July 1st, 2021
0030 hours
Robyn sighed heavily, the weight of the last several days like lead on her shoulders. She gazed at the ransacked remains of her office and shook her head at the papers tossed about in disarray. Quinn Jones had a propensity to tear through lives like a hurricane, as he had effectively done to hers. Years of hard work, meticulously studied research, were gone or discombobulated so badly that she doubted she could ever organize them again.
Work was the only thing that kept her going after Barry's passing. He was so supportive of her journey, so proud of each accomplishment, that she couldn't give it all up. Likewise, her father wanted more than anything to see her succeed; now, in the dull glow of the light from the streetlamps, she felt more of a failure than ever.
Robyn wanted to preserve their memories, fulfill the dreams they'd made together: not just for them, but primarily for herself, that she might begin again and move on. She needed to become what she had always planned, never forgetting them but carrying them with her, through her accomplishments. In memorium, she thought ruefully, a burning, tumultuous rage beginning to brew within her. Robyn scowled, swiping up a stack of papers angrily and slamming them on her now empty desktop.
Robyn would be damned if she let that pompous, ridiculously educated excuse of a man get the better of her. She was angry she'd been injured, and while she knew she couldn't blame him entirely, most of it was his fault. Had he not taken over her necropsy, she wouldn't even be part of the investigation. It made her angrier still that she'd felt safe in his arms after, that she'd enjoyed the feeling of his warm, masculine body embracing her.
Robyn shook the reverie from her mind, eager to bury it deep within her subconscious, where she wanted it to stay. She grinned wickedly, knowing a secret that put her ahead of him in their investigation: while she had held her end of the bargain, and begrudgingly handed over her evidence to Gordon, she had smaller portions of the samples still hidden in a secret compartment in her desk.
She knew they would turn her house inside out looking for it, and since they'd already confiscated everything of importance from her office during the necropsy, the likelihood they'd go back there was slim. Her prediction had been correct, she mused triumphantly, sliding her hand underneath the smooth, wooden surface. She fingered the latch and opened the small, hidden drawer, excitement flooding her as the compartment swung forward, the small vials glinting in the dim light. She grasped them eagerly and grabbed the handful of rough notes she'd jotted down in her haste to preserve information from the seized files.
"Should I come back later?"
She jumped, startled at the teasing tone, and spun angrily, expecting to be met with a steely glare. A dark figure loomed in the entry, concealed with shadows, arms crossed over their chest.
Instead, Robyn stared into a pair of brilliant, jovial eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the figure's blond hair glinted in the moonlight.
"Zach!" Her heart was pounding erratically with adrenaline, sure that it had been Quinn who was interrupting her.
"Hey, Birdie." His warm smile flooded over her, a welcome relief from the tension the plagued her mind. "You didn't grab that drink with me."
Robyn mentally scolded herself for forgetting. Zach was a nice guy, and he didn't deserve to be blown off. That hadn't been her intention, but she could see why he would come to that conclusion.
"Shit, I'm sorry. I really wanted to but I just-" she began, but he cut her off, crossing the room in a stride and ruffling her hair playfully.
"I know. George filled me in earlier when you weren't answering your calls."
"Oh thank God." She breathed, giving him a perfunctory hug. "I'm glad it's you."
He frowned in confusion. "Who did you think it'd be?"
Robyn's cheeks flushed, but she wasn't sure why. "That effing FBI agent." Her tone was resentful, but her heart was leaping with a strange emotion she couldn't place. After what happened earlier, Quinn proved to be an even greater mystery than she imagined. Being alone after the attack would have been horrible, and she wasn't sure if she was happy to have someone console her, or if the emotion existed because it was him.
"Ah yeah, George mentioned him too. So, what are you doing?"
"Well," she turned, grateful to be focused on something besides Quinn "I'm going to do some tests with these samples I...harvested."
"The ones you stole back?" Zach teased, poking her in the side playfully.
"Well, they were mine to begin with." She growled possessively, again harboring a resentment to the newcomer thorn in her side. It irritated her that Quinn could get under her skin without being present.
"Chill, Columbo." Zach chuckled amusedly. "I know this is important to you. Uh, what can I do to help?" He ran a hand nervously through his surfer hair. Robyn frowned, pondering the situation: Zach was great with aspects of the game warden role, but in this situation, he didn't have the training or expertise to lend.
"I don't know if you can." Robyn admitted, shrugging her shoulders sadly. She hated to see him go: his easygoing smile was relaxing. "I really need George, he's the one who-"
"I'm right here." Came a second voice, as a shorter, stockier silhouette emerged from the darkened doorway.
"George!" She breathed, sinking against the desk in relief.
"You didn't think I came alone to assist a damsel in distress, did you?" Zach grabbed her hand and rubbed reassuring circles on her palm. "Calm down, my beautiful beach goddess. I have your back. Plus, I have no idea how to do any of this." He shifted uncomfortably, twitching nervously, before placing a hesitant kiss to her temple.
She smiled, elation elevating her mood to new heights, grateful for such supportive coworkers. Robyn smiled and kissed him on the cheek in return before spinning around and handing George a vial.
"What happened to your leg?" Zach's eyes narrowed, focusing on the bandage around her calf.
She glanced down, eyeing the stark, white bandage. While the wounds weren't too deep, she had needed a few stitches. Once Quinn carried her up the ladder, which was extremely impressive, Shepp quickly sterilized the area and got to work, barely hurting her as he deftly stitched her skin together. Shocking though it was, she was slowly becoming accustomed to these agents being qualified for almost anything. Perhaps they had to be, doing what they did for a living.
"I cut myself diving. It's no big deal." She lied, reassuringly; she didn't want them to worry. Her skin prickled, a lump growing in her throat as she recalled the horror she felt in those dark, inky depths.
A shiver ran down her spine and she rolled her shoulders, shrugging it off. "Let's get started." Her throat constricted in attempt to clear it. "Quinn thinks he can usurp me, but I've got an advantage over him. We are running these tests ourselves. He, on the other hand, will have to wait for someone from his lab to run tests and report back to him."
Her eyes sparkled with an air of mischievousness.
"So, did you freeze your cross sections or did you keep them incubated?" George asked, joining Robyn on the other side of her desk.
"There's a temperature controlled warming unit in that compartment." She gestured toward the desk.
"Brilliant." George whispered in awe, gazing at her with a newfound appreciation. "You're scary, you know."
"How so?" She mused, tongue stuck between her teeth as she began to prepare a slide. "Could you flip on that thermal cycler for me? I need to get these brewing." Robyn was running on pure revenge now: since Quinn had failed to instruct his team to destroy her equipment, she was able to perform her own tests without resistance. I'll throw that in his smug, sexy face, she thought, a manic grin spanning her cheeks.
"You outsmarted the most intimidating man I've ever met." George gulped, quickly switching on the machine and rejoining her. "I don't think he's going to like that."
"To hell with him." Robyn spat, inserting the samples into the cycler.
"What are you doing?" Zach interjected, clearly behind in the process.
"With Quinn? Playing some asinine game of tag, I suppose." Robyn gritted through bared teeth. She really didn't want to discuss the insipid, debonair devil that had taken over her life.
"Um, no." Zach frowned, stepping back, clearly uncomfortable with her murderous tone. "I meant, with those machines?"
"Probably a DNA probe analysis." George stated, gathering more vials and bringing them to the machine. "It will tell us-"
"We're starting with the automatic DNA sequencer." Robyn stated, cutting him off abruptly. "I don't want to be one step behind Quinn Jones, and I'll be damned if I don't solve this mystery first." She growled, overtaken by a sudden possessive, competitive desire to shut Quinn up indefinitely.
"You already prepared the bases?" George inquired, squinting at her in disbelief. She'd been just as busy as he, with trying to evade arrest, that he found it astounding she could have done so in such a short period of time.
"I told you," she hissed, completely incensed at this point "I'm going to make that man eat his words."
"What words would those be?" Zach cocked an eyebrow, eyes narrowing at her.
"All of them." Robyn snapped, shutting him up.
"Okay then." George grabbed syringes and began injecting the samples into the gel cells in the sequencer tank. "Why are you running the probe as well?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Well, I just turned on the cycler. I thought you'd already prepared the samples."
Robyn sighed, squinting through the darkness, the only light in the room emanating from the machines behind her. "Most of them, yes, but there were a few that needed extra observation. I couldn't put them in yet."
"What is it?" George emptied a syringe into the gel and turned to get a look as she raised a vial, the small specimens barely visible in the dimness of the room.
"I'm not sure about this one. That one, though," she pointed at the sample taken during her dive "is some sort of oil from the rig."
"Why do you need that?" George queried, eyeing the vial suspiciously.
Robyn shook her head, indicating her confusion. "Quinn thinks it's important."
"Of course he does." George eyed Robyn with a sideways glance.
"Why is it so dark in here?" Zach asked, blinking around, like a bat without sonar.
"In case Quinn has someone tailing me." Robyn answered nonchalantly, to which both men rushed to the window, peeking childishly through the blinds. She rolled her eyes, then flipped on her desk lamp and squinted at the sample before her. It was strange: she couldn't place the texture, and at first, she had thought it was a contaminated specimen. But the more she looked at it, the more it became clear that she'd stumbled upon a rarity, one that she didn't intend to give up so easily. She hoped beyond hope that Quinn didn't have one like this, though she knew that was a futile hope.
"I'm going to process it now." She yawned, inserting one of the small, oblong samples into the machine and plopping tiredly on her chair. "Get a couple hours of sleep here, or go home, whatever is more comfortable."
Robyn wasn't conscious long enough to hear their responses: tiredness hit her like a ton of bricks and she was out, only roused later by an incessant beeping from her processors. Her feverish, disturbed sleep had been plagued with nightmares of sharks circling around her, biting off pieces of her limbs bit by bit. The difference between her dreams and the reality she'd lived is that in her nightmares, Quinn wasn't there to save her. She shuddered and jerked, sleepily feeling her fingers and forearms, a rush of relief flooding through her as she realized she was dreaming. Her shirt clung to her body, soaked with sweat, her hair damp and limp.
She blinked the sleep from her eyes, bumping into a body as she stirred. She startled, bleary eyes taking in a form slumped beside her over the desk. George, she guessed, and noticing another figure curled up on the countertop, Zach too.
She smiled; happy they'd stayed with her. Turning, she retrieved the print outs from the machines, eyes still unfocused from a terrified sleep. It took a few moments for her vision to adjust, and when it did, she gazed in disbelief at the results.
They had to be wrong: for her to receive results like this, there must have been extreme contamination in the samples. She sighed and wearily began preparing new ones, careful not to wake her colleagues. Squinting at the roundish one. It almost looked like roe, though how it got inside the dolphin was a mystery. It might have been inside an unsuspecting fish the animal had eaten, but since the organs were missing completely, that seemed implausible.
Frowning, Robyn fired up the small, cylindrical saltwater tank on the counter, careful to set the temperature control to 22 degrees Celsius. She gently deposited the specimen, hopeful that if it hatched, it could shed light on the growing riddle surrounding the case. At that temperature, were the roe viable, it should produce something within a few days.
Weary and desperately in need of sleep, she grabbed a cold, half empty travel mug of coffee and chugged, hoping it would be enough to stall her ever increasing weariness. She was afraid to close her eyes again, worried the dreams would resume, and she'd be trapped again in the inky abyss of the ocean, terrified and alone.