AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Syd’s stomach tightened. Dr. Pallon was more than capable, but what she’d discovered was too dangerous to trust anyone with it. She couldn’t afford not to be overprotective. The whole point of her work was to save lives, but so far, what she’d created could do much more harm than good.
“You’ve got enough of your own work.” Before he could respond she added, “I’m going to get a coffee. You want one?”
“That depends. Are you going around the corner to get it?”
“I’ve made a vow never to drink the coffee in this place. I’m getting a muffin too.”
“Coffee, yes. Muffin, no.”
Sydney closed down her computer and pressed her thumb against the fingerprint reader to turn on the security for the safe beside her desk.
Pallon crossed his arms. “You do know I’m not leaving the room while you’re gone, right? You think I’m going to snoop?”
“You know I trust you, but you also know I never leave my research exposed. What if there’s a fire alarm? You going to risk your life by staying here to protect my work?”
“This work? Definitely.”
“Then I’m saving you the trouble. Should the need arise, you can save yourself.”
“You’re so magnanimous.”
“Did that come up on your word of the day calendar today? Or was that from years of study?”
He snickered. “I don’t have this PhD for nothing.”
Sydney had always worked solo, but after working so long on her own, she enjoyed Dr. Pallon’s company. She tended to get consumed by her research, and he had a way of bringing her up for air. When they first insisted on his involvement, she’d fought hard against it. But now, she was glad to have him around.
She rushed down the corridors, eager to get outside into the sun-filled day she had observed from the window. Most of her life was spent indoors, and although she struggled to leave the desk she was chained to, once she was free, the fresh air always did her good.
She stopped on the front steps of the building, craning her neck toward the sun so she could drink in the vitamin D before descending the last few steps to the sidewalk below, where she faced off with a steam of pedestrians. There weren’t many. But there were enough.
She wasn’t afraid of crowds exactly, but when she was cooped up in her office for too long, she forgot how to be among people. Mice were easy.
Ignoring the cringe in her stomach, she entered the flow of people and allowed herself to be carried along, bumping shoulders now and then. Everyone was either always in a hurry to get somewhere or unaware of the others around them.
She would be classed in the latter group as her mind drifted to process the next steps she’d be taking when she got back to the office. But when she rounded the corner, she stopped dead in her tracks.
A convenience store on the corner had a pile of papers available for sale at the door, and her eyes had locked on to one in particular.
When she was bumped from behind, she apologized before moving to the side and picking up the paper that had caught her attention.
An image of her face took up two inches of the front page, joined by the headline:A Jason Bourne level breakthrough in Medical Science.
Her breathing hitched. No one knew what she was doing besides her and Dr. Pallon. The reports she sent in each month to Biotech only offered the bare minimum of information on the physical enhancement side effect of her research and made it clear that they were far from movie level science.
According to anyone, all her drug did right now was give a bit of pep to a lot of small mammals.
Her eyes sped across the lines of text. The article said little about the cancer research she conducted and instead suggested that her research was more about perfecting the human body as its primary goal.
Everything the article celebrated was nothing more than an obstacle to the outcome she was working her butt off to find. The last thing she wanted was for people to think she was part of some super soldier experiments. And worse still, that it could be weaponized.
She rummaged around in her purse for loose change to pay for the newspaper before racing back to the lab, the coffee forgotten.
* * *
Christopher wasn’t in her room when she returned, so she hurried to his office.
“Chris.” She was out of breath when she found him with his fingers anchored in his hair as he pored over a file on his desk.
