Read The Infected 1: Proxy for Free Online Page A

taking over.
    "The thing is, Brian, both of these options have massive problems. If you choose the drugs, you're basically going to have to be kept so stoned all the time that you won't have a real life. After a while these things will permanently impair your ability to reason. We might as well lobotomize you, which has also been considered, since no kind of drug therapy would leave you any clearer in the long run.
    "If you choose the training... The lab boys have run some projections on it and give you an expected life span of eighteen months to two years at the outside, sooner or later you'll run into some Infected that you can't escape from in time, or you'll keep fighting, trying to protect people when you should be running. To make it worse, in order to give you a chance to learn first, in the first few months or so, we have to work you nearly to death. You can be drugged at night, sometimes, so that you can sleep, but during the day you have to feel the pain, at least be really uncomfortable, all the time."
    Both the people next to him looked down then, which Brian got. No matter what he did, he'd have a death sentence hanging over him. One a virtual death that could take decades, but wasn't living at all. The other, well, it sounded sucky to him.
    His body had been carefully honed over the years to excel at eating Twinkies and sitting on a sofa playing video games, maybe stand and pack toilet paper into boxes, the job he'd kept for the last three years. He couldn't even imagine what kind of training they meant and felt a little afraid to ask. How hard did you have to work to stay in constant discomfort, much less pain?
    Brian shrugged, thinking as carefully about all this as he could. He had two paths, either one led to death of a sort, one had a lot of pain, the other might as well just be putting a bullet in his brain for all he'd be able to know about the world around him. Really, neither one was all that attractive, even considering that he personally valued being able to think over not hurting. For now at least.
    Pain... bit monkey balls. Brian knew that one first hand, and didn't really want any more if he could help it.
    It really only left one thing for him to ask. Pretty much the only thing that mattered in the end.
    "So, if I do it, this training thing, do you think I can help anyone? Can I learn enough to even save one person?" He didn't say this to the doctor, but to the agent, an obviously tough guy that didn't soft peddle his answers. Brian held his breath, because if he couldn't help anyone, there wouldn't be any point to taking either option. Then a bullet to the brain would help everyone more than anything else would.
    The tall man shrugged.
    "Yeah. I mean, look kid, there's no guarantee here. You could go out the first time and have to fight the toughest Infected on the planet. If that happens you're just dead. Anyone would be. Then again, you might go years without facing another infected at all. You could be knifed, shot, who knows what the fuck all, but against people like that, low level Infected or regular people, you could do a lot. You're young, and balls-out tough. I know you don't think that's true, but I've seen the tape of you fighting in the bar. You suck, sure, but you didn't stop trying, even when most people would have quit fighting and just curled up crying. I think that if it had just been the gunman you might have even won, Brian. Untrained against an armed man, he was reeling a few times there and if his buddy hadn't bailed him out... With training? Yeah, hell yeah in fact. I think you can do it. The guys from the lab, the number crunchers... They think, given everything so far that you can save between twelve and eighteen people before you buy it." He spread his large hands, his face looked sad, like he was telling Brian that he had to take the suicide mission... or else everyone else paid for it.
    That sounded about right.
    Well, twelve to eighteen people anyway. Still...
    Looking