There’s a Reason They Should Die…

"Hey, what do you think about this?" My girlfriend shows me something, trying to think of ideas for a senior project. "Huh, a laboratory?" I say. "Why do you bring this up?"

"It's supposedly abandoned, maybe even top secret! I hear there was a lot of research being done there, but none of it ever came to fruition after so much of it was destroyed in the earthquake a few years back. They were doing research that is similar to your major, you could write your paper about it! How about it? Huh?"

"Alright, we'll explore it a bit. Do you know what the research was specifically?"

"Nope! It's always been a well guarded secret, no one knows what lies beyond those walls."

"Okay, and if so much was destroyed, then what's the point of going if most of the secret research is gone?"

"Hmm, not sure… But! I think we should go find out!"

She grins playfully, like she always does when she gets excited about things like this. She's always had fun helping me with projects since she couldn't do it herself. She wasn't able to go to college because of a severe learning disability she has, so she's been working to help me through college. She's loved learning and working on projects since she was young, but had never been able to do any of it without an extreme amount of help from others. So, she's helped me with my projects, and she always finds some sort of way to turn it into a field trip. This time, abandoned laboratory. I don't understand how she's able to find these sort of things… "Come on! We gotta get packed so we can leave first thing tomorrow," she exclaims with excitement. "Alright, hold your horses a second," I retort. "I know you're excited, but I can't just leave all of a sudden. I need to let teachers know that I'm gonna be gone a few days, and I need to let work know-"

"I know, but you have a deadline that we need to meet!"

"The deadline for this project is three weeks away, there's plenty of time."

"No, there isn't. Just the fact that they're already having you work on it makes the deadline seem so close…"

"Hey," I say gently, holding on to her shoulders. "It'll be fine, you know that. I'll give my notices to teachers and my manager. Let yours know as well. We'll go next week."

"Okay… I would have liked to go sooner."

"I know, Angie. But better late than never," I tell her, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. I can feel her soft smile, she always gives off a happy glow when she does, even if she's a little sad.

We pack up the car and start heading towards the Nevada desert, where the abandoned research awaits us. It takes about a day to reach our location, which was a little harder to find than we had anticipated. We geared up like we were about to explore a cave, and entered the lab. It was dark, very dark. There was still electricity being supplied throughout the area, which was evident from the low hums of twitching lights and sparks from exposed wires every now and again. How had this place not caught on fire yet? We went deeper into the cavern-like lab, only getting darker as we go. Angie spots a room up ahead, glowing a soft, bright blue.

Upon entering the room, I knew this was where we were meant to go. There were filing cabinets lining the left wall, many of them left ajar with files and papers strewn about the the floor in front of them. There was broken equipment on tables in the center of the room, DNA slides shattered into pieces under crushed and shattered microscopes. "Dan, come and look at this," Angie calls over. She's standing in front of hole in the wall, obviously some sort of containment unit. It had bright blue lights that flickered from the set-in ceiling of the broken tank. The glass that had surrounded the frame was strewn on the ground in front of it. Inside the tank was a rotting corpse of some sort of sea animal… I think it's a shark. Yes, that's what it is, the corpse of a nurse shark. It had been here quite a while, about two to three months. But, something was a little off about it… A loud thud sounded next to me, knocking me over from shock. I hiss as the glass digs into my palm, causing the thudding to increase in tempo. I look at its source to see a very anorexic hammer head shark hitting its head against the glass. It probably hasn't had food in months, how was it still alive? Well, it's really hungry now. It keeps banging its head until the glass starts to break. It doesn't care about its own life enough in this moment to know that it'll die soon after the glass breaks.

The glass breaks, flooding the room with water, but it only ever comes up to our ankles before dispersing outside the room. The hole the shark created wasn't big enough to let it out, just enough to suffocate it from lack of water. I walk over to the filing cabinets, picking up soaked files and stapled papers. Something on one of the files catches my eye, "Hammer Head Adaptation" it read. I read the file to the best of ability seeing as it was soaking wet. My eyes widened as I read. They were performing illegal genetic alterations to these creatures. The hammer head was genetically modified to live for up to 2 years without having food, but because of the primal instincts of the shark, it will still feel starved and go insane without supply of food. The nurse shark had the same alterations, including an increase in healing speed and reduction of decay and injury. Well, that's why it looked strange. That nurse shark must have been dead for at least a year and a half then.

I spend hours scanning and pouring over the files. Everything that they were doing was completely illegal, but also very threatening. They have no idea what kind of damage this could do to the ecosystem if these genetically modified creatures were released after this series of tests. This modification to them where they can live for two years without food… It causes them to go insane because the hunger is still there. There's a reason they should die after not eating for a certain amount of time… If they don't, they turn into the blood thirsty monsters so many people believe them to be.