Wonderful accident

Wonderful Girl had stopped by the Federal Advanced Sciences Directorate for what she thought would be a routine goodwill visit, shake a few hands, check in on safety protocols, and surprise her old friend Dr. Lila Serrin, one of the lab’s brightest chemists. The two women were catching up beside a containment chamber when an alarm chirped, barely a warning before a hairline crack in the chamber released a swirl of pale-blue vapor. Lila reacted first, slamming the emergency seal, but not fast enough to stop Wonderful Girl from inhaling a thin breath of the experimental compound. The heroine blinked, steady at first, then suddenly unsteady as the edges of the room seemed to soften and sway out of focus. Lila rushed to her side as Wonderful Girl pressed a hand to the wall, her thoughts slipping like sand through her fingers. The gas wasn’t harmful, Lila insisted—an experimental neurochemical mist meant to temporarily fog pattern-recognition pathways during cognitive testing—but it wasn’t supposed to be airborne.