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Simon paced back and forth at the bus stop as he looked down at his phone, watching anxiously as the minutes continued to tick by. His preferred mode of transportation still wasn't seen and normally he would have seen it coming around the corner by now. If the bus was late that would mean that he wouldn't get into his work at the usual time and then there wouldn't be any time to do his routine. Just as he was about to check the app to see if it had broken down he breathed a sigh of relief when the glint of metal could be seen turning towards him.

His bus dropped him off at the usual spot, letting him get his coffee before moving on to the large lot that sat at the end of the corner. The lab he worked at was less of a building and more of a campus, complete with several smaller buildings that surrounded the largest one in the center. For Simon his destination was the small spire that was further away from the street, some of the windows actually able to see the nearby woods. Of course for the young scientist it wasn't the view that brought him back to that spot every day, it was the research that was being done inside.

"Good morning Simon," an older scientist said as he saw him come in. "I would check the clock to see if you came in at the same time but at this point I would believe you more than the clock. By the way you're going to have to work overtime again, we had someone else quit and we're currently on twelve-hour monitoring cycles."

Simon just nodded and made his way over to the locker room so that he could change into his lab coat and grab his security credentials. Since it was a lab that had government contracts in it security was rather intense, the guard nodding to him as he slid his pass through the card reader before going inside. On the other side of the metal door he felt himself shiver as he walked into the chilled environment as it locked behind him. Despite the cold the glass that separated the observation hallway and the specimen remained clear as he took one of the tablets and began to do his rounds.

On the other side were the pride and joy of this part of the facility; each section of the lab basically a small vat with a container of different hues of ooze. Even with the cold the surface of the thick liquid bubbled occasionally as he passed by them. Each cell had various machines hooked up to it as well and they all had wires that led to probes dipped into the liquid. Symbiotes... that's what they called them unofficially since the classification that was given to them was just a series of random numbers and letters.

It was the first of its kind, living organisms that he had discovered with the potential to act as a highly adaptive environmental suit. The idea was to have a soldier or something activate the suit and it would cover them like a fully body suit of armor. There were also potential applications like increasing strength and reflexes, but that wouldn't be proven until they got out of the initial testing process and started with human testing. For Simon that had been the goal for the last two years when he was named the head researcher of the project and he knew that he had three more to go before he even saw the acceptance for animal testing, much less human.

Three more years... the very thought caused Simon to shiver in dread. Though the scientist enjoyed his work there was something about his work that left him... unfulfilled. It wasn't just the fact that the hours were long and he was often working overtime and yet was still salaried, but there was also a certain amount of jaded bitterness from his other co-workers as well as the constant pressure coming from his higher-ups to try and get him to push the limits of his experimentation. He frowned when he looked over the checklist of things that they wanted him to make sure were there; all of this about more speed, more resilience, more variables instead of actually looking into what made the living organism actually tick.

All save for one. At the end of the hall was one of the symbiotes that had what looked like the same machines monitoring as all the others, but Simon had switched around the internals to a few other scanners that would monitor things other than kinetic tensile strength or regeneration factor. It was a pet project of his and even though the results would be handed in he would at minimum lose his position if they found out he wasn't going by the government playbook. It was why when it came to his last stop he took a mixture of results from the other studies and filled in the gaps in the observation work while the real data was streamed to his phone.

Once he was finished with his first set of rounds several hours had already passed, making it just in time to take his first break of the day. He had planned them so that he would have as little interaction with the other scientists of his spire as possible but since they didn't have any type of real schedule he would more often than not find himself sitting with one or two others while attempting to sit politely, just like this day as he slowly ate his sandwich while two others talked. "So I heard that Lenore increased the protocol evaluation studies on lab three again," the one guy said with a sneer as he ate his pizza. "I think she's just trying to get the entire place fired so she can fill it with her own idiotic choices."

"Wouldn't be surprised," the other scientist replied, shaking a spoon at the first guy and getting yoghurt on Simon's face. "They cut the funding by fifteen percent to lab four and twenty percent to lab seven. At this rate they're going to make us pay for our own surgical gloves, or maybe make this one here actually work a double shift in another lab like we all have too."

Simon resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he waited for the two to focus on one another again while he wiped the dairy product off of his face. Even though he was working twelve to fifteen-hour days he was still considered to be the slacker of the group or the privileged one because their benefactors have been taking an interest in his work. That plus the stress that came from the higher-ups constantly pushing them to get them results faster and cheaper meant that many of his fellow co-workers had the possibility of getting nasty to one another. Once it looked like they had turned their attention away from him for even a second he got up and put the rest of his uneaten lunch in the trash before going back to his samples.

As he started to go back to his lab he realized that one nice thing about going back early was an excuse to check his phone and see where his stats are. With most of his project being monitoring there weren't many on his team, in fact after the latest round of lay-offs he found himself alone most of the time. That was fine for him as he had the entire locker room for his section alone as he pulled out his phone and began to look over the readouts. Everything seemed stable as usual, nothing out of the ordinary from the EKG or oxygenation monitors. Just as he was about to put his lab coat back on though he saw one of the readings that shocked him so hard it caused him to nearly drop his phone.

"What..." he said as he looked at the readout. "That... can't be..."

The results caused his heart to flutter and he wanted nothing more than to leave back to his home console, but he couldn't leave until his shift was over. It was the hardest rest of the day in his life so far and since no one had come in to help he had to work a full fifteen hours. Once he had submitted the last report he immediately left without talking to anyone and walked all the way back to his apartment. With the bus lines out of commissions it was all he could do and it took him nearly an extra hour to get home with him running most of the way.

When he finally got home though his enthusiasm for his results was temporarily derailed by the stack of pizza boxes that he nearly knocked over when he opened the apartment door. "C'mon Anthony..." he said as he took all the cardboard and put it back next to the trash. "Hey! Anthony! You still around?"

"I'm home..." Tony replied, coming out in boxer shorts and a tank top. "If it's about the boxes I just had a few people over earlier and haven't had time to clean up. I'll square it away this week."

Simon sighed and nodded, then continued over to his bedroom. While he couldn't believe that as the head researcher of a major government lab he still needed a roommate in order to cover the rent that was exactly what brought Anthony into his life. He was a fourth year college student, and with the university close by and the rent in the area rather cheap already it was a no-brainer for Anthony to take Simon's offer of being a roommate. Though the other man wasn't exactly the cleanest or industrious, often times found playing video games or working out instead of partying, but since Simon was gone most of the day anyway and Anthony paid the rent he was able to live with it.

When Simon got past the bit of clutter towards his own room, which was far more meticulous then the rest of the apartment, and immediately the excitement of what he had seen before came back to the forefront. He booted up his desktop and linked it with his phone, establishing a remote connection so that he could see all the data and compile it with a more powerful processor. Specifically he brought up the EEG machine that he had put into the symbiote and watched as the line continued to spike. It was impossible... this symbiote was just supposed to be an adaptive mass of goo but the readings that he was getting was denoting... brain activity?

Simon began to tap his pencil against his desk as his brain tried to comprehend what was happening here, going through everything from a possible calibration error to a chemical imbalance causing a false positive. But entire time before this nothing had ever happened like this before, so why would it suddenly change now? There was nothing that could possibly explain it other than the fact that that somehow something that had been created in the lab had gained sentience. It would be the holy grail of scientific finds... and there was no way that he could tell anyone about it without getting in trouble.

"There has to be a way..." Simon said as he wrote down his findings, thinking about what he could possibly say or do to get the permission he needs in order to continue to study this new phenomena. "Maybe I could just tell them that I found an outliner, a piece of data that caused me to use the EEG machine. All I need to do is make the data match..."

The next day Simon awoke with a snort when he heard something beeping, removing the papers stuck to his face as he realized that it was his alarm clock. Since he had little time to begin with after working so late at the lab he had to cut into his already substantially tight sleep schedule in order to figure out how to provide an excuse to get an EEG reading on what was supposed to be a mass of synthetic cells. When he looked at his clock he saw that it was almost time to catch the bus and all his time that he usually used to eat breakfast and shower was instead spent gathering all the data he had compiled. Even then he was rushing out of the apartment and down the street, just catching the bus so that he didn't have to walk the two hours to the lab or catch a ride share.

The entire time spent on the bus was spent compiling and reconfiguring his data so that he knew exactly what he was going to say as well as any potential questions that might arise when he met his project manager. It was his most immediate boss in a line of bosses that went all the way from each individual lab up to the floor and then the spire, then you got to the real bureaucracy in the system. Even as a head researcher Simon would have to get three separate sets of signatures before he could even think of something as simple as adjusting glucose input or regulating temperature. It was way he had gone rogue in the first place and did his own testing himself, though that was proving to be a hinderance at this point as he used his phone to email his boss for a meeting.

It took multiple trips to the coffee shop in order for Simon to keep awake as he waited for the response to his e-mail, hoping that they wouldn't just give him the usual runaround. He found himself more often than not staring at the last symbiote in the chamber, the clouds of his frozen breath increasing as he watched the surface bubble. How could something like that have enough sentiency to be monitored, and if it was having actually thoughts then what else could it feel? Pain? Emotion?

Simon started to realize that this new finding wasn't just going to be opening things up on scientific grounds but ethical ones as well. If they really had created something with intelligence then they couldn't just use it like some sort of item like body armor or a t-shirt. Plus it would be the first time that they would have to discuss what to do with human-created intelligence, something that most researchers thought would have to be done with computer AI. But as he stood there and continued to muse a pop-up on his tablet broke his concentration.

It was the meeting that Simon had hoped for, but he couldn't help but feel dread as the time was scheduled for an hour from now. Normally it took a week to even get something scheduled and the only time that they expedited such things was when they wanted to yell at you. Considering what he was asking for that was probably what was going to happen as he finished up his observational data before his break. Even though it was something he had done many times before he couldn't help his hands shaking as he went up to the administrative floor of the spire.

"Mr. Wolfe," the older gentleman said, Simon thinking mentally that it was strange that he didn't comment on his punctuality yet again. "I received your e-mail concerning the expansion of protocol testing on your symbiote project and I have to say that It's left me a bit... worried."

"Worried?" Simon repeated in question. "Dr. Malcone, I don't know-"

"I don't know what you got into that thick skull of yours," the doctor said in a far more serious tone, any semblance of being amicable going right out the door. "I don't really care about how you managed to get to some hare-brained conclusion or that you came to the brilliant conclusion that your cell soups down there are capable of independent thought? It's ballistic goo for god's sake, your team said that it would be like programming your house lights!"

"We... didn't think that this would ever happen..." Simon replied as he attempted to regain his composure. "But sir, as I stated in the e-mail the possible scientific potential is-"

"The only potential I see is the millions of dollars that we're about to flush down the drain because of your curiosity!" Dr. Malcone shouted as he slammed his hands down on the desk and caused Simon to jump. "Do you know what could happen if you told this scientific ethics and morals committee about this possible finding?! It would be years before this project would even see the light of day again and then it's going to be our asses hanging out to dry!"

There was a moment of pause and Simon could see the veins practically bulging out of the doctor's neck as he reached into his desk and pulled out a bottle of pink liquid. Though Simon was thankful for the momentary respite he didn't know how he could possibly respond to something like this, his brain still reeling from the verbal assault that he had received. All the facts, figures, everything that he had prepared in order to counter arguments that his boss might have had just went out the window. That just left the researcher sitting there staring while the doctor took a big swig from the bottle before setting it back down.

"Did you tell anyone else about this?" Dr. Malcone asked, Simon shaking his head which caused the other researcher to breathe a deep sigh and wipe the sweat off his brow. "You are to tell no one about these findings, and if anyone does ask then you say that it was a glitch in the hardware caused by a faulting testing machine that has now been rectified and that you'll take the compromised sample out for summary destruction. Then you will continue going on as normal and if you go so much as a toenail out of the parameters of the experiment then you will find yourself cleaning out the recently terminated specimen cages, do you understand me?"

Simon was at a loss, all he could do was just nod his head in response. The researcher quickly dismissed him then and took another swig from the bottle before telling him to leave his office and to delete all emails that concerned his findings. Once he had gotten into the elevator he finally began to feel the cold pit that had formed in his stomach during the entire encounter. Potentially the greatest find in human history, and he was asked to keep it quiet so that they could continue to milk the project for more money.

A few hours later Simon found himself once more in the observation hallway staring at the substance that he had been monitoring all this time. While he didn't know about any of the others in the trial he knew that this one was thinking, possibly feeling, maybe even speculating. A creature with such potential that will be squandered so that Dr. Malcone could make a good impression on his boss so that his boss could do the same to his boss and so on. Specimen destruction... Simon didn't know if he could go through with such a thing as he found himself reaching out to the creature through the glass.

Just as Simon was about to pull back and continue on with his notes he saw something that caused him to pause. At first he thought it might have been a trick of the light but the longer he stared at it the more he realized that the shiny black mass seemed to have shifted towards him! He felt his breath quicken as he moved his hand to the left and watched the ooze shift in order to start to stretch towards him, then go the opposite direction when he slowly moved his hand that way. Simon could feel his heart racing as his hands began to shake; not only did the symbiote have the ability to sense but it could do so through extremely thick containment glass!

On a whim Simon went over to the other symbiotes and attempted to do the same thing, only to find no response that he could detect before returning to the one that had been standing in front of in the first place. Once more he stretched out his hand, this time holding onto the chilled railing with his other one so he could get as far as possible. Again the ooze, or possibly creature at this point, seemed to stretch out even further in order to try and get towards him. When he leaned back the symbiote did the same and he felt himself letting out slight gasping laughs as he stood there on the catwalk. So many questions were reeling around in his head he had to go to the bathroom and sit there in the stall so that his mind could try to sort things out.

This was beyond mere sentiency, Simon realized as he looked down at his tablet as the specimen details of the symbiote, and yet he was still going to have to destroy it. Even if he put up a protest he would likely lose his job, even if he went to the ethics board the facility had enough clout to cover it up while the one who took his place would just follow through with the termination. But... if Simon pretended to go through with it, then they wouldn't be the wiser if it just happened to show up somewhere else. It was his project after all, if the lab didn't want it than why shouldn't he take it for himself?

Because if he did that then he would be facing criminal charges if not outright treason, his more rational mind said to himself as he put his hand to his head in frustration. Not only that but he would have nowhere to house it, not with a roommate in a small apartment. He didn't think that Anthony would appreciate finding a pool full of ooze in the bathtub and there's no way he could get the containment protocols in place to continue the study. If only he could just have more time, keep the symbiote safe while making his preparations...

That's when Simon remembered the canisters that the samples originally came in, the ones where the original cultures came from before they created the symbiotes. If that was able to hold the immature versions then it could probably hold the fully-grown ones as well. He wouldn't be able to get it all in there, but having some of the sentient creature saved was better than nothing... he hoped. It was all uncharted territory at this point, but it was the only plan he had as he went out of the bathroom and finished his rounds.

As ordered Simon scheduled the termination of the symbiote for tomorrow, making sure that his boss knew that he was going through with it as well as providing all the false paperwork that he was told to make. Even though it made him sick he knew it had to be done and then found an excuse to leave early, which for him was relatively on time. He found himself stepping outside the lab while the sun was still out, something that didn't usually happen for him as he took the bus home. On the way back to the apartment he started to make a mental list of what he might need in order to create something that would contain the symbiote enough for him to continue his research.

When he got home and opened the door he heard the thud of cardboard and sighed when he saw pizza boxes scattered on the floor near the trash can. Whether they were old boxes or new he couldn't tell, but at the moment that didn't matter to him as he shouted to see if his roommate was home. When there was no response he took it upon himself to clean up, finding that his long hours at worked combined with a messy roommate left a lot of neglected housework to be done. With all the nervous energy still built up in his system he took care of most of it and as he went from the bathroom back to the kitchen he looked at the door that was Anthony's bedroom.

Having an entire room would give him the space to study this creature, he thought to himself, but symbiotes don't pay rent and he was going to incur extra costs to set something up. That meant that he needed a roommate more than ever and the researcher frowned as he found himself between a rock and a hard place. As he continued to muse he heard the door open behind him and saw his roommate strolling in with his back pack around his shoulder. Anthony stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the other man standing there, looking at him in slightly surprise.

"Huh, didn't expect to see you here," Anthony said as he looked at the clock on his phone to make sure he hadn't been mistaken. "Did that lab you work at burn down or something?"

"Just managed to take care of everything in a timely manner," Simon replied while he walked back to the kitchen. "Once every two years I like to take a breather and relax."

"Home early and an attempt at humor," the other male replied with a small laugh. "Whatever you're using to relax I'd like a hit of it myself, I have a huge radiology project coming up and I'm still having trouble with the calculations to make sure all the telemetry is right."

One thing that Simon did admire about the college student was that even with his somewhat frat boy attitude he was still very smart. "Well I'm sure that you'll figure it out," Smion responded, then looking down as something came to mind. "Don't suppose you took any of those ethics classes that they offer down there?"

"Had to," Anthony replied, rummaging around the fridge before taking out a drink. "Why?"

"Just... something that I remember when I took the course not so long ago when I was there that came to mind today," Simon responded. "If you were told something that you believed was inherently wrong, but in order to make it right you had to do something implicitly wrong, does it still make your actions right even if you had to do something wrong to accomplish them?"

"Whoa, that's some really heavy stuff to be laying on me right after class," Anthony stated with a chuckle. "I just managed to pass that ethics course, but I suppose if you are trying to right a wrong and there was no other way it would be justified... or something. Also do you realize that this is probably the most that we've talked since I've moved in and it's about morals?"

Simon laughed at that and apologized for bothering him, going into his room and locking the door behind him. As soon as he was alone once more he found his grin turning into a frown as he saw the readouts that were still on his screen, reminding the researcher of what he was about to do. He took his phone to check the latest results and found that they were even stronger than before, the EEG readings showing discernable activity in the symbiote. Surprisingly the highest spikes were during the time he was interacting with it, which once more showed that he might be right in the level of cultivated intelligence he was dealing with.

The researcher attempted to continue to work but found his eyes nearly closing with each passing minute, the stress of the situation combined with the lack of sleep and general weariness that came from working such long hours all crashing down on him at the same time. Not feeling like falling asleep at his computer again he decided to go to bed, and even though the sun was still streaming into his room he found his eyes getting pulled closed. The last thing he thought of before slipping away into sleep was the thought of that bubbling black pool of goo...