Oh boy, it's already the third week of #FollowTheWriter, I hope you guys are enjoying all the stories as much as I am!

The super-duper quick recap (that keeps getting shorter):

"FollowTheWriter is a Writing Prompt Challenge. Every week, contestants continue the story of last weeks winner." (Original Post)

We had a lot of submissions last week, which is awesome, keep them coming.
However, this made chosing the winner quite difficult. I went back and forth and couldn't make up my mind. I think every submission was great, so if you didn't win: know I still loved reading your story.

Luckily, @anarcho-andrei came to the rescue. He'll be our resident judge from now on. Together we are happy to announce this weeks winner:

@flaminghedge

Congratulations mate! The cliffhanger worked, we'd love to see where other writers will take this story.

Proof of payment:

Right, on with the show, we have a contest to run.

RULES:

Continue the story of last weeks winner.
Submit your entry as a comment to this post.

As always:

Original content only.
Feel free to edit your story until the deadline.
Deadline: Sunday the 11th of July, 21:00 CEST. (Next Sunday evening, EU time)
You keep all the rights to your story.
If you enjoy this contest, consider upvoting and resteeming. Also, if you're totally awesome, you may follow me ;).

I will choose the story I like best, together with @anarcho-andrei.

The winner will receive 5 SBD.

Best of luck everyone! I look forward to your entries. Let's have some fun writing.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

#FollowTheWriter Contest: Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3

The story so far:

The original writing prompt:

Shady Transaction
Cold. The rain's pouring down. You didn't even want to be hear in the first place, but it's not like you have a choice. Finally, the man arrives. 'Can I see it?' you ask. "Show me you're able to pay first, 2 Bitcoins."

Chapter one - by @mariebauwens

Give me a moment, trying to find my words.

Been a long night.

It all began 17 years ago, 2238. Seems like a lifetime ago. ELKON they called it. Promised it would replace the need for food. Just one little pill. Invention of the century. Food shortages were as common as polluted air back then.

So, eh, sorry, I’m a little out of breath.

Yeah, in the beginning.

For a while, everything was great. No more need for food, who could be against that? Seems like the greatest invention of all time, doesn’t it? That’s what we thought. Took two years. Hallucinations, it happens you know. Nobody suspected it with ELKON. But when the looney bins started filling up…

And there were other side effects too. Memory loss, convulsions. Some just went plain old crazy. Going back to eating food though, no way. Food production was way down, but even then, people wouldn’t have traded their daily dose for gold if you asked them to.

Always told them not to touch it. To stay away from that poison. They would listen, couldn’t really. Called me crazy, a lunatic. Well, this crazy lunatic just managed to buy one of the last pure doses of ELKON. Gonna save all of humanity! Or maybe I’ll feed it to my cat. Who knows… I’m crazy, right?

Chapter two - by @flaminghedge

"No, you're not crazy," Cheshire purred as I scratched the back of his neck, "But I'll stick with mice, thanks."

I nodded in agreement. Wise choice. Well, I guess that just leaves the first option. I scratched Cheshire a little more aggressively. Ready to save the world?

"The world kind of sucks, but I'm bored, so I'll watch," he meowed as he leaped onto the counter and curled up into a ball.

Not exactly the kind of motivation I needed, but Cheshire had brought me two fat rodents this week, so I couldn't complain.

I reached into a large brown box on the dirty basement floor and began extracting pieces of my chemistry set. A rat's nest of tubes began to form over the various beakers as I assembled my experiment for the third time that week. Once everything was in place, I wheeled over the tanks containing various compounds and began the tedious process of balancing chemical reactions.

Hours passed. Cheshire fell asleep, woke up, got bored, and then went out to hunt. By the time he came back with a couple of plump shrews, I was nearly finished.

Cheshire dropped one of the shrews at my feet before wolfing his down in one bite. He hopped back up onto the counter and began cleaning his paws.

Thanks, Cheshire.

The last measurement came out perfect. We were ready to give this another shot.

"'Bout time," Cheshire growled.

I gave him an exasperated look. These things take patience. I removed the small vial of ELKON from its metal case and used a syringe to extract 5 cc of the clear fluid. I emptied the syringe into the appropriate tube and turned up the Bunsen burner.

Now we wait.

"Great. More waiting," Cheshire hissed. "Hey are you going to eat that?"

I bent down, picked up the shrew, and tossed it into my mouth. This one was pretty good.

"Glad you like it," Cheshire purred as he began to clean his ears. I scratched his back absentmindedly as I waited.

After a few minutes, I bent down to check on my experiment. Little crystals had begun to form.

Cheshire picked up on my sudden excitement, "No way! It worked?"

After a few more minutes, I turned off the Bunsen burner and emptied the crystals into a Petri dish. I placed a small one on a slide and fed it into the little slot on my compact compound analyzer.

After a couple of seconds, the analyzer beeped and I removed the slide. It was a perfect match.

Chapter three - by ...

What will you write? Maybe your story will end up in the #FollowTheWriter chain!