B1C22

This chapter originally looked quite different, and my recent revision of it basically amounted to deleting half of it.

You see, originally, I saw in my mind this very dramatic scene where Thomas would, the morning after having taken the drug, would walk into the lab looking like he'd aged two to three decades overnight.

1. This would make the reader and Thomas think that the drug hadn't worked.
2. However, everyone else in the lab was supposed to basically ignore how Thomas looked or chalk it up to stress.
   1. There was also a smaller plot point here about how some people would think Robbie had poisoned Thomas, although I never quite worked out how that would square with the bigger plot point about people ignoring how Thomas looked.
3. Eventually, in this chapter, the reader and Thomas would discover that it had been stress all along, and that the drug had actually worked.

It was a great plan, until my editor left this comment in the lab chapter.

This is a writer's worst nightmare: finding a plothole that forces huge rewrites.

However, while rewriting, I did find the comedy in Clay trying to describe that Thomas had aged decades overnight. It is obviously a bizarre concept, and led to some bizarre, now-deleted, descriptions, like the following.

Even though stress had carved so many fine lines into his face this week that he seemed like a different person altogether, he maintained his stoic dignity.

Hmmmmmmmmmm 🤔

He really had aged a lot. It was weird to see a young man, younger than Clay himself, sit down like that with a shaky freefall and a sigh, glad to give his aching feet and tired bones a rest.

He really do be acting 90

(Also, I'm not sure whether Thomas being younger than Clay is canon. They're both young, okay? I hate dealing with ages.)

The door of the lab opened slowly, and at first Clay thought it was because the entrant was being unnecessarily dramatic. However, when the door opened fully, he saw the truth. It was Thomas, and instead of looking dramatic, he looked… old. Really old.

Wrinkles rutted his face. An invisible hand pushed his back down slightly. Everyone could see that it had taken all his strength to push open the lab door. He shuffled into the lab slowly.

This was his grand entrance back in the lab chapter 😂

Tina stared at him in disbelief. Thomas looked more than stressed. He looked like a shell of himself. Here was a man who had been working eighty-hour weeks for months now without losing the spring in his step. Today, suddenly, he was haggard.

Maybe it truly was the stress of recent events getting to him…

TFW you get so close to the answer and then make a U-turn to delulu land