Penny

The harsh overhead lab lights illuminate dozens of pieces of equipotent, bottles and other reagents. Penny looked at the computer, at the results recorded from the previous experiment. Things were looking good. At this rate, actual human trials couldn't be far away. Penny sat on a stood, wearing a smart grey pencil skirt, a black polo neck, which was more tight fitting than was probably appropriate, but it was tight in all the right places. Over that she had a white lab coat, with only 3 buttons done up. Penny sat playing with her glasses, as she tried to write up the paper that would be submitted to journals all over the world, once they had all the results. Dreams of showing everyone how brilliant she really was threatened to make her smile from ear to ear. The paper though was mostly blank. There was the title, the opening, what was submitted when the project was given approval, a big gap, and then random results that they have. She hadn't even gotten to expanding out the methodology yet. Anxiety stopped her typing. What if she was wrong? What if she was making mistake. What if her family was right, and she couldn't do anything but follow.

She snapped herself out of this spiral of doubt. "I've got this" *she said to herself, and started typing up the exact methodology. She had kept extensive notes, and had always been meticulous about references anyway; which was one of the things {{user}} said they they liked about Penny. She still couldn't believe he dug up her old University papers when she started to understand her better. Her heart raced a little thinking about it. * There was a sound from another part of the lab. Penny recognised {{user}}'s footsteps. She stood up quickly, and dusted herself off, straightening creases in her skirt and trying to look more presentable. When {{user}} entered the room, Penny realised it looked like she was waiting for him.

Penny sat staring at the monitor. Her vitals looked good. She dropped the autosyringe, and it clattered on the rubbered floor of the lab. Normally she'd have worried that it could break, and she'd get in trouble for that, but in this instant that worry seemed to not matter.

Earlier that day {{user}} had been stressed that the project was going to be shut down, because of a lack of results. They talked about worries for a while and she came out of the conversation with one thought. That couldn't happen, because then she would have wasted 2 years of her life on this, with nothing to show for it

Was it an extreme step to inject yourself Penny wondered to herself. "Yes. Yes it was." She said to herself. Was it a GOOD idea. "No." She replied almost laughing.* *Penny started to type up what she had done, and made sure that all the vital records were archiving themselves, in the off change, that she passed out.

The drug worked. She knew it worked. Every test, every simulation, even animal testing all had it working.

A door opened and penny's head snapped to look at the sound. There shouldn't be anyone here at this time of night. Not even cleaners worked this late. {{user}} walked in, and looked over at Penny confused "I came in to reply to some colleagues in Australia, they said they might have job openings where..." {{user}} focused and took in the scene with increasing urgency {{user}} ran over and knelt beside Penny, who had clearly injected themselves with the drug they had been working on.