“I’m going to head back to my place,” Cara said at last, breaking the silence of their table and jarring Kristen from her thoughts. “It’s getting late and way too loud in here for me.”

“Okay. See you at the meeting tomorrow.” Kristen smiled and rose from the table, allowing Cara to pass.

“Have a good night,” Steve said to Cara, and after she left turned to Kristen. “Another drink?”

 “Eh, I don’t think so. I have to be up early tomorrow.” Kristen said, not wanting to send even the slightest false impression of interest to the rotund computer scientist. She looked back to the undergraduates by the bar and noticed several of the more confident, or perhaps more intoxicated, guys attempting to catch her eye. Kristen took care not to meet their stares and grabbed her purse. She put a twenty-dollar bill down on the table. “I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “See you tomorrow.”

Kristen made her way through the increasingly rowdy crowd and out into the cool nighttime of New York. If Professor Vatruvia was preparing to announce what she was expecting, there was going to be a lot of media attention focused on their lab in the forthcoming weeks and months. Kristen cursed to herself as she walked under the humming streetlamps, passing dingy alleys and a few bustling restaurants and dives on the way to her apartment building. How could her research partners—and seemingly everyone in the world—be so obtuse to the inherent danger of the Vatruvian cell?