Prompt: In the end we shall achieve in time/ The thing they call divine (In the Meantime, Spacehog)

Simms knew what he as getting into when he took the job - the over-arching question, that longtime dream. They called it extended preservation, but he knew what it meant.

Eternal life.

With all of the metabolism hypes on the market no one looked a day over twenty, but they wanted more than that. They wanted to watch the sunrise until it burst into a neutron star. They wanted to be God.

That's what the Icebox was doing - playing God.

The scientists jokingly called it the Icebox, with its animate stasis studies and cell reversal technology, but its was actually called Cadence Technologies, the leading manufacturer 'to a more youthful you.' Simms doubted it; any more youthful and the populous would be a horde of wailing infants. He was only twenty-two but wore his smile lines with pride. Having seen firsthand what lengths people went through to stay young he had adamantly chosen to be the only man in town to age normally.

Simms liked to think he was good at his job. He had pioneered cell structures and turned EverYoung injections into a capsulated, easy-access form. He was the head of the EverYoung line of age-defying salves, shots, and supplements, easily the most lucrative branch of Cadence.

Cadence's CEO, Carolyn Wright, adored him for it, but Simms politely pushed her affections away. Carolyn was sickening, science for science's sake. She would cut corners and bomb plantations that grew their supplies, all with a dimple in her cheek. Her eyes were crystal cold and rarely did anyone find favor with her. Simms was an exception, but he would rather have swept the floors each night that toil under Carolyn's gaze.

She had given the green-light on every project on life, on watching the stars turn over a thousand times, because she was old. Simms knew it, the look behind her young, buoyant face, the heaviness that dragged her cheeks down and hunched her shoulders when she thought no one was looking. She would never die. She took every prototype life expander, downed dozens of pills a day. Stretched out like elastic across time.

Eventually she would snap.

Simms enjoyed his work, to an extent. His colleagues were the best of the best, his equipment optimum quality, and his results jaw-dropping. But every time he thought of Carolyn swallowing the latest formula his success seemed worthless.

If people like Carolyn could live forever, what was the point of living at all?

Then he received that fateful message from Eduardo, one of the lab technicians.

>you've done it! we did it!<

Simms was driving to the Icebox when the message appeared and floored the pedal, speeding past the cars meandering down the road, and burst into Cadence's parking lot, almost crashing into some of the younger workers playing basketball. Or maybe they were the older workers, he couldn't tell.

Carolyn's secretary was waiting for him in the lobby, as coldly cheerful as her boss.

"Welcome, Simms!" She said brightly, but the warmth didn't quite reach her eyes. Simms glanced at her nametag - Hope. He had never taken the time to remember. Instead of answering he brushed past her and entered the elevator, jamming the 'door close' button before the secretary could follow him.

When the doors opened Simms launched himself into the lab.

"Who knows?" He turned to Eduardo, who shrank away at his tone.

"I just messaged you, but Ms. Wright is one fixed carbon copy...

Simms swore loudly and sprinted to the lab table, where a single vial of thick, gooey white material stood propped up on a stand. A card leaned against the vial, reading, 'Congratulations, Simms!'

Eduardo hovered behind him, hands clasped together. "We made you this, do you like it?"

Simms turned to Eduardo and smiled thinly. "Yeah, Ed, I do. Has Carolyn been down here?"

He blinked at Simms' flippant tone. "Ms. Wright? She tried to, about a minute after I messaged you. I messaged her that it was lab protocol to wait until you arrived."

"You locked her out?"

"Not me, no. When I input the success data the locks closed to any unauthorized employee not of our division. The elevator doors wouldn't open for her."

I bet Carolyn didn't like that. Simms leaned back against the desk, running a shaking hand through his hair. Eduardo watched him with faint curiosity.

"Should I tell Ms. Wright you're here now?"

"NO!" Simms bellowed, causing a lab assistant two tables down to drop a beaker on her foot. He pulled dozens of chemicals down from the shelves behind them and dumped them into the vial, then wiped the data from his laptop and wrenched the top screen off.

"What are you doing?" Eduardo shouted as Simms cracked open the laptop bottom and dug the hard drive out of the mass of wires inside, then snapped it in half.

"Did you replicate the formula?" Simms barked, ignoring the question. All work at the lab had ceased, everyone staring at Simms.

"Just once, in B Lab, but now that you're wiped the data I can't do it again!"

Simms froze, then carefully sat in his chair, his breath short. "That's open access." He muttered.

"B Lab is, yeah." Eduardo eyed Simms carefully. "What's going on?"

Before Eduardo began to speak again Simms was off, tearing through the lab and into the elevator, keying in the highest floor.

Carolyn had her back turned to him, and didn't react when he stepped inside. Her silhouette was cruel and calculated, her sneer almost tangible in the dim light of the room.

"Congratulations." She turned on her heel to face him, her heavy face weighed down with all the years. Simms was dragged down with the load of it, the burden and the pain, stumbling to stay upright. Kneel, she called.

"For what?" He asked. "Giving you what you wanted all along?"

"Funny." She murmured, setting a vial on her desk. "You never seemed to like me."

Carolyn was a mass of information, Atlas with buckled knees, straining and sweating. Simms was cold; Carolyn was ice. That inch of white liquid in the vial, his precious creation. Simms had been playing God all along.

"One sip and I'll see the fall of the USA." She crooned, tapping the vial with a delicate finger. "I'll see you die, Simms, and your son, and his son. I'll see it all. I'm so old, Simms."

When she said it he could feel it, the brittle bones, the constant pain, a body that wanted it all to be over, in denial at the drugs pumped into it, a fight between her brain and her bones. Simms' lips parted to cry out but no sound came.

"Are you ready to make me young again?"

Simms strode up to the table casually and observed the vial set there, perfectly balanced and waiting, very still. In one motion he picked up the vial and observed the contents, rolled it over in his hands. Carolyn's eyes narrowed and Simms saw her fingers twitch.

"You always complicate things, Simms." She said, then opened a drawer in her desk and withdrew a snub-nosed pistol, leveling it at Simms' chest. "You know what happens next. It's you or me."

And he did know. To destroy the formula he would have to drink it, and his body would adapt too quickly for her to get a reading on the contents. If she shot now she would simply take the vial and drink it herself. Even if he ground the vial under his foot he knew she would salvage a drop. Carolyn knew too; her face was pinched and confident. Here she ruled, Simms was powerless.

He looked at Carolyn, twisted, cruel Carolyn, who had once replaced a man's blood with lemonade to see if he would function and cut off the lab rats' tails, who did what she wanted because she could, because she had the genius intellect and the boundless wicked imagination to appease her. Carolyn was old, so old, years of devouring darkness to become the light.

Simms opened his mouth as if to speak, then ripped the gun from Carolyn's grasp and drank the formula down. With a triumphant half-smile he raised the pistol to his temple, before the liquid had even reached his stomach, and pulled the trigger.

The last thing he heard was Carolyn's scream, her dying scream at his funeral.

Then everything was light.

Hello, dear reader! Looks like we've hit 25 prompts! 1/4th of the way there!

I appreciate every comment and vote you send, so keep them coming! Love you all!

- Caro