Is there like, any point of doing anything now?

  His last hopes slowly smoldered into nothingness. He had accepted the loss of the project back when it all started going wrong, but was it too much to hope he could at least salvage it without getting himself killed?

  He knew what was happening, yet lacked the crucial details to stop it -- and that was the worst part. The Project had become decentralized -- which explained the smoke -- and grown resistant to naphtheniqúe, rendering his most trusted cleanup solution useless. Even if he managed to destroy the scattered parts of the Project on his table, it would barely slow it down. It was everywhere now; wherever there was light, it could grow, and any nutrients it encountered, it could consume. Hell, it might have already gotten inside him if it was smart enough to overcome the mask filters. Or maybe it just used his ears -- there was no stopping it now, not really.

  Getting killed by your own invention seemed fitting now. Fitting to his ambition, in pursuit of which he'd forgotten to be a biénventor, not just a student who aspired to be one. Every serious académist had desperately tried to drill one particular thing into their young students' heads: to succeed, and more importantly, to survive, they had to learn to think. To think on their own, not relying on chémetomes or others' advice. Six long years of Chemidiáté had seared the rules into your brain...

  But that was exactly the part you couldn't really learn until it hit you in the face: being a biénventor -- or any kind of inventor -- meant breaking outside of the rules. Everything within the rules was already known; they existed to guide you safely to the point where you could peek beyond them and see something greater. From that point on, there were no guidelines -- only your knowledge, skill, and caution to guide you.

  It made so much sense now. Why couldn't it have made sense before? Before it was all over for him?

  Rosemarée slumped on a somewhat soft mess of rugs atop the trunk, leaning against the wall, staring into the crawling black nothingness of the lab.

  Splat.

  As unformed thoughts echoed in his hollow skull, a single drop of water fell onto his rugged hair.

  He glanced upwards to see dozens of metallic hooks hanging above.

  Another droplet fell from a hook onto his palm.

  The droplet was partially black, dotted with flecks of dark "dust" suspended within.

  Absently, Rosemarée stood and took a closer look at the hooks. His battered mind recalled observing the "condensate" and hearing a quiet patter of droplets, yet he hadn't investigated their source until now. A thin line of water running down the chain of the hook caught his attention.

  Looking up into the darkness of the ceiling, he noticed a small crack, with a sheen of moisture glistening on the surrounding surface. Another droplet of water leaked from this crack, making its way down the hook.

  Without shaking water off his hand, Rosemarée approached the table and pulled the lensóscope toward him, carelessly disrupting the orderly spirals of the Project. He gently deposited the droplet onto the special examination plate and leaned in for a closer inspection.

  The droplet was overloaded with the custom bacteria; a few of them looked somewhat familiar. This one, for instance.

  Looking somewhat absent-minded, Rosemarée mechanically set about decoding the rainwater. He slid open a drawer in the table, retrieving a small box of ampoules labeled as "start sequences", his collection of keys to the DNA-publishers he occasionally read. The long, slightly twisted bacteria was characteristic of A. Sqardeu, an old-fashioned yet ingenious man researching the topic of necrosis. Rosemarée was drawn to his articles since the topic of death felt very personal to him; and Sqardeu, nearing his old age, seemed to put all his remaining mind to solve the final mystery of life. It was very visceral and fascinating to see a man cling to life with such scientific dedication; a new issue means he's one step closer. To what end -- who could say?

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  He filled the syringe with the highlighter - a combination of bacteria engineered to interpret DNA and arrange a readable pattern after a series of reactions. He then emptied the syringe into the examination dish, adding a sample of Sqardeu's "start sequence" to the blend. The final component - a drop of rainwater - found its way into the same dish. Slowly, bacterial constellations began forming in the shivering liquid.

  He adjusted the lensóscope into reading mode -- this model came with one. The bacteria were already beginning to glow, arranging themselves into a pattern. A few years prior, he'd spent so much time reading these codes that he'd memorized them; each "character" consisted of up to four luminescent bacteria. They could typically emit four colors: Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow -- the latter corresponding to a larger bacteria. The colors represented different symbols, and their combinations mapped to the remaining symbols beyond the initial four...

  He fine-tuned the lensóscope and watched as the clusters gradually took shape. Though his perception of colors was compromised by night vision, he could still differentiate them based on the intensity of their bioluminescence.

  "...were able to be reversed. The seven main components were deciphered decades ago, and most can be readily restored, provided marker compounds have been pre-injected and prime ratios remain within normal parameters. The crux of our predicament, as you might surmise, lies elsewhere: Schwann cells, Meissner's particles, Pacinian corpuscles... While their restoration is theoretically plausible, they share one distinct characteristic beyond their basic functions: active state. This state fluctuates continuously as long as the body functions, and their specific configurations cannot be determined at any given moment. Yes, we can approximate their ratios, but their exact values? Let me put it in cruder terms: I could grow a perfect copy of your brain in two to three business days, cell by cell. But can I determine the precise state of the cells that make you uniquely you? The prospects, I'm afraid, remains rather dire in this regard..."

  Sounds like good old Sqardeu. Some things never change until the day they die, Rosemarée mused. Would he himself have time to change? The end of day was drawing near.

  He cast his gaze upward, toward the darkened ceiling of his lab, his face devoid of emotion.

  It was rainwater. The words of good old A. Sqardeu couldn't simply materialize here out of thin air. Rainwater in a locked-down, decontaminated laboratory. And the ever-so-cautious Rosemarée had chosen to dismiss it as mere random condensate. How convenient it is to disregard alternative hypotheses, isn't it?

  It's time, then.

  Rosemarée exhaled heavily through his now-redundant mask. Rising from his seat, he reached under the table and retrieved a large glass cylinder filled with viscous, dark green liquid. Closer examination revealed dozens of small white dots suspended within, like bubbles frozen in time. A second, concentric inner cylinder housed an elongated dark shape. As Rosemarée manipulated the cylindrical aquarium, the shadowy form writhed lazily.

  He positioned the "aquarium" on the left side of the cabinet, directly in front of an imposing metal device. The apparatus consisted of a stand adorned with dangling wires and various levers, all connected to a control panel beneath a large cylindrical cavity. With practiced movements, Rosemarée lifted the "aquarium" into the cavity, rewarded by a satisfying metallic click. He methodically connected the wires to contacts on both the inner and outer cylinders.

  The device awakened with a mechanical hum. Inside the tank, a voltaic eel began to wriggle, its body outlined by dancing sparks. Throughout the outer cylinder, charged particles encased in white bubbles slowly gravitated toward the contact point.

  Electricity was dreadfully expensive, but you had to have one of those in the lab exactly for the cases like this. Rosemarée got this fishtank from the Chemidiáté, along with some other equipment. He hoped he won't have to use it. Hope was a tedious thing as of late.

  Dim bioluminescent lights identified the levers available for use. Rosemarée found himself unable to look away from the last one, marked with a red glowing spot. The "BREACH" lever.

  The Project might have already escaped with the rainwater. It might have not. It wasn't hope for the latter that forced his decision, but a crystallized understanding, an undeniable realization that any action other than this might lead to a fate graver than another Prion Plague. Who knew? Perhaps the first Prion Plague had come about in precisely this manner, engineered by some self-replicating, optimizing Project that decided disrupting a few proteins and spawning an incurable disease would be an evolutionary leap forward.

  By pushing this lever, he was accepting responsibility for his actions, for his own stupidity.

  With a metallic scrape, the lever came down, and the world visible through the window bathed in red, vibrating with a low, ever-present hum.