The next few days proceeded normally, even though Giulia was checking on her newest graft with great anticipation. As she had expected, the new graft took a couple days to fill out as it produced the stem cells as she’d designed it to. Then, slowly, she began to see the reduction in the damaged tissues that she had been hoping to observe. Marisol was her usual, silent yet impressed self when she saw the initial progress.

The specimen was not much more than a head and shoulders connected to a few mechanical grafts that handled various biological processes. Yet after that first week, she began to find new growth along the lower edges of the specimen’s shoulders. Skin, muscles, and even bone were beginning to form. New blood vessels, nerve endings, and even hair follicles began to appear.

Giulia was on the verge of calling Marisol to come and see the new tissue growth when something she had not anticipated happening happened.

The head turned to look at her and then blinked.

Giulia nearly dropped the specimen out of shock.

“Ohmygoodnessdontdothat!” Giulia said in a great rush that smooshed all of her words together into one, almost unintelligible noise.

The head blinked its eyes again and nodded back and forth.

She’d assembled the specimen as accurately as she could, including all of the muscles, nerve endings, and so forth that would be necessary for movement, but there was nothing more than a rudimentary brain. Barely enough mental capacity to run the autonomic processes, and certainly nothing sophisticated enough to produce movement or, heaven forbid, thought. The whole point of this experiment was to develop the means and processes for grafting artificial, mechanical, and organic components onto an existing, living creature. Not create some new, living, thinking thing. The ethical implications of such work were well enough known to her as it was. Just working with the specimens that she had was already a fairly controversial topic within her field.

“Good morning,” Marisol intoned, startling Giulia once again and causing her to nearly drop the specimen a second time.

“Marisol!” Giulia exclaimed as she hastily placed the specimen back inside its tank.

She wasn’t sure how Marisol would react to seeing this new change to the specimen and so she decided in that moment not to reveal it to her just yet.

“How’s the graft?” Marisol asked with slight uncertainty at Giulia’s behavior.

“It’s going very well,” Giulia said. “No signs of rejection, the tissue irritation is all but gone.”

“May I see it?” Marisol asked.

Giulia hesitated. Marisol rarely asked such things of her. Usually she would just look around the room while Giulia told her what all had been going on. It was usually Giulia who was asking Marisol if she wanted to see things.

“Umm,” Giulia began uncertainly, “I’ve been working on it a fair bit outside of its tank today already.”

“I thought that the new graft was suppose to allow it to remain outside its tank for longer periods of time?” Marisol countered. “Indefinitely, even.”

“Well, yes,” Giulia agreed.

“Is it likely to be damaged by being shown to me?”

“No, sorry,” Giulia conceded and she climbed back up the step ladder to retrieve the specimen.

While her hand searched in the murky green fluids she thought she could feel Marisol’s eyes on her back. How would she react to seeing the change in behavior in the specimen? How would she react to Giulia trying to conceal it from her?

She found the head and began to walk her fingers along it, moving down towards the the shoulder where she could grab it and lift it out. The specimen wasn’t making this very easy as it twisted and twitched on its own at her touch. Suddenly, the specimen jolted and a sharp pain erupted in her wrist.

“Ouch!” Giulia cried out and she yanked her arm back out of the tank, blood seeping down from her wrist.

She clutched the wound in her other hand, applying pressure to staunch the bleeding.

“What happened?” Marisol asked, concern and confusion both playing prominently on her face.

“I’m not sure,” Giulia admitted.

She was at the wash station now and she stripped off her long gloves and began rinsing the wound under the clean water. Marisol was by her side, opening up the first aid box that hung on the wall beside the wash station and she began laying out sterile gauze pads and butterfly bandages.

As Giulia worked, the extent of the damage quickly became clear. There was a chunk of flesh missing from her arm, just above her wrist. Her bone was clearly visible as well as a few tendons.

“Did the mechanical graft get caught on you?” Marisol asked in shock when she too saw the wound.

“I don’t know,” Giulia said through gritted teeth. The adrenaline was still rushing through her body, helping her ignore the pain, but she wanted to get the area dressed and dealt with as quickly as possible. She just hoped Marisol didn’t notice how much it looked like a bite wound.

Marisol helped Giulia apply and then tape down the gauze pads, for which Giulia was grateful. Caring for any injury one handed was difficult.

“You should probably go to the hospital,” Marisol said when they had finished. “I don’t know if your skin will regrow well enough on its own. That was a pretty big chunk of skin you’ve got missing now.”

Giulia nodded. They’d cleaned it well enough, she supposed, but that big of an area would need stitches at the very least. They made to leave the room but a strange and terrible splashing sound brought them both to a halt. With a sickening inevitability, Giulia turned slowly back towards the tank with the specimen. She knew the sounds would be coming from that one.

Sure enough, the large tank was frothing and the shadow of the specimen within looked as though it were convulsing.

“What’s going on?” Marisol cried out as they both rushed over to the tank. “Do you think the bit of skin’s clogged something? Is it damaging the mechanical graft?”

“I don’t know!” Giulia cried out and she had to throw herself against the tank as it threatened to tip from the violent thrashing within. “Help me! Hold it steady!”

Marisol braced the tank from the other side while Giulia climbed once again up the step ladder. She didn’t dare reach into the tank again so instead she grabbed a hold of the many tubes and cables that ran into the tank and lifted the specimen up and out by those. She knew she was risking damaging the specimen since those cables and tubes were never meant to be weight bearing but she didn’t have many other options.

The specimen came up, out of the fluid, thrashing about. Its face contorted in an unreadable expression, its facial muscles spasming in some terrible mockery of life. As soon as it was out of the tank its eyes locked onto Giulia and it began opening and closing its mouth, sometimes slowly and purposefully, sometimes with frightening speed and the sharp noise of teeth crashing against teeth.

“What’s wrong with it?” Marisol asked as Giulia laid it out onto the table.

“I don’t know,” Giulia said for what felt like the hundredth time.

“It looks like it’s alive,” Marisol said quietly after they had watched it for a while, writhing on the table before them.

“It’s always been alive,” Giulia told her. “What’s different is it’s never been conscious before.”

“Is that what’s going on?” Marisol asked her. “Is it aware now? Did it bite you?”

“I—” Giulia stopped herself before she could say that she didn’t know one more time and instead said, “I think the stem cells may be doing more than just healing it. I think it’s trying to grow itself a full body.”

Marisol looked genuinely shocked as she looked down on the specimen. It was starting to relax now, or perhaps it was simply running out of energy. Either way it wasn’t thrashing around so violently anymore.

Consigning herself to admitting the truth to Marisol, Giulia picked up a pair of long tweezers to use as a pointer and gestured with them as she spoke.

“You can see new bone growth poking out here and here,” she said, “and there’s new tissue growth around the same areas. Since the newest organic graft creates stem cells, they can just as easily be used to grow new limbs as they can heal old wounds. It’s not that different, really, from a developing embryo.”

Marisol was silent for a time and her face took back on its more usual calm expression as she studied the specimen further. She even took the tweezers from Giulia and used them to lift and move parts of the specimen so she could get a better view.

“It’s growing, you say?” Marisol said at last and her voice was even and controlled.

“That’s my theory.”

“Then I suppose my next question is, what is it growing into?”

“What do you mean?” Giulia asked. “It’s made up of human DNA, so it’ll grow into a human.”

Marisol nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s head and shoulders are those of an adult,” she observed, “so will it grow everything else to those proportions or will it be infantile?”

Giulia hadn’t considered this, but Marisol pressed on without giving her time to really think.

“If it is in fact aware, what sort of obligations do we have to it, if any? Does this stop being a specimen and become a person now? Do we need to begin considering its human rights?”

“I could just remove the graft,” Giulia said. “Without the steady influx of stem cells the new growth should stop.”

“No,” Marisol replied at once. “I think it’s already too far along to stop it now without running into some ethical problems.”

Giulia didn’t say it, but she thought they were already in some ethical trouble if word of this specimen got out. Better to destroy it and pretend it never happened, but Marisol was in charge and Giulia didn’t dare contradict her.

“I want to see how far it will develop,” Marisol said. “Figure out a better way to contain it, and send me your equipment request list as soon as possible. I don’t want to loose this specimen!”

Marisol left the room and Giulia remained, tired, in pain from her injury, and utterly terrified by the thing on the table. It didn’t feel right referring to it as a specimen anymore, and yet calling it a person didn’t feel right either. A number of monikers came to her mind but she knew better than to use any of them. At least, not out loud.

For now, she set to work coming up with a new tank design. It would need to be much larger than any of the others she’d made in the past, and it would need to be able not only to contain a suspended specimen, but one that may be more active, and perhaps prone to trying to escape. She just hoped the bite she’d received was an accident and not a sign of things to come.