Renna Rose Lancaster never searched for love.
She stumbled into it long before she was old enough to know what to call it.
It lived inside flower crowns that barely survived a minute on his head. Pebbles he slipped into her pockets because every tre...
"I loved her not for the way she danced with my angels, but for the way the sound of her name could silence my demons."
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The centrifuge died with a tired whine, like it had finally accepted that none of us were getting out alive.
I pushed the last rack of microcentrifuge tubes into the tray and logged the final run and hit save.
The software froze.
"Come on, you useless bastard," I muttered, tapping the keyboard like that had ever helped anything in the history of computers.
The cursor blinked. Mocking.
I leaned back against the stool, cracked my neck once, then twice, and waited for the spinning wheel to decide whether my data was worth existing.
Just load. Just fucking load. I am not re-running sixty-four samples because some bastard in IT hates students.
Footsteps scuffed behind me.
"Jesus, lad, ye still here? I thought ye'd died and they'd forgotten tae tell me."
I glanced over. Mick, the cleaning assistant, rolled his trolley in like a one-man invasion. He was built like a retired boxer who'd taken up cleaning as a hobby and never stopped.
He started wiping down the far bench, moving glassware into trays with practiced care.
"You've been in since morning," he said. "That man still got ye chained tae the bench?"
"Pretty much."
He shook his head. "Walters is a lazy bastard. Been one since before ye were born. Man's got a grant and a pulse, that's it."
I watched the loading bar inch forward. Twenty-eight percent. A miracle.
"He pay ye at least?" Mick asked.
"Eventually."
"That's not an answer."
I shrugged. "Last week, yes."
"Aye, well. That's somethin'. More than I can say for half the staff in this place." He clinked glass into a tray, then glanced at me sideways. "Ye look knackered. Proper knackered."
"I'm fine."
Mick laughed. Not cruel, just knowing. "No' one who says that is ever fine."
He wheeled the trolley closer, started collecting used pipettes. "So what is it, then? Ye got no pals? No dinners tae go tae? No bird? Somewhere else tae be other than cleanin' up after that arsewipe?"
I kept my eyes on the screen. Thirty-six percent.
"I like the money," I said. "And the papers."
Mick made a face. "Authorship, aye. He'll put yer name on it in size six font and call it generosity."
