The beeping of her phone was the most obnoxious thing she'd ever heard.

"Just five more minutes," she said to her ceiling as she turned off her alarm.

Seven minutes later, she finally summoned up the courage to open her eyes. To her delight, the clock read 7:52. Only weirdoes got up on incomplete numbers.

"Eight more…"

It was precisely 8 o'clock when Tala finally crawled out of bed and trudged to her shower, hoping she'd be able to scrub off the night before. Not bothering with the lights, she tried to relish the darkness. Darkness was good; darkness went easy on her and didn't remind her that she'd been goaded into drinking far too much for a Wednesday.

"Ah, who cares," she said, this time to her bathroom floor. "It's not like Dave really gives a shit anyway."

Shower, coffee, clothes, makeup, hair, breakfast – it was a practiced routine, one that was only slightly hampered by the growing pain behind her eyes.

More coffee, she thought, just…more coffee.

Grabbing a flask, she was out the door just before 9.

For the entire day, she didn't have a single thought worth having. It was great – the personal assistant network always envied her for her boss, because Dave really didn't give a shit.

He had a gift and a reputation for being utterly devoid of any charisma, or any discernible personality for that matter. But that meant that he was also mercifully free of any of the quirks that those poor other PAs had to deal with, so she never even considered leaving; as long as she answered the phone promptly and didn't make typos, she had enough money and free time to make up for the fact that she had to walk into that beige office every week.

At 5 o'clock, on the dot, she left the office, headed home, and went straight to her bathroom again. The stupid headache had refused to budge the whole day, no matter how much water she forced into her system.

"Am I being punished?" she groaned, letting the hot water rush over her, hoping that it would perform a healing miracle. "Or is this hangover just worse because Thursdays are the Sundays of the week?"

Predictably, her showerhead gave no answer.

Just as she was rinsing out her shampoo, her knees buckled.

"What the…," she gasped. The world was tilting on its side; she could only reach out a hand to steady herself as the pressure behind her eyes began to spike, and for a moment her vision was overcome by a brilliant green light.

And then, darkness.