There eventually came a point where Keira knew she was one of the last people in the building. No more crashing or maniacal laughter. All that was left was herself, an unconscious scientist, and the security staff that patrolled the halls at night.

Remembering the term security, Keira shot up off the floor. There were cameras all over the place recording everything. If there were recordings of what had happened here...

Keira grabbed her lab coat and ran out of the lab in the direction of the security room. Inside there were several computer monitors recording every inch of the premises. Having the status she did in the company, she had full clearance everywhere. No one was ever inside because the computers captured the information. She waved her ID card in front of the scanner, let it take her fingerprint, and let it scan her eye. Once the light flashed green, the door slid open.

The computers faintly hummed and the monitors showed albeit pretty janky footage from various rooms and hallways. She took a deep breath and sat in the office chair inside. The computers each monitored a few different rooms, and Keira knew which sector the lab was in, thereby which computer was capturing it. She switched to the live feed, the gas chamber in full view. Biting her lip, she set to work erasing and corrupting the footage. She followed Norman's path and corrupted that footage as well. At this point she had no idea where he was and almost didn't care. She was worried of course, but she hoped and prayed that whatever madness had overtaken him would lead him home.

She picked apart and put footage back together, erasing tapes and distorting audio. Come the next morning, all that would be known is that the system glitched.

Nobody would ever know.

***

Keira spent hours covering their tracks, not getting home until well into the wee hours of the morning. The clock read 3:13 when she hit the bed, passing out almost immediately.

Around six in the morning, someone was shaking her awake. Suddenly transported back to her teen years of her dad waking her up for school, she swatted the attacker and groaned.

"Mom, it's Dad." She heard Harry talking. That got her attention. She perked up with her messy hair and red rimmed eyes. Harry was clearly about to go to school, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

"What about him?" She asked.

"He's in his office just... lying there." Harry said. Keira flew up, grabbing her night robe and storming out of the room, Harry following behind. Sure enough, once she pushed the already ajar door open further, there lay her husband facedown on the ground as if asleep. He was in his work clothes, an odd detail considering the state Keira had last seen him in.

"Dad, wake up." Harry pushed in front, shaking his father in an attempt to rouse him awake. Groaning and shaking, Norman slowly sat up with Harry's assistance. "What are you doing on the floor?"

Norman didn't reply, just went for the leather chaise lounge seat next to the desk to lean against.

"What happened?" Harry continued to press with questions.

"Last night, I..." Norman blinked a few times before facing his son. "I don't remember."

Part of Keira hoped that it meant last night was just a bad dream. There was no way either of them were stupid enough to test an incomplete experiment. No one went insane and trashed the lab. No one spent hours sifting through footage and deleting it.

None of that really happened, right?

Almost as if answering her thoughts, a woman burst through the door followed by the butler, Bernard.

"Mr. Osborn!" The woman said, coming into the office. Keira recognized her as Ms. Lyman, one of the secretaries.

"I'm sorry, my father's not seeing anyone right now." Harry said, trying to bar the woman from entering.

"I tried to stop her at the door, sir." Bernard said.

"Mr. Osborn. Dr. Stromm is dead." Ms. Lyman said.

"What??" Both Norman and Keira said at the same time.

"They found his body this morning in the lab. He's been murdered."

"What are you talking about?" Norman asked. Keira kept her mouth clamped firmly shut.

"And the flight suit and the glider..."

"What about it?"

"It's been stolen."

Keira's ears began to ring after that. The conversation continued but she didn't hear a word of what was said. The overwhelming urge to throw up overcame her. She covered her mouth with one hand and held onto the edge of the desk with the other. Harry noticed the state of Keira and urged everyone out so he could be left alone with her.

"Mom, are you okay?" He asked. Keira's lower lip wobbled before she grabbed the trash can next to the desk and vomited in it. Harry knelt down and held her hair back as she threw up, ignoring the putrid smell. Once she stopped, Keira sat up on her knees.

"Harry, why don't you get to school, alright? You don't need to be around for this." She said weakly. Hesitant to leave her, Harry slowly stood up and grabbed his backpack, leaving the room and his heaving step-mother behind.

A hundred thoughts crossed her mind at once, but the term "it was real" kept repeating itself. The wave of nausea returned, but she had nothing left to expel. She could sort of hear the conversation outside now that the ringing had dissipated.

"...need to at least get a statement out by Friday and compensation by the 23rd." Ms. Lyman said.

The 23rd already?

The date clung to Keira as she grabbed the trash can and slunk into the adjacent bathroom. Ever a stickler for office cleanliness, Norman's wastebasket had plastic bags in it for easier disposal. Keira pulled the full one out and tied it off, making a note to take it outside later.

Almost as if something clicked, Keira looked from the disgusting bag to the drawer under the sink, remembering the date. All the recent stress and she had forgotten.

Five weeks.

Now even more worried for a completely different reason, Keira slammed the drawer open and pulled out a small box, taking out its contents and double checking the directions. Following them exactly, the seconds ticked by impossibly slow, the muffled voices still slightly audible. After a certain amount of time, she grabbed the pregnancy test off of the sink and examined it.

Two lines. Positive.

She was pregnant.

At least having the sense to make disposal easier, Keira whirled around and vomited directly into the toilet.

Oh, what a world. She thought grimly.

***

Even if Norman thought Keira was being uncharacteristically quiet, he didn't ask. Not that he had much of an opportunity to do so seeing as Keira spent the rest of that day locked up in her own home office. Taking out a sheet of lined paper, she wrote down everything she knew.

1) Enhancers worked on me, no side effects to be shown as of yet

2) Enhancers also did work on Norman, turned him insane as a result, even if he has no memory of it

3) Pregnant.

The three bulletpoints seemed to mock her. The old adage of Murphy's Law kept bouncing around in her head. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Technically they had all they needed to continue with the contract; Keira herself was the human experiment that worked. But why had it worked? It could be that the Y chromosome messed with the formula or some other reason similar. Keira pushed the idea away when she remembered the one failed rodent trial.

It was a female.

So sex had nothing to do with it...

Keira stared at that third bullet point and started connecting dots in her mind. Pregnancies yielded excess hormones, especially in the early stages. Most notably, if she was approximately three and a half weeks pregnant, her body was producing a large amount of progesterone.

Well, okay, so maybe sex had something to do with it. Keira allowed a grim smirk to poke out, writing C21H30O2 in bold letters on the paper. Progesterone's chemical formula. At this point, she had nothing left to lose. First thing in the morning, she would make the changes, find some mice, and then find some volunteers.

Time was of the essence.

***

"Thank you all so much for coming on such short notice. It's a bit of a time crunch so your quick responses are much appreciated." Keira said, holding a clipboard and looking at her six candidates, three male and three female.

Once the rodent trials had gone off perfectly, she immediately called Siobhan and had her put out an ad for volunteers as soon as possible. Within a few days she had all six she was looking for.

"Now, you all signed waivers once you got in here and were given a vague idea of what your purpose here is." Keira held up a tube of the green liquid. "Human performance enhancers. Once administered into the human blood stream via gas exposure, a human being will immediately notice the difference. A severe increase in strength, speed, durability, healing, among other factors."

"Any negative side effects?" One man asked. Keira smiled.

"In our rodent trials, the worst that was experienced was a period of fatigue and the mildest shift in cycles for the females. The Serum contains a pregnancy hormone called progesterone to help with stability. Males have largely no response to it and women have the aforementioned cycle shift. Nothing notable, maybe a day or two later at most."

"You're certain it works on human subjects?" A woman asked. Keira put the clipboard on the desk with a playful smile. She then went for an empty table and put her hand underneath it in the center. It lifted with ease. Her subjects' eyes went wide as Keira put the table back on the ground, mockingly dusting off her hands.

"Who's first?"

***

"...So as you can see, with the addition of the hormone into the solution, it stabilizes the Serum to the point of safe consumption. Whereas before, rodent subjects underwent some severe mental strains, after the new edition, no harmful side effects were found in any subject.

"The same pattern can be viewed in the six human subjects who were given the Serum in the same manner. The women experienced a two day shift in their menstrual cycles and the men only experienced a slight blip in their moods for only an hour or two. The fatigue can last from between five minutes to five hours before full recovery." Keira pointed to her graphs and models in front of her captivated audience consisting of some board members and a few military representatives.

"And what are the results? What does the strength increase look like?" One of them asked. Repeating her earlier stunt, Keira went to the shelving unit in the corner of the room and lifted it with just one hand. She set it back down and went back to her presentation.

"Mrs. Osborn, I think I speak for all of us when I say I'm impressed. Under the two week deadline as well." A board member said. Keira smiled.

"I try to stay well ahead of deadlines."

"How did you come up with this?" A general asked her. Keira coughed once, knowing she had to choose her next words incredibly carefully.

"The beta version of the Serum was all we had and we needed a human trial to isolate the problem. I... tested it on myself along with my husband. I was unaware at the time that I was three weeks pregnant. The excess amount of the hormone in my system neutralized any negative side effects." Keira said.

"Wonderful to hear. And how did it affect Mr. Osborn?"

"Hmm?"

"You said you tested it on yourself and your husband. I highly doubt he was pregnant at the time." They paused to laugh. "What were his side effects?"

Keira swallowed hard.

"Well, he--"

The door to the conference room burst open, Norman suddenly appearing in his business attire with his lab coat draped over his arm.

"Apologies for my tardiness, I came as soon as I could. I'm assuming this is about the contract?"

"Actually, there's nothing to be worried about." Keira piped up, silently thankful she didn't have to answer the previous question.

"Your wife here managed to fix the enhancers and give us six successful human trials before your two weeks was up."

"She what?" Norman turned to Keira, surprised and impressed.

"The Serum needed a pregnancy hormone to stabilize it. I was actually just about to hand over the contract so we can start mass producing it and getting it to the military." The general to Keira's left said, pulling out a small packet of papers. "You owe your wife big time, Norman. She saved your company from going under."

Norman looked from Keira's bashful face to the attendees to the paper.

"How did you figure it out?" Norman asked, stunned. Keira flushed and took a few steps towards Norman. She took his hand and gently rested it on her stomach.

"Surprise." She said, smiling. Understanding the message, Norman grinned and enveloped Keira in a large hug.

"Maybe if we get this signed fast enough, we can avoid the visit with Quest." The general said.

"Ah, too late. Slocum's already on his way." Another military representative said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. Keira and Norman shared a glance.

"Son of a bitch." Keira hissed. Norman seemed to tense up for a moment before grabbing a pen.

"Don't worry. It will be taken care of, honey." He said, Keira noticing the slightest shift in his vocal tone. She brushed it aside, instead choosing to watch Norman sign his name on the papers.

That should be the end of that, she thought.