*This* was yesterday's intended chapter. Ooo, plot!

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Mark's morning had not gone the way he planned. First off, Anne escaped way too early in the morning. He had all these questions he wanted to ask, and she neatly avoided them by waking up earlier than him. He only awoke when he heard the front door close. Stumbling to the window, he saw her head off down the street, hair dully reflecting the porch light, then fading as she moved off.

He cursed under his breath, then tried to force his body into some semblance of haste. His leg ached abominably after the exertion of yesterday, causing him to trip at odd moments and slowing him down tremendously as he tried to perform his morning ablutions. He cut his chin while shaving and soundlessly whispered vile curses while he waited for the bleeding to ease.

Then, after finally getting ready and when he was almost out the door, his aunt emerged from her room and cornered him with questions. Last night they had all been too tired to pursue the situation, but where he and Anne had fallen quickly to sleep, obviously his aunt had not.

"Why was she here last night?" she asked.

"She's having problems with," he started, then paused. Anne had denied that they were family, and she didn't know what else to call them, so he started over. "Some of the other plants came into town a few days ago. I was staying over there to keep an eye on them, to see what they were up to. But one of the guys there is the boyfriend that she's talked about all these years. And he's sleeping with the girl that Anne saved." Then he had to explain how the plants aged differently and that no, Knives wasn't a pedophiliac. At least, not entirely.

Finally, the girls began to awaken and he was released from questions. He walked to work as quickly as he could, then looked in on Anne's office.

"Yes?" she asked quietly, looking up from writing a report. "Did I leave my towel on the floor?"

He let that pass. "Are you doing ok?"

She looked at him oddly, as if he had asked a pointless question. Politely, she said she was fine.

"Not running off to parts unknown today?"

"I have that gig tonight," she said with a slightly hollow laugh. "And I've been neglecting work lately. Probably should take care of my obligations." Then she looked back at her report, clearly dismissing him and his concerns.

He backed up a couple steps, closed the door behind him, then rested his back against it. Looking at the ceiling, he sighed.

She wasn't acting right. After the mourning of yesterday, after the grief that she showed, this was wrong. Unnatural.

He shook his head and went off to find Effie.

She was busy trying to make up for her absence as well. Two of her engineers had taken advantage of her lapse in attention to pursue a few pet projects that they were certain would be the real solution to the energy crisis, and she was trying to explain to them why losing focus at this late a date was not a good idea.

When he got a chance he pulled her to the side and asked her to go check on Anne. She nodded, went off for a few short minutes, then came back.

"She seems fine. A little distant, but fine," she affirmed. "Why, what's wrong?"

"She was crying her eyes out yesterday because she found out that her boyfriend had moved on."

"No," she gasped. "A letter?"

He frowned. "She didn't really say how, but it wasn't a letter. Her boyfriend is Knives Millions."

"The murderer?"

He nodded absently, toying with the edges of an idea.

"She's better off without him," Effie said sternly.

He blinked and looked at her. "I… have to go," he said.

"Go where?"

"I'm curious about just what happened yesterday."

"Oh, you're going to go listen to the spies?" She stepped towards the door, obviously intending to go with him, but raised voices behind them called her back to work. Mark shook his head wryly, glad that he wasn't a manager, and went off to one of the parts of the plant appropriated for Group work.

He nodded to the technician in charge of coordinating the listening devices. They had been planted in Anne's apartment while she was being held at the plant, just on the off chance they might be useful. After the rescue, it had been decided that it was vital to know if they were planning anything, what they were intending to do next. Once it was obvious that there were no current plans for the imminent massacre of the human race, they still listened in, just to see what sort of creatures these plants truly were.

Even those members of the group who disagreed with the continued employment and freedom of Anne to roam about the plant were nearly giddy over the opportunity afforded by the these little bugs. Finally, to see the enemy as he truly was!

They just hadn't expected them to be quite so boring. Quite so… normal. No one had expected that they would be subjected to bathroom squabbles and accusations of just whose job it had been to pack the right amount of underwear. On the first day this room had been packed with people wanting to listen in, and today it was just him and the technician.

He accessed the recordings from an hour before he had seen Anne emerge from her apartment building. Starting with the living room as the most obvious place for the discussion, he listened to mostly boring phrases and fragments of conversation. He heard Anne come in, heard her travel through the room and into the kitchen, and then muffled voices from that room. Then the men left, then some more conversation from the kitchen, then he heard Anne leave.

He checked the time that Anne had arrived, then pulled up the kitchen feed. He thought that he was calmly listening to what Ace said, but found himself tightly clenching the edge of the desk when it was through.

That cold little bitch, he thought. No wonder Anne was upset.

He sat back and thought for a few minutes about this, and Anne's behavior yesterday, and how she was acting today. The spark, the life that normally danced in her eyes was gone, and what remained was only a calm acceptance that this was the way things were supposed to be. That she was so easily discarded from the lives of others. That this was all she could expect from life.

With a grimace and a faintly sour taste in his mouth, he made the only decision he could.