A dark caption. Part one of three.

Dr. Kramer wasn't so much obsessed as frustrated, at least in his mind. He knew that it should be working, but why wasn't it? Why was the procedure not working like it should be?

Eight patients, he thought. Eight patients that it should have worked on and eight people that were now dead. He had managed to keep their true causes of death under wraps so far, but that was more due to good luck and a cooperative team than anything else. He knew their cooperation wouldn't last forever, and if they turned on him, he knew this could easily be considered murder.

None of the patients, he knew, had agreed to any of this. Anything they signed or waivers they put their names to wouldn't hold up upon close scrutiny, especially if any on his team was honest about how much medication those patients were on when those forms were signed, and that was only for five of them, he had nothing but his reputation and his teams silence of three of them.

If he gave up now, he reasoned, then their deaths would be all for nothing, and the hard work his team and himself had done. No, he needed something. He needed a success. So, for the next few weeks, which he'd need to avoid suspicion anyway, he analyzed what went through and how. He'd need two more people, certain specialist equipment, and a couple of other things, but he figured out after his period of waiting that he could actually do it.

His next chance came with twenty-eight year old Valarie Emerson and ninety-one year old Bruce Masterson. She was brought because it was thought her appendix needed to be taken out, only to find out it was just a minor stomach issue, and Bruce, well, his numbers seemed good enough to use and was compatible enough to Valarie.

She was kept overnight for observation, as was Bruce, and that was when Dr. Kramer struck. He discreetly had his people get Valarie and Bruce in an operating room and the surgery commenced. It was done quickly and this time, to Dr. Kramer's delight and to his team's surprise, it worked! In fact, Bruce seemed to be showing promising signs.

However, despite their success in the operating room, one of the new people to his team misunderstood where these two were supposed to be taken. Rather than the more private rooms they were both taken back to their original rooms.

Valarie was found first by a nurse, who screamed in horror as she saw Valarie's twenty-eight year old head now stitched onto Bruce's ninety-one year old body. The scream woke Valarie, who upon seeing and feeling her new body, immediately had a severe heart attack. Her old heart could not take the shock of it, and she died moments later.

Bruce, however, due to the commotion, went unnoticed for a bit while the hospital figured out what was going on. A check of all the rooms (they did not know still who did this or why) revealed Bruce standing there, looking at the shocked staff, hands on his twenty-eight year old feminine hips.

"So," he said, looking at them, seeing their extreme shock at him and his new body. "Do any of you want to tell me just what the hell is going on?"