Love Burned, She Rose Unscathed

"Anne... God, how I miss you... Can't you come back?" Murray murmured.

The only thing that answered him was the pitch-black living room and the relentless, howling cold wind outside the window.

The next morning, Roseanne was up with the birds. She showered, cooked breakfast, got ready, and prepared to head out to the lab.

As she was about to close the door, she noticed a paper bag hanging on the doorknob. Inside, there was a tube of the allergy nasal cream she always used. She glanced around. Who could have left this?

Suddenly, her eyes landed on the door across the hall. Roseanne looked at the nasal cream and then examined the paper bag more closely.

Just as she was about to knock on the door to ask if it was Owen who'd left it, the door abruptly swung open.

Owen stepped out, his face stern. Upon seeing her, he paused.

Sensing something was off, Roseanne asked, "Is something wrong?"

Owen replied, "Let's talk on the way to the lab."

"Okay," Roseanne said, her tone serious, momentarily forgetting about the nasal cream.

On the way, Owen received a phone call.

his expression darken and his voice grow even more

understand. We're on our way now, should be there

of this week's experimental data has been wiped. We haven't managed to recover it yet, and

"Don't we have backups for the lab

we realized most of the backup was gone too,

maintain computer performance,

month, and they had just

shouldn't be any issues, especially since data is backed up twice for safety. But...

really just

was too early to

...

in the lab had arrived, including Owen and

were tech specialists who had signed

discovered, Stoddard had immediately

tech team was

half an hour,

asked, "What's going

the computer to enter data, and it