The Forest

-29-

The woman worked her knuckles into her eyes. Everything was milky and grey when she opened them again. So tired. Sydney stretched herself backwards over her chair, arching her back. She had the worst ache.
She tapped the screen on her wrist to display the time. It was one of those digital watches, the fancy type you can have your own clock-face on. Hers was a picture of a ten-year-old Micky with strawberry ice-cream smeared on his sunburnt face. Sand grains clumped in the corners of his eyes, the same colour as his hair, which had crusted into solid curls beneath the blaring sun and salty sea water. She managed to smile despite the 1:07pm that sneered above his smile. She had almost been awake for a full forty-eight hours. It wasn't a personal record, but it had been a while since she last pushed herself like this.

Sydney adored that photo of her little brother. Sure, he was grown now; he didn't have gaps in his smile where he was missing teeth, he didn't believe in the tooth fairy anymore (though after this, she wasn't sure what to believe) but Michael was and would would be her little brother.

The watch-screen went black. For a second she thought it died, then she realised she had just been staring into space for so long that it had put the screen back into sleep mode. So tired, her whole body ached for sleep.

Sleep could wait. A wonderful idea had been brewing ever since her first conversation with Azure, a vision that got better and better the more she dwelled on it. The only problem was that it came with a lot of paperwork. A few hours more, she reasoned with herself. Then she would rest.

The computer screen in front of her asked for a location code. She rifled through a stack of papers to her right, then frowned. She rifled again. And a third time.
"Where's the..?" again, she checked them over, then even knelt beneath the desk to make sure it hadn't slipped loose. And then she remembered. Daniel had borrowed the paper days ago, supposedly wanting to check some information that was attached to the back of it, promising to give it back the moment he was done. And of course it hadn't been returned.
"Men." The woman tutted. Sydney rose from her chair and stretched her arms to the sky, "Can't trust them with anything." Her neck gave a little crack. So tired, for the hundredth time.
I know, she sighed to her complaining self. Tonight would probably be another night on the break-room sofa.

Sydney half-stumbled through the door of her office, peering around for someone she had to look professional in front of. Cain Connors had mercifully cleared off back to the hole he crawled out of, taking Daniel with him, so she allowed her face to drop back into a baggy-eyed stare. Nica would show up in a couple of hours. Plenty of time to make herself a coffee— or order one from town, if the machine here was still broken. Which it was.

She walked the white corridors of her facility like a ghost. When she came to the doorway, she peered into the break room, "Nica...?"
No answer. Obviously. She trudged on.
"Daniel?" She sung, "Nica?" The only answer was the slight echo of her own voice. She was completely alone here, for the first time in days.
With a faint smile, she called, "Cain?"
Just saying his name aloud irked her. Cain fucking Connors with his big secret project, waltzing into her facility uninvited and acting like he owned the place. Had she ever barged into his workplace? No. Did she have the authority?— yes, but most people weren't rude enough to use it like that. And then there was her students. Daniel looked to her for advice on everything. Until yesterday, apparently. Cain was his new idol and Nica's latest romance game.

Conceited prick.

She came to a stop outside of Nica's door. The unspoken rule was that you didn't ever go into somebody else's office without permission. God knows what kind of papers and documents would be scattered everywhere— sometimes over the floor, sometimes piled up in front of the door. Sometimes a knock broke that previous thread of concentration when you were halfway through solving a problem. Oh, the pain of having hours of mathematics suddenly become random numbers instead of that equation you had been working on...