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Description
It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

Jerome K. Jerome

Leiter passed through the door, leaving the kid behind without a second thought. There wasn’t really a reason for him to stay behind, anyway. The drug he injected to that boy didn’t have damaging effects on most subjects, and nine over ten chances said he would wake up normally by himself and leave the place.

The door shut behind him by itself. The trick didn’t impress the doctor. By that time it was obvious that some force of a kind he wasn’t familiar with was running the whole place. If the concept wasn’t in itself as ridiculous as it was, he would call it magic. Now again, that concept was ridiculous.

Something that did indeed surprise him was the smell he felt on entering the new room. It was a fresh smell, not very familiar, it smelled like…

-Sunflowers… that’s interesting.

He proceeded to make a careful analysis of the new room, if one could call it that way. There where walls, surrounding it. In fact, it was one circular wall of maybe one kilometer of radius and almost four meters of height. However, there was no ceiling, which made very difficult to discern if his location was really a room or a backyard.

But what really was strange about that place was the thing inside it. Vegetation of all kind was growing around the doctor, notably close to him were the sunflowers he smelled when he entered. He could see as he walked toward the center of the room a bigger version of the statue inside the former one. It was different; notably, it held a chalice in its hand instead of a chandelier. The hole in the forehead was also gone. Instead there was only a word…

But what intrigued him the most was the road he was walking by, that led to a village that had burned. All evidence stated that the burning was recent, although there was no sign of any kind of culprit or victim.

The question about the futility of a village inside of a big room outside of any contact with the outer world went around the head of Leiter for some seconds while he walked towards it before he abandoned it in favor of his task in hand. Probably there would be another person in the room. He was probably coming right then from the opposite side and he had to device a strategy for that case. The sun hit strongly in John’s face but he didn’t really care, it was either 10 in the morning or 2 in the evening, depending where the west was. It was getting cloudy, it was about to rain.

The doctor walked in between the ashes, leaving some of the buildings behind. By his side there was a barn without any animals in it. The smell of death tainted the small village of little more than six houses, but there were no bodies anywhere.
But it wasn’t the doctor’s objective to make an analysis of the place; his focus was instead on the big statue on the exact center of the room. The instructions to make it to this room where near the statue last time. If the statue in the middle of the room was a constant, the location of the instructions surely must have had a pattern.

Indeed, once again on the foot of the statue there was a book, and on that book there were instructions.

“Fill the chalice with the blood of the unworthy”.

John looked around. There still wasn’t anybody near him, so it all was a matter of waiting. Near the statue there was a kind of cage or well. It was large and it featured descending stairs.

There was another door in the room, and a road very similar, or maybe equal, to the one he took himself to get to the little village. But the symmetry stopped there. The plantations and buildings differed completely from side to side. Leiter waited five minutes in the village, half-covered by a house until the door opened, and another man in a white, doctor’s coat came out, holding a bright red bag in his hand. That was indeed interesting, for another doctor to be the one to confront him. He had almost eight minutes until the other one came in...

He took a scalpel and made a deep, transversal cut on one of his kidneys. He made a very deep wound; very hard to heal. Then he threw the scalpel away and started to stagger towards the road, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Eventually, John could see the doctor with the red bag.

-H… Help – He said, faking weakness, and then falling first on one knee, and then on his entire body. His coat was blood stained from the great pressure of his wound.

The other man hastened his step to help John Leiter, taking from his bag some gloves and bandages between other things.

-What… is your name?

-Avery Grey; you will sleep now.

Avery took a vaccine of his own and, rolling up Leiter’s sleeves, he injected the anesthesia on his arm. It didn’t work. John’s cells rejected the drug as Avery opened the coat and pulled up the shirt of his patient, with futile attempts to find the answer to a wound that just kept bleeding while the blood regenerated, making it impossible to clean; trying to cure what would be an almost impossible wound in the middle of a country road inside of a room, and while his healer had a lot to worry about, John Leiter only had to take a syringe of anesthesia from his now open coat. There was enough in there to put somebody to sleep in a few seconds…

His opponent had both hands busy cleaning the wound; it was time. He quickly took the syringe and, like he had done with the kid before, injected it on the arm of Avery Grey.

The doctor of the red bag, who was still holding some bandages on his hand, looked at John Leiter while he stood in full strength and injected the drug in his arm, and almost instantly, the deep wound he had been treating closed itself and stopped bleeding.

-Why? – Avery asked with a broken voice while the drug pumped inside of his blood.

-Don’t worry, Avery Grey. - Leiter said while the other doctor was falling at his feet – I’ll just take a little bit of your blood. It won’t hurt a bit. – He had repeated similar words dozens of times without meaning it, and even in such a different context, it felt all the same to him…

After he put all of his clothes back into place, Leiter took one of his scalpels in his right hand, proceeding to make a delicate, yet precise cut in Avery’s right hand. He grabbed one of the bottles he stole from the weird eyed kid in the last room, once the bottle was full he had almost double as much blood as he needed. It would suffice.

The body of the other one would make no use to him now. It was bad that they couldn’t have a longer meeting. By the way he made the efforts to heal his fictitious wound; Leiter could notice that Avery just happened to be quite the good doctor…

Holding the bottle of blood in his hand, Leiter stood back and faced the statue holding the Grail. All that was left now was to fill the chalice. The doctor took two steps before a really powerful force struck him from behind, making him hit the ground, surprising him and forcing him to release the bottle he was holding, which fell somewhere between the tall grass along the road. Soon, John found his arms grabbed by the same doctor he had drugged some few minutes ago.

Leiter started to make an analysis of the whole picture: Somehow, Avery Grey had woken up from his supposedly hours long sleep. He jumped over him with a great strength and tackled him from behind, taking him down to the floor, surprising him and grabbing both his wrists with great reflexes. To add more to the strangeness of this case, the right hand, that should had been bleeding, did not drop any blood. Even more; considering the pressure on both the wrists, his newly gained opponent seemed to be perfectly ambidextrous. He could fight back, but there was lots of data in play there, so he had to fake agony to analyze this strange man, Avery Grey.

-Arghhh, please, please, stop! - He said, twisting his body under the strength of the doctor of the red bag. – I give up. I can’t take it anymore.

-I’ll release one of your arms, so you can help me put your coat off. Be cooperative- was the answer. He was smart. He had seen that he hid numerous drugs and medical items under his coat. It an inconvenience to take it off, but the possibility of studying him was worth it.

-It’s fine, I can do it myself. Just let my arms go.

Grey did as he was said and let Leiter go. The last one proceeded to take his robe off.

-I’m sorry for deceiving you. You see, it’s the only way I know how to defend myself.

-Do you possess the body control? – Dr Grey was going straight to the point.

-Body control? What is that? Do you mean the regeneration thing?

-Precisely. Where did you get that from? Ever taken a strange drug?

A drug made for body control? What an interesting concept. If anything, Grey’s most important skill seemed to be the ability to get more interesting by the time. Of course, he was used to skills related to the modification of the body and its properties, but the idea of a full-on body manipulation made the possibilities endless, be it by analysis of subjects submitted to it or by a further understanding of anatomy he could gain himself by these means.

-No… My recovery, it just got out of nowhere. I don’t know how it happened. But please, tell me more about this drug you are talking about, maybe I can figure something out.

-…No, it doesn’t matter. I’m now sure that whatever you have, it is not related to the formula. I can’t help you.

It wasn’t good for John’s plans. He somehow had to find out more, even if it meant to blow a bit of his cover. He sat on his knees, to talk at the same level of Avery, who was now taking Leiter’s coat and looking at the poisons and formulas he had stored there.

-Well, I guess I have no choice – he said – you can say it or I won’t let you have my blood.

The doctor of the red bag smiled for the first time, from Leiter’s point of view, it could mean either sarcasm or arrogance, the latter was the most likely.

-Your blood?

-Exactly, you need my blood to get to the next room; you can read it down the statue. And with my healing, the only ways to get my blood are either by my own will or killing me. And I’m sure as a fellow doctor that you wouldn’t kill anyone.

The doctor of the red bag stopped his activities for a second, and then continued talking.

-Then, even in the case I tell you anything, wouldn’t you have a sure victory?

-Oh, no, that’s not right. You already saw that in matters of physical combat, I’m useless. So I wouldn’t risk myself to being killed by you. You are athletic and strong.

-It looks like I don’t have a choice, what do you want to know? – He said. His expression went back to normal seriousness now.

-Oh, well, there are so many questions I could ask… Does the drug you were talking about reside on your mind or your body?

Avery looked kind of surprised, like if he expected a sort of question like “Do you live forever?” or the sort, questions more appropriate for a kindergarten student than a scientific mind, that over all things should worry about the reason over the fact.

-It resides in my mind, but all of the neurons in my body possess the same symptoms as the ones in my brain for proper coordination. Also, the neurotransmitters adapt themselves to those modifications, so while the drug acts in my brain and over my body, my body has traces of it. That would be the proper answer.

Leiter smiled.

-Thank you, that’s about everything I needed to know. Look at the chalice the statue is holding over there in the burning village. Take it down so I can fill it with my blood.

For sure, the doctor from the red bag suspected something, but anyway he left for the statue fifty meters away, taking his bag with him. Meanwhile, Leiter took his coat from the floor and put it on again.

...As expected, Avery had confiscated all of his drugs. But it was not something to worry about. After all, he didn’t even need to fight him to succeed.

Searching between the grasses, he took the bottle of Avery’s blood he had dropped and put it down his coat. He checked for flaws in the bottle before hastening his step towards the statue, everything was fine.

Avery went up for the statue, climbing it quickly, just like one would expect from someone who controls all of his body functions. Meanwhile, John Leiter just stood on the feet of the statue and waited for his “opponent” to come down.

-Here reads that the blood of the unworthy must fill the chalice. It must mean the other one will pass. Give me the chalice.

Taking the chalice from the statue’s hand, Avery threw it down, letting John Leiter get it. He was quick to put the grail on the ground. He had a chance there; he could put the blood from the bottle into the cup before Grey didn’t even notice.

But that was not his objective anymore.

With his bare right hand, Leiter caught his left arm, ripping the skin away while Avery watched silently, and letting the blood fall in the chalice, feeling the warm touch of the liquid slowly flowing from his arm in an endless waterfall. The sun was higher. After all, he was originally facing the east and right then it was 10:30 in the morning.

The wound stopped as soon as the chalice was filled entirely, only letting a few drops fall in the ground. The door in the well opened for Avery, who took his red bag and began to step in. Leiter knew the wish thing was over for him, but he didn’t really care. It was all just about investigation and research in the first place. It would probably have been risky to go further. Meanwhile, if he were to aisle the biological variation that made the “Body Control” possible, the results would have been maybe even better than expected. He was the winner.

-I guess you were lucky somebody let himself be defeated, weren’t you? - He said, politely, to Avery, who entered the door and got into the well, closing the door after him.

-I agree. By the way, I will be really surprised if you get to aisle enough neurotransmitters inside of blood so you can duplicate the formula. While a hard task at hand, I have done it once from scratch, so I think somebody else could.
He started to descend, but he did not stop talking.

-If you manage to do it we will meet. Take care of that blood; you won’t get a second chance.

John Leiter listened to the last steps from down the stairs until there was no more sound to be heard. He had taken the bottle of blood off his coat and now held it in his hand.

“…That is very intriguing” – He thought, lonely, only surrounded by the burning village. Now that two doors had opened, a very gentle, almost inexistant blow of wind started to flow, dispercing the ashes on the floor softly.

To think that, all along, Avery Grey knew exactly what was going on at the time and managed to deceive him into thinking it was the other side around. It was certainly an unexpected turn of events. How much did he actually know? From when did he notice everything? Indeed, he had found something unexpected there, maybe even better than the price he was looking for.

He looked at the bottle of blood he held in his hand. He also seemed to have gained an objective. After all things, it ended up being his victory too.

Leiter took the stethoscope, he had dropped it when he started to fake his wound. He looked at the word on the forehead of the statue again; “truth”, then he began to walk towards the door that he came from.

…Truth…

What an irony.

Description
It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

Jerome K. Jerome

Leiter passed through the door, leaving the kid behind without a second thought. There wasn’t really a reason for him to stay behind, anyway. The drug he injected to that boy didn’t have damaging effects on most subjects, and nine over ten chances said he would wake up normally by himself and leave the place.

The door shut behind him by itself. The trick didn’t impress the doctor. By that time it was obvious that some force of a kind he wasn’t familiar with was running the whole place. If the concept wasn’t in itself as ridiculous as it was, he would call it magic. Now again, that concept was ridiculous.

Something that did indeed surprise him was the smell he felt on entering the new room. It was a fresh smell, not very familiar, it smelled like…

-Sunflowers… that’s interesting.

He proceeded to make a careful analysis of the new room, if one could call it that way. There where walls, surrounding it. In fact, it was one circular wall of maybe one kilometer of radius and almost four meters of height. However, there was no ceiling, which made very difficult to discern if his location was really a room or a backyard.

But what really was strange about that place was the thing inside it. Vegetation of all kind was growing around the doctor, notably close to him were the sunflowers he smelled when he entered. He could see as he walked toward the center of the room a bigger version of the statue inside the former one. It was different; notably, it held a chalice in its hand instead of a chandelier. The hole in the forehead was also gone. Instead there was only a word…

But what intrigued him the most was the road he was walking by, that led to a village that had burned. All evidence stated that the burning was recent, although there was no sign of any kind of culprit or victim.

The question about the futility of a village inside of a big room outside of any contact with the outer world went around the head of Leiter for some seconds while he walked towards it before he abandoned it in favor of his task in hand. Probably there would be another person in the room. He was probably coming right then from the opposite side and he had to device a strategy for that case. The sun hit strongly in John’s face but he didn’t really care, it was either 10 in the morning or 2 in the evening, depending where the west was. It was getting cloudy, it was about to rain.

The doctor walked in between the ashes, leaving some of the buildings behind. By his side there was a barn without any animals in it. The smell of death tainted the small village of little more than six houses, but there were no bodies anywhere.
But it wasn’t the doctor’s objective to make an analysis of the place; his focus was instead on the big statue on the exact center of the room. The instructions to make it to this room where near the statue last time. If the statue in the middle of the room was a constant, the location of the instructions surely must have had a pattern.

Indeed, once again on the foot of the statue there was a book, and on that book there were instructions.

“Fill the chalice with the blood of the unworthy”.

John looked around. There still wasn’t anybody near him, so it all was a matter of waiting. Near the statue there was a kind of cage or well. It was large and it featured descending stairs.

There was another door in the room, and a road very similar, or maybe equal, to the one he took himself to get to the little village. But the symmetry stopped there. The plantations and buildings differed completely from side to side. Leiter waited five minutes in the village, half-covered by a house until the door opened, and another man in a white, doctor’s coat came out, holding a bright red bag in his hand. That was indeed interesting, for another doctor to be the one to confront him. He had almost eight minutes until the other one came in...

He took a scalpel and made a deep, transversal cut on one of his kidneys. He made a very deep wound; very hard to heal. Then he threw the scalpel away and started to stagger towards the road, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Eventually, John could see the doctor with the red bag.

-H… Help – He said, faking weakness, and then falling first on one knee, and then on his entire body. His coat was blood stained from the great pressure of his wound.

The other man hastened his step to help John Leiter, taking from his bag some gloves and bandages between other things.

-What… is your name?

-Avery Grey; you will sleep now.

Avery took a vaccine of his own and, rolling up Leiter’s sleeves, he injected the anesthesia on his arm. It didn’t work. John’s cells rejected the drug as Avery opened the coat and pulled up the shirt of his patient, with futile attempts to find the answer to a wound that just kept bleeding while the blood regenerated, making it impossible to clean; trying to cure what would be an almost impossible wound in the middle of a country road inside of a room, and while his healer had a lot to worry about, John Leiter only had to take a syringe of anesthesia from his now open coat. There was enough in there to put somebody to sleep in a few seconds…

His opponent had both hands busy cleaning the wound; it was time. He quickly took the syringe and, like he had done with the kid before, injected it on the arm of Avery Grey.

The doctor of the red bag, who was still holding some bandages on his hand, looked at John Leiter while he stood in full strength and injected the drug in his arm, and almost instantly, the deep wound he had been treating closed itself and stopped bleeding.

-Why? – Avery asked with a broken voice while the drug pumped inside of his blood.

-Don’t worry, Avery Grey. - Leiter said while the other doctor was falling at his feet – I’ll just take a little bit of your blood. It won’t hurt a bit. – He had repeated similar words dozens of times without meaning it, and even in such a different context, it felt all the same to him…

After he put all of his clothes back into place, Leiter took one of his scalpels in his right hand, proceeding to make a delicate, yet precise cut in Avery’s right hand. He grabbed one of the bottles he stole from the weird eyed kid in the last room, once the bottle was full he had almost double as much blood as he needed. It would suffice.

The body of the other one would make no use to him now. It was bad that they couldn’t have a longer meeting. By the way he made the efforts to heal his fictitious wound; Leiter could notice that Avery just happened to be quite the good doctor…

Holding the bottle of blood in his hand, Leiter stood back and faced the statue holding the Grail. All that was left now was to fill the chalice. The doctor took two steps before a really powerful force struck him from behind, making him hit the ground, surprising him and forcing him to release the bottle he was holding, which fell somewhere between the tall grass along the road. Soon, John found his arms grabbed by the same doctor he had drugged some few minutes ago.

Leiter started to make an analysis of the whole picture: Somehow, Avery Grey had woken up from his supposedly hours long sleep. He jumped over him with a great strength and tackled him from behind, taking him down to the floor, surprising him and grabbing both his wrists with great reflexes. To add more to the strangeness of this case, the right hand, that should had been bleeding, did not drop any blood. Even more; considering the pressure on both the wrists, his newly gained opponent seemed to be perfectly ambidextrous. He could fight back, but there was lots of data in play there, so he had to fake agony to analyze this strange man, Avery Grey.

-Arghhh, please, please, stop! - He said, twisting his body under the strength of the doctor of the red bag. – I give up. I can’t take it anymore.

-I’ll release one of your arms, so you can help me put your coat off. Be cooperative- was the answer. He was smart. He had seen that he hid numerous drugs and medical items under his coat. It an inconvenience to take it off, but the possibility of studying him was worth it.

-It’s fine, I can do it myself. Just let my arms go.

Grey did as he was said and let Leiter go. The last one proceeded to take his robe off.

-I’m sorry for deceiving you. You see, it’s the only way I know how to defend myself.

-Do you possess the body control? – Dr Grey was going straight to the point.

-Body control? What is that? Do you mean the regeneration thing?

-Precisely. Where did you get that from? Ever taken a strange drug?

A drug made for body control? What an interesting concept. If anything, Grey’s most important skill seemed to be the ability to get more interesting by the time. Of course, he was used to skills related to the modification of the body and its properties, but the idea of a full-on body manipulation made the possibilities endless, be it by analysis of subjects submitted to it or by a further understanding of anatomy he could gain himself by these means.

-No… My recovery, it just got out of nowhere. I don’t know how it happened. But please, tell me more about this drug you are talking about, maybe I can figure something out.

-…No, it doesn’t matter. I’m now sure that whatever you have, it is not related to the formula. I can’t help you.

It wasn’t good for John’s plans. He somehow had to find out more, even if it meant to blow a bit of his cover. He sat on his knees, to talk at the same level of Avery, who was now taking Leiter’s coat and looking at the poisons and formulas he had stored there.

-Well, I guess I have no choice – he said – you can say it or I won’t let you have my blood.

The doctor of the red bag smiled for the first time, from Leiter’s point of view, it could mean either sarcasm or arrogance, the latter was the most likely.

-Your blood?

-Exactly, you need my blood to get to the next room; you can read it down the statue. And with my healing, the only ways to get my blood are either by my own will or killing me. And I’m sure as a fellow doctor that you wouldn’t kill anyone.

The doctor of the red bag stopped his activities for a second, and then continued talking.

-Then, even in the case I tell you anything, wouldn’t you have a sure victory?

-Oh, no, that’s not right. You already saw that in matters of physical combat, I’m useless. So I wouldn’t risk myself to being killed by you. You are athletic and strong.

-It looks like I don’t have a choice, what do you want to know? – He said. His expression went back to normal seriousness now.

-Oh, well, there are so many questions I could ask… Does the drug you were talking about reside on your mind or your body?

Avery looked kind of surprised, like if he expected a sort of question like “Do you live forever?” or the sort, questions more appropriate for a kindergarten student than a scientific mind, that over all things should worry about the reason over the fact.

-It resides in my mind, but all of the neurons in my body possess the same symptoms as the ones in my brain for proper coordination. Also, the neurotransmitters adapt themselves to those modifications, so while the drug acts in my brain and over my body, my body has traces of it. That would be the proper answer.

Leiter smiled.

-Thank you, that’s about everything I needed to know. Look at the chalice the statue is holding over there in the burning village. Take it down so I can fill it with my blood.

For sure, the doctor from the red bag suspected something, but anyway he left for the statue fifty meters away, taking his bag with him. Meanwhile, Leiter took his coat from the floor and put it on again.

...As expected, Avery had confiscated all of his drugs. But it was not something to worry about. After all, he didn’t even need to fight him to succeed.

Searching between the grasses, he took the bottle of Avery’s blood he had dropped and put it down his coat. He checked for flaws in the bottle before hastening his step towards the statue, everything was fine.

Avery went up for the statue, climbing it quickly, just like one would expect from someone who controls all of his body functions. Meanwhile, John Leiter just stood on the feet of the statue and waited for his “opponent” to come down.

-Here reads that the blood of the unworthy must fill the chalice. It must mean the other one will pass. Give me the chalice.

Taking the chalice from the statue’s hand, Avery threw it down, letting John Leiter get it. He was quick to put the grail on the ground. He had a chance there; he could put the blood from the bottle into the cup before Grey didn’t even notice.

But that was not his objective anymore.

With his bare right hand, Leiter caught his left arm, ripping the skin away while Avery watched silently, and letting the blood fall in the chalice, feeling the warm touch of the liquid slowly flowing from his arm in an endless waterfall. The sun was higher. After all, he was originally facing the east and right then it was 10:30 in the morning.

The wound stopped as soon as the chalice was filled entirely, only letting a few drops fall in the ground. The door in the well opened for Avery, who took his red bag and began to step in. Leiter knew the wish thing was over for him, but he didn’t really care. It was all just about investigation and research in the first place. It would probably have been risky to go further. Meanwhile, if he were to aisle the biological variation that made the “Body Control” possible, the results would have been maybe even better than expected. He was the winner.

-I guess you were lucky somebody let himself be defeated, weren’t you? - He said, politely, to Avery, who entered the door and got into the well, closing the door after him.

-I agree. By the way, I will be really surprised if you get to aisle enough neurotransmitters inside of blood so you can duplicate the formula. While a hard task at hand, I have done it once from scratch, so I think somebody else could.
He started to descend, but he did not stop talking.

-If you manage to do it we will meet. Take care of that blood; you won’t get a second chance.

John Leiter listened to the last steps from down the stairs until there was no more sound to be heard. He had taken the bottle of blood off his coat and now held it in his hand.

“…That is very intriguing” – He thought, lonely, only surrounded by the burning village. Now that two doors had opened, a very gentle, almost inexistant blow of wind started to flow, dispercing the ashes on the floor softly.

To think that, all along, Avery Grey knew exactly what was going on at the time and managed to deceive him into thinking it was the other side around. It was certainly an unexpected turn of events. How much did he actually know? From when did he notice everything? Indeed, he had found something unexpected there, maybe even better than the price he was looking for.

He looked at the bottle of blood he held in his hand. He also seemed to have gained an objective. After all things, it ended up being his victory too.

Leiter took the stethoscope, he had dropped it when he started to fake his wound. He looked at the word on the forehead of the statue again; “truth”, then he began to walk towards the door that he came from.

…Truth…

What an irony.