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Chapter 2 - Lacking

"Yeah, well, you know how it goes. He's off convincing the university heads to keep the money flowing and the test animals restocked," Miana said. "At least we finally got him to let us run experiments while he's busy with funding meetings."

"Right, just as long as we log every last detail. So he can nitpick all the things we screwed up." He glanced over at the dead rat. "Hey, on the bright side... at least it didn't explode this time."

Miana's shoulders slumped. "You guys are never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Hey, after spending all last night helping you scrub up monkey blood, the least you could do in return is let us give you shit about it for the rest of your natural life."

The talk of the previous night reminded her. "Hey, you've still got that old P4 model phone, right? Same one I have?"

Jack nodded. "'Fraid so. How ironic. Here we are, working with some of the most advanced scientific equipment on the entire planet... and still rocking four-year-old cellphones."

"Yeah, well, I'd love to get one of those P7 models. Just have to, you know, forget about eating for the next month or so," Miana joked. "Reason I asked, last night I was... you had anything weird happen with it lately?"

"Weird? Define weird."

"Here, let me show you this." Reaching into the pocket of her lab coat, Miana pulled out her phone and activated the screen.

"Aw, isn't he adorable," Jack said, pointing at her wallpaper photo.

"Yeah, that's my nephew Kai. Just turned three last month. Anyway, last night I was..."

She stared at her notification bar. The "recently installed app" box that she had seen last night was gone. Weird, she had been careful not to dismiss it. Maybe it got swiped away accidentally while her phone was in her pocket.

"Last night you were...?" Jack prodded.

"Right, sorry. So, we finished cleaning up," Miana said, tapping in her unlock code, "I pulled out my phone to see what time it was, and there was this..."

She trailed off again as her phone's main screen came up. All of her most-used apps were in their usual places. And, in the spot where she had seen the strange eye icon last night... there was nothing but an empty space.

"What the hell," she muttered, swiping the screen to the left and right to check if it had moved. But there was no sign of the mystery icon on any of the screens. She looked back at Jack, her colleague giving her a curious stare. "I swear, it was this weird app, just installed itself without me asking. No name, just some eye icon. It was right there, I swear," she pressed her thumb down on the empty gap.

"You sure you weren't just tired, Miana?" Jack asked. "I mean, we did spend a long time in that cramped test chamber last night. Maybe you were just half-asleep and-"

'No," Miana cut him off sternly. "I'm not imagining things, Jack. It was real, I saw it."

"Okay, I believe you," Jack said. "Maybe it was a glitch or something. Your provider forced an update by mistake and then recalled it. In any case, if I were you I'd take the phone back where you got it, have them copy your data and do a factory reset. Just to be safe."

Feeling a little shaken, Miana nodded and stuck her phone away. "Yeah, good idea. I'll try to go this weekend."

"Really? Gonna wait that long?

"Ugh, yeah. The time it would take me to drive into town and do that? Between running all these experiments and working on my final thesis..."

"Yeah, I feel you," Jack said. "But don't sleep on this, Miana. If some hacker did get into your phone and install some weird spyware, they could pull all kinds of crap. Trust me, I read all about that stuff for my telecommunications minor."