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Chapter 10 - Exploit

At the beginning of the night, Miana had just seen this whole experience as a means to an end. An excuse to spend as much time as possible next to one of her team members, and keep the Cyclops at bay for a while.

But it had turned out that making love to Sandra was exactly what she had needed. The whole time, she hadn't thought about Jessup, or the project, or that goddamn app at all. Miana couldn't remember the last time she hadn't been thinking about one of those things in the past few months. But while she and Sandra had been together... Miana had been at peace.

Might have to make this a regular thing, Miana thought, lightly stroking at Sandra's bare arm draped over her. Until the project is complete, at least. I'll wait to break things off with her until then.

Most nights, Miana could spend up to an hour lying in bed, waiting for her overactive mind to finally quiet itself so she could drift off to sleep.

But tonight, it was only a few minutes before Miana felt the conscious world fading away.

* * *

"Mmm," Miana moaned, slowly opening her eyes to the dim light around. It took her a moment to regain her bearings in the strange bedroom. After a minute or so, she finally remembered where she was.

And then she heard it. Vaguely, but definitely there. A soft, intermittent buzz coming from the other room.

No, dammit. You were supposed to leave me alone tonight.

Obviously, the Cyclops was trying to be subtle. Not playing the beeping melody, but making her phone vibrate to get her attention. Miana wanted to ignore it, but after the last time of trying that, she didn't want to risk everyone in Sandra's apartment building getting a late-night notification with her picture attached.

She shifted slowly across the bed, moving out from under Sandra's limp arm draped over her body. Sandra shifted slightly and Miana paused, waiting for her to drift back to sleep. Once Sandra's steady breathing resumed, Miana pulled completely away from her and up to her feet.

The cool night air sent prickly fingers across her naked body. She started to reach for some of her crumpled clothes on the floor, but the buzzing from the next room was sounding more and more insistent by the second.

"You sick son of a bitch," she quietly muttered, as she left the bedroom and made her way through the apartment back to where she left her phone. As she walked, she noticed something odd about the buzzing sound. The rhythm of the pulses was different than when the Cyclops had muted himself before.

It almost sounded... like it was just her phone ringing.

Was the Cyclops calling her? Or someone else? Her eyes caught a clock on the wall of Sandra's living room: it was just past midnight. So it had to be the Cyclops. Who else would call at this hour?

She paused for a moment before picking up her phone, remembering her current state of undress. But the hell with it. At this point, if the Cyclops wanted to see her naked, he'd had plenty of opportunities. Let the son of a bitch get an eyeful.

Her phone was in her hand, the screen glowing in the dim moonlight coming through the windows. It was an incoming call. But no one that Miana had in her contacts, as the screen just listed the caller's phone number without a name. Miana fought the urge to let out a groan. After getting all freaked out, it probably was just some spam caller trying to convince her that her computer had been compromised or to buy impotence pills, some crap like that.

Well, she was awake, anyway. Might as well answer. "Hello?" she said, after sliding the button across her screen to accept the call.

"Ah, good evening, Ms. Xing. You are doing well, I hope?"

For a moment, she couldn't place the voice. The two of them rarely spoke by phone, so she wasn't used to hearing him through the tinny speaker at her ear. Once she did, however, part of her still couldn't believe it.

"Dr. Jessup? You... what is this about?" She looked again at the clock. "Did something else happen at the lab?"

"No, Ms. Xing. Everything is fine at the lab," Jessup said. There was something in his voice that put Miana on edge. A peculiar cheerfulness that she'd never heard before. "We should be all set to begin experiments again on Monday."

"Okay... so what are you calling me for? It's pretty late."

Jessup chuckled into the phone. "Ah, yes, my apologies. I'm afraid this cannot wait until tomorrow. You are familiar with my colleague, Raymond Davenport, yes?"

Miana sat down on the couch, trying to puzzle out what exactly was going on. "Uh... a little, I guess. He's in the Electrical Engineering department, right?"

"Correct, Ms. Xing. I was speaking to him earlier this evening regarding the... tragic incident with his energy storage project. After the proverbial dust had settled, he had the members of his team... well, the ones that weren't injured, of course... run a full diagnostic on the device, to determine the cause of the incident. Do you know what they found?"

Miana didn't like this. Jessup bringing up Davenport reminded her of what she had been doing around this time last night. Huddling in fear while Jessup came terribly close to discovering her mid-sabotage. "Dr. Jessup, I don't mean to be rude," she said, doing her best to keep her voice pleasant. "But could we talk about this in-"

Jessup talked over her. "Nothing, Ms. Xing. They found absolutely nothing at all. As far as they could tell, the discharge was simply a freak accident. An oversight that nearly resulted in tragic circumstances."

"Oh," Miana said, at a loss for what else to say.

"That's it? I would have thought you'd be pleased, Ms. Xing," Jessup said.

Miana was three seconds away from hanging up. "Why is that supposed to mean?" she asked, frustration at the edge of her voice.

"Pleased, Ms. Xing," Jessup said, soundingalmost gleeful, "that your sabotage was undetected."