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And she hoped he would let her help him walk through this. That maybe in some way, all their jagged parts would fit together to make some sort of beautiful whole.
The morning between them was quiet and comfortable. They both had work to do—Mark trying to help identify the man who’d tried to kill Sarah, and Jenna working on further compounds to see if they could help the woman regain her memory.
After lunch, they headed over to the county lab. It was much better equipped than the hospital—the kind of lab Jenna would have set up for herself if she were interested in doing this work full time. Well, maybe it didn’t have every bell and whistle, but she was content with what she had. This would allow her to make good progress.
She wanted to be ready for when the next robot was found.
Part of that was through trying to help Sarah regain her memories. Even if the memories the woman recovered weren’t helpful in taking down Joaquin, Jenna wanted to give her back as much of her life as possible.
Just because the sequence Joaquin’s bioengineers created had caused Sarah’s brain to short-circuit and dissolve her memories didn’t mean the memories were no longer there. It was harder than one imagined to fully wipe someone’s memory.
The easiest solution was to create some sort of mental work-around. To come at the memories from a different angle. Sarah’s brain still stored all the info; Jenna needed to figure out a way to trick her system into accessing it.
Hopefully, once Jenna did that, it would be possible to immediately reverse effects on future robots.
If Jenna could actually do it.
Shewould. She had helped start this nightmare, and she would help end it. Now, it was a question of doing it before the next robot was found.
As she worked all afternoon and into the evening, Mark sat at a computer on the other side of the lab going through a very sensitive database of the secret government backup servers. He was trying to piece together where Joaquin might send the next robot or any kind of clue about what that bastard was ultimately trying to do.
Through the hours, she’d been sneaking glances at him. He’d been doing the same to her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this. Giddy and light-headed and distracted, despite the importance of her work.
“Well,” Mark said. “Shit.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “The server search is too broad. They’re all over the country. Without knowing what intel Joaquin is trying to get from them, it’s too many to narrow down.”
Jenna input another sample compound and set it to run. She needed to wait for the results, so she walked over to him. “We know two were the Department of Transportation and the IRS. What was the first one?”
Mark checked. “FEMA.”
“That doesn’t seem to make sense. Those aren’t the agencies you’d expect Joaquin to dig into.”
“So, a dead end.” Mark leaned back in his seat. “Yet another one. They weren’t able to find the guy who tried to attack Sarah either.”
He still felt guilty about letting the man get away. Omega Sector agents had been looking along with the local police, but it was as if he disappeared into thin air. It wasn’t surprising if he was under the same chemical subjectification as the other robots. The programming would tell him where to go, make him stronger and faster and not let him stop until he was where he needed to be or died.
The syringe he’d tried to inject Sarah with had contained poison that would have killed her in minutes. Whatever Joaquin was doing, he very much didn’t want it getting out.
Jenna rubbed Mark’s shoulders. “If it helps, even if you would’ve caught him, he probably still wouldn’t have been able to tell us anything. He’d be under the same chemical and genetic modifications as Sarah and the other robots.”
“I’d like to know that for sure, rather than just assume.” He spun in his chair and reached for her, tugging her closer by her belt. “It’s late. Should we start again tomorrow?”
There was a playful glimmer in his eyes that told her exactly what he was thinking, and she was fully on board. “Let me just finish this one test,” she said. “Then I’ll be ready.”
She still felt the pressure to get this work done, but with no one currently in danger, she could take another night to try to get a decent amount of sleep.
And…other stuff.
The computer was still running the sample, and it would take a while. She set it up so the results would be sent to the bus. “Okay, I’ve got it so the results will be sent to me. I can check them later. I’m ready whenever—”
Mark was suddenly behind her, backing her against the lab table. “I’m ready.” He pressed against her. “It seems like with you, I’m always ready.”
She didn’t even try to stop the catch in her breath at feeling him so close. “I like the sound of that. Let’s get back home.”
Home. The bus wasn’t a home, but—
