They were instructed to stay away from the windows, pull down all blinds, and remain as silent as possible as they worked during the twenty-four hour period. Hemlines of lab coats swept against knees as biotechnologists raced around the floor, doing a clean sweep of all the rooms; a mandate issued to them by the CEO. Some hovered over hotplates, cooking live samples of bacteria and cells into a bubbling concoction, rupturing membranes and contaminating the floor with a foul smell. Others retrieved notebooks and files for the woman stationed in the printing room, her rough fingers shoving all remnants of their failures and successes into a shredder. A large mass of confetti was piled at the center of the said room. They had plans to later burn it before exiting.

There were also a select few down in the basement, putting the lab mice and other specimens into an eternal slumber. It was protocol to euthanize any test subjects once the experimentation was over. As inhumane as it may seem to those outside the bio realm, it was the way things had to be done.

The blaring of sirens still echoed in their ears long after it had initially stopped. All the citizens had already been evacuated earlier in the day to the far west side of the city. The people who were currently here in the building were supposedly the only few who stayed behind.

The government had informed the civilians it would take at least two weeks before the enemy would be able to step one foot within the city on the condition that they could somehow manage to overpower their own acts of defense. However, it had taken merely two days for the front line to reach the city border, and thirty minutes for the warfare to make its way into the very heart of the financial district. Twenty-one thousand worker bees had been smoked out of their hives. Twenty-one thousand worker bees had stung their way through shops and privately-owned businesses in a riot as they fled en masse towards grasslands and untamed wilderness.

Eleven miles of cars veered askew, mailboxes turned over, broken glass, and deserted roads were all that separated the financial district from the Avalon Building--the establishment the scientists were currently grinding away in. But that was during the evening, it was midnight now and no one knew how far the enemies had moved since then or in which direction. They had no eyes outside the walls of the laboratory.

Perhaps they had decided to travel further south to capture the intelligence center of the capital immediately, or maybe they had plans to fan out for resources first. However, if raiding critical facilities was a part of their mission, then everyone inside Avalon was doomed.

A utility door swung open, and in walked one of the biotechnologists snapping a glove at the wrist. Single, aged thirty-four, with strands of gray hair already accumulating at his hairline, he was the youngest of the unit. Standing stiffly at one of the counters, the man wet the palms of his gloved hands with buffer--a translucent, odorless liquid---before reaching into an apparatus and extracting a gel cassette. He separated the two plastic plates and peeled back a thin sheet of substance that resembled gelatin.

The man was followed a minute after by his senior, who, with purposeful steps, made his way toward him at the counter nearest the exit.

"You alright, Sangjoon?" his senior asked.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

His senior did not respond, and a thickening silence soon fell upon them in layers, slowly but surely suffocating the two. A catalog of worries was streaming through Sangjoon's mind. What to dispose of next. What to destroy next. What to take with him. What to leave. How to escape. What to do if Avalon were raided at this very moment--

"Hey, Sangjoon. You ripped the polyacrylamide."

Looking down at his hands, there was indeed a miniscule tear cutting diagonally across the block of gel. Sangjoon released an unintelligible curse before dumping it into the disposal. Not like he was going to salvage it anyway. It was against protocol to remove anything from the lab.

"Are the jitters getting to you?"

Sangjoon, removing his gloves before setting both hands flat against the countertop, asked in a hushed tone, "Has the CEO decided what he wants to do with the kids yet?"

There was a pause before his senior finally answered with a shake of his head, "No."

"God. What is he doing? What is he thinking? We don't have much time left. Is he still in the building? Have you seen him? We have to reach a decision before the enemy gets here."

"Sangjoon, calm down," the older man advised. "You're still young, so I can see that you're very passionate about things. I understand. I feel the same way. We've been developing these trials together for the past five years, and you're always making me remind you to keep a clear head."

"Thinking about it just makes me sick. I have a niece and nephew of my own. I see them almost every weekend. The youngest just started elementary."

With a sigh, his senior reached for another gel apparatus. "How are your folks holding up?"

"The nursing home had moved my parents in the morning."

"And your sister?"

"She left yesterday. Rang an hour before the communications were cut. She kept asking when I was coming, and she wouldn't stop complaining about how wrong it was for the CEO to hold us back like this."

"Did you tell her? Did you tell her it was crucial that we destroy all traces of our current experiment?"

"Yes, I told her that. About how it could be used as incriminating evidence against us if we are ever somehow brought in to court as war criminals." War criminals. Sungjoon then violently his gloves into the disposal, his eyes watering as he drew in a breath. "I have a niece and nephew of my own. The ones down there, they're only kids as well. Babies. We grew them in test tubes. Raised them, fed them, clothed and bathed them. And for what? So we can market them to Security and Defense as some living, breathing weapons of mass destruction? That's devaluing human life. It's unethical. And now that we can't continue with the experiment since we basically lost the war, we're actually considering killing children? Everything is so wrong on so many levels."

"Sangjoon, I know you worked very closely with the kids, and I get that. But that's also the reason why they didn't want you cleaning up down in the basement. You're young, and you have to understand sooner or later that sacrifices must be made. Sometimes science can be unethical, immoral, wrong, but someone has to do it. It's better us than another company who will truly do evil with them."

"How do we know we're not the evil ones?"

His senio