Someone was full of shit, and he wasn’t sure if it was these AgriMed people or some part of the government.

He was going to figure it out.

###

Juan took in a deep breath. The smell in the lab was almost pleasant, not unlike the scent of sawdust—the result of strict air filtration and sanitation protocols. They were necessary in a lab that housed hundreds of rats in open-air enclosures.

He peered in at the rat in cage 153. “Hercules, how are you feeling?”

The brown rat paid him no attention as he nibbled ravenously at one of its feed pellets.

Juan had named this rat Hercules because of his unusual bulk. He carried nearly thirty percent more muscle mass than the normal rat, his fur was somewhat longer, and his metabolism demanded more caloric intake.

He was the first of the rats to be injected with the virus-carrying fragments of the latest algorithmically-generated genome. The modified genes, which had been injected during the beginning stages of Hercules’ development, had turned him into something unusual. The gene-laden virus had made him a living embodiment of the future of his species.

This rat was proof that the miracle Juan had been trying to create was actually possible.

Juan looked into some of the other cages—cages for the control rats. Subcutaneous lumps along these rats’ haunches indicated that the cancerous cells that had been injected into them were growing rapidly.

Hercules had been injected with the same cells, yet he showed no signs of any of the unusual growths.

He truly was a miracle.

One of Juan’s assistants, a gray-haired lab tech named Carol, was working nearby. Juan called to her as she carefully lifted one of the rats from its cage. “Carol, have you done a complete metabolic panel on Hercules yet?”

The fifty-something-year-old turned her gaze from the wriggling rat in her left hand and pushed her glasses high up onto the bridge of her nose. With a sour expression, she said dryly, “Oh, let’s see. I have two hundred fifty lab specimens currently under test, one intern whose only skill seems to be keeping his lab bench in complete disarray, another intern who is afraid of rats—can you believe it—and a third who nearly pees himself whenever I tell him it’s time to do something with the animals. So that leaves just you and me handling the actual lab work.” Carol raised an eyebrow. “And you haven’t been in here much. So… no. I haven’t quite gotten to running a metabolic panel on our wunder-rat.”