Today was going to be a bad day.

It wasn't like Lucy Hemings was superstitious or anything, she tended to stay away from bullshit like horoscopes and palm readings that a vast majority of the general public regarded as gateways into the not-so-distant future. You couldn't tell the future through foggy smoke screens and a hyped-up seance.

No-siree. It was all spreadsheets and data and anything with numbers or letters or anything that could pop up on a computer screen. That was the way the world worked as far as she was concerned, through numbers and statistics, hard, cold and indifferent facts that weren't based on thought or superstition.

Numbers couldn't lie, not the way that people could. Numbers didn't care if you were black or white or some colour in between, they didn't care if their values would hurt your opinion and try to change themselves so that it would make you feel better. That's what Hemings liked best about them, the way that they didn't give one shit about whoever was reading them, if they ended up crushing the dream of some scientist or acted as the seven numbers that you needed to win the lottery.

People would lie. They would make themselves all mushy and kind and try to change themselves to please someone above them. They'd use false words and lies to tell you that you were special, that you would make something of yourself in the world when in reality, you were just another damn face in a never ending sea of people.

Hemings reached for a now-cold cup of coffee that sat on her desk a few inches away. How long had it been sitting there, she wondered? It was curious to muse about how humans could so easily get lost in their thoughts, forget about the tiniest little things that were under their noses.

She raised the cup to her lips and took a long drink, tastebuds recoiling from the bitter flavour that seemed to come hand-in-hand with any cup of black coffee. But that was the way that Hemings like it, liked it the same way that she liked numbers and statistics. Coffee at its purest, black and cold without any special flavouring to hide the truth underneath. She liked the way that it marched down her throat and settled uneasily in her stomach, kept her alive and drove away the sleep that had been clawing at her eyes for several hours by now.

Was she normal?

It was a thought that Hemings often regarded with some sort of blatant amusement, how her cold indifference and obsession with numbers seemed to put her at the farthest edge of the social circle. People were supposed to be okay with other people lying and making themselves look good, it was just how the world worked. So what if you had to lie to make someone smile or give them a false sense of security? Wasn't it all worth it in the end?

Her parents had often called her a freak. They never said it aloud. No, the Hemings family was too good and too uptight with the neighbours to be screaming insults for all to see. Loving children of God, they liked to call themselves, never lifting a finger against anyone who wronged them, unless it was behind closed doors.

So loving and adhering to the Bible that when Hemings's fourteen year old sister Trinity had been gang-raped by a bunch of bikers off some alleyway in the downtown area of Charleston, South Carolina and fallen pregnant (don't even get her started on who the father was), that the very thought of abortion was not even on the table.

Didn't matter if she was too young or if she might die, didn't matter if she was supposed to go to college and would have to end up taking care of some child for the rest of her life. God had set forth His plan as far as her parents were concerned. Trinity was to be a mother as her divine purpose was set and that was that.

And it was still part of God's plan, too, when Trinity who had just barely turned fifteen, bled to death on an operating table when she delivered her child three months too early. Both didn't survive the night, stripping Lucy Hemings of both a sister and a nephew in less than twelve hours.

And then it was all funerals and prayers and cards and sympathies before Trinity's room was locked shut, the baby toys and clothes packaged and stuffed away like she had never existed at all.

The church pastor had often placed Hemings's cold indifference and dissatisfaction with the world on the death of her sister. You just had to realise that it was all part of God's plan (why did everyone keep saying that?) and that you would see both of them in Heaven one day. But you couldn't be angry with God, never ever.

It wasn't more of a deep-rooted anger, more of a disconnect in Hemings's brain the following weeks later. It was like all that religious instillment and teachings simply faded from her mind, leaving behind nothing but an empty void where nothing would ever find home inside.

Except numbers.

Oh, her parents had yelled so hard the years following. When she was packing up for college with a full ride to Harvard under her belt, her parents had kicked and screamed and cried. How could she possibly dare to travel all that way away from them? Was it so hard that she couldn't stay behind and attend the local Christian college, become a nun for Christ's sake?

But Hemings had found her home in science, found home in a world of numbers and facts, where you didn't have to rely off thoughts or feelings. It was the one area of study in the world where people didn't chastise you for being cruel and straightforward.

When they realised that their daughter was just as close to being a nun as Trinity was to bursting through the front door with her son in hand, both happy and healthy, they shifted their stance like a group of lions trying to prod their prey in hopes of finding a weakness. If she wasn't going to be a nun, they said, then at least change your major. Don't go down the godless path of chemistry where it was all formulas and math and charts and data. Nothing good ever came from that. It was much harder to be a Christian when you were looking at pie charts all day long.

Biology would be a lot better. There were a lot of Christian biologists, did you know that Lori down the street was an evolutionary biologist and she still managed to praise God's glory every Sunday? Maybe they would phone her and she and Hemings could have a nice little chat about the weather. There was even a community college right down the road that would probably wouldn't even hesitate to take a bright young girl like she was. That way you could go and get your degree and it would only be a mile away from home. There would be no need for her to go all the way up to that godless state of Massachusetts where every heathen in the country probably had their eyes set on for a new permanent destination.

Even then Hemings had turned down the offer, but then again, it wasn't really an offer at all. It was her parent's way of attempting to stake their last claim over her, dig in that final tendril of control that would root her to them for the rest of eternity. A part of Hemings had almost given in that day, ready to abandon her pursuit of numbers in turn of a life with her parents, sticking with the church and community she had grown up in her entire life.

Maybe a lot of things would have been better if she had just stayed.

But the Hemings remembered Trinity on the metal table in the maternity ward of the hospital, Trinity with her paper white skin, bloodshot eyes that seemed to match the colour of the crimson fluid that was gathering all around her, the way that her lips were parted in a soundless howl. Hemings had said nothing to her parents then, when they had left the hospital with Trinity and her child in a casket.

And she said nothing to them that day either as she packed for college and walked out that door for the last time, turning her back on her home which was mighty fine with her.

Hemings shook herself from the memory, wondering why her mind was even choosing to play these events when they had happened all so long ago. Both her parents were six feet under, dead for the last seventeen years. And for all her accomplishments and tireless hours working towards a doctorate degree in pharmaceuticals, Lucy Hemings found herself working in some boring facility in Topeka, Kansas, working for a failing drug company that was probably going to collapse in on itself any day now.

Not like anyone working there said it aloud, not if you wanted to lose your pay check and find yourself on the side of the road without a job. They were all going to lose their job any day now when the doors finally shut on this whole project forever, but Hemings didn't mind keeping her pay check for at least a week or two longer even if she was only a part time intern.

Lucy Hemings, a doctoral graduate from the University of Harvard with thousands of dollars of student debt to show for it was working as a part-time intern at some crappy drug trial that would probably go down in history as being slathered on some medical textbook advising aspiring medical students about the Do's and Don't's of choosing what drug companies to sign up for.

It had sounded good on paper: Trinity Wells Corporation. Hemings would have called it fate if she believed in such a concept, but maybe there had been a small part of her that still did, why she had chosen this sinking ship of a drug company out of all the others on the list, the way that the name Trinity had practically stood out to her like a sore thumb, some ghostly communication from beyond the grave.

The whole experiment revolved around some pill that was supposed to revolutionise the way that modern science treated cognitive diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. The pill itself was based off some fungus found in the remote regions of India, packaged into a small capsule that was then supposed to be ingested and reduce symptoms of these diseases in less than an astonishing twenty four hour time period.

Yeah, it was too good to be true.

The pill - MentalX was the commercial name - had proved to be a failure in each and every experiment. The rats had all gone into epileptic shock, their body temperature spiking to a point that their brains would literally boil and explode. It was a nasty set of experimental trials and was probably the reason why the entire janitorial staff had gone on strike.

But the pill now, as the head executives now insisted, was supposed to be better. Too much iodine in the first solution, this whole new wave they were rolling out was supposed to be ten times better. Hemings didn't buy one word of their bullshit, but apparently it had been convincing enough for the ethics committee to believe because they had shipped over a few monkeys for experimental trials. If this proved
to be a success, than human trials were to be implemented the next week.

Lucy Hemings, the failed Harvard post-graduate who was probably a joke in the eyes of her dead parents, who had found herself thinking about memories that had been buried in her mind for years and years, had been given the unlucky honour of administering the first dose. Though it wasn't really a privilege, no matter what her supervisors insisted. If anything went wrong, it was always easy to blame and fire an intern than someone with an actual contract, ''twas the way the world worked.

Just Lucy Hemings, her cup of cold black coffee and a monkey that stumbled around blindly in a containment room, separated by a wall of Plexiglass. The monkey in of itself was in such a state that it would have sent the ethics committee reeling. Before the drug was to be administered, the genetic scientists had taken on the wonderful liberty of knocking out some of the damned animal's genetic coding, simulating early onset Alzheimer's.

How else were you supposed to know if the drug had worked?

Hemings supposed that if she had been religious of the sorts, maybe she wouldn't have been here. Maybe she would have found it disgusting that these scientists were disrespecting God's creations in such a way, playing with forces that were not meant for man's doing. She had even found the advertisement for this position on a Sunday morning, one of those flashy little website pop ups that you only see once before they're going, going, gone. Maybe if she had just stayed at home, didn't go to Harvard, gone to church and didn't bother looking for a job, she wouldn't be here.

She wouldn't have ended the world.

It was strange, Hemings thought, because she could have sworn that the monkey was looking at her. Even though it was half drugged out of its mind, memories leaking from its brain by the thousands, there seemed to be some sort of recognition in its decaying mind, that what Hemings was about to do would go terribly wrong.

But what did Hemings know, the failed post-graduate from Harvard who cared only for numbers and nothing else? This was her job, this was the very reason why she had gone to college in the first place. To become a scientist, to gather numbers and data and embrace them like they were a part of her.

So without a second thought, Lucy Hemings slammed her fist down onto the button, wondering briefly why she was gripping her coffee cup so damn tight, and ended the world.

The monkey was strapped to the ground and didn't put up the slightest struggle, like it was already well aware of what was happening and knew what it would eventually change into. It did not even react the slightest when the pill was dropped into its mouth from a mechanical arm, the bright red tablet popping into its mouth and disappearing forever. Hemings made a motion to jot down a note of the monkey's placid reaction, its indifference to the world around it, but found her hand suspended in midair, the one only inches away from the notepad. Why was she going to make a note about this? The monkey's reaction and coldness to the world wasn't anything new to her, it was practically like looking in a mirror.

Something did change a few minutes later. The monkey, who had once been so quiet, began to thrash and scream like something was trying to eat it from the inside out. Hemings stood from her chair and watched in transfixed horror, oddly wondering what sort of numbers the computer would later spit out to describe what she was witnessing now.

The creature's eyes has gone bloodshot which eerily reminded her of Trinity on the hospital bed with all the blood (why did there have to have been so much blood?).

And then it was all over, a few awful seconds of screams and agony before the silence, the silence which the world would soon grow to know all too well, the silence that would swoop over this planet like a giant black wing for all to see.

Hemings supposed that the monkey was dead. It didn't surprise her, none of the animals previously had ever survived the drug administration. They sure as hell weren't going to be trying these on humans any time soon and with the money almost dried up, this would certainly mark the end of Trinity Wells Corporation, yes-siree. They'd put the whole blame on the intern, give her the boot and Lucy Hemings would be on the side of the road without any job, her student loans no less lighter than what they had been.

The least she could do was clean up the mess, save the janitors a few painful horrors of guts and gore. It was kind of surprising though. For all that screaming that the monkey had given, there was no blood. In fact, if she hadn't witnessed its heart go out on the monitors, Hemings could have sworn that it was only sleeping.

She slammed her fingerprint onto the nearby keypad and watched as the metal door hissed as the air in the containment room began to destabilise. Hemings slowly approached the monkey feeling perhaps the smallest stirrings of sympathy. Though how strange it was, how strange it was indeed that this monkey was so calm, so peaceful, so seemingly on the edge between life and death!

Maybe the monitors had gotten it wrong, maybe data and numbers were just as capable of flaws and imperfections as humans were. Lucy Hemings thought this to be so, for she grew certain that this monkey was not dead. There was no way that it could have died and departed this world in such a peaceful position.

She moved her hands away from undoing the restraints and pressed her left ear against the monkey's chest in search of a heartbeat.

There was nothing. Apparently machines and numbers didn't lie after all.

As Hemings went to lift her head, the creature's eyes flew upon with such grace and dignity, one might have thought it to be rehearsed. The eyes began to search the room, though they weren't the same eyes before. The eyes that Lucy had last seen were full of knowledge and wisdom. The eyes that this monkey bore now were clouded and unfocused as if seeing the world for the first time.

Lucy Hemings should have run away right then and there. But she could only watch in transfixed fascination as the monkey lifted its head, bore back its teeth in a menacing smile, and ripped her ear right from her head.

Now there was blood, a lot of it too, probably a lot more than there had been back in the hospital when Trinity had bled to death. She felt the monkey take a few more bites into her neck and skin, but Lucy Hemings felt no pain. She had gathered already the numbness that usually fell upon you moments before you succumbed to death, and that was perfectly alright with her. Everyone everywhere was already dying from the moment they were born, so the concept of death did not frighten her. She had wanted to sleep and sleep she would at last.

But the curious thing though, the last thought that would ever go through Lucy Hemings mind as she was ripped apart, was that the heart monitor in the other room emitted no detection of any pulse coming from the monkey, nor had she felt any beat of a heart when she had placed her ear against its chest.

What that meant, she did not know, for death crashed upon her like a cold blanket that dulled her senses and blurred her thoughts, easing her for what came next.