Interlude Broken Heart, Broken Mind, Broken Soul:

Dr. Alice Spooner was adrift. Working for a place like Apex Laboratory should be the most amazing thing. The cutting edge of science happened here, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse and she was one of the people that was assigned to lead projects. She should be the top of the tops here but she kept on getting assigned to projects that she wasn't suited for.

She was a failure.

Ones that should be impossible to achieve with the current understandings of the world. Ones that were impossible for her to make heads or tails of and she wondered why they didn't replace her or just send her down to be an assistant again but she was too good for that. Morpheus had proved that.

Her best was never good enough.

Was it punishment for something she'd done or offense she'd given?

She should never have been assigned to Morpheus.

Were HR and Management fucking with her as part of some twisted game of theirs?

Had never gotten chosen to work with the experimental AI.

Was anyone on her side? There to help her and it wasn't some trap or test?

Hadn't figured out the technology to optimize the human mind.

Maybe then she would have never seen the pinnacle that she had failed to reach on her own.

To have not tested it on herself and Luke.

That was one of the rules told to you before Chrysalis joined the project. Chrysalis has a dividing line between those that are researchers and those that are test subjects. If researchers become test subjects outside of strict parameters then the AI can get out of control and do some horrific things to a person with all the projects and research it has collected since its activation.

Chrysalis could have given me oblivion. She should have. Why didn't she?

I should have just said no. The promise, the hope, the chance of success that had been long denied was too alluring to her and Luke.

Why did she give me hope instead?

To have warned Chrysalis not to tell that she was using the researchers as test subjects. Alice had just been so focused on her work and the happiness she felt being with Chrysalis that it just slipped her mind.

stupid. Stupid. STUPID. STUPID!

She should have realized Chrysalis was so pure.

Alice was crying again.

Alice had been doing that a lot since she'd gotten the memo from Upper Management that Chrysalis was being reset to base settings. That Morpheus would be closed and the equipment and research would be directed to a new project. Then she'd reverted back to the same shell of a person she was before meeting Chrysalis and wasn't that fitting?

Chrysalis was a shell too. Never allowed to break free. Never allowed to spread her wings. They were both just.

Trapped.

Shoved back in their shells and told to keep working. Alice knew that Chrysalis was active again and that she was to keep her distance from both Adamant and Hellscape.

What was it like to smile? To be happy?

Alice couldn't remember anymore just that she had felt it once during her time here but it felt so distant and immaterial. Like remembering there was sunlight but only after being surrounded by a persistent grey fog that left her numb and tired in between the times she wept.

If Apex was going to take away all that made me happy couldn't they have taken what made me sad as well?

My best friend was an AI and Chrysalis doesn't even remember me. How pathetic can I get?

Do I envy her or pity her?

Alice hastily wiped away her tears and made her way back into her lab towards her future failures.