Olivia didn’t pine. Of course, before it had be she neglecting to reply to friend’s emails from California.  Even so it was hardly in her nature worry much as to what others thought of her, and certainly not in her routine to get distracted over a [i]man.

“Narrows? The bloodwork?”[/i] Oliva blinked, horrified at herself and quickly tried to make sense of the data rolling across her screen.

[i]“Right, everything looks normal.  Slightly anemic maybe.” 
“Four people didn’t hemorrhage from their diets.”[/i] No that would have been the faulty implants he’d helped develop. Some thoughts where better kept quiet, instead of speaking she looked up to the dead body lying four feet away.  The skull had been surgically opened on the right side and some obviously decaying brain was spilling onto the table.  Doctor Layne still held a bone saw, frown telling that his mask wasn’t doing much for the smell either.

[i]“Did you get it out yet?”[/i] The doctor held up a small metallic device about the same size as a thumb in his other gloved hand.
[i]“Power piece still in his spine, but I figured you want to take a look at this first.”[/i] He took a step closer, apparently expecting her to pick up the tech which still had bit of brain clinging to it. She did her best not to wrinkle her nose at the idea and instead offered a petri dish for it to be dropped in.  The dish was in turn dropped with haste to the counter, Layne pretended not to notice, but even with a mask the corners of his eyes showed signs of a smirk. [i]“It’s getting late, I’ll get the other piece out and you can get a fresh look at them tomorrow.”[/i] Olivia alright tapped out of the computer system and was on her way out of the lab.  Normally she would be the first to volunteer staying late, normally there weren’t two month dead corpses being dissected. The doctor who couldn't deal with the dead, or the sick she'd found while visiting the residency hospital. It was just something she’d have to get over, preferably before she got into residencies.

Half an hour of washing hands and tending to her lab-coat later, and Olivia allowed herself to reach into her pocket for her phone. No calls, no messages. It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t much help the sting. Everything had been going too well for it to be personal, but there was little other way to take the sudden silence. She decidedly turned her thoughts away from Duncan and placed the phone in her pocket, considering possible side effects of neural implants.  It lasted until the exited the front door and the buzzing against her tigh evaporated thoughts of work.
Not Duncan. His [i]mother[/i]. Enough, she dismissed the call and muted the phone, and continued the walk to her car with a quicker pace.  She knew where his lab was, but it wasn’t something she’d planned to visit, especially uninvited.  Duncan’s work absorbed him completely but left her grasping, it was his own interest in it which she appreciated more than the material itself. But receiving three calls from his mother in the same time he’d apparently forgotten about her was too much.  She punched the address into the GPS system, sanitized her hands then the steering wheel, and pulled out of the parking lot.  

It was bigger then she’d imagined. Her expectations had been more in line with an office building, filled with short sighted men hunched over equations for hours. Not an entire factory building decked out in even more security then her own employer’s private company labs. There where two security checkpoints at the entrance of the building, and the handling of her bag and phone by strangers did little to improve her mood.  None the less she attempted a smile at the uniformed man behind a large desk.
[i]“Hello, would Dr. Moran be in today?”[/i] The man looked at his watch, sighed, then opened a program on desktop. 
[i]“Hasn’t checked out yet, but he’s way down in the warehouse.  We can’t really reach the guys down there. Aren’t supposed to bother them either.”[/i] He looked her over, apparently looking for a missing limb or any sort of emergency that would require him to bend these ‘rules’.  Olivia’s smile turned to a full grin, with clenched teeth. 
[i]“I’m sure you’re familiar with Dr. Miller by this point, Mr…?”[/i] At the name of Miller the formidable man seemed to shrink half a size.
[i]“Keen.  Tedd Keen.”
“Well Mr. Keen,”[/i] She placed her cellphone on the desk in front of him, clearly displaying a missed call from the doctor. [i]“She’s been trying to reach me for some time now, and I’m not going to explain to her that no one has heard from her son in three days on my own. So unless you find some way to reach the warehouse, you’re going to have to tell both myself and Dr. Miller exactly why that is, when she calls again in about fifteen minutes.”[/i] Isabella Miller’s influence went further than just her son it seemed, as Tedd Keen reached for a large walkie-talkie on his desk, then hesitated.
[i]“Your name miss?”[/i]
[i]“Olivia.”[/i] She gave the poor man one last smile before moving back to stand beside the seats placed just after the second security point.  The small victory had rallied back her optimism and it actually took Duncan’s appearance several minutes later for her to remember that she was annoyed. Not that she had a chance to express as much before he began talking and practically dragging her back wherever he’d just come from.  
[i]“Thank you Mr. Keen!”[/i] was the only full sentence she managed to get out before disappearing through a series of hallways leading to what appeared to be a set for a science fiction movie. It truly was a warehouse, but in size only.  Computers and boards with foreign math where just about the only things she could recognize. [i]“Duncan-“[/i] She tried for the fifth time with the same results.  It was possible here that he just couldn’t hear her, everything was buzzing and he looked awfully tried. Her eyes however drifted to the giant holographic interface.  The amount of money needed to fund a project- or whatever this was- would be astronomical.  Duncan pulled her attention back with half of an explanation she answered nothing. She stared at him with utter confusion and more than a touch of concern, had he even left the lab since she’d last seen him?
[i]“You’re talking about the Time Machine story? I might have read it in high school, scientists invites friends and colleges to see an invention and they all think he’s crazy…”[/i] Her eyes wandered again despite herself, he couldn’t be building a time machine, looking for anything that would help explain what the entire operation actually [i]did[/i].