They didn't speak the entire time they walked through the cell block and back through the lab hallway. The black haired man kept pace behind the Doctor, far enough to not impede his pace, but close enough for him to feel his presence; like an unwanted extra shadow. They arrived at the meeting room, ahead of the Surgeon, since the room was empty. The Doctor busied himself with uploading the data from the previous exams, trying to ignore the Assassin as he stood near the doorway, watching him intently.

The silence eventually was broken by the sound of him playing with his pocket knife. The Doctor automatically turned to look, meeting his eyes. They were full of a smug arrogance, a thin smile on his lips.

He narrowed his eyes at the Assassin as he walked back to him, glaring.

"Upset I marred your little pet project?"

"You know he's on the table tonight. There was no reason to go down there and...bully him like that," growled the Doctor, grabbing the hem of the identical lab coat the Assassin was still wearing. "You're acting like a spoilt child."

"You should have seen the look on his face when I went in there looking like you...." cooed Assassin blithely. 

It was an ugly, ugly thing that Assassin did. Pretending to be other people to break them a little at a time. He was used to him taking his face to mock him, using the Surgeon's to threaten him. Faces of the staff or other guards to lead him to other places for him to taunt or torture. 

But this? Assassin never had any reason to toy with subjects normally, unless he was interrogating. And even then, it was strictly for business. For intelligence gathering. What Assassin did to the gunman was something he only did to the Doctor himself. He was thankful he'd noticed the dead camera feeds when he did.

"Why."

"Because I can. Because...my dear Doctor...it hurts you."

"I swear, when Surgeon hears about this..."

"Tattling?? Hah, now how's acting like a child suddenly."

"Both of you can stop," snapped the Surgeon as he entered the room. He looked mildly irritated as he brought in a stack of printouts and a tablet. "Assassin, you and I are going to have a little talk after this."

"Bussssted," he sing-songed, though he didn't really seem to care. 

"Let me go treat the cut, Surgeon," the Doctor said as he turned for the door. 

"I sent one of the staff to take care of it. Maybe it'll heal once he gets administered the current formula." He was distracted as he started going over the MRI results, and the print outs. "But everything is so far mostly exceptional. Lung capacity worries me but it has a good chance of also recovering once the procedure is done."

The Doctor hesitated, then turned back. He was hoping there would have been something to delay this, anything.

"Assassin, you're forbidden to enter the cellblock until after we finish." Surgeon's voice was hard and cold. Final. It was a tone he used only for Assassin and the Doctor.

"Fine."

"Return to your quarters. You and I are going to have a conversation."

Petulantly, Assassin gave a short scoffing exhalation and turned to leave, shrugging off the lab coat and leaving it on the ground. The door shut with a curt bang.

"What in the world did you do to piss him off so damn much," grumbled the Surgeon without wanting an answer. He set a small locked case on the table, one they used for carrying samples. He paused, staring at the case, and instantly the Doctor felt something was wrong. The air around him was colder, deathly cold. The way his gloved hand rested on the latch of the case, barely shaking in some dark emotion, the slight narrowing of his eyes before he swung them to glare at his cousin.

This wasn't about the Assassin. This was about something else. Something else altogether more serious than Assassin.

As he pinned him with his gaze, his hands unlatched the case and he pulled out a single glass vial. The Doctor's heart stopped. The vial had his neat handwriting, written impeccably small with a dark blue ink on the small paper label. 

(1) sample + catalyst (ideal)

The sample that gave him a positive result. The first dose he was finally able to synthesize without using the Surgeon's established main compound; his own that never seemed to work. 

Until this sample stabilized. It was one of the first samples he'd gotten to work in all the years he'd been working for Surgeon. One of only 7 samples he was able to test and hide for this long.... All it needed was to be synthesized with the rest of his own established formula, the Doctor's personal formula, and this new variation would be as complete as the other 6 he'd made over the last few months.

He was sure he had moved all his vials--the completed formulas at least--to the hidden refrigerated safe in his room. He was positive. Did the Surgeon find them? The Doctor's mind raced until he remembered. No, he did leave this one sample with the other rejected batches, in fact, a week ago. It was awaiting materials to finish it into the final version of the drug. Hidden in the back, with the other rejected vials for disposal. He thought it was the perfect place for it; why would the Surgeon check failed samples?

As he retraced his steps in a panic, every beat of his heart ticking like a clock, the Surgeon's voice cut through the storm of his thoughts.

"Oh, cousin...did you think I wouldn't notice? Those little miscellaneous tests, the spectrograms, the little samples....  You've been working on some secret project, haven't you?" His orange eyes were hard and slightly luminescent in the dim light of the office. 

The Doctor's heart nearly burst, and he tried to think of some excuse. Something to deflect the accusation. So caught up in his racing thoughts, he didn't noticed that Surgeon had moved to stand right in front of him. Despite their similar faces and voices, the Surgeon stood at least 3 inches taller. Just enough to look down at the Doctor, just enough to be intimidating. The Doctor's attention snapped to his cousin and he started to stumble back, but the Surgeon's hand whipped up and grasped his throat tightly. He slammed him against the wall. He didn't even have time to suck in a mouthful of air.

"Doctor, you've been hiding a variation of our drug, haven't you," asked the Surgeon. His tone was deadly serious, bereft of his false familial warmth. The orange eyes glared intensely as his hand squeezed harder. "Where is it? How? How did you get your compound to stabilize?"

The Doctor dug his fingers into the Surgeon's arm, gasping for breath. He trembled and tried not to let the tears in the corners of his eyes spill over. The grip loosened and he coughed violently, but the Surgeon didn't let go. He flexed his fingers as if to warn him and gave him a very curt nod.

"I...I don't know what you mean...." he coughed, the only thing he could think of.

In a rage, the Surgeon threw him onto the table, still holding him by the throat. "Don't LIE to me! We've tried for years to stabilize your compound, and NOTHING! How long have you had stable samples?! HOW LONG?!"

The Doctor let out a cry of pain and struggled to break the grasp. "I swear to you, cousin!! I swear, I didn't know!! That's why I left it for disposal!" He had to lie. He didn't have a choice. He was on the end of another barrel, and this time, things wouldn't come cleanly or quickly like a bullet.

He was looking down the barrel of a life he was terrified to live.

Surgeon knew it was a lie. But he didn't know for how long. It didn't matter. All these years of chasing leads, running down dead ends over and over again, making only millimeters of progress when he would have a modicum of a breakthrough. All those wasted years and dollars...and the answer was hiding right beside him. Pretending to help...and more than likely hindering him. 

This whole time.

Betrayal from the very blood he had so generously helped for so long.

Surgeon grasped a handful of his hair and slammed his head against the table. God, the pain was more than the Doctor could handle. He tried to cling to consciousness by the atoms of his fingertips but the Surgeon slammed his head onto the table again. And again. And again. In fact, the Doctor lost count after 4, and his body fought 2 very different urges: the desperate urge to try to stay conscious, and the second to let darkness take him. At some point, the world snapped off and the pain stopped. 

But the blessed silence of the void didn't last long. It never did.

The world faded back on as he came to. His vision slowly came into focus and he was still on the table, looking up at the ornate wooden ceiling. His head didn't hurt, but he could feel a cold stickiness beneath it, matting his hair. With a small groan, he sat up slowly, running a hand through it. He looked at his hand, and it was smeared with cold blood. 

The Doctor swallowed hard in resignation, slowly turning to look down at the table. A puddle of his blood was beneath where his head was.

No brain matter this time, he thought. And deep down he realized what a terrifyingly depressing thought it was to have so calmly. Staring at the puddle, he heard Surgeon from the other side of the table. He didn't bother lifting his gaze to look at him.

"We're using this in his formula tonight." His voice was cold, emotionless, but it wasn't colored with rage. It was just...hollow. "And if it succeeds...."

The end of it hung in the air. The Doctor's worst nightmare finally knocked upon his door. He'd been trying for years to delay it, feigning ignorance for nearly 2 decades. But that's what wearing someone down does to a man with no hope of escape. One day, you get careless....

...And that's when the trap finally snaps shut.