Nikki Hollands hurried down the hallway of the laboratory. Getting the paid internship here, with the newly formed Marble Labs straight out of college had been a dream come true for her. It paid well, and allowed her to put a good sized dent in her school debt.
She had been excited to join a company who had advertised themselves to be on some new breakthrough in genetics, but in the end… she was a glorified secretary. She was not allowed in the labs, despite her work experience, graduating top of her class and her overall dedication in the field of genetics and gene therapy.
Ooooh, no.
Her job was to transcribe the ramblings of one Doctor West.
Yeah… after four years at an expensive college, this was totally not how she thought her life would be going.
She had been transcribing the tapes every night, but because the Gargoyle was now being observed in "the wild", so to speak, there hadn't been any tapes for her to listen to.
Tonight, she was told to go down and continue working, and so she had drug her feet a bit before coming down to get to work.
The minute she'd put the first tape in the machine, she knew something was wrong. Frantically, she had reached for the next tape. Then the next. Five tapes later, and Nikki knew that she would have to tell someone.
Everyone had been made aware of the Gargoyle, and what the plan was to let her "escape" with a bunch of "tapes" that were supposed to be blank…
It seemed that the Gargoyle had outsmarted someone. Luckily most of the staff, including Nikki herself, had been told to stay home the night they must have been taken, so she could not be found to be at fault.
It didn't really relax her mind, however. Just her luck, they would still hold her accountable and fire her.
To be honest with herself, she wasn't sure she would mind it. The more time she had spent with those tapes, listening to that creepy ass woman talk about things that, had the specimen been human, would have made her question her life choices.
So maybe being fired wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Nikki took a breath as she approached the door to the lab office where Doctor West worked alone most of the time. She raised her hand and knocked.
"Come in," The voice inside snapped.
"Excuse me, Doctor West," Nikki said, opening the door slowly. "I have something to tell you about."
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"What do you mean, the tapes were switched?" Doctor Sevarius demanded.
"Just what I said, you fool," Doctor West snapped.
"You were careful to keep things generic, correct?" Doctor Sevarius asked.
"Of course," Doctor West waved a hand in the air. "I am not a complete idiot."
"I never said that, dear," Sevarius said with a sneer, "But that's not to say that some people that you've hired here are not."
"Evidently," West said with a sneer of her own.
"Who would have thought that the Gargoyle had enough forethought to switch the tapes?" Sevarius mused.
"The question should be," West said, "What are we going to do about it?"
"Obviously we have to send the team in to get her," Sevarius said. "We can't take the chance of someone else getting a hold of those tapes."
"It's one night earlier than we were hoping, but," West shrugged, "I guess we have no choice. Call the team. Tell them to use the tracker and bring her back tonight."
Sevarius nodded, and reached for the telephone mounted on the wall beside him.