A Month Later…

"Well, hello there, Gwenny - it's been a while!"

Gwen laughed as she was welcomed warmly into the Waters home by Mr. Waters, who reached out and hugged her warmly - like he was welcoming his own daughter. Bryce reached out and patted a hand gently on her shoulder.

"She's been busy - too many new friends down in Generativity," he laughed, which caused Gwen to turn and look at him with a skeptical expression.

"New friends," she scoffed pointedly, rolling her eyes. She'd hardly had time to socialize in her first month of the project - if she had craved the feeling of being more productive, more contributory, her wish had been granted as her days had now gone from cataloguing specimens day in and day out to long days in the lab conducting her own independent research. Her work kept her so busy, in fact, that the only 'new friend' she could have cited was one that she was not prepared to tell them about.

"It's - it's amazing, but it gets tiring," she admitted as she sat down at the dinner table with Bryce and Mr. Waters. "They're really adamant about not digitizing anything we do, so we record everything by hand in these journals they issue to us - my wrist is killing me, but it's pretty amazing, having free reign to work on what I want," she said. Despite the fact that her face was clearly exhausted, both Bryce and his father couldn't help but smile at the fact that she seemed to genuinely enjoy what she did.

"What have you been working on?" Mr. Waters asked between bites of salad - his doctor had advised him that it was better for his heart to stray from the usual foods he liked, so Gwen and Bryce shared a glance and a poorly concealed chuckle when the older man frowned in disgust at the fact that he needed to change his diet.

"Right now, I'm - I'm trying something new with lysogenic viral reproduction. It's really interesting, and I think I might be onto something," Gwen said brightly - Mr. Waters gave a strange smile that seemed laced with something like sadness for a moment, and Bryce remembered the statement he had made before, that Gwen reminded him of an old friend. "I haven't been able to do much with it yet, of course, it's all just test samples and lab rats, but I think it could go somewhere."

Bryce had to admit, he rather enjoyed when Gwen went off this way about her work - she had never been this enthusiastic about cataloguing. Actually, he was fairly sure that no one had ever been too enthusiastic about cataloguing. Ever since they were in school, Gwen had been fascinated by biology, and before Generativity, had been growing incredibly jaded by it. In the past month, she simply seemed alive again.

"How's your father doing?" Mr. Waters asked. Gwen inexplicably placed her fork down and her smile became forced as she cleared her throat and nodded.

"He's - he's doing alright," she began. "He's not too pleased with the promotion, and we've had a rough time. Our work schedules have sort of panned out so we could avoid each other, but… it'll blow over. I'm sure it will."

Mr. Waters didn't press the issue any further, which Gwen was endlessly grateful for - her relationship with her father had taken an interesting turn indeed when she arrived to give him the news that she had already taken the aptitude test for Project Generativity a month ago. He had encouraged her to back out, and for the first time in her life, she outright refused. Since then, their connection had been strained at best. It had gotten to the point that she was so lonely for the presence of a father figure, Mr. Waters's interest in her work was more than welcome.

But she was sure her father would come around eventually. He had to.

"This is the most stable strain so far - I knew epithelial stem cells were the way to go."

Gwen pulled her goggles up and drew a sample of a clear fluid in a test tube into a disposable pipette for transfer onto a new slide, and proceeded to glance at it under the microscope. "The markers from the retrovirus are clearly taking hold in these, and it's working much faster," she added, but she wasn't talking to anyone actually in the room. An outsider would have reasonably thought she was talking to herself as many scientists often do, until a name slipped its way into her conversation.

"What do you think, Will?"

She glanced up at the screen on her Psi, where Will Caster was watching her work. This, unbeknownst to anyone, was one of the reasons she was thankful to have her own lab, because for the past month, she had been taking advice from Will on the new direction to take her research. She learned that while the life sciences had certainly not been his specialty when he was alive, he had interesting ideas, and a surprising amount of awareness. It had been a combined idea of theirs - though admittedly with more encouragement from Will - to infuse the retrovirus with a sample from his own nanoparticles, to see if they could, by doing so, merge his genetic material with that of another living set of cells. It had taken several trials to do it correctly, to successfully isolate the samples from the garden and incorporate them into viral genetic material, but somehow, Gwen had done it - she had hardly slept in the process and was a good deal skinnier because of it, but she had done it nonetheless. She had managed to generate nearly fully human cells with viral properties - an enzyme called reverse transcriptase that had the ability to hijack the workings of living cells and take it on as a host.

Unstoppable was a word he used once or twice to describe the combination of his expertise on technology and Gwen's extensive knowledge in biology.

"I think it needs to be tested."

"That's easier said than done," Gwen replied casually - she had developed a strange sort of ease when speaking to Will, it seemed that there was no difference between the way she spoke with him and the way she spoke with a real person - a live person. "Right now, all I can do is grow these cells in the sucrose solution - and it's working -

"But it's not enough -"

"Well, it has to be for now - and I'm arguing with a machine. Good grief," Gwen said, shaking her head in disbelief. There were times, she had to admit, that talking with Will Caster the way she did made her feel a little bit insane, especially when it came to them disagreeing. She was no expert - she didn't even know if a machine could be convinced it was wrong. There was no opportunity to say much more when Gwen heard the sound of the outside door - she reflexively swiped her arm across the table and moved a group of beakers across the surface to cover her Psi.

"Don't talk," she managed to say before the door to her lab swung open, and a man entered - Milford Duggan. Gwen took a few steps backward when she noticed the slight stumble in his step. He was drunk. He stared at Gwen as he took lumbering, clumsy steps across the small laboratory space towards her.

"Just stay quiet," Duggan said, a toothy, unnerving smile working its way onto her face. "And I promise, it won't hurt - it'll be good for you too -"

And he lurched forward, his hands landing on Gwen's waist as she was frozen in a brief moment of surprise. He groped and grabbed at her blouse beneath her lab coat, untucking it from her slacks and giving both sides a hard yank so that the top buttons came apart, separating from the garment and falling to the floor.

"Duggan, get off!" Gwen screamed, giving the man a hard shove, but it only managed to deter him for a moment before he grabbed a hold of her again. "Stop it! Get off of me!" But he didn't comply - he had her pinned against the desk, and his hand was roving up her leg, pulling at the waist of her slacks.

With another cry, Gwen reached out and grabbed the closest item in reach, an empty beaker, and broke it over the side of his head. He let out a near-roar of agony and clutched the now bleeding side of his head, yanking himself away. He wheeled around, but froze when through the gap left by the beaker Gwen had hit him with, he caught sight of her Psi - and Will Caster's face on the screen. He didn't know who the man was, but he knew that this was some kind of a secret. Gwen, in a panic, reached out and picked up a heavy steel extension clamp, giving it a mighty swing so it hit the other side of his head - he collapsed to the ground in a heap, and she dropped the clamp to the ground with a clang.

"Are you hurt?" Will asked, his voice as calm as ever. Gwen nodded, but looked down at Duggan and saw that he was bleeding badly from his head. This looked bad. If he died here, there would be hell to pay - she had to be able to at least turn him in, she decided.

"I have an idea," she said in a sudden, breathless voice, hurrying over and picking up the test tube from the rack that contained the solution of the sucrose and the epithelial cells infused with the virus. She scrambled quickly, wordlessly around the room and dug through drawers until she managed to find a large, needleless syringe. Drawing up as much of solution as she could, she crouched down next to Duggan's motionless form and covered the area of the wound on his head with it. Immediately, the bleeding seemed to clot and slow - the reaction was nearly instantaneous.

Now assured that Milford Duggan wasn't going to die from bleeding out of his head, Gwen straightened up and let out a breath as it sank in what had just happened. She ran her trembling hands over her hair, now tousled out of its neat ponytail. Milford Duggan had just drunkenly tried to rape her, and she had nearly killed him out of worry not for her own safety, but because he had seen Will and might try to tell. She shook her head, and wordlessly reached out, closing the screen to her Psi and walking out - first, she took Milford Duggan's access badge away, so even if he came to, he wouldn't be able to board the elevator out without anyone's assistance.

It probably wasn't the best time, but nothing tonight seemed to have impeccable timing. She made her way across the sub-basement level to the staff workout facility where there was a small row of showers. Making sure the door was locked behind her, she decided she couldn't function well enough if it still felt like she had dirt all over her - nothing she could see, but nonetheless a feeling of being completely filthy.

Gwen stepped into the shower and let it wash over her hair, her shoulders, her entire body - but she didn't feel any better. She clenched her eyes shut and ran her hands through her hair, fervently scrubbed her skin, and continued doing so over and over for what had to be an hour. She stayed under the water until her skin was wrinkled and pruny, and when she stepped out, she changed into the spare set of clothes she kept in her workout locker. After brushing her wet hair back into a neat ponytail, she glanced at herself in the mirror and felt assured that she look fine - that she had washed away what had just happened, and she could face whatever happened. She would go back and see how Duggan was holding up - and then she would turn him in and make him pay.

When she arrived back at her lab space and opened the door, however, there was no sign of Milford Duggan except for the small smudge of blood on the floor. Gwen froze and stared - he had gotten away. How was she going to explain what happened? It would be dangerous, Gwen realized, if Duggan went to the police first and lied - it would be his words against hers. She would need to get her hands on the security footage, and it would be a long, intense debacle. It was going to ruin everything…

"Hello, Gwen."

She flinched at the sound of another voice coming from behind the large supply cabinet, and she realized it was the voice of Will Caster - but the voice didn't emanate from the Psi, which was still laying closed on the desk. Instead, she looked up and saw a person emerge from the shadow of the cabinet, clad in Milford Duggan's clothes - but the clothes were overlarge on this man, and the face was one Gwen recognized, but only from having seen it on a tiny screen. He was a man who, at least in appearance, seemed no older than thirty.

"Will?" she asked in a breathless voice, taking a few steps closer as her entire body felt as though it were shaking. She stammered a few times and let out a few expletives under her breath before finally managing to ask one of the endless questions on her mind. "Is that you? Where is -"

"Milford Duggan has ceased to exist," Will answered - it was jarring now to hear the voice she recognized, but with such human inflection that was new and unfamiliar. She walked over and stared him over, her brow furrowed.

"So I - I brought you back to life," she said, reaching up and covering her mouth with her hands, letting out a slow breath. It was finally sinking in - the virus had worked, and worked more thoroughly than she had even thought possible. In the hour she had spent in the showers, the virus infused with Will's nanoparticles had managed to completely take over the host body. She shook her head in disbelief at what this meant.

"Gwen?" he asked, reaching out and placing a hand on her shoulder - she flinched, still completely awestruck that Will Caster was an actual person, a man with a body who was actually able to reach out and touch her. She lowered her hands and stared for a moment, and she realized that he stared at her with questioning, with concern. "I'd like to see this Mr. Waters that you've told me about. Can you take me to him?"