Doll and James

My dad always used to say that

"This has probably been the most insane day of my life," William told, slightly interrupted by a yawn.

"You're telling me," Lana agreed, glancing at her computer screen.

"Orders are still coming through," she told him, turning back around. Sitting by each their desk, their bodies were turned to the once again empty room.

"Bloody hell," Will breathed out, leaning back further in his chair. Lana hummed in agreement.

"We're going to have to hire more people," he realised flatly. Lana nodded.

"Already put a billion adds out," she told.

"For what?" William asked, spinning his chair to look at her.

"I offered Anna the title of product manager, simply because we don't have time to look for someone else. She'll have to do. But besides that, I put out ads for CTO, sales manager, assistants, secretaries, CFO, human resource manager, customer service representative and CMO," Lana listed, looking at her notepad to make sure she'd mentioned all.

"You want a chief marketing officer? I thought you wanted to be in charge of marketing?" William asked, sounding tired.

"I don't want a CMO, we need a CMO," Lana told him, equally tired. William nodded in reply.

"That's not enough people. You know that, right?" he asked, looking at her.

"I know," she admitted; "I've put in every ad that experience in leadership is only a plus. We'll have to delegate and have someone else do the interviews, preferably the HR manager. All the students have been great, and we're not laying them off, but we need someone who knows what they're doing. No way in hell can we run all of this on our own, I can hardly keep up as it is."

"Lana, love?" William asked tiredly.

"Yeah?" Lana replied, closing her eyes.

"There's no one I'd rather do this with than you. Whether it had turned out to be the biggest fail of our lives and we'd been sitting in crushing debt... I'm happy you're the one I'm sitting with," he told her. Lana smiled, not opening her eyes.

"Right back at you," she told him, making him smile as well.

"We should probably head home. Get some sleep," he specified.

"Mh. Probably," Lana admitted, groaning slightly as she opened her eyes.

"C'mon, you lazy woman," he ordered, standing up.

"I'm up, I'm up," Lana complained, forcing herself to stand up.

"When do we start tomorrow?" he asked, smiling tiredly.

"You can sleep in, you know," she told him.

"When are you coming in?" he asked instead.

"Six," she told quickly.

"See you at six," he told, kissing her cheek before heading towards the door.

"See you at six," she agreed, smiling as her friend walked off.

She ran her hands through her by then loosened hair, taking a deep breath before picking up her phone and keys, deciding to leave the rest behind for the next day, knowing she'd be too tired to work once she got home anyway.

She made sure every window was closed properly before locking the back door, turning off the lights and stepping out into the dark street, locking the door behind her and making a mental note to work out some kind of security system.

Could she use someone else's system until MSS was fully functional, or would that reflect poorly on them? Could they use the offices to test out the first system line? As her train of thoughts went on, she hardly noticed the sound behind her, only turning around at the very last moment. She jumped back from the glowing circle on the ground, the black void in the middle surrounded by a ring of fiery sparks. She gasped slightly as she did so, suddenly much more awake. She leaned slightly forward to look at the sudden appearance.