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.

was said on the other end made his expression darken

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

"There's been a glitch with the lab's computers. All of this week's experimental data has been wiped.

have backups for

just went black suddenly. When we rebooted, we realized most of the backup was gone too,

maintain computer performance, the lab's data

was the end of the month, and they

issues, especially since data is backed up twice

it really

thought it was too early

...

lab had

specialists who had signed confidentiality agreements to

after the computer glitch was discovered,

team was dispatched without

after half an

asked, "What's going

computer to enter data, and it just went black. When she restarted it, the data was gone, and most of