Keith kneeled down and lightly touched Sven's cheek.

"Sven? Can you hear me?"

"I don't think he can hear much of anything. It was a hell of a battle to get him here, than man weighs a ton, dead weight but not a peep out of him. For a bit it seemed like he was trying to respond to my commands but then he just gave up.

Keith started to check Sven over and was shocked to see a tear on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He moved the pieces of material apart as far as they would allow and his face paled.

"Lance, get me a pair of scissors so I can cut this open further. I want some more light in here so I can be sure I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing."

Lance quickly got a pair of scissors out of a kitchen drawer and handed them to Keith. Keith quickly cut the sweatshirt open further. When Lance got down close enough he could see what it was that had upset Keith so.

There were very bad bruise marks on Sven's forearm, but there was something different about the bruise marks.

"Those look like puncture marks." Lance lightly rubbed them.

"They are. I think there's drugs in his system as well as alcohol."

"We've got to get him up and moving then, try to get him conscious."

They got Sven to his feet and started to try and get him walking on his own around the apartment. It was almost an hour before he started trying to walk on his own. It was ten or fifteen minutes more before he was trying to talk on his own.

"Gonna...gonna...be sick."

They quickly got him to the bathroom and he was only over the toilet for a few seconds before Sven threw up. Harsh heaves racked his body and drenched him in sweat. When he had only dry heaves to contend with he tried to move away only to fall backwards. Keith shivered as he flushed the toilet.

Lance brought Sven into his arms rocking him and hugging him. Keith could see the tears in Lance's eyes. Lance and Sven had been friends since they were kids and it hurt Lance to see Sven struggle with everything he did in life. No one could understand why Sven had joined the Space Academy. His marks were low; his attention span was short and classified, in general, by his teachers as a useless troublemaker. They didn't really think or know that Sven's school life and outside life were completely different.

No one could understand why Lance hung out with Sven. Lance had so much going for him, only Keith came to see the special bond of friendship between the two the more he was around them outside of school.

Lance would never abandon his friends and considered Sven to be one of the greatest. They had weathered a lot, only a tiny bit of which Keith had been privy to.

"Don't want to lose it." Sven's harsh, raspy heavily accented voice whispered in Lance's ear.

Lance lifted his head to look at Keith then looked back down to Sven.

"Don't want to lose what Sven?"

"My leg."

"Your leg? What are you talking about?"

Sven reached around, dug into his pants pocket, and brought out a couple of folded pieces of paper. He handed them to Lance. Lance unfolded the papers and read the over. Keith could see his face go white. He handed the papers up to Keith then brought Sven back into his arms and rocked him.

Keith looked them over then helped Lance get Sven into bed.

"I'm going to stay with him for awhile." Lance whispered.

"Yeah, I wanna read these over a few times to see if I can digest this."

Keith took the cordless phone and went to his bedroom. He quietly closed the door and dialed the number for Marshall Graham's office. Marshall Graham had made it a point to let the students know that they could contact him if they needed him for anything. He wanted to, liked being close to his students, and wanted them to know that.

Keith knew it was late and he was taking a chance that Marshall Graham might still be there. Usually most got the answering machine after nine as they had often told Keith but Keith was in luck. Marshall Graham was still there.

"This is Ensign Keith Parker, I would like to speak to you about Ensign Sven Anderson."

"I received the papers regarding his arrest. I have just been going over them, that's why I'm still here. I just can't figure it out." Marshall Graham replied rather sternly.

"There is a reason for that, Sir. Before you plan of dismissing him, he gave me and Lance some papers stating that he's been taking some kind of medication and the alcohol had only served to intensify the side effects

"It states here that his private doctor had put him on some kind of radical treatment to cure an infection that came about from a cut on his knee. There have been some serious side effects to the treatment such as insomnia, sexual side effects, lack of attention span and serious secondary infections.

"I know he don't sleep good at nights on the best of times, I don't know about the others but I think something's going on. The original medication stopped working so they put him on something stronger and something else for the secondary infection. I know a lot of these meds, Sir, when I was young I was a walking drugstore. You name it, I had it, but some of these names are not familiar. I can't even pronounce them. The only thing I really recognize is the suffixes, which, to me, mean steroids.

"It wouldn't surprise me if they were using him as a guinea pig for their treatments. It states that the treatments are curing the infection and keeping it from spreading. If the treatments stop, the infection will spread and he could lose his entire right leg."

"Really?" Marshall Graham replied. Keith could almost see the man's eyebrows arching. "Who is his private doctor?"

"It says here, Dr.Kirklande."

"If he takes any kind of turn for the worst, take him to the hospital. In the meantime, keep this to yourselves while I look into this. That name seems very familiar."

"Thank you Marshall Graham."

Keith hung up the phone and came out of the room and into Sven's. Lance had Sven's head resting on his lap and was washing out the bright orange color.

"Hey Keith, this stuff ain't real. It's just that fake shit. I touched it and it didn't feel like that real coloring stuff. It was sticky so I got a basin of water and a little shampoo, it's coming right out. But he's going to need a stylist to fix the other part. I'm no hairdresser."

"I'll ask Lisa to do it, it'll save him some money. She did mine once, she wanted to be stylist so she took a course for a few months but found out it wasn't what she really wanted to do so she quit and joined up with the Academy."

"You know, I can't see Lisa as a hairdresser. Hand me that towel."

Keith picked up the towel lying at the foot of the bed.

"You know, neither can I but that's what she told me one night while we were dating."

"Why didn't you two stay together?"

"I don't know, after a couple of months we just seemed to drift apart. I don't think we were meant to be together."

"There, it's as dry as I'm going to get it."

"I'll get that water out of your way." Keith picked up the basin, cringing at the bright orange water as he poured it down the sink.

He came back, helped strip Sven out of his clothes and covered his with a warm soft blanket. They left the room closing the door quietly.

"I called Marshall Graham. I thought he should know about the situation."

"What did he say?"

"If Sven gets worse to take him to the hospital. He's going to look into it though, he thought the name of Sven's doctor sounded familiar, and he wanted to check it out."

"He thinks something is wrong."

"I think he does. The more I think about it too, something really is wrong. Sven always tells us when something is wrong, regardless of what it is. Something tells me this doctor didn't want him to say anything, that he was doing more than just treating an infection. That he was experimenting on him.

Lance's face paled.

"Are you serious?"

"Very. Especially when Marshall Graham wants to check it out. My guess that whatever the doctor injected him with certainly didn't agree with the alcohol."

"I know Sven to be a drinker but I always thought he knew when to draw the line."

"He does. He might have had only one drink and whatever was in his system just wouldn't tolerate it."

At that moment the phone rang. Keith jumped on it.

"This is Marshall Graham, would you and Ensign Hamilton report to my office immediately?"