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

We're on our way now,

been a glitch with the lab's computers. All of this week's experimental data has been wiped. We haven't managed to recover it yet, and the worst-case scenario is—" He paused for a moment: "We've lost everything. We'd have

frowned, "Don't we have backups

realized most of the backup was gone too, less

computer performance, the lab's data is

the end of the month,

since data is backed

it really just

was too

...

in the lab had arrived, including

signed confidentiality

after the computer glitch was discovered, Stoddard

was

after half an hour, there was no

"What's going

got a call from Liz. She booted up the computer to enter data, and it just went black.