Page 13 of See Me After Class

Of course, she did.

"How does it feel?"

I narrowed my eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Rejection," she replied gleefully. "I heard what Davenport said, Leon. Sucks to be you, doesn't it?"

I stepped forward and touched her arm. She jumped back. "Desperation doesn't look pretty on you, Ruby. Don't ever try that with me again," I said icily.

Ruby wrenched her hand away from me and ran down the rest of the stairs without looking back.

I marched toward the hallway and spoke to no one. I took a steak, cooked rare like I liked it, and cut into it ferociously. D. C. Davenport would be warming my bed yet.

She'd break once I figured out her failing and twisted it around to my advantage.

Then she'd come crawling to me like the rest of them.

They always did.

5

Viktor

"Dr. Magnusson?" Her voice, small and unassuming, rang in my ears. "Are you listening?"

I was, but I felt a curious sense of being untethered from my body. It wasn't evening yet, and I was already on a jittery high from all the caffeine in my system. The last few nights had been sleepless and hurried. But that wasn't the main reason.

My hearing tried to comprehend the words the speaker in front of me shaped with her soft, small mouth. I'd never seen someone so unconventionally beautiful. Her eyes were a spectral gray, almost glacial in their transparency. She looked like a living ghost.

The arch of her eyebrows held the question she had asked and expected me to answer, except I hadn't quite heard her. She reached out to touch the bare skin of my wrist. I jumped and took a quick step back, coming to my full cognition.

I was standing outside the lab, my arms stacked with notes for today's class. A class that I was, by all intents, very late to.I scowled heavily. "I'm sorry, I'm very late." I broke into a brisk walk, hoping this strange creature would leave me in peace. I didn't care for the way she made me feel.Exposed.Yes, that was the right word.

She didn't seem to mind my reluctance to entertain her in the least and fell into step beside me.Far too entitled for my taste,I thought sourly. Her ego clearly made up for her small physical frame.

Nice, Viktor. Come up with all the reasons you can to hate her before you know her.

I grimaced. Maybe I was being too harsh with the new girl. "You were saying…?" I prompted, hoping she'd repeat what she'd asked initially.

"Yes, Dr. Magnusson. I read your paper on regenerative cell treatments. It's quite groundbreaking," she began, her tone reflecting genuine interest. "The part about using pluripotent stem cells to repair damaged tissues was particularly fascinating."

Hmm. We had a lot of serious students in this institute. And then, there were some others with a particular proclivity toward flattery. But why would the new girl flatter me? What was in it for her?

For the moment, I humored her. "That's one of the more promising aspects. The ability of these cells to differentiate into any cell type gives us numerous therapeutic possibilities."

"Your paper mentioned potential risks, though," she pointed out.

It did. I recalled the hours I had spent in the confines of the research lab, standing motionless with my sole focus on the Petri dish nestled under the microscope.

The late hours were irrelevant compared to what I hoped to learn. Unfortunately, the cells in the petri dish did not multiply in the controlled, precise way I had anticipated.Instead, they sprawled across the dish like an unruly, expanding universe. They had deviated from their intended path. If left unchecked, this meant they could lead to teratomas, tumors with unpredictable intent.

"It's a significant challenge," I remarked coldly, although internally, I was impressed by how thorough she was. "But I'm exploring gene editing techniques that could help increase the precision of cell differentiation."

The new girl fell silent for a moment. We turned around a corner. "So, by editing specific genes," she continued, "you would theoretically guide the stem cells more accurately?"

"Yes."

"Funny, how we think we can control life," she observed quietly. "In a way, you're playing God, aren't you?"

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