Mohamad stops at the door. His eyes scan the room. He expected three people. Instead—every seat is filled. Twenty. All but one. His. At the head.
Dr. Halvorsen smiles. A mischievous glint. Mohamad's alarm rises immediately. That look—MIT prank day. Every year. Always brilliant. Always disastrous. Always at his expense. Something is wrong.
Dr. Wong approaches, hand outstretched. "Mohamad. Been a while."
He shakes it. Firm. Controlled. His former lab partner. Now working under him. Dr. Wong returns to the front.
He glances at Jason. Jason swallows. Wrong. Mohamad scans the room again. Geneticists. Statisticians. Programmers. Project Eve core team. All present.
He unbuttons his jacket. Takes the head seat. His eyes return to Halvorsen. Waiting. Halvorsen leans back casually. Too casual.
The screen lights up. Project Eve. Dr. Wong begins.
"Phase I of the compatibility analysis began with candidate selection. Five female candidates were identified—"
Five. Mohamad's fingers still on the table.
"—based on exceptionally high cognitive performance…"
Five female candidates. His jaw tightens slightly.
"Two hundred eighty-five male candidates were selected—"
His gaze flicks to Halvorsen. Still smiling.
"—based on genomic indicators associated with physiological resilience—"
Mohamad's breathing slows. Controlled. Measured.
"Rather than assuming simple inheritance patterns, we applied a polygenic model…"
Polygenic model. Compatibility. Pairing. The words begin aligning. Not his sample. No. They wouldn't—
"Each female candidate was computationally paired with all 285 male candidates…"
The room narrows. His fingers curl once against the table. Male. Candidates. Five females. Pairwise.
"—producing 1,425 potential offspring combinations—"
His pulse spikes once. Hard. His gaze shifts to Halvorsen. Still watching him. Still amused.
"—for each pairing, we ran genomic simulations predicting probable offspring outcomes—"
Offspring. Pairings. Simulations. Mohamad's jaw locks. This is wrong. This is not—
"…polygenic cognitive potential… immune system diversity… disease risk reduction…"
His breathing becomes uneven. Not his sample. Not just his.
"All pairings were evaluated for optimal trait convergence—"
All pairings. All. His stomach tightens. His eyes harden. No. They wouldn't—
"The resulting compatibility index ranks projected offspring viability…"
Compatibility index. Ranking. Ranking. His hand presses into the armrest.
"One pairing demonstrates statistically significant superiority—"
One pairing. His chest tightens.
"…across cognitive, immunological, and physiological metrics."
Silence.
Mohamad's jaw tightens further. Five females. Two hundred eighty-five males. Pairwise. Ranking.
She wasn't matched to him. She was—His fingers slowly curl into a fist. Compared. Evaluated. Selected.
Like—
His breathing sharpens. A candidate. A variable. A breeding profile.
His eyes darken. They took her DNA. Ran her against two hundred eighty-five men. Optimized her. Ranked her. Selected her. Like a specimen. Like a lab rat.
Heat rises fast—violent—instant. His pulse hammers once. Twice. Hard. But he doesn't move.
Control. Always control.
His voice doesn't come. His jaw tightens harder. They didn't test his compatibility.
They tested her. With everyone. His gaze shifts slowly to Halvorsen.
That amused look. That damn amused look.
The fury spikes—sharp enough to fracture. But he swallows it. Still. Silent. Controlled.
For now.
"Male Specimen #314 with Female Candidate #3 produced the highest projected offspring viability—"
Mohamad's head snaps toward Halvorsen. Three fourteen. Dorm room 314. Their room. His sample. So they did run his.
His jaw tightens. Hard. They matched him to every woman. Evaluated him. Ranked him. Assigned him.
Like breeding stock. His fingers curl slowly beneath the table.
"—statistically superior across cognitive convergence, immune diversity, and—"
Halvorsen doesn't even look at him. Just glues his eyes to the screen. Calm. Clinical. Detached.
"The second highest compatibility pairing—Female Candidate #5 and Male Specimen #617—"
Female #5. The slide changes. Her profile appears. Ace. Her name. Her genome. Her traits. Her projections. Her body reduced to markers. Variables. Outcomes. Matched. Ranked. Compared. With other men.
Mohamad is already standing before he realizes it. The chair scrapes violently behind him.
The room goes silent. His pulse slams once. Twice. Hard enough to blur the edges of his vision.
They ran her. Against 285 men.
Halvorsen finally looks up. Too late. Mohamad crosses the distance in three strides. Jason moves—too slow. His hand shoots forward. The punch lands clean across Halvorsen's jaw. The crack echoes through the room.
Halvorsen's chair tips. He crashes to the floor.
Silence detonates.
Mohamad stands over him, chest heaving, fists clenched so tight the tendons tremble. "How dare you."
The words come low. Controlled. More dangerous than the punch.
His gaze sweeps the room. No one moves. No one breathes. The silence presses in. Too loud. Too sharp. His pulse still pounds in his ears. The heat hasn't left his chest. His hand aches. He becomes aware of it—tight, trembling, still half-curled from the strike. He inhales once. Too fast. Again. Slower. Control.
The fury doesn't disappear. It compresses. Forced down. Contained. Filed away.
His jaw tightens. Then loosens. The room is still watching him. Mohamad straightens his cuff first. Then his sleeve. Smooths the front of his jacket with deliberate precision. One breath. Another. His expression empties. The anger seals behind his eyes, buried beneath cold neutrality.
The mask returns. By the time he lifts his chin, nothing remains visible. He turns. Mohamad walks out of the room.
Jason stands frozen. Halvorsen tastes blood. Warm. Metallic. Spreading along his tongue. His jaw throbs where the punch landed—precise, controlled, exactly like Mohamad. Even furious, he hadn't missed.
Halvorsen exhales. Then laughs. A sharp sound that slices through the stunned silence. Someone shifts. No one speaks.
He pushes himself up slowly, fingers brushing his lip. Red. Definitely split. He rolls his jaw once. Still intact.
And laughs again. Harder. The room looks horrified. Confused. Terrified. That only makes it worse.
In all the years he's known Mohamad—MIT dorm room 314, the endless intellectual wars, the elaborate pranks designed to crack that impossible composure—Mohamad had never hit him.
Never lost control. Not once. Until now. Halvorsen wipes the blood from his mouth, grinning despite the sting.
"Well," he mutters, almost to himself, voice rough with amusement, "that answers that."
He pushes himself fully upright and turns to the stunned room. "What are you all waiting for? Let's take a break before we continue."
The spell breaks. Voices erupt. Chairs scrape. Mutters ripple across the room—questions, confusion, alarm.
Jason moves in fast. "I told you this was a bad idea. Are you all right? Where's—"
Before he finishes, Dr. Wong already has the first aid kit open. He presses gauze into Halvorsen's hand. "Another one of your pranks? What is it this time?"
Halvorsen says nothing, still grinning faintly.
Jason exhales sharply. "Male specimen #314. Three-one-four."
Dr. Wong turns toward the screen. The number. The slide still frozen. Recognition dawns. His eyes widen. Then narrow. "You didn't."
Halvorsen lifts a brow. Jason answers for him. "He did."
Dr. Wong frowns up at Halvorsen. "He specifically voiced against it. Every time you brought it up. He doesn't want his—"
"He dropped off the sample himself," Halvorsen cuts in calmly.
Jason and Dr. Wong both pause.
Halvorsen dabs the blood from his lip, still faintly amused. "I just used it."