When vengeance strikes in the form of a bullet out for the princess's blood, Princess Aleia VonAuclair must flee the heart of her country in order to protect the people she loves and take back the pieces of her soul she'd lost to the girl she once l...
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"Okay, so we agree on using the protein TTR-GFP to conduct the cloning process in the yeast vector, yes?" Ivan asked, the tip of his chin tilting up from the screen of his laptop.
"Yup."
I took a sip of my milkshake without looking away from my own laptop screen.
Ivan and I had decided to take up shop in Salmah's Diner after class to start going over the requirements of our project down to the bone. The afternoon had thus, been a productive blur of milkshakes, coffees and food.
And while there were a couple options to choose from, neither of us could fathom obtaining brain tumour cells nor did we know where to even begin investigating non-invasive prenatal genetic testings, so, we decided on the next best thing: examining protein aggregation and toxicity through cloning. I was positive I only understood half of what that meant.
I finished typing out the blueprint of our research project and sent it via email to Ivan's laptop.
"So, we'll meet up at the lab tomorrow to start the experiment?"
"Yes," I said, hugging the glass of my chocolate milkshake to my chest. "Oh, wait. Don't you have practice tomorrow?"
"Yeah, but it's in the morning. I can squeeze in the lab after class."
I shook my head. "That's not what I meant. I mean, won't you be tired after all that? We could always come in on your off day."
"Nah. We only get one off day every two weeks. At that rate, we'll never get this project done on time. Besides, I'll be fine. I'm pretty used to it, anyways. All we have to do it figure out the logistics right? Piece. Of. Cake."
An ungraceful snort pierced the hushed trickle of the diner. "You say that now. I don't think you'll feel the same tomorrow."
"Ah, so you're a glass half empty kind of girl," he mused.
He took a sip of his nearly empty mug of coffee.
"I'm not being pessimistic. I'm only stating the facts here. The only thing that's going to be half empty tomorrow is our fifth cup of coffee."
The lean curve of his shoulders wracked with laughter. His eyes roved over his laptop screen for a moment before he closed it shut.
I didn't plan on going home just yet since I still had a few more assignments to catch up on. Ivan, however, had dinner plans with his girlfriend in the city, so as he packed his things into his bag, I slowly sipped on my chocolate milkshake. The glass was nearly finished, and I'd just ordered it half an hour ago.
"So, you planning on coming to our first game next week?"
I toyed with the ends of my straw and said, "I don't know. I might - just to support Nate. But he always tells me he doesn't mind if I don't come. Says if he screws up, I won't be there to laugh at him about it until the next time he makes himself look like an idiot."
