08-20-2012, 12:58 PM
Idiris had been thankful when the report back had gone smoothly. She trusted that a few more days in the tunnels would turn fruitful, to say the least. And if she got caught? Well, that would be easy to manage. Everyone always underestimates the mostly blind girl. Naturally, the idea of failure would weigh her down. Kenya had been right. The punishment for failure was severe and definitely not something she would ever look forward to.
When she was led back to her tent, Idiris overheard the comment of 'any way' and blushed. She certainly didn't need more than just someone standing outside, making sure no one came in. The mere thought of needing more was vaguely horrifying, but Idiris knew it was not for her embarrassment that the executive officer said it. So instead of paying it any mind, the lieutenant went to work more on her sketchbook and get some rest.
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Palmer was going over his notes back in his lab, the vials already set, duplicates made in the event that everything went as planned. He still needed to check back with Ana to do one more DNA match, making sure everything was right.. Yet, he hoped that, by week's end, the first in a hopefully long range experiment would take off. After all, the young adult was nervous that things might not actually go as planned, so thinking about it obviously lead to stress.
Crossing off two lines in his notes that were no longer valid, Palmer sighed. He felt like he should be doing more, being more fruitful. It wasn't every day that human tests were made. While all the rodent trials had been successful, that was hardly saying much. Eliminating any range of diversity in the group, Palmer had used half-starved sewer rats, keeping them all undernourished during the experiment. Thankfully only a few died in the trail, but the other five had shown tremendous change in a positive light. From there, the experiment grew until now. Nearly everything was perfect, even if there was a vast margin or error. Human tests were the hardest to get right. It wasn't like with the rodents, where Palmer hadn't been worried if a few had died while working things out. These were real, human, lives.
That was why he chose Ana. She had the least connecting, no family to worry about.. It was just her. If she died it would be a tragedy, but no where near as awful as any of the other soldiers that were going to be undergoing the change. Palmer swallowed hard at the thought, disappointed that his mental process had come to no longer strongly value the human life. But this was war and people died every day. There was no time for over sentiment.
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