I named this RP, one I made elsewhere, 'Gene War' which describes the near future where some demented group, pretending to be a pharmaceutical research company, convinces a bunch of suckers to vounteer for their medical tests, by little more than bribery. In my character's case, he was in a bit of legal trouble and they offered a seemingly better way.
This is the first post I made for it. Warning, it's 3 pages long, and more of a narration than a setting description.





Joel sighed and sat on the uncomfortable bench. The little cell was not a new sight to him. For what was the umpteenth time, he was picked up on petty theft. He wondered if one of these times this would sink him into deep trouble. Something was different though. Well, not that different.
The policeman stepped forward and announced. "You're a lucky man again. You got bail. This ain't over o'course." He tacked the last sentence on perhaps to sour the serendipity of the moment. He smirked a little and turned the key. Joel gladly stepped out of the cell, under careful watch of the uniformed officer.

The person who bailed him wasn't a familiar face. Not even close.
Joel was immediately suspicious, of course. This man wanted something. What that was was at the moment, an enigma.
The man smiled a million dollar smile which didn't phase Joel one bit.
He cut to the chase for the man. "Okay, so what do you want?"

The man seemed insincerely hurt with a comical expression of shock. "Want, Joel? I'm willing to help you. Now, I could send you back to the cell if you'd like."

Joel narrowed his eyes a little "How do you know my name?"
The smile returned. "We do our research. Let me explain what you'll be doing to 'work off' your sentence. Call it 'community service'. We give you a place to stay, daily meals and eventual freedom from your sentence. You give us valuable data for medical research. We'll even compensate you once we're done. Sound like deal?"

Joel considered a moment. This sounded entirely suspicious.
Doubtfully good fortune as the officer had stated it. But it was that or something worse than merely being in jail. Prison would be worse, and even petty theivery could land you there, if you were persistent at your pilfering trade, but not persistent in avoiding being caught. It was proven, Joel was a lousy thief when it came to being undetected. But this 'community service' could be a deception. This man reeked of deception.

Joel finally sighed and responded. "Deal."
The man gripped his in a spontaneous handshake. "You won't regret it."

To the consternation of the police officer, he was led out, and by the way the man walked, he had a feeling Joel would not be returning for some time.

The cabin of the car was over-air conditioned and felt like stepping into a freezer. The thing was, outside was not so nearly hot to warrant it. Some people, Joel surmised, were not comfortable with anything even mildly approaching uncomfortable. Heat was more uncomfortable than cold to them, maybe. The seats were cushy.

Joel studied the man in more detail. His clothes were nice. He seemed more like an executive or at least, some aide to an executive, than one who'd be likely to bail out lost causes from certain detainment. It was all just a little too fishy to Joel.

Even more so when he felt his eyes drooping. He was far from tired, but his body didn't seem to believe that. He was out in mere moments.
When he awoke, he wasn't on the same texture of cushy. He snapped to sitting and looked around. Joel then remembered being bailed under unusual circumstances and then, even more unusually, going to sleep when it was hardly afternoon.

That was also what left him just a little keyed up once he realized.
They had to have applied some mild, airborne sedative.
Now he was in something that resembled, in size, at least, his old cell.
This one was cushy. Looked like an apartment. The bed was nice enough.
There was even large wall-mounted panel that he took to be the TV.

His clothes were better than before. They had changed him while
he was out, he gathered. Standing, he looked around. The room, if you didn't have furniture blocking, was at most about five paces at his narrower dimension. The longer dimension was about twice that. The door seemed alright, until he tried to open it. Nothing happened. It was locked from the outside. "Great. Prison in velour, but a prison it still is."
He muttered. At least it was more comfortable than before.

When he turned the panel on, a menu appeared. Searching more, he found both a remote and a keyboard. The remote wasn't like a normal one. By moving it, he waved a cursor around on screen. the middle button proved to be a clicker. He scanned all the menus slowly, picking up the options.
It was both a data terminal and a TV. There weren't many channels.
And they weren't anything like the channels he knew.
A perfunctory examination turned up that most of the channels were varying forms of corporate proaganda. Nothing of consequence. The data access wasn't typical net access either. he was at home on the net,
at least. Not enough to get some decent hook up, but to get around the eddies of useless fluff data.

It didn't take long to realize that most of this was just as empty as the TV networks he had access to. Useful. Why even bother to put a veneer of freedom? How could any one not see through it? His suspicions confirmed, he sat down on his bed. This was going to be nearly as boring as a jail cell was. And what of the 'medical experiments'? This could hardly be considered consent, either. Which made it illegal and amoral under any reasonable international decree. As if he could call on those
protections now anyway.

The days passed slowly. He used his keen ears to listen. Voices of, presumably other prisoners. Most were bored, restless, incontent. But more than a few.. more than a few were unmistakably in suffering
and pain. But there was no real way to communicate to them. If he could rig a terminal, they'd just spy on it anyway.

Joel's hearing had always been, some said, unnatural. People muttered or talked behind his back and he heard. He got a reputation for being able to pick out those sorts of details from a mass of noisy chatter among people. He wasn't a tattler, but he found while still in school, things could be done with information instead of brute force. People would do things if they thought you knew something they didn't want other people to know.
Now, his ears were more of a burden, when one can hear people being tortured or something. Something was most definitely amiss.

A week, Joel judged, had passed before anyone visited him. He got meals and other necessary items every day, but no real contact with anyone.
The guards wouldn't respond if he asked them anything. So his surprise was palpable when two people entered the room. They were not quite dressed like the other guards, he noted. They led him to a room after a long winding path through what was, Joel thought, a much larger facility than he had expected.

The room was clinically neat. White tiled walls and coldly lighted equipment lined it. Some of the gleaming metal equipment looked more than vaguely menacing. But he was not led to any of those. They settled him in an ordinary chair. A man, Joel decided he was the one in charge of the others, entered, dressed in a stereotypical doctor's outfit. He looked him over, then looked at a small pda. Hmming enigmatically, he plucked a small cylinder from a counter. Fitting it in a syringe, he looked over Joel once more.

Joel was of course, immediately shocked at this. Truth serum or worse?
The doctor noticed his sudden panic. "This is a medicine that will temporarily prevent allergic response. A test drug of course. We will examine it's effect after applying a mild allergen to the room."

That was the biggest load of bull Joel had ever witnessed, but did he really have a choice in the matter? If he struggled, they'd knock him out and stick it in him anyway. The problem was, what was it really? What would it do to him? he acquiesed. The prick was like every other shot
he'd ever taken. That meant, over in seconds. They dabbed the spot of blood that welled up and put a bandage on it.



Only a few days had passed, and Joel felt a disorienting dizziness in his head that accompanied at first milt sinus and ear pressure. His head itched, in a place he couldn't scratch. Then one day, he awoke and was immediately accosted with all the symptoms of the days before only expanded far beyond that, into clear cut, scything pain. This accomapanied a fever that tingled his body all over.

It lasted a total of three days from when the first symptoms took place. Those days were unending agony for Joel, who could do little but writhe on his bed. He vaguely noted guards sponging sweat from him and spooning food into his slack mouth, though it came and went with his consciousness.

When he awoke, he was stark naked. The room was as it was before.
He was exactly as he was before. That was of course, until he heard something. Well, anything, really. The voices which were indistinct and afar now seemed closer. Maybe not closer, but clearer, certainly. He could even make out words. Mostly idle chatter of prisoners to themselves, but he did notice soft muttering of conversation from other, less forlorn voices.
And what he heard enraged him. They werent' testing medicine.
They were testing extremely experimental genetics on them.

What they had done to him, he wasn't sure. There were no hints in the voices, but he knew with certainty that they had done something
to his hearing. His already excellent hearing was now, to him, practically supernatural. No. It was supernatural, for a human anyways.

Interesting story and I'd certainly like to read more of it. ^_^ It would be neat to get a bit more background and details of these characters, but keep working on it!