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Hey, everyone! The following is a sample of my newest passion project, Chemical-18. It is a slow burn, erotic adventure/thriller that focuses on multiple protagonists. This is Chapters 1&2. If you like them, consider popping over to my [Kindle Vella]( page where you can read Chapter 3 for free as well. 🙂

(Likes and follows are very much appreciated on Kindle Vella as well!)

I really hope you enjoy!

**Chapter 1 – Elizabeth**

Elizabeth Hall arrives at BioGrowth Pharmaceuticals at a quarter till six, flashes her badge at the security guard, and waits for the red and white striped gate to allow her entry. The guard, a middle-aged man with an extended gut, recognizes her, gives the badge a cursory glance, then waves her through.

“Goddammit,” she mutters, killing the engine inside the lines of her employee parking spot. It has not even been empty for a full eight hours, yet here she is again to fill it.

Without giving herself a chance to lose momentum, Elizabeth heaves her tired body out of the driver’s seat and sets off toward the building’s front entrance. A quick card-swipe later, and she is inside.

The guard sitting behind the security desk looks up at her with a quizzical look.

“Beth,” he asks, checking the watch on his wrist, “didn’t I just see you leave here a few hours ago?”

The guards all work twelve-hour shifts, so yes, he had.

“Yeah, but you know, I just love this place so much that I can’t seem to stay away.”

The guard, Henry, is a lanky man whose ill-fitting, white cotton shirt hangs awkwardly across his midsection and bulges out overtop his gun belt.

It is good that he has that gun, she thinks, because he doesn’t seem capable of overpowering anyone, much less someone looking to break into the headquarters of a pharmaceutical business. But, then again, it isn’t just him on duty. There are at all times dozens of guards patrolling the outside, lobby, hallways and common areas. There are even some that wear full PPE and patrol the clean rooms and labs.

“You guys working on something cool down there?” He asks this question almost every day. It’s not a serious question because he knows she can’t answer it. It’s just a little small talk routine that they engage in every morning.

She gives him a wry smile and turns toward the elevator. “We always are.”

**2**

Once inside the elevator, Elizabeth takes a moment to clear her head. They are working on something cool, something very cool indeed. She knows she can’t tell Henry that, but it’s true. Biogrowth Pharmaceuticals, more specifically the wing of R&D that Elizabeth is assigned to, has been working on that cool thing for over forty years. Elizabeth herself has not been working on it that long, of course. She is only thirty-two and has only been part of the team for about two years; however, in that time, they have made some major progress.

The door dings open and Elizabeth steps out and into the hallway of subbasement floor B3.

Dr. Faust, the department head and her direct supervisor, is waiting just outside the lab door and leaning against it with his eyes closed. Although he is five-foot-ten—just an inch taller than Elizabeth herself—Dr. Faust looks incredibly small and frail. He is tired. They both are.

“Beth, did you sleep well?” He asks this without opening his eyes.

“Wonderfully. All five hours were just so restful.”

“Five? Consider yourself lucky, that’s one more than I got.”

With great effort, Dr. Faust straightens his wiry frame, stretches a bit, and turns to unlock the lab door with one of the many jingling keys that stay affixed to his belt via a retractor clip. The two enter the lab together and dawn their lab coats.

“I swear mine is still warm,” he says.

“Mine’s not. It’s absolutely freezing in here. Want coffee?”

“Sure.”

Inside a small room adjacent to the main laboratory, Elizabeth loads a coffee pot with water and a heart-exploding amount of coffee grounds. She hits brew and listens to the bubbling water start its journey.

Back in the lab, Elizabeth hears Drew and Alex arriving. They are both speaking to one another in an upbeat and energetic tone that, at that moment, she can’t comprehend. The entire team has been on sixteen-hour days for over a week in preparation for the upcoming shareholders meeting, yet they sound fresh and rested.

Once the coffee has finished brewing, she pours two cups, returns to the lab where Drew and Alex are now both in their own lab coats, and places one cup of coffee on her workstation and hands the other to Dr. Faust. He accepts it graciously.

Then, plopping down in her chair and swiveling to face them, Elizabeth asks Drew and Alex: “Are you two dipping into the powdered cocaine from upstairs? How the hell are you both so awake?”

“Sleep is for the weak,” Drew says defiantly.

Alex agrees, “for the weak and frail. We, as you can plainly see, are neither.”

Alex and Drew both use this opportunity to flex their non-existent, lab tech biceps which only results in a lighthearted eye roll from Elizabeth.

“Okay, team, listen up.” Dr. Faust says, flipping around a chair and squatting over it. “We really are coming down to the wire this time. Last quarter we were able to show some progress with specimens A243 and R32, but so far this quarter, we’ve got niltch, nada, and nothing.”

“What about rat C33? I’ve been teaching him to do the macarena in my spare time and he’s showing real progress.” Drew says this with a straight face. Alex and Elizabeth both suppress a chuckle.

“Shut up, Drew,” Dr. Faust says firmly. “I’m not in the mood. I’ve had a total of eleven hours sleep in the past three days, and unless we come up with something to show for it, we might be facing downsizing or even a complete shutdown of the entire wing.”

Drew leans back in his chair, satisfied that he has managed to make the group smile, save for Dr. Faust.

Alex then speaks up: “What makes this time different? I mean, the company has been funding our department for decades with little to no progress, so what’s changed?”

Dr. Faust pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and clears his throat. “I can’t get into specifics but let’s just say the board is losing faith in the project.”

Still sitting in her swivel chair and leaning her back against the wall, Elizabeth feels herself slipping into sleep but catches herself before tumbling to the floor. She chugs a large swig of coffee.

“Drew, I want you to biopsy every single rat that we injected yesterday evening and check for signs of cell mutation. Alex, physical inspections of subjects G121 through G344.”

Both deflate, but neither complain.

“Beth,” Dr. Faust continues and her head jerks to attention, “I want you to analyze the new batch of samples and document any changes in their chemical composition.”

“Okay, sure,” she says, but her mind is barely processing. She takes another sip of coffee and prays that it kicks in sooner rather than later.

**3**

As Drew and Alex work with the live specimens across the hall and Dr. Faust sorts through data on his computer, Elizabeth retrieves a tray from one of the multiple mini-fridges that are used to house newly synthesized formulas. This particular tray contains twenty individual glass vials organized into two long rows. Each of these vials contain a unique formula that will soon be tested on live subjects, and it is Elizabeth’s job to ensure that they are as safe for the subjects as efficient.

She places the tray onto her workstation using gloved hands and carefully removes the vial labeled Chemical-1 from its slot at the front of the left row. She unscrews its cap, uses a syringe to draw up a small amount of the light pink liquid, and squirts it into a machine that will display its chemical composition in the form of a graph. She then presses the begin button. As the machine is working, she replaces the cap on Chemical-1 and slots it back into the tray.

As she waits for the sample to analyze, her mind wanders back to simpler times, times when she wasn’t crunching desperately to impress shareholders that she had never met. They are making progress. Elizabeth knows this and so does the rest of the team, but that progress is not at all times so easily quantifiable. Sometimes, scientific advancement is nebulous and can’t be charted into an earnings projection.

If they could only see what Elizabeth sees. If they could only back off and give her team some more time—

The beeping of the machine rouses Elizabeth from a brief standing slumber. She looks at the clock and sees that she couldn’t have been out for more than a couple minutes, but still, when was the last time she had fallen asleep while standing? Never.

She leans over to look at the chart that has appeared on her monitor and presses the compare button. A small loading bar appears for a split second and then disappears. It is replaced by another small box that displays the text:

Sample confirmed: 100%

One down, nineteen more to go.

In this batch.

Goddammit.

**4**

On most days, Elizabeth will tell you that she loves her job. After all, on most days she really does. It is a good job, it pays well, and she worked many years to acquire it. Working at BioGrowth under the watchful eye of the esteemed Dr. Gregory Faust has been a dream realized for her, and the project which she is assigned to is, as Henry would put it, very cool.

That project—the one that the business’s founder, Richard Lowe, had established BioGrowth to develop in the first place—is a serum that can rewire the human body’s natural growth hormones to promote rapid, but controlled, cell growth. In theory, it will take a person’s DNA, the genetic building blocks that determine everything about them, and rewrite it. In that way, they can force a person’s body to grow in a predefined way.

Bigger muscles, faster reflexes, greater intelligence: nothing is off the table with the right formula.

To a young, college-aged Elizabeth, this whole thing had sounded like science fiction, but as she investigated it more and more, the whole concept began to seem increasingly possible. The idea fascinated her and had played no small role in her decision to acquire a master’s degree in Chemical Biology.

Elizabeth continues to work her way down the line of vials, analyzing each and doing her due diligence.

The coffee never kicks in.

**Chapter 2 – Elizabeth**

After a while, Elizabeth makes it to the end of the first row—to Chemical-10—and then promptly starts on the second. Behind her, Dr. Faust is munching on a doughnut and sipping more coffee. His caffeine rush appears to be working well as his glazed fingers are tapping away quickly on his keyboard.

As Elizabeth clicks the Compare function for the sample of Chemical-17, her mind is drawn back to her days in school, to the long hours of tedious study and note taking. She hadn’t been famous then as her high college acne had moved into the dorms with her and stayed until she was almost twenty-one; however, she had still enjoyed a decent amount of social success and had a solid, tiny friend group.

Now, she is lucky to have a day off, and on those days off, she spends her free-time performing long-ignored chores, going for walks through nature to enjoy light that isn’t provided via LED bulbs, or passed out on the couch, catching up on missed sleep. Her old friends are sometimes available, but they have their own adult lives now the same as hers, and making plans is too much of a hassle.

Elizabeth replaces Chemical-17 into the tray and reaches for Chemical-18.

The last real social outing that Elizabeth had been invited to was her old roommate, Jessica’s, wedding. Elizabeth had gone but didn’t feel like she should have. All the attendees were Jessica’s new friends, coworkers who worked in real estate, and Elizabeth had about as much in common with them as she did with her own estranged mother.

As for a boyfriend… Well, that was a whole other can of worms. Not having friends was hard enough, but when exactly was the last time she gotten a really good pounding—

Elizabeth feels the vial labeled Chemical-18 slip from her fingers as she moves it across the table in front of her. As this happens, she reaches for it with her free hand, but she is too slow and ends up spiking the little glass vial onto the surface of her workstation. Upon impact, the dull, pink liquid immediately gasifies into a cloud of bright, pink gas. This cloud engulfs Elizabeth, coating her gloved hands, lab coat, and face. She gasps from the unexpected shock and sucks in a deep lungful.

The burn is immediate on her lips, throat, lungs and eyes. She coughs and gags uncontrollably as she stumbles backwards.

“Oh shit!” Dr. Faust says as he stands up from his station. He wipes the doughnut crumbs off his fingers and onto his pants.

Blindly, she rushes in the direction of the emergency eyewash station. As she moves, she attempts to blink the gas from her eyes and cough it from her lungs. At the small, saucer-shaped sink, she tosses apart her soiled lab coat and gloves before leaning in and letting the cold water spray upwards into her face.

“Fuck!” Elizabeth groans through a coughing fit as water streams across her eyes and down her face.

Dr. Faust, now donning a respirator, goggles and fresh gloves, calls out to Elizabeth from across the room. “Beth, don’t bother with that. It has covered your face, your neck, your hair. It’s all over you. Strip down and get in the emergency shower!”

Thinking about using the emergency shower causes Elizabeth to panic slightly. The emergency shower—really nothing more than a large, pressurized shower head overtop a drain—is situated directly in the center of the lab. It’s meant to be as accessible as efficient to as many people as efficient, hence its centralized location, but that means it also offers no privacy whatsoever.

She knows she shouldn’t care considering she has just been exposed to an experimental drug that hasn’t even been tested on lab rats, but the idea of stripping off every article of her clothing in front of her boss is… humiliating.

“No,” she says, dismissing him through even more coughs, “I just need a second.”

Her eyes are red and irritated; her lungs and throat sting; every breath invites more coughing and sputtering wheezes.

As if reading her thoughts, Dr. Faust—his voice muffled by the respirator—appears beside Elizabeth and says: “Do not argue with me. There’s no time to waste on modesty.” As he says this, she feels him pulling her away from the eyewash station and pushing her toward the emergency shower.

Realizing that objecting to the business’s clearly outlined safety protocol—the protocol that she had signed as part of her new hire paperwork—would mean likely losing her job, she relents and allows Dr. Faust to guide her in the direction of the shower.

“Okay, Beth, I’m going to need to you to strip off your clothing,” he says as he primes the emergency shower, allowing the old, stagnant water that had been sitting in the pipes for God knows how long to clear. Elizabeth doesn’t want to see what color the water is, but she assumes it is likely a rusty brown.

Standing with her arms wrapped across her bosom and listening to the shower head sputter to life beside her, she accepts that this situation is gonna get worse before it gets better. She hears Dr. Faust’s squeaky dress shoes rush up beside her.

“Come on, Beth, I’m sorry about this, but the skin on your face is already breaking out in a rash and I need you to get in the shower.”

Reluctantly, Elizabeth agrees and begins stepping out of her flats. She feels Dr. Faust unfastening her blouse’s buttons. The fabric slips from her shoulders, and she feels the icy air of the lab bite at her midsection.

“Off with the necklace,” Dr. Faust orders. “And the earrings too. They’re both contaminated.”

As she raises her arms to comply, she feels Dr. Faust sliding a single finger between her back and bra strap.

Holy shit, she thinks. When was the last time a man took off my bra? Three… Four Years ago…

There should be nothing intimate about this moment—and in many methods there isn’t as she is still coughing violently—but she feels her heart rate noticeably rise as the tension in her bra strap releases and her small, perky breasts drop free.

She is exposed now. She knows it, and although Dr. Faust is standing behind her, she knows that he knows it as well. Part of her wishes that she could see the expression on his face, but another part—the more rational part that knows she will still have to work with the man when this whole ordeal is over—is glad that she doesn’t know where or at what part of her he is looking at. She assumes that he’s looking at her back, but kind of likes the idea of him seeing her—

As Elizabeth is removing her second earring, she feels the zipper of her black skirt unzip. The fabric around her hips falls to the floor and her face, which is already blood-red from exposure to Chemical-18, somehow gets even redder.

Her heart is beating out of her chest; now he is surely getting an eyeful. She struggles to remember what type of panties she put on this morning. The black ones?

No, she remembers, the white ones. The ones that make my ass look really good.

Elizabeth steadies her breathing and hands her jewelry to Dr. Faust, remembering to keep her breasts covered with one arm as she does. She steps out of her socks and feels the cool, hard tile beneath her feet. This, more than anything else, makes her realize how incredibly naked she is.

By this point, the coughing is starting to subside, but she dares not speak so as to not invite another fit.

“Beth,” Dr. Faust says with his voice still muffled. “I’m going to let you—finish undressing yourself.”

He was referring to the last article of clothing that remained: the white panties.

“No. This is enough.”

“Beth, protocol says that— “

“There’s no way that the exposure got through two thick layers of clothing and down to my panties.” She pauses for a brief moment. The word had felt dirty coming out of her mouth and she wishes that she had said underwear instead but continues on. “This will be enough.”

“Beth,” he says meekly, all authority gone from his voice.

“Greg!” Her voice reverberates around the room, and she prays that it doesn’t alert Drew or Alex.

“Very well,” he says taking her arm. “Watch your step.”

She attempts to open her eyes just enough to see, but pain flashes through them. It was like an entire bottle of shampoo had been dumped in them.

Once inside the shower, Elizabeth crosses her arms tightly and braces for what she knows is coming next. She had never had to use the emergency shower in an actual emergency, but in school, during her introductory biology course, her entire class had been required to demonstrate that they knew the proper steps just in case.

As she is reliving this memory, Dr. Faust pulls the handle, and a burst of nearly ice-cold water immediately makes contact with the top of her head. In this moment, as the water’s icy fingers run down her bare shoulders, chest, stomach, back, legs and feet, all hints of arousal that may have come from feeling Dr. Faust’s warm hand unhooking her bra evaporate. It happens so suddenly that it’s like flipping a light switch off.

“God-fucking-dammit, that’s cold!”

“It’s actually only about sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The shower can’t actually do its job if it is too hot and—”

“Thank you for the science lesson, Doctor, but I mean it feels cold.”

“Yes,” he says quietly.

Elizabeth knows that she shouldn’t be angry with him. After all, she is the one who dropped the vial and exposed herself to the contaminant, so this entire situation is her fault, but in that moment, she can’t bring herself to think rationally. Emotions are swirling, her eyes and skin are still burning despite the water, and for a brief moment, she feels as if she might pass out.

She raises her face to the water and, for the next couple of minutes, allows it to wash away any remnants of Chemical-18. She uses her palms to scrub at her neck and shoulders while still keeping her elbows low enough to cover her chest.

After a while, she forces open her eyes and allows the water to run across them as well. After about a minute of this, she begins to feel her vision returning to ordinary. She breathes a sigh of relief and glances in the direction of Dr. Faust. As she does this, he immediately averts his eyes.

He had been staring directly at her the entire time.

That fucking creep.

She raises the lever to shut off the water and begins reaching for a nearby towel.

“Beth, you need to wash the entire 15 minutes.”

“Oh really? Is that for my safety or just so you can stand there and eye-fuck me for a while longer?” She wraps the towel around her torso.

“I’m sorry,” he stammers, completely at a loss for words, “I didn’t mean to— “

“Yeah, I’m sure. Look, can you just go stand in the hall and guard the door while I look for my spare clothes?”

“Of course,” he says without moving, “but I must insist that you finish the shower.”

“No!” She shoots back, anger still in her voice. “There is nothing corrosive or carcinogenic in Chemical-18, and if I do suffer any exposure effects, it will be from the lungful I inhaled, not the light coating that I just washed off my face.”

He considers this. “Very well, that’s your choice. I’ll be in the hall.”

Dr Faust shuffles to the door, removes his PPE, wraps it in an orange contamination bag, and drops it into a bin before exiting.

NSFW: yes

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