Element X

"...of 99 and a low of 70. Folks, its going to be a scorcher. Now moving in from the east-"

"There's nothing on," you mutter, taking a sip of warm, flat soda from yesterday and grimacing as you shut off the TV. Your apartment is a mess, with books and papers stacked haphazardly and soda and beer cans strewn about. Ordinarily you think you are rather tidy, but, lately, your life has been anything but normal. It is finals week of your last semester as an undergraduate premed student, and you have had little time for anything but cramming. This is entirely your fault, as you have spent most of the semester coasting by; on a good day, you'd go to class, but that was about 75% of the time, which reflected your grades quite well. Of course you also spent much of your time looking for ways to make money with little effort, which is how you stumbled across the Helios Pharmaceuticals challenge.

This contest was advertised, funnily enough, by your school advising team. Helios had recently, as your sometimes-annoying premed classmates constantly remind you, begun advanced testing of their Xcine prototype: a vaccine for the most common of common cold viruses, the rhinovirus. As such, Helios set a challenge to any college student across America: find the flaw in Xcine that killed the lab rat test subjects. It seemed that Xcine was a little too powerful; sure, it killed the rhinovirus, but the lab rats didn't make it either.

So, you crammed, but not for finals. You had your eyes on the contest's $100,000 paid internship reward with Helios Pharmaceuticals itself. Fueled by junk food, caffeine, and , you pored over the several hundred pages of the research report.

Finally after three straight days of work, you laughed as you thought you found the answer. Craving sleep and feeling completely delirious, you had typed out your contest submission and passed out.

Presently, you hear your email notification beep from you laptop. On your way over, your reflection stares back in the mirror.