It was so hilarious, just how quickly things spiraled out of control.

  At the very least, he was alive.

  Discovering an non-restricted, scaling and rapidly self-improving entity, then dozing off a mere meter away from it, is not something from the "inadvisable" section of any chémetome. It's not needed; if one can't recognize this as a bad idea, they probably won't live long enough to apply any safety protocols.

  Rosemarée's table was covered by thin, black lines tracing peculiar circular shapes. At first glance, they seemed to grow like vines or roots, sprawling in all directions, but that was an illusion. Upon closer inspection, it was clear the Project was targeting items on his table. Several black lines, as slender as a sewing thread, clung to the test samples on a ceramic board. Another group of lines was woven into a jar of batch-powder, likely breaking down it's contents into amino acids, consuming it. Then there were the candles. Each of the four candles, crafted from special oils and waxes to burn for days, were ensnared in black lines that seemed to devour the flame atop the candle, obscuring it almost completely.

  The rest of the table was covered by a network of small "pearls", connected by black strands. There were larger and smaller pearls, and the width of the connecting lines varied as well; Rosemarée felt sick just thinking about whatever this has become, but the pearls were probably optimizing old cells and synthesizing new ones, and the black "vessels" provided them with resources and guided newly made cells to their... testing grounds? To some other, unknown purposes?

  A few of the processing pearls were emitting a thin strands of smoke, as he's seen before.

  Sorry Audry, it is not going to be okay.

  Let's count; aerial contamination, unsupervised optimizing self-replication of rank II (4-6 hours), schematic-divergent development of new energy absorption methods...

  All this brought to mind a single phrase, one that sent chills down his spine: "Cheramicques intervention is highly advised".

  A distant, but clear memory, that was. They heard about it on their first year at Chemidiáté: one of the professors was too busy "documenting the effects of Ars-L substances applied to human body", that he overlooked a centrifuge due for maintenance. Several experimental lifeforms were developing in that centrifuge, the centrifugal force enabling high-pressure reactions while simultaneously containing the creatures.

  Officially, the damaged equipment was blamed for the incident. Part of the story about Ars-L originated from the students of higher tiers, but regardless, a breach had occurred and the dangerous nature of the breaching creatures forced Chemidiáté's higher-ups to call in the Cheramicques. Nobody knew the details, but Left-A wing of the building was charred and sealed off for several weeks, and Hayskell Medicamentum was called in to heal some of the walls. More so, it was still smoldering days after the incident, visible even from a distance. Very few chemicals are capable of that, and... The professor was never heard of again. There were whispers of a private farewell ceremony, but no body to lay to rest.

  Other académists discussed the incident, though always in hushed tones. They generally agreed that the most effective way to clean up a bioengineering disaster was to incinerate it until nothing remained. Despite their private sector origins, Cheramicques were rumored to possess war-grade "hellfire" compounds and somehow managed to use them in close quarters without incinerating themselves, likely through advanced coolant implants. These rumors neatly explained the charred building and hinted at the fate of the careless académist.

  It was an irrationally exciting memory -- the intervention of a higher power, bleeding-edge compounds in action, witnessing something serious alongside his tier-mates. The incident even left its traces in the student-only black market, and Rosemarée managed to get his hands on some interesting items, allegedly splinters of Cheramicques' war-grade gear. Like everyone else, he dreamed of becoming the creator of such compounds, or perhaps a worker equipped with augmentations similar to those of the intervenors...

  He never pictured himself in the shoes of that académist.

  Standing there in the relative safety of his lab, under the dim light cast by the fading flames, Rosemarée felt trapped. Worse yet, he had only himself to blame. One truth he'd tried to avoid was his supervisor's warning: this project would likely earn a higher grade, but at the cost of increased risk. Real, inherent risk -- characteristic of his chosen field, not merely "risky" in statistical terms. And Rosemarée had fallen into a "safety trap"; despite adhering to all safety guidelines, he'd never truly tasted danger. Things always went smoothly for most students of his tier. Risk existed, but it was manageable if you followed the rules. Then there was the other type of risk, the inherent kind, independent of one's actions.

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  Having only encountered controllable risk before and carelessly grown accustomed to it, Rosemarée hadn't expected... this, despite his adherence to all safety measures.

  Despair began to exert tangible pressure on his psyche, prodding him into action. Perhaps the situation wasn't entirely hopeless; he had to determine just how bad things truly were before it worsened further or he lost all the hope.

  Splat.

  The worst-case scenario involved a breach; the best-case, uncontrollable spread within containment. Time to minimize the risks. First step: his trusty cabinet.

  Rosemarée rummaged through its contents, exercising just enough caution not to let loose anything dangerous. Lab-grown bone ribcage -- he'd dropped that project. A few crypto-preserved samples from two years ago? Those were preserved exactly to collect dust. A Va?le-branded strongbox? The very thing he'd been thinking about -- a splinter of "surely real" cheramium, sold to him by his friend. He might see actual cheramium in action yet, if things got even worse...

  He snapped out of this grim thought the moment his fingers brushed against a large, old-fashioned BLRB-99 filtering mask. Judging by the looks of the two purifying cartridges, it still had a few hours of use left, though he'd need to look for replacements soon. The left cartridge clicked into place as he rotated it, and the right one soon followed. Once the mask was on, the cartridges began to emit a pale yellow light, indicating that the purification reactions had started.

  Now he remembered why he disliked these. The smell. Some of his peers wore these constantly, taking "better safe than sorry" to the extreme. Rosemarée suspected one could acclimate to the scent, but it took some dedication to self-torture.

  The mask should now render the smoke mostly harmless to him. "Mostly" because he still did not know what is this smoke, and that's exactly the "uncontrollable" type of risk when working with self-developing projects. Next, he fetched a small metal box, which, upon being unlocked with a specific key, revealed several rows of ampoules with numeric markers to them. He selected the one he needed and took a syringe piston from the same cabinet, avoiding the reuse of the one now in the "contaminated" table.

  Identifying the correct marking on his arm, he quickly injected the substance into his bloodstream. Within a dozen seconds, he felt the expected itching sensation within his eye sockets. This usually lasted a few minutes, after which the effect became visible.

  After repacking the cabinet, he cautiously approached his table. If his Project had resorted to using the candles as sources of light and heat due to a lack of other energy sources, he would need to extinguish them, plunging himself into darkness.

  The candle flames grew brighter and blurrier by the second, while the darkest corners of the room became more discernible as his retina adjusted under the effect of Picilio's Mixture -- colloquially known as "kitty-eyes," since if you use it, you obviously can't afford a real implant. Rosemarée preferred to call it "cat-eyes." The genetic modification required for this adaptation is part of the Nurdov's Pre-Correction, a genetic alteration program applied to yet unborn children: improved immunities, prevention of most genetic diseases... His mother hadn't wanted this, but his progressive-minded grandsire, a proponent of all things chemical, had insisted. Rosemarée himself didn't mind; he was unaware of any major drawbacks and had enjoyed some minor benefits, like fewer stages of physical verification at facilities in Chemidiáté and a wider range of available Badbloods.

  He snuffed out the candles; yet he was still able to see in the near-total absence of light. He hoped that this will prevent the Project from feeding on the light, as some kind of plant would. Now he had to ensure it didn't draw energy from elsewhere.

  The first part of that 'elsewhere' was a jar filled with batch-powder, which he took and set atop the ash pile that was once the Project's protective shell. He recalled how the incident with the cocoon began in the first place; the "black mass" of the Project had seemed slightly off. He had a similar feeling now, but couldn't pinpoint what was the cause...

  Looking at the heap of ash, he realized it was due to his night vision; his ability to perceive finer details was diminished, causing him to overlook a smattering of pure black dots forming into circular lines amidst the greyish substance of ash.

  Impressive, Project. Very impressive that some part of you can either withstand the fire, or re-constitute itself. Naphtheniqúe mixture is a go-to solution for a wide range of problems, and its burning temperature was typically lethal to any lab-grown lifeform.

  Unless this lifeform adapts to protecting itself, and Rosemarée did not expect that the Project would... Of course, it was adaptive, that was the whole point, but it was not supposed to adapt to fire since it was not part of it's environment?

  Until Rosemarée had set it alight, that is. Good news: his invention can adapt to hazards on the fly; bad news: his invention has adapted to strongest hazard within this lab and now Rosemarée was helpless in the face of it.