Shutdown? Y/N

I carried on ploughing through the folders until my eyes were aching, my vision blurring.

Just as I'd decided it was time to take a break, two things happened in quick succession: first, the battery warning meant the laptop started beeping at me, and second, the sky clouded over - as it so often does around here, when morning becomes afternoon.

I wasn't sure I'd understood everything I'd read, and I hadn't read all the documents yet - but what I had seen was both terrifying and exciting. There was a lot I'd like to be able to ask Mr Smith, but that wasn't a possibility right now: as far as learning more was concerned, I was on my own.

The background to Lucidar, the evidence for what it had caused, and the information about Project Lupus seemed to confirm what Mr Smith had said: I was facing people who were powerful and dangerous.

But the folder containing Mr Smith's assessment of what I could do had made startling reading - and this was what I'd found exciting. The people who ran Project Lupus clearly thought I had value as a weapon - and I have to say, thinking of yourself in such a way is a definite boost for the ego. I wasn't even beginning to understand what was happening to me - but what I'd seen had, at least, made it more real.

I closed the laptop. I had more than enough to be thinking about. Plus, this deadly weapon needed some lunch.

Closing my eyes, I thought hard about being in my kitchen - and than was in my kitchen. Not without a sense of relief.

I smiled. I had the feeling that the Lupus people didn't really know what I was capable of. Shit, I didn't know what I was capable of.

And then I realised I'd left the laptop on the bench.



Story begins here.