The lights in B-Sector flicked in their usual dull bullshit today—2 AM and Birkin was still hunched over the electron microscope like some kind of academic gargoyle. His coffee had gone cold three hours ago and the t-Virus sample in petri dish C-7 was doing something interesting, and interesting meant breakthrough, and breakthrough meant he'd finally shut up Spencer's smug bastard cronies who kept questioning his methodology.

Anyways...

A lab tech shuffled past the observation window, forgot his name. Birkin didn't bother learning them anymore, not after the last "incident" required personnel rotation. The guy's reflection ghosted across the glass specimen containers lining the walls, each one holding something that used to be tissue, used to be normal, before Birkin got his hands on it.

The data streams on his terminal painted a beautiful picture: accelerated cellular regeneration, 47% increase in metabolic function, minor necrosis in the frontal lobe but that was—that was fixable, wasn't it? Had to be.

Ethics. Christ. Ethics don't cure death.

The specimen in container 12-B twitched.

Just then, the security door hissed open behind him, and Birkin's hand froze over his notes.