Time suddenly seemed to fly by in a hurry. Charlie passed through my phases so quickly, I could hardly keep up. Before I knew it, he had been here a full month, and in just one month, he had passed through five phases;

Phase one, introductions. The part where I welcomed him into the world.

Phase two, human behavior. That one was ever-growing, but seemed to be one he was adopting surprisingly well.

Phase three, society's rules. All the small but complicated things society taught you was socially acceptable and what was not.

Phase four, feelings. The reason why this one was phase four and not phase two or something, was simply because feelings were so complicated. Just look at the other night where I had to walk him through good and bad, finally settling him on how he had to make his own opinion on what was good and bad to him. However, Charlie sailed right through it with sterling efficiency, quickly understanding and comprehending when I made certain faces, knowing what emotion I was displaying. How he would excel with them in actual life and not just in practice was yet to be seen, though.

And finally, phase five – the one he was currently in – was physical contact.

Charlie still had a hard time letting me get too close to him or even touch him. A pat on the shoulder or a squeeze of the hand was as far as I'd gotten. We still hadn't approached the matter of a hug yet, much less other physical activities such as dancing, playing sports, or simply just bumping into people on the street. It was important that he learned that humans were social beings and, amongst other things, relied very much on the touch of others. I tried explaining to him the neurological effects it had on us and it seemed to be the better approach when it all came down to it. He didn't understand the need to touch another person yet, so going with science was a good way of making him understand.

Of course a lot of his inability to understand physical touch was perhaps because I had kept the subject of 'love' and the making of it as far away from him as I could. He was still just a child on a mental level, even though he was rapidly approaching his 'teen' years, the way he kept learning and understanding. So far, I'd denied him direct access to the internet, knowing how littered with porn it was and other strictly adult content. He'd been allowed to listen to music, but if the subject of 'coitus' ever came up, I had smartly steered him away from it and talked to him about something else.

The thing was; Charlie's hunger for knowledge was growing every day, and just like growing and learning, he was maturing rapidly by the second. In the beginning I had purposely fed him information slowly, mainly to let him get comfortable with it all and not to get overwhelmed, but also because I feared this would happen; he'd want to know more and more, and suddenly, he wouldn't be the innocent Creature I knew him to be. Everything in moderation as they said, and I feared that it if taught him about sex, he would surely begin asking a whole lot of questions I just wouldn't know how to cope with.

– Especially because my mind was growing a teensy little crush on him.

It was ridiculous and utterly unprofessional, I knew that. I was so ashamed of myself, but truthfully, Charlie was well-behaved, kind, thoughtful, clever, and most importantly, not constantly thinking about sex. That of course brought a sweet, endearing aura around the manchild I was monitoring. He could be sitting on the living room floor with a bowl of skittles, watching Spongebob in his slacks and nothing else, and still look like a gorgeous grown man on a Sunday afternoon, revisiting his youth.

Yes, Charlie didn't know it, but he was what any female dreamed about having in a man; Smart, sweet, with just a side of gentleness. And then of course there was the fact that he was ridiculously hot.

Case in point; I came downstairs that early Thursday morning, after having showered, and found Charlie already sitting by the dining table in his morning slacks with his golden uncombed hair that was finally getting longer. He was deep in what I could only assume was his umpteenth bowl of cereal when he suddenly looked up and saw me coming down the stairs. His magenta eyes glowed while he chewed, quickly swallowing his food so he could speak – another polite thing I had taught him. "Good morning, Carly!"

"Good morning, Charlie," I smiled, walking into the kitchen, past him, to get a bowl. "How did you sleep?"

It wasn't unusual it sometimes took him a second to reply, but we had made great process with that lately, and this wasn't a hard question. So, when he didn't reply after a moment, I turned my head over my shoulder as I was pulling out a bowl from my cabinet and found Charlie staring at me.

But more specifically, he was staring at my ass.

"Charlie!" I said, shock and surprise all at once ringing through my voice. He was looking at my ass – my rear, my buttocks, my hide, my taint. That one. Why the hell was he doing that? I really honest to God hoped that I accidentally had put my pants on the wrong way this morning, but nope. I hadn't.

"Yes?" He finally replied, drawing his eyes away from my gluteus.

"Why were you just looking at my rear, Charlie?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but then frowned, confusion crawling over his face. He completely paused up. "I... I don't know." He blinked and then looked down at his bowl for a moment, as if the answer was in there. "I don't know why... is it wrong?"

Crap. I really wished he had said 'you have a feather stuck to it' or something like that, but this was far worse. It meant his biological clock was beginning to cog its wheels, his mind and apprehension developing to the point where testosterone played a bigger part. He might have been a Creature, but his primary DNA originated from the human DNA, so that naturally meant some 'natural urges' had to have survived the experimenting.

Primal, and most likely, carnal urges seemed to have gotten a metaphorical lifeboat.

Crap almighty.

I steeled myself with professionalism. This was just another thing Charlie would have to learn about, but it certainly wasn't going to be at 8am in the morning. I therefore inhaled a breath and met him with a smile. "It's okay. You normally just look at my eyes when we speak, which, if you remember, is the polite thing to do when speaking to someone, yeah?"

"I remember," Charlie replied, quickly nodding. "I just..." He frowned a little again. "I got... distracted..."

Distracted. By my ass. I swallowed hard. "That's okay, like I said, it happens. It's actually very human."

"It is?" He said, relief instantly flooding his voice.

"Yes. Very," I assured him with a final smile before I returned to finding myself a bowl and a spoon.

Poor Charlie. He couldn't understand what had just happened, but the truth, I feared, would develop him to a whole new level that would alter his mentality forever. And was it selfish that I wanted to keep him innocent for as long as I could? He was here to learn, after all, not to become a sex-obsessed creature. Literally.

Not yet, I therefore told myself, postponing the moment I'd bring him into that phase. Not quite yet.

~~~

Thankfully nothing else happened during the rest of the morning. Charlie seemed to put much less into it than I did (understandably), and had resumed his normal schedule. I'd set him up with the treadmill and made him run his usual daily marathon. After that, he had showered and sat down on my living room rug as usual to consume his cartoons and practice his social skills. I was folding some laundry on my sofa and talking to him about nothing in particular to see how fast his response time was. Over the past few weeks, it had gotten a lot better.

We were deep in the subject of different animals breeds and talking about how he'd never even petted an animal before, when the most unexpected thing suddenly happened; There was a knock on the front door.

Both me and Charlie froze up and turned to look at the door. Charlie blinked in confusion, maybe because I hadn't explained 'knocking on the doors' to him yet, but I got up from my couch and immediately went for the door.

Who the actual hell was coming to visit me?

For the first time ever, I was disappointed to see that it wasn't Jehovah's witnesses on the other side. My smile dropped immediately when I saw a man and a team of scientists standing behind him, all in labcoats and wearing a safety vest underneath. They wore the C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S symbol.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, more defensively and rude than what was meant, but first of all, their obvious appearance and lack of discretion could easily cause my neighbors to get curious, and secondly, they hadn't informed me they'd be stopping by today. "Have I missed a memo of some sort?"

"No, ma'am," The aging man standing in front of me said, the doctor and most likely the leader of the team. He offered me a professional smile and glanced over my shoulder to Charlie who was peaking up from behind my couch, his face slowly falling with a look; recognition. He had seen this man before. "We're here for Creature 6402-C's monthly health check and medical shots. My name is Doctor Evan Jacoby, and this is my team."

"Why wasn't I informed of this?"
I asked suspiciously, raising a brow. "I'd like to see a notice from C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S, allowing you to perform these health checks."

"Ms Bloom, is it?" The doctor asked. "You very well may be his legal guardian and caretaker, but Creature 6402-C is the property of C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S, meaning he is our investment. We don't need your permission to run thorough exams on him to make sure he's of full health, nor do we require his. Now, if you don't mind, we'd like to proceed with what we came for," Dr Jacoby flatly lipped off.

I hadn't realized my fists had clenched until I suddenly felt a sharp twinge of pain in my palm. My nails were digging into my skin, and with effort, I managed to unclench them. Exhaling a slow breath, I decided to cross my arms instead and look Dr Jacoby up and down. "That very well might be, Doctor, but this is however my home. I'm not letting anyone into it before I've seen a note that supports your claims and your credentials. Until then, you and your team can stay on my threshold all day for all I care."

Dr Jacoby's face grew into a tight mien, but then with a small twitch of his flat lips, he withdrew a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to me. "Now, if you'll excuse us."

I had barely opened the note and skimmed the first sentence before the team marched inside my house and started setting up their equipment. The note did unfortunately grant them access to Charlie and told they were to run their tests on him, all of it signed and cleared by Mr Alan, the guy who assigned me Charlie in the first place. That still didn't stop my anger from clawing at my mind when they so bashfully intruded my private home without a day's warning or notice. Charlie hadn't been prepared for this, and there was no saying how he would react.

But to my surprise, Charlie just stood up from the carpet and lowered his head when Dr Jacoby stepped up to him with a medical suitcase in his hands. "Hello, 6402-C. I assume you haven't forgotten procedures?"

I watched as Charlie paused for a moment, but then silently shook his head and looked towards my dining table. Dr Jacoby nodded, and then his team begun laying out a plastic cloth on it, pulling out one chair. Charlie begun walking towards it.

"Whoa, wait, what are you about to do to him?" I asked when Charlie followed silent orders and what seemed to be old procedure to him. He took the seat and joined his wrists on the back of his body and leaned over slightly as one of the team members came forward with a set of the burly cuffs. "What are those for? Are they really necessary?"

"Ms Bloom, I think it's best if you step back and let us do our job," Dr Jacoby voiced as if I was a nuisance, only there to disrupt his work. "Creature 6402-C has done this many times before, you can see how calmly he's handling it."

Yeah, I could, hence the reason I questioned the damn cuffs.

I steeled my eyes on the doctor. "You do your job, Doctor, I do mine, and mine is to ensure Charlie's safety and to make sure he's not about to participate in something he won't like. So, with all due respect, I'd like you to tell me what you're planning on doing to him before you do it."

Sighing slightly irritably, Dr Jacoby pulled on a pair of medical gloves and tried to conceal his dislike of me. He was doing a poor job, but I suspected he didn't care much. "Very well. As you wish. It's going to happen either way, whether we explain the procedures or not, but if you feel you must be included—"

"I very much do."

"—then I'll gladly explain what we are going to do." Dr Jacoby's medical team were rushing around Charlie who out of all of them seemed the calmest. Though despite exuding calmness, I saw the hint of fear in his eyes as he laid his head down on the table, over the plastic sheet, and then waited, breathing shallowly. He was scared.

The next moment I realized why. While most of the team were taking small samples of blood from him, checking his blood pressure and studying his breaths and heart rate (the usual stuff I was familiar with), one of the team members pulled a long syringe out of one of the bags and uncapped it. He handed it to Dr Jacoby who flicked the tip and then turned his attention to Charlie who was being sterilized with a small antiseptic wipe in the back of his head, just below his hairline.

"What are you doing?" I said and automatically took a step forward when I noticed Charlie clench his fists and squeeze his eyes shut, preparing himself for something. "What's in that? What are you going to—"

"This is a C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S serum, developed solely for the Creatures," Dr Jacoby told as he watched the honey-colored liquid inside the tube. "It's designed to help Creatures adjust better to the world, to help their brains reach a more suitable level."

"Suitable level? Wait, wait, wait," I protested when he brought the needle down to Charlie's skin and paused right above it. "Are you saying that you're giving him a drug that... dumbs him down?"

"In layman's term, yes." Dr Jacoby answered with a sardonic smile.

"Are you kidding me?!" I damn well nearly shouted. Here I was, working my ass off to get him to fall in tact with the world, and they were dumbing him down? That was just... "Stupid! You're making him stupid when he's meant to be learning?!"

Dr Jacoby gave a lighthearted chortle and granted me a patronizing glare over his rimmed glasses. "Trust me, he's still very capable of learning with this serum, Ms Bloom. There's no need to be melodramatic. He's made progress so far, hasn't he?"

"Of course he has, but imagine the progress he could've made if his brain hadn't been on drugs!" I yelled at him, infuriated. I could honestly say I couldn't remember ever having been so mad and ready to punch someone in all my life. "Wasn't the whole point of bringing him into the world to test his limits? To evolve him? How can he do that when you're not allowing him to reach his full potential?"

"He's more than capable of evolving on the IQ we're choosing to grant him. It's for your benefit, too."

The IQ they chose to grant him? No wonder he sometimes took so long to reply—to think. They were literally slowing his brain down.

"How is this for my benefit as well?" I snarled as I now saw Dr Jacoby prick the needle into his skin, Charlie immediately stiffening up. The syringe that was more than six inches long got pushed deep inside his brain and made Charlie holler out in discomfort, gritting his teeth.

It took everything inside me in that moment to not pounce forward and potentially end up doing more harm than good. With a needle that deep inside his head, the last thing he needed was even the slightest push. Charlie was struggling to stay still, having several of the team members to hold him to prevent him from shifting while the needle found its location inside his brain. He grunted and made a low whimper when Dr Jacoby then finally stopped pushing. A short second passed, but then he injected the drug into his brain.

Charlie screamed.

His cry was excruciating and reflected the numbing pain that crippled through him. He cried hollowly and begun breathing harshly against the plastic, his head turning red from effort of lying still, and sweat appearing on his forehead from accepting the drug. Tears of pain built up in his eyes, but he snapped them shut and gritted his teeth, just as the syringe emptied.

And I had all but screamed as well.

Standing frozen in shock as they slowly pulled the needle out of his brain again, I watched as Charlie slumped against the table, his body going limp. His face relaxed and his muscles unclenched, just as his mouth opened and his eyelids parted. His purple orbs were so expanded, all I saw was nearly black. 

"There are six commonly known levels on the regular IQ scale," Dr Jacoby continued with an unperturbed voice, handing the empty syringe to one of his team members while completely ignoring my shellshocked expression. "There's mentally inadequate, low intelligence, average, above average, high intelligence, and genius. But what the public doesn't know is that with the C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S program, we've reached a new seventh level, one that goes above human intelligence capacity; Super-cerebral."

I closed my slack mouth and tried to shake myself out of my shock to compose a comprehensible answer. "I'm still waiting for the part where this benefits me and him for that matter."

He gave me a tight smile. "If we allowed him to be at his best, Ms Bloom, even if you had a genius mind, you wouldn't be able to keep up with him."

Well that was a subtle insult worthy of an Oscar. "I'd say that's for me to determine, Doctor."

"In this case it's not." He stated as-a-matter-of-factly and pulled off his medical gloves. The rest of his team begun packing up, so I assumed they were done. "If we allow him full access to his mental abilities on the outside of the C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S lab, there's no saying what he'll do."

"So you're saying when he's in the lab, he's allowed full access to all his faculties?" I growled.

Dr Jacoby nodded. "How else can we benefit from his creation?"

Unbelievable. The hypocrisy was making my fists curl again and my head boil. So he was allowed to be smart inside the facility, but not smart outside of it? He wasn't allowed to contribute his extreme knowledge to the whole world, only them, but at the same time he was here because he had to learn as much as he could so one day he could join us? Where was the logic in that? He absorbed, but couldn't produce? There was definitely something not right about this.

"May we remind you that he's just here to learn, not to solve your Sunday paper crosswords," Dr Jacoby told with a small chuckle while packing up his last things. "Your job is to teach and observe, not lecture us on how to proceed with the Creature we created."

I was so close to smacking him. So. Damn. Close. They were talking about Charlie like he was a copyrighted object they held the patent for. Maybe that was the case, but fucking hell, hadn't this whole experiment been about seeing if Creatures could come into the real world and live here? How could he do that if they kept referring to him and using him like an object with 'Made At C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S' stamped at the back of his neck?

Double-standarded bastards.

"Well," I growled, barely managing to keep my voice under control. "This has certainly been educational. Trust that this is the last time you will ever come near Charlie with that serum again. I am going to call C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S and have a very long talk to them about this," I snarled and took an involuntary step forward, like a lioness protecting my cub. "Charlie should be allowed to be at his full five. He is not of danger to anyone, when are C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S going to realize that?"

"And when are you going to realize that you verily don't understand what you're really dealing with here, Ms Bloom?" Dr Jacoby rebutted. "You've only ever seen him in this state, you've never experienced him at his full five."

"And whose fault is that?"

"We have videos," He smiled. "If you're interested in truly seeing what you signed up for, we could send them to you for your consumption."

"Videos?" I repeated. Why did the taste in my mouth tell me these videos were going to be the equal of illegal pornography containing minors?

"You will want to watch them before you decide to make any rash decisions," He said with a better-knowing little smirk. "They might just make you reconsider."

"I highly doubt that," I spat back, anger searing inside me. Goddamn, just keep calm before you do something you'll regret. "But go ahead and send me the videos. If it'll make you believe that I'm making an informed decision, I'll watch them."

"Very well then. Consider them sent." Dr Jacoby finished and then nodded to his team. "We are done here. You have a lovely day, Ms Bloom. I have a feeling we'll see each other in another month."

"Get out of my house."

With a last tight smile, him and his team then left, and once again I found myself having let Charlie down. It wasn't so long ago that we'd been in the same situation and I had felt helpless. Charlie had once again fallen victim to something he shouldn't have, and I had only stood idly by and let it happen.

No more. I was stepping up my fucking game now. If they wanted to play dirty, so could I. No more surprises, no more drugs, no more intervening from their side. If I had to do my job and do it properly, they were going to leave us the hell alone.

"Carly..." Charlie croaked from the table, still slumped over. My eyes shot to him as he tried to sit up, his wrists red from where the cuffs had been. He tried pushing himself up, but groaned instead and clutched his head when pain obviously seared through it. I was by his side in a blink.

"Charlie," I choked back, helping him lean back into the chair while he clutched his head and slightly shook. God, his whole body was trembling. "It's over now, Charlie. I'm so sorry, I didn't know. I didn't know they would... God, I'll make sure it never happens again. I promise."

He opened his eyes, water still gathered in the corners, and his purple irises looked at me. They were so dilated—glassy from the drugs, but they were looking straight at me, pleadingly. "C-Carly..."

I didn't think. I just acted.

I leaned in and wrapped my arms around him and pulled him into my embrace. I felt him stiffen up in shock and probably panic, but the instant my hands begun caressing his shoulder and back, I felt all of his muscles uncoil. His own hands, one placed on his head, the other gripping the table, both slowly let go and dropped. I thought he was going to freak out and withdraw like he always did whenever I had made an effort to try physical contact in the past, but not this time.

This time, his hands slowly imitated mine and wrapped themselves around my waist. He held me closely and buried his face into the crook of my neck, into my hair, and then we silently sat there, me half sitting on his lap, half kneeling, and him holding onto me for dear life, not appearing to ever wanting to let go again.

And just like that, Charlie experienced his first hug.

• • •

Cuuuddleeees. Sorry, I'm bored. One thing is waiting for the updates, another is waiting to upload the updates. The really good ones.

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