Lorilei shuffled into the lab. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked even paler than usual. She bumped into the corner of a table and almost threw up.

She choked it back, and began fumbling around to make coffee.

”Good evening!” Angela said loudly and cheerily as she strode into the lab. Lorilei winced at the noise and rubbed her temples. “How was your night?”

”Great,” Lorilei rasped. Her hands were shaking trying to place a mug under the coffee spout.

“Great!” Angela said. “McKeyla will be back tonight, so I’ve ordered a replacement box of tinies from the prison. Be sure to have them prepped for her, she’s eager to get back to work. You might all have to work together to get it done in time. And be sure to have all the data from last night collected for her, you know she loves data. Alright, have a good night!”

***

The three interns sat in miserable silence, slouched on their lab stools. They were all massively hung over, pale and puffy-eyed. Myla and Alexis injected the new prisoners with zombie-like motions, often fumbling the little creatures. Lorilei compiled data, squinting at the bright monitor.

“Ow, fuck! this little fucker bit me,” Alexis said. She threw the little fucker on the floor and stomped on him with her somewhat dirty white Jordans.

”Really Alexis?” Lorilei snapped, “After yesterday? That’s why we’re here right now!”

”What do you mean? Yesterday was your idea after you forgot to put the lid on. Anyway, who cares, it’s fine. It’s just one sample. Put it in your essay or whatever.”

Lorilei sighed, not having the energy to argue. “It’s a good thing we’re dosing them one at a time, in isolation, or the whole box would go crazy and we’d have another shit show.”

Behind them, unnoticed, Myla was holding another man in her gloved hand. She pursed her lips and side-eyed him, as if to say uh oh, sorry… He looked up at her shaking his head in silent terror, as if to respond I won’t tell anyone I swear! But his attempt was useless. Myla surreptitiously covered his head with her latex thumb and squeezed her fist. When she felt him squish, she pulled her glove off inside-out, hiding his remains inside and tossed him in the trash. She faked a big yawn and stretch to further hide her action and wandered over to Alexis.

“Careful,” Myla said, smirking, “if one of them bit you, you could turn into one of them and start shrinking.”

A mischievous look came over Alexis as she stared at Myla.

“What are you doing?” Myla said.

Alexis raised her long leg.

“Don’t,” Myla began, “Don’t even think about it - I’M SERIOUS, EW GOD, it’s all over your shoe, he was full of shit or something!“ 

Alexa was holding up her long leg with dirty white sneakers close to Myla’s face. The tiny corpse’s burst innards dangled wetly from her sole, and were indeed foul.

Myla turned green, got up, and ran to the bathroom. “I’m gonna barf, you bitch,” she whined from behind her hands covering her mouth.

”You see what you’ve done?” Lorilei demanded. “Now we’re going to be behind.”

”Come on, it was funny.”

***

Dr. McKeyla strode into the lab, her heels clicking.

”Hello Doctor,” Lorilei said.

McKeyla stared at her. “Are you unwell? You look pale.”

”Oh, I just, haven’t gotten much sleep lately, that’s all. How was the conference?”

”Extremely boring. I truly did not need to be there, it could have been an email. But it did force me to relax. They have a fantastic spa in the Toronto Size Center, and the girls took me out on the town. I have to admit, it did me good - I have new plans for the serums, I think I know why they aren’t working. So I’m going to prepare new samples for tomorrow.”

”Oh, that’s good. Wait, but we’ve just prepped an entire cell block with the old serums?”

”That’s unnecessary now.”

”…and I have this report on the first cell block we tested while you were away…”

”Also unnecessary. But, I appreciate the hard work you’ve been doing while I was away, Lorilei.”

”You don’t want to read it?”

”Was there any signs of success?”

”…uh, well…no, not really…”

”I didn’t think so. Like I said, I realize where I went wrong with the old serums.”

”Okay… what about the cell block we already injected?”

Dr. McKeyla finally seemed to catch on to Lorliei’s dismayed tone. “Well… I’m sure they’ll be of use somehow. We’ll just, hold on to them for now until something comes up I suppose. You’ll have to feed them and everything though, I’m sure I won’t remember.”

”Yes, Doctor.”

”Look, why don’t you go home? You said you hadn’t slept much. I can prep tomorrow’s samples on my own. Go on.”