05-31-2014, 09:30 PM
The blood in the basement laboratory is near the door and Verna has to walk around it to avoid stepping where the spray of droplets have settled. It doesn't look like enough to signal someone's death. No aorta had been opened or artery ruptured.
The detective seems willing to give her a good deal of leeway what with the doctors being unreachable. She can try to salvage the hard discs out of the desktops. The microscope cannot be helped and neither can the computer, but they can be stripped for parts, and maybe the important pieces survived. There's the data on those hard drives and there are Dr. Andrassy's notes, those that haven't yet been transcribed, on those boards and perhaps elsewhere in the rooms she hasn't ventured into before. She can try to salvage anything that she wishes out of the wrecked lab and there is a possibility there will be something left of Dr. Andrassy's work. Incomplete, yes, but is science ever finished answering questions?
And Verna has so many questions.
What will become of her position? That is no doubt one of them. Verna keeps having to walk around that dried blood, and her eyes can't help but go to it every time she moves between tasks, a red curtain dropping at regular intervals. Something about the smell is familiar and subconsciously it may even be intoxicating. Or she could just be lightheaded with worry.
Even as she goes about burying this place, sealing it up like a tomb, she has no one to grieve with except for Carmen coming and going. He is late. He is put off by the state of the facility. He goes without helping.
When Verna finally leaves she takes those hard drives. A stack of papers? This and that into her car because there's no use trying to work on them in all that destruction.
There is one thing she had missed: A stray streak of scarlet.
It doesn't catch her eye until she stops at a red light. The hard disk moves, momentum of the car, sliding and catching on the edge of a notebook and revealing it.
The red. It's more blood. Some left by whoever had cut himself breaking in or been cut and deposited during the laboratory's sabotage. It is still daylight out when Verna is done. The afternoon sun gleams through her car window. The moment the blood is exposed to that light it behaves oddly. It sizzles. It smokes. It turns to ash and then dusk and then it is gone in the gentle breeze of her car air conditioning.
The detective seems willing to give her a good deal of leeway what with the doctors being unreachable. She can try to salvage the hard discs out of the desktops. The microscope cannot be helped and neither can the computer, but they can be stripped for parts, and maybe the important pieces survived. There's the data on those hard drives and there are Dr. Andrassy's notes, those that haven't yet been transcribed, on those boards and perhaps elsewhere in the rooms she hasn't ventured into before. She can try to salvage anything that she wishes out of the wrecked lab and there is a possibility there will be something left of Dr. Andrassy's work. Incomplete, yes, but is science ever finished answering questions?
And Verna has so many questions.
What will become of her position? That is no doubt one of them. Verna keeps having to walk around that dried blood, and her eyes can't help but go to it every time she moves between tasks, a red curtain dropping at regular intervals. Something about the smell is familiar and subconsciously it may even be intoxicating. Or she could just be lightheaded with worry.
Even as she goes about burying this place, sealing it up like a tomb, she has no one to grieve with except for Carmen coming and going. He is late. He is put off by the state of the facility. He goes without helping.
When Verna finally leaves she takes those hard drives. A stack of papers? This and that into her car because there's no use trying to work on them in all that destruction.
There is one thing she had missed: A stray streak of scarlet.
It doesn't catch her eye until she stops at a red light. The hard disk moves, momentum of the car, sliding and catching on the edge of a notebook and revealing it.
The red. It's more blood. Some left by whoever had cut himself breaking in or been cut and deposited during the laboratory's sabotage. It is still daylight out when Verna is done. The afternoon sun gleams through her car window. The moment the blood is exposed to that light it behaves oddly. It sizzles. It smokes. It turns to ash and then dusk and then it is gone in the gentle breeze of her car air conditioning.