be seeing you.”
The masked men were gone.The door to the hallway stood open.They were simply… dismissed.
Shaky, disbelieving, they changed into the clean clothes—sweatpants and hoodies that now hung off their returned-to-frame bodies—and walked out.No one stopped them. The loading bay was empty.An ordinary service door led to a nondescript alley. The sun was high in the sky.It felt like a different day.
They stumbled out onto a busy sidewalk, blinking in the natural light.People streamed past, no longer staring.
“I feel… good,” Rigby said, stretching.He jumped, a small hop, and landed lightly.“I can move! This is awesome!”
Mordecai looked at his reflection in a store window. He saw himself, the old himself, looking back.A little tired, a little haunted, but him. The relief was a physical warmth in his chest.It was over.They were free.They were normal.
Then his stomach clenched.Not with hunger, but with a deep, cellular yearning. A phantom ache for something specific, something sweet and chalky and potent.He pushed it down.
“Come on,” he said, forcing a smile. “Let’s go home.”
They walked, their steps light and unlabored, the memory of their waddle already fading into a bad dream. Rigby chattered about getting pizza, about how they should celebrate their awesome new bods.
Mordecai listened, nodding, but his fingers in his pocket found the edges of the white card. He didn’t take it out.He didn’t need to. The number was already etching itself into his mind, a quiet, insistent whisper beneath the relief. He crumpled the card tightly in his fist, but he didn’t throw it away.
Not yet.