Arrival

"This is Akilah everybody, she is the new addition to the team.", says the Prime Minister's assistant(Benjamin) turning to face the other scientists, "Please treat her with respect and try not to scare her off, especially you Luna .", he joked the woman with a blonde bob rolls her eye so I assume she's Luna.

Benjamin holds out his hand guiding me to my desk. I can feel the eyes of my colleagues following me watching my every movement. l

clutch my satchel in my sweaty palms as I walk over to my desk.

At the desk next to mine, there is a rosy-cheeked woman who looks like she is of South Asian descent. She smiles at me kindly and I give her a shy smile back."Hi, my name is Kavya, what's yours?"

I sit down in my chair.

"Wait, sorry Benjamin already said it, it's Akilah, right?"

"yeah," I stare at my desk.

The others gather around my desk, making me feel even more uncomfortable

A chorus of names is shot at me all at once.

"Hey, slow it down. You're gonna scare her, one at a time!" Chastises Kavya.

They look at each other then one person starts to introduce themself.

He has a dirty blonde wolf cut, grey eyes and an angular facial structure "Hi my name is Holland, I am the team leader so I'm in charge."

He steps back allowing a girl with long flowy hair to tie it back in a pony forward.

"Hey, I'm Amelia. id say my best traits are my smile and how hard-working I am" she chimes cheerily stepping back.

The girl that Benjamin talked to steps forward."Hi, I'm Luna as you already know, thanks to Benjamin" she rolled her eyes.

Amelia began to speak again "over there," pointing to a tall handsome man overlooking an experiment," is Elio. He's really hardworking and concentrated when he's working but when he isn't he's a lot of fun as well as the fact hot" she whispered.

Everyone dispersed to their various stations to continue their work after they got to know me a little more and I started to organise my stuff and read through what I'm meant to do for today.

A few minutes later...

I got to work on manufacturing the artificial Plutonium for the fission (the splitting of plutonium using neutrons)part of the hydrogen bomb in the lab when Elio enters. He enters and stands beside me observing my work. This makes it specifically bothersome since I need to concentrate don't making a mistake. I turn to him "Can you move back a bit you're kinda distracting me? "

"oh sorry, didn't mean to disturb you carry on as you are."

His voice is deep and smooth like velvet.

I returned to my work on the uranium in the

particle accelerator.

"So," He began "what's your reason for joining the project?"

"I don't really wanna talk about it, it's private," I said my eyes unwavering from my task.

He continued to scribble away on his clipboard.

"Oh, that's awkward."

"No, not at all, I understand you were trying to make conversation."

I continued in silence for a bit. The air was thick, suffocating me from how unfortunately sheepish the room was so I decided to break the silence.

"what do you specialise in ?"

"I specialise in aerospace engineering," he said with great pride," specifically aeronautical engineering, it's a really interesting and fun field, necessary for delivering the bomb on target."

"So that brings the question, why are you here?

" Oh me, I'm here to observe the way the bomb is built so it does react with the metals in the rocket and explode before it reaches the target and I want to greet the newbie."

He smiles.

Can't lie, that was low-key cute but I can't be distracted from my goal of avenging my sister especially not by some cute guy at work.

My face remains blank.

"Well, I'll leave you to work. "

He exits the particle accelerator lab back to the main office in the building and I was left alone with myself and work.

3hours later...

I had finished making the plutonium, it was as bothersome and tiresome as expected but what was not expected was how many times I had messed up and created like ten other elements. Even when Elio wasn't distracting me!! Maybe he just shook me up a bit.

Anyways it doesn't matter, I still finished what I needed to do and now I'm done for the day.

"Bye everyone, " I said as I approached the exit to clock out and leave the premise.

"bye see you tomorrow," waved Kavya.

I smiled and waved back at her.

She's such a pleasant person, I look forward to seeing her in the coming weeks.

I entered the cold night air and walked to the nearest bus stop.

I had to do this to keep the research centre secret and anonymous so spies from Aladonias do not suspect me.

I took a 20-minute walk to the bus stop where I'm meant to catch the 185 bus to the university apartments.

The night air is warm with a cool breeze cooling me down every so often. Clouds disguise the moon's bright and illuminating light. Faulty street lights barely elucidate the street making the place seem dingy and rough.

I make a beeline for the bus stop as I see the bus slowly pulling up.

My speed walk turns from a jog to a run.

I arrive at the bus stop, pay my bus fare and rest in their not-so-comfortable seats.

The bus stops like 6 times until it reached my stop and by this point I'm knackered.

I haul my body off the bus and drag my feet to my apartment where I see Daniel waiting for me with a container containing some sweet sweet food.

One thing about Daniel is that he cooks like a prize housewife, his food will always leave you wanting more and more until you burst from an overly satisfied stomach.

"How was work?"

"Ok, but now that you've brought me food it cancels out all the 'ok' and leaves me with nothing but joy." he handed me the food and walked me up to my apartment .