Her office was just around the corner and she sighed in relief seeing the glass door as she walked towards it. Entrance to the building required a keycard activation, and she quickly brought out her I.D. The beep of confirmation was pleasant as she walked through the door, and immediately the secretary looked up from the computer of his reception desk and smiled at her.

“Good morning, Nisha!” He said, his tone as bright and chipper as the weather outside, and she nodded at him. “Screenings are today, please make your way directly to the main conference room!”

Nisha did as she was told, stepping inside the relatively large room normally used for meetings and business deals. Today however, the long table and high end chairs surrounding it were gone, instead replaced by simple plastic chairs running along the walls. Most of the chairs were filled by people waiting for their turn to be screened. Some sat, idly thumbing through their phones, while others read from book or magazines, and a few played games on handheld devices. Nisha herself stepped inside and found herself an empty seat near the door she entered through, placing her backpack on the seat.

She walked up to the far end of the room by a simple push door, signing herself in on a tablet attached to the wall.

‘Welcome Kakkar, Nisha!’ The tablet alterted her, the message popping up on a brightly colored screen. ‘You are number 37 in line, please wait until your name is called.’

Nisha made a face and took the little printed ticket provided to her at the top of the tablet, making her way back to her seat.

Well, at least she’d planned on there being a wait, and the newest edition of Strings Monthly wasn’t going to read itself. It had just arrived yesterday, and she was very interested in their article on how to perfect a good vibrato. 

The article was shorter than Nisha has expected, but she was more surprised that when she had reached the end of it, a woman bustled out of the push door, calling out names.

“Could Nisha Kakkar and James Merritt make their way through the door, please?” The woman called, after a moderately sized list of names.

Nisha stood up, quickly stowing her magazine into her backpack and slinging it along one shoulder as she proceeded her way forward. An extremely tall and lanky man with bright red hair and similarly red glasses followed her, nervously playing with the hem of his sweater as the two of them walked through the door. Nisha recognized him, vaguely, from the more technical and coding based end of the company. She was often around that department, helping to oversee the completed or constructed physical prototypes, before they went into more commercial beta testing. He always seemed nervous, she thought, as they walked down a grey painted hallway; following signs that pointed them to their destination. But then again, Nisha herself was not much of a talker either. At the year of working in her team, all her coworkers really knew about her was her name.

The two of them quickly reached their objective destination, a moderately sized room where people in medical scrubs attended to various other people in more business casual wear sitting at quickly constructed desks. Nisha walked up to an empty desk and sat down, expecting another noticeable wait, but instead a man in a labcoat and surgical mask was over almost immediately, holding a clipboard. He looked to be about her age, and had black hair that was cut in a simple and unimpressionable style, with bright blue eyes. He looked like a douche.

“We’re going to need a blood, urine, and a hair sample” he said simply, his tone curt and sharp. “We will also be conducting retinal scans, if the evidence we collect is inconclusive we will furthermore take samples of your plasma. If you’re squeamish around needles we can collect a sample of your saliva, please do not pass out.”

Nisha frowned, not entirely understanding the need for so many different types of DNA. 

“I thought urine samples were proven to be conclusive enough in most cases.” She said, and the man sighed as he flipped through his clipboard.

“You think you’re the first person to ever ask me this in the entire world?” He said, his voice showing little emotion other than annoyance. “Under contract we’re not allowed to go into detail. Are you happy?”

Nisha was not happy, but she knew she wasn’t going to get any better information out of the type of person he was, so she didn’t bother. Instead she carded her fingers through her black bangs, peered through the retinal scanning device provided to her, spit into a thin tube, and quietly left for the bathroom to properly collect her urine in a small plastic cup. The medically dressed man took all four without complaint or further comment, turning and leaving Nisha without any further instruction.

She looked around, maybe she could pick up what she was supposed to do next from observing the other people surrounding her. The man from earlier, James, caught her eye and gave her a small and nervous smile. She smiled back, the corners of her mouth tilting upward ever so slightly. Sorry James, that’s the best you’re going to get.

He averted his eyes, focusing them on his fingers, which were picking at the skin around his thumb. Nisha wondered idly if she would be able to read the rest of her magazine, she has saw on the cover there was some sheet music sample of a modern sonata inside this month’s issue, and she was itching to try it out on her own. As she was considering the logistics of whether it would be socially polite to start reading her magazine in this particular situation or not, the apathetic man came back up to her desk.

He dropped, without comment, a single piece of paper onto her desk. Nisha eyed him warily as she picked up the sheet, nervously unfolding it.

There was no letter, no list of her genetic background, nothing special. All that was printed simply on the page was a long bout of technical jargon, and then at the end,

‘Positive. 87% likely’.