Rauch jerked forward in his chair. “WHAT!?!” He looked like he’d just been shot in the back. Britt and the girl were likewise rattled, if not to the same degree. Even Charles turned an ear, though he didn’t let it interrupt his work. “You can’t be serious.”

“Well,” the girl ventured, considering, “we do need another subject, and it’s not like he’s going to get infected again…” she was warming to the idea. Rejected out of hand at first, but the more she thought about it, and the more she took the contrarian view, the more she was buying in. She and Miller shared a glance, but Miller said nothing, content to let the rest of the room argue the merits of his idea.

“I’m not some rat!” Rauch whined. “You can’t just use me like that!”

“Like what?” She argued. “A subject? We wouldn’t be. We won’t be running tests. We’ll just be taking a few readings, no different than if we took your weight or temperature right now. We wouldn’t be introducing any new variables to your…ah, condition.”

“So what! If we need another subject just grab another furball! That’s what they’re for.”

“Won’t work. If we could re-create the results at will we wouldn’t be testing in the first place…and even if we could, who knows how long it would take? You’re the only one who can make this happen.”

“Uh uh!” Rauch screamed. “I won’t let you hook me up to those things! I won’t let them read me like that again!” His eyes darted back and forth as she backed him into a corner. “Britt!” He grasped at his last straw. “You’ve still got your wits about you…tell them this is ludicrous!”

Britt checked the primary display, then the secondary. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he considered. “How long until that kill-switch is ready?” he asked.

Charles’s lips moved in silence as his pupils traced their lines, engrossed absolutely in whatever they were seeing.

“I said, how long until –”

“Not long,” Miller answered. “About twenty minutes more. He just has to queue it up, parse the signal, find the right insertion point and off she goes.”

Britt ran his fingers through his hair, then rubbed the back of his neck. “Then you’ve got that long with him,” he sighed. “Rauch, gown up.”

Rauch’s eyes bulged. The lines on his face sharpened as his features tensed in panic. “No!” he sat up and slammed his palms into his armrests. “This is insane! I…I won’t do it!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” the girl chided. “It’s not the full interface, not like it was before. It’s only a few electrodes. The rabbits came out of it just fine.”

“I don’t care! I’m not some freaking rodent! You can’t just experiment on me like that!”

“God dammit!” Miller screamed and banged his fist on the steel of console, dislodging dust that had ionized to its constant current and sending it eddying into the air. His voice cracked as it reached its crescendo. It was the first time in a long time it had risen above a sigh. “Why are you always pulling shit like this?! Why can you only ever think of YOU?!”

“I don’t only think of –“

“The hell you don’t! Like last week, when you had to work all that ‘overtime’ during inventory fixing all those bullshit rogues…awfully convenient, wasn’t it?”

“I had a bug! I couldn’t help it. It just showed up in the code one day. You had one yourself the week before. You wouldn’t stop bitching about it for two whole days!”

“Yeah, but mine didn’t sync up with everybody’s least favorite chore, did it? And last month when you burned meatloaf after you and Britt had that row over who’s turn it was to pull KP, even though none of us could find a thing wrong with that oven? What was that all about?”

“I don’t know, must have been some kind of power surge.”

“Guys…” Charles mumbled from the edge of the room.

“It’s a gas oven!” Miller screamed. “And no one wants to hear your shit! We didn’t then, and we don’t now, so why don’t you just grow a pair and help us out, just this once?”

“But…it’s the principle of the thing! You don’t run tests like that on human beings! You just…don’t!”

“Agreed. Let us know when you become one.” Miller slid off the console’s surface and advanced on Rauch, as if to force him into submission. Rauch sat up in his chair, eyes widening, subconsciously preparing to edge away.

“Guys!” Louder this time. The urgency in Charles’s voice magnified in contrast to his usual happy-go-lucky demeanor. “You better take a look at this!”