Chapter 4: The First Injection
The ten minutes were an eternity.
Ethan lay as he’d been left, face pressed into the cool silk, every muscle trembling with the aftershocks. The sting of the injection was a dull, distant buzz compared to the raw, throbbing ache that bloomed deep inside him. A wet, warm trickle traced a path down his thigh. He didn’t move to wipe it away. The order had been explicit: stay. So he stayed.
He counted the slow beats of his heart against the pillow. Listened to the faint hum of the elevator descending. Alex was gone. To his study, to his calls, to a world where this was just another logged task.
When the time finally felt like it had bled out, Ethan pushed himself up. The movement was stiff, painful. He shuffled to the ensuite bathroom, avoiding his own reflection in the vast mirrors. He cleaned up under the brutal, clinical glare of the lights, the routine already feeling horrifically familiar. The small bandage on his hip was a bright spot of color against his skin. A marker.
Back in his own room, he didn’t sleep. He sat by the window, watching the city’s lights wink out one by one as dawn bleached the sky. The hormone cocktail was a live wire in his veins. His emotions felt scraped raw, too close to the surface. A stupid commercial for family theme parks made his throat tighten. The memory of his mother’s laugh, sudden and unbidden, brought a hot spill of tears he angrily swiped away. Increased emotional sensitivity. A listed side effect. It made the violation feel medical, not personal. Which was worse, he couldn’t decide.
The next night, the process was identical. The injection at 7:00 PM sharp, a new spot on his hip. The silent preparation. The bed. Alex’s detached, efficient touch. The only difference was a slight variation in position—Ethan on his back this time, a pillow under his hips—which felt even more exposing. Alex’s eyes, silver and assessing, tracked every flinch, every suppressed gasp, as if collecting data. He finished, withdrew, and left without a word.
On the third night, the pattern broke.
Ethan was bracing himself on the bed, awaiting the now-familiar chill of the alcohol swab. Alex stood behind him, syringe in hand, but paused.
“Turn around,” Alex said, his voice flat.
Ethan turned, confused. Alex’s gaze was intent, scrutinizing. He reached out and thumbed hard at the previous injection sites on Ethan’s left hip. The skin was tender, already bruising in subtle yellow and purple blossoms.
“You’re bruising too easily,” Alex muttered, more to himself. “We’ll alternate sides. And I’ll apply pressure longer after the injection. It’s inefficient.”
The concern, such as it was, was for the protocol. For the vessel. Ethan said nothing.
Alex administered the shot on the right side, his fingers pressing a firm, unyielding ball of gauze against the spot for a full minute after. The pressure was almost painful. When he pulled it away, he inspected the site with a clinical frown.
“Better.”
Then his eyes lifted, meeting Ethan’s. For a second, there was something else there—a flicker of scrutiny that went beyond the physical. Ethan looked awful, and he knew it. Shadows pooled under his eyes, his appetite was gone, and a shaky, hollow feeling had taken up permanent residence in his chest.
“You’re not sleeping,” Alex stated.
It wasn’t a question. Ethan just shook his head, a tiny movement.
“You need to. Stress can lower efficacy.” Alex turned and placed the used syringe in the sharps container. “From now on, after our sessions, you will take a sleeping aid. I’ll have it added to your nightly water.”
The control expanded, seeping into his unconsciousness. Ethan felt a dizzying wave of resentment, so sharp it tasted metallic. “I don’t want a pill.”
Alex stilled. He turned slowly, the motion predatory in its calm. “What did you say?”
Ethan’s courage, a fragile, brittle thing, shattered. He looked down at the marble floor. “Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought.” Alex walked to the bedside table, poured a glass of water from the carafe, and shook a small white pill from a bottle. He held it out. “Now.”
Ethan took the pill. It was bitter on his tongue, washed away by the cool, tasteless water. He handed the glass back, his fingers brushing Alex’s. The contact was a jolt.
“The schedule tomorrow is clear,” Alex said, his tone shifting back to business. “Your first monitoring appointment with Dr. Thorne is at ten. The driver will be ready at nine-thirty. You’ll have a blood draw and a physical scan.”
Ethan nodded, numb. Another appointment. Another set of hands, another machine confirming what was happening inside him.
“After that,” Alex continued, stepping closer. The space between them charged with a new, different tension. “You will go to the art supply store on Fifth. You will purchase whatever materials you require. A new sketchbook. Paints. Whatever you used before was inadequate.”
Ethan’s head snapped up, truly bewildered. “What?”
“Your student records indicate a decline in your studio grades this semester. That is unacceptable.” Alex’s jaw was tight. “The contract requires you to maintain a B average. Your distraction is a liability. Drawing is, according to your professors, your primary skill. So you will draw. You will focus. This moping affects your health, and therefore the outcome of our agreement.”
It was the most Alex had ever said about Ethan’s own life. He’d read his records. He knew about his grades. He was issuing a command for him to create, as if inspiration could be switched on like a light in this sterile tomb.
“I can’t just… buy supplies and fix it,” Ethan whispered, a strange laugh caught in his throat. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“It will work exactly as I say,” Alex said, finality iron-clad in his voice. “You have a task. Perform it.”
He didn’t touch Ethan again that night. He just looked at him for a long, silent moment, then gestured to the bed. The session was, as always, brutal in its efficiency. But as Ethan lay there afterwards, the promised drowsiness from the pill dragging him under, he felt a confusing spark amidst the misery. The mention of his art, of his sketchbook, felt like someone had thrown a rope into a dark well. He hadn’t realized how deep he’d fallen until he saw it.
The next morning, the pill had done its job. He woke groggy but without the brittle, fractured feeling of the previous dawns. The driver took him to a sleek medical suite that smelled of lemongrass and anxiety. Dr. Thorne was a woman with kind eyes and a voice that never changed pitch, even as she discussed his endometrial lining and hormone levels as if he were a graph. The transdermal scan was cold and invasive. She showed him the blurred, grey image on the screen. “Everything is progressing optimally,” she said, pointing to a vague smudge. “The protocol is taking effect.”
He left feeling more like a laboratory specimen than ever.
The art store was a sensory explosion. The smell of turpentine, paper, and graphite hit him like a physical memory. He moved through the aisles in a daze, his instructions a list in his head. He picked up a hardbound sketchbook with thick, creamy pages. A set of charcoal pencils. A small, expensive wooden box of watercolors. He paid with a black credit card Alex had given him, the clerk smiling as she handed over the gleaming bag.
Back in the penthouse, it was silent. Alex was at the office. Ethan took the bag to his room, not the master bedroom, and placed it on the desk by the window.
For hours, he just stared at the blank first page of the sketchbook. His fingers itched, but his mind was a roaring static. Draw what? The view? The perfect, dead lines of the furniture? Alex?
He thought of the bruises on his hip. The cold feel of the marble. The distant, disconnected look in Alex’s eyes during the injections.
His hand moved almost without his permission. The charcoal was dark and forgiving. He didn’t plan. He just let the lines emerge: the severe angle of a jaw, the ruthless set of a mouth, the dark slashes of eyebrows. But as the face took shape, his own subconscious betrayed him. The eyes he drew weren’t cold. They were focused, intense, but in their depths, he’d shaded a faint, impossible reflection—a tiny, distorted image of Ethan’s own face, looking back.
He slammed the sketchbook shut, his heart hammering. It was a mistake. A dangerous sentimentality. He shoved the book into the desk drawer, hiding it as if it were a secret, a crime.
That night, when Alex came into the bedroom for the 7 PM ritual, his gaze swept the room and landed on Ethan. “Did you acquire the materials?”
“Yes,” Ethan said, his voice barely audible.
“Good.” Alex prepared the syringe. “Show me something tomorrow.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the next item on the schedule. But as the needle pricked his skin, Ethan, for the first time, didn’t just feel the sting of the drug. He felt a flicker of something else, buried under the fear and the obligation. A terrible, fragile urge to open that drawer.