She was so focused on the screen in front of her that she hardly noted the 'whoosh' sound of the door opening. It was after all, the busiest time of the day for the counter-terrorism unit, and Diana had very important work to do in the lab.
Neither did she register any concern at the next sound, that of someone sitting heavily in the seat behind her. Only a handful of people had access to the high-security lab they were in, and she was more than familiar with how loud Michiko could get.
Diana did tilt her head a little when she heard Michi mutter "Damn!" under her breath. That was quite unlike her. Michi could always be counted on to be loud, so muttering or mumbling was really not her style.
"What up, Mich?" she asked, not really waiting to hear her reply. Each woman had her own duties in the lab, it was such a small setup, and although they would consult each other whenever something new showed up, they were almost invariably assigned different cases to review, so much so they had yet to work together on a single project.
"Nothing," came the muttered reply, and Diana turned around to look at her colleague. She was surprised to see that she was still in the contamination suit she was wearing in the other part of the lab. "Mich! You know you're not supposed to wear that in here!"
Diana was surprised, but not shocked. Michi was after all the baby of the lab, all of 24 years, with raven-black hair, almond eyes and a trim, if slightly muscular body. She was also the rebel, often questioning procedures and policies and refusing to follow the rules she didn't agree with. She was also brilliant, one of the best minds in bioelectronics, so that was why the head honchos put up with the feisty little Asian.
But she hadn't seemed to mind the strict safety regulations they had all had to follow, so it was a little surprising to see her wearing the white suit that they were required to shed in the decontamination chamber just outside.
"Yeah, well, lots of things happen that aren't supposed to," was Michi's terse reply. Diana turned full body to look at her colleague. She was certainly not responding the way she normally did. What was going on?
As she turned Michi's chair to face her, Diana noticed small perforations in her suit. "What..?" she began, but before she could complete her sentence, the alarms began to sound.
"Shit, Mich," Diana yelled over the loud whooping. "What the fuck happened in there?"
Michiko shook her head and looked glum. "I... I slipped. I didn't... want to be stuck in there, so I came in here. I'm... I'm sorry, Di."
"Listen to me," said Diana, aware that her voice was rising. Being locked in due to a contamination alert didn't concern her as much as what it was her colleague had down to cause the lock down. After all, she was a carefree and single 28-year old woman whose primary companion at home was the TV. No one to worry about her: that was why Diana took this job.
"Listen," she said, shaking Michi gently. "Tell me what happened in there. I need to know." She noted that the perforations in Michiko's suit were larger than she had originally thought. Or was it that they were getting larger? Just what was it that had caused the contamination alert? Diana could feel the hairs on the nape of her neck standing in anticipation of the younger girl's answer.
"Remember that lot of stuff we got from that bioengineering whiz? The one we called the mad scientist?"
Diana nodded. Dr Stan Lee was well-known in the scientific community for his eccentricities, especially towards the later part of his life. He was absolutely brilliant, and much of his work was still being assessed. Too bad he killed himself before he could give his own accounting of the items they found in his lab. Dr Lee was said to be so distraught by his wife's infidelity with their gardener that he locked himself in his lab for months after she left.
The things he left behind were sent to her CT lab because they simply did not know what to make of the capsules, vials and other paraphernalia he had left behind. She remembered spending weeks just cataloguing the stuff, and cross-referencing his notes with the items they had received. Not that she could make sense of much of it either... she had simply classified them as best she could.
Now, it seemed one of Dr Lee's concoctions had come to haunt them.
"What were you doing with that? Don't you know all of that's off-limits?" she began scolding her downcast colleague. Michi said nothing and simply looked away, as if she could not even face her. "Shit Mich, that's a deal-breaker, you know."
"I know. I... I just thought... to be the first to break down what he... what he was doing... I just wanted..." Michiko began to try to explain, but Diana shushed her. She was right -- the holes in Michi's contamination suit were getting larger by the minute.
"What's done is done. Here, let's get you out of this thing," she said, reaching out to tug at the zip at Michiko's neck.
As she touched the girl's suit, she felt her skin crawl, almost as if a million spiders were suddenly running up her arm. Michiko noticed her reaction and smiled wearily.
"You feel that, don't you?" she asked, pushing her hand away and reaching for the zip herself. "You really shouldn't have done that."
"Done what?" Diana was puzzled. What did the girl mean? Had the incident in the lab made her slightly mad?
