You’d only been gone ten minutes. Ten minutes to realize you’d left the preliminary compound-V dilution ratios on your desk, sitting out in the open where any junior lab tech could peek.

The elevator ride was quiet. A soft ding announced your floor.

The doors slid open.

And the air turned to ice.

He stood there, flanked by the white-coats you’d once called colleagues. The same men and women who’d held him down, needles trembling, as he screamed for a mother who never came.

The scientists behind him had gone very, very still.