Muhammad was awoken by the dinner alarm playing over the intercom. It was a repetitive bell that rang until everyone had signed into the room, a precaution to make sure people weren't skipping their meals. He rubbed his grainy eyes and looked around. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but it felt like forever.

Someone started pounding on his door. It was locked so he wouldn't get disturbed. "Muhammad, blast it kid. The bell has been ringing for twelve minutes. Get your butt stairs before I break down the door." Alex's angry voice filled the room.

Muhammad almost grinned. If there wasn't a rule against swearing in the lab, he was sure some more colourful language would've come out of his mouth. "I'm coming." He pushed himself away from the desk and shut off his computer. No one needed to see what he had been researching. It wasn't ready yet.

He pressed his thumb to the pad by the door and it opened, revealing Alex in the hallway. Veins were popping out along his neck and he was grimacing, his ears plugged by two pieces of paper.

Muhammad brushed passed him and headed to the ladder. The cafeteria was two stories up, on the very top of the lab. The main structure of the lab was a globe. The top story was a cafeteria, the next two were research rooms and cages, and the bottom was where the living quarters were. They were the only rooms with metal walls, not glass. It was a privacy issue.

The others were all in the cafeteria when he arrived. He jammed his thumb onto the pad and the loud alarm stopped ringing. There was an audible exhalation of air as the tension vanished, pushed away by the absence of the consistent alarm.

"Where were you?" Allison asked.

"Sleeping." He replied brusquely. He wasn't in the mood to talk. He wanted to eat and get back to his research. It was more important than being social right now.

Harris joined him at the table of food. She pulled the plastic cover off of one of the dishes and scooped out some old vegetables. "Me and Allison were wondering if you wanted to join us on a little diving adventure after breakfast."

He shook his head. "I have work to do."

Harris grabbed his arm lightly. "You can take a break, you do know that, right? We have a lot of time to do research. You haven't gone out yet."

He pulled away. "A year goes by quickly. We have already used quite a bit of our time and none of it has worked well. I have too much to do."

She sighed. "If you change your mind, join us later in the hatch."

He didn't respond. Instead he turned to the farthest table and sat by himself. He pulled out his tablet and quickly started googling some more information on his topic. It was fascinating. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of it before. The experiment itself would be simple.

No one joined him at the table. He half expected Allison or Harris to sit down and talk, but they joined Grayce, Alex, and Terry at the other table. The words they spoke were too quiet to be heard but judging by the glances he guessed it was all about him.

He ate as quickly as possible before placing his plate on the washing rack and hurrying back to the ladder. His last glance at the room showed Allison silently watching him, her dark eyes filled with worry.

It wasn't that Muhammad didn't care about Allison. Every time he saw her his heart started beating and he found it hard to breath. She was perfect and so beautiful but he didn't know how to react. Love wasn't in the equation of hisa future. He would get rich from this and go on to other businesses. Nowhere along the way had he considered falling for someone, especially someone lesser than him. But it was happening a lot faster then he'd anticipated.

For now the best thing to do was lock himself away and do more research. He headed over to the tank and looked through the glass wall. The tiger shark was swimming in the tank below, going in circles as it seeked an escape. He smiled, it was the perfect candidate for his project.

The door slid open from somewhere down the hall and Terry came around the corner. He had left the hall only minutes after Muhammad had arrived. He was whistling, dressed in a jumpsuit and carrying several wires over his back. They were thick and made of metal, like the cables that held the lab together.

"What are you doing?" Muhammad asked.

Terry stopped. "Hey kid. Several cables came loose during that storm. The waves were monstrous." he chuckled nervously. "I'm just fixing them."

"Oh. Will that affect the power?"

"Possibly, I don't exactly know." He leaned against the glass. His gaze travelled down to the tiger shark. "It's a shame that they're killing the shark. It's a fine specimen."

He started whistling again and passed by him, the thick cables slamming against his shoulder.

✸✸✸

Allison was placing the last dish on the tray when Muhammad rushed back into the cafeteria. He grabbed her hands and looked her in the eyes. She squealed, startled.

"Is it true that you're killing the tiger shark?" he asked.

She nodded. "Y-yes. We're going to run the experiment again and see if life regenerates better on a smaller shark."

He groaned. "Don't kill it, Alli. I need that shark for mutations. We can't waste it on the same stupid experiment."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry Muhammad. There's not much I can do. It's Dr. Harris's choice."

He let go of her and ran back towards the ladder. "Don't do anything to the shark. I'll talk Harris out of it."

Allison watched once again as he hurried down the ladder. She listened to his footsteps as he ran down the hall. Her heart sighed and she slowly put down the last dish. Something was going on but Muhammad was placing a barrier around his heart, fortifying it to an extreme degree.

She took one last look at the cafeteria. It was clean, except for the floors, but she would sweep those later today. Harris had cancelled the diving expedition because it had been a bait for Muhammad. Now that he'd refused, she said there was no point in wasting their time. With nothing else to do, Allison retreated to her medium-sized office. One of the glass walls was filled with a large bookshelf stuffed with her large textbooks, as well as a small shelf of her favorite novels. A desk and computer were on the same wall as the door. The third wall was empty, half of it blocked by a metal cubicle that was the bathroom.

She took out her phone and turned on music, pulling off a textbook about sharks and flipping to the section about tiger sharks. There was a lot to learn. She knew a lot of facts about the overall category of sharks, but as individuals there was still a lot to learn.

The tiger shark she had caught was a baby. Adults could reach up to 14 feet and theirs was only about five feet. She didn't know what it was doing in the reef but she was glad there had been no adults. That would've been harder to capture. Their serrated teeth made them dangerous. She knew that it was dangerous but they had kept it on drowsy injections to keep it from getting hostile.

Her music stopped and an alarm started ringing. She had one set for twelve o'clock, which was when the shark needed its next injection. Harris wanted to get the experiment over with, especially because of the excessive amount of sedatives entering its body. They could affect the serum, which could have multiple results. It was a risk they were going to have to take.

She opened the door. The hallway was empty. There had been no announcements for the passed few hours, which meant that Harris and Alex were probably going over reports. Russia was infamous for strange experiments and after the outbreak Harris had been more stressed. She was always walking on a wire, leveling between what had to be done and what was safe to be done.

Killing the tiger shark was more of a precaution. Harris had already told Allison that she was worried about the tiger shark. Since it was prepubescent, it would react more drastically to being locked in a cage.

She walked down the hall and entered the small tunnel that led to the entrance to the cage. It opened out onto a platform, which was above the water. She jumped down and walked over to the groggy shark. The water reached her waist, completely soaking through her jeans, but Allison was only here for a couple seconds. She placed some food in front of its mouth for the shark to eat before injecting a little more sedative into it.

Even though she knew it was just a test subject, she always found herself developing a love for the animals. They were innocent of what was about to happen. The world, in its twisted, fascinating science, was slowly ruining itself.

And she was currently in the center of it.

✸✸✸

Muhammad felt rage coursing through his body. His plans were being ruined. Aside from the fact that he was the youngest person here, he was also the smartest. But Harris was becoming insufferable. She looked at him like he was a child, refusing to meet his needs. If she wanted a report to give to the headquarters she was going to have to let him do what he had to do.

That was the only solution for a successful experiment.

He entered his room again. Harris's final words still rang in his ears. "One experiment at a time. Let us figure this one out."

He was the one who made it. Only he would be able to truly figure it out. But they were down here for mutations, not regeneration, The reviving experiment was supposed to help with the mutation progress. They were on an unseen deadline, which ended when another country made the final discovery and became the leading supplier with mutations. It was the highest goal worldwide right now, and the pinnacle was going to be mounted soon enough. Muhammad wanted to be the one to do it.

He logged back into his computer and started scrolling through his files. He found his latest one and opened it up. The detailed diagram of the electric eel filled the page. He scanned it to the holographic projector and watched as it popped up in the air. He spun it around for a few seconds before pulling off the first layer of skin, placing it into the inventory box. Electric eels had three pairs of abdominal organs that gave it the charge it used. There was the main organ, the Hunter's organ, and the Sach's organ. It made up four fifths of the eels body and gave it the ability to send off a low or high charge shock.

Muhammad inspected each of the organs carefully. They didn't look hard to create. With these on the shark it would officially create the first real mutant. To most people the idea of growing extra appendages on an animal was absurd, but to Muhammad, who had been interested in mutations since he was a child, it was just the simple matter of triggering the right spots to follow a pattern.

He pulled the organs out of the hologram and enlarged them. They were more simplistic than a lot of things he had been trying. Of course, on a shark the shock would be lethal. He would have to warn people not to go into the cage. But Harris had given him specific instructions not to mess with the shark. She was determined to continue with the regenerative experiments.

That meant he was going to have to go undercover.

Muhammad was a good kid. In college he never partied, he never skipped classes, he never even went to the principal's office in elementary. Sneaking around wasn't his forte, but for tonight it was going to have to be. If he skipped the next couple meals and worked full time he could have something ready by nightfall.

Once everyone fell asleep, he would put his plan into action.

He locked his door and started pulling the supplies out of his closet, placing them on his large table. The dim light helped him as he started mixing. Two alarms went by, both eventually turned off when they couldn't get him to come. By the time he was done it was past eleven and everyone was asleep.

He quietly opened his door, sure he would see permanent dents from all the pounding. There was something that made his spine prickle when he stepped into the dim hallway. He had never wandered around at night. It just wasn't in his personality genes to go against the laws of a curfew.

The cameras were already hacked, playing an empty loop. The one with the shark had been a little more complex, since he had been forced to record it for thirty minutes before he could make the loop convincible. Not that anyone watched closely during the night. There were too few people on this lab to be suspicious.

Clutching the serum tightly to my chest, Muhammad ran down the first length of the hall. The eerie lights cast from the dark ocean were foreboding, messing with his mind. He shivered, backing against the glass wall as he heard something from further up the hall. His small body pushed itself into a dark corner as a shape passed by him.

Terry.

He was no longer carrying any tools or cables and his careful footsteps worried me. It was obvious that he wasn't interested on getting caught. He waited until the last echoes of his footsteps disappeared before taking off again.

The tiger shark's cage wasn't far from Muhammad's room. He looked down into the dimly lit water and watched the lithe shark speed around the circular cage. It looked lonely and bored, like he imagined a shark with a death sentence would look.

The small tunnel triggered claustrophobia as he approached the platform beneath the water. Af night the water levels rose to allow more swimming space, and the platform now sat beneath several feet of water. Muhammad climbed into it carefully, his shoes and the cuffs of his pants getting soaked. He pulled a small vial of the scent out of his pocket and dropped some into the water. Immediately the shark came towards him.

When it was close enough, he stabbed the needle into the lower part of its back, injecting the serum into it rapidly.

He climbed back into the tube and went back to the main level.

There were still three serums back in his room.

Three chances to make this work.

✸✸✸

Allison crouched beneath her desk, panting. In her hands, a closed laptop shook as she nervously wiped sweat off her brow. She had almost been caught twice, each of the fellow curfew-breakers unknown to her.

Once both sets had receded, she opened her laptop again and continued working on getting into the mainstream system. No one was allowed to go there, especially not her, but she had developed some hacking skills in college from her crazy roommate, and they were becoming handy.

The screen lit up as the mainstream opened up[. With it she could access any information from the lab databases, but she was after something else.

Muhammad's search history.

Harris knew something was wrong when he didn't appear to meals, but she couldn't physically force him to come so she had worked around the alarm.

Allison silently read through it, her eyes widening as she realized what his intent was.

The only problem was that she couldn't tell Harris without explaining her illegal activity. She erased all signs of the mainstream and tucked the laptop beneath her baggy shirt. She left the room in a slouch, letting it hide beneath her clothing.

Her room was close to the next hatch. It was beside Harris's room, which made sneaking out hard but doable. On her way down she looked into the tiger sharks cage, where it was moving slowly, slower than usual.

Her mind drifted back to the plans for the shark and why Muhammad had been mad in the first place.

Maybe by morning it would be dead anyways.