WiP: Rope (Lie To Me)
Prologue: Aftermath
Loker can’t remember what he was doing when the phone rang.
It’s a minor detail, completely inconsequential to the crisis at hand.
But it matters to Lightman, so it matters to him.
Slumped over a table in one of the conference rooms, the recently promoted exec interrogates himself as if he were a suspect, silently running through the events of the last twelve hours. It takes awhile, but eventually he recalls getting out of bed that morning and going to the bathroom. Making his way into the kitchen. Two bowls of Cap’n Crunch, forty-five minutes of Regis and Kelly and one shower later, he was out the door. The morning commute took longer than usual with a stop for coffee and the number of a cute barista along the way. When he strolled into work more than an hour late and all Torres said was she hoped he enjoyed being left in charge, he remembers thinking it was going to be a good day.
After that, things get fuzzy. He knows he spent the rest of the morning more or less working in the lab, waiting for his big chance. He had the information Lightman was looking for, and he couldn’t wait to rub his nose in it a little, to show him that even though Torres is the natural, he’s the one with the skills.
He was so smug.
Most of the afternoon is missing. Shock, Loker figures, again. Losing touch with reality for the second time in a six-month span can’t be good, but there’s no one to talk to about it, and he’d be too ashamed even if there were. So instead he keeps trying to fill in the blanks on his own, hoping to summon something other than a vague impression of those last few minutes before everything fell apart.
He can almost picture being in the lab… cueing the microfilm… that feeling of anticipation…
Then nothing.
Just a big, black hole, at the bottom of which was the frightened whisper of Gillian’s voice, and the knowledge that he had let her down.
Thanks for reading! Comments, critiques and heads up on typos are always appreciated.
Chapter One: Tabula Rasa
Loker can’t remember what he was doing when the phone rang.
It’s a minor detail, completely inconsequential to the crisis at hand.
But it matters to Lightman, so it matters to him.
Slumped over a table in one of the conference rooms, the recently promoted exec interrogates himself as if he were a suspect, silently running through the events of the last twelve hours. It takes awhile, but eventually he recalls getting out of bed that morning and going to the bathroom. Making his way into the kitchen. Two bowls of Cap’n Crunch, forty-five minutes of Regis and Kelly and one shower later, he was out the door. The morning commute took longer than usual with a stop for coffee and the number of a cute barista along the way. When he strolled into work more than an hour late and all Torres said was she hoped he enjoyed being left in charge, he remembers thinking it was going to be a good day.
After that, things get fuzzy. He knows he spent the rest of the morning more or less working in the lab, waiting for his big chance. He had the information Lightman was looking for, and he couldn’t wait to rub his nose in it a little, to show him that even though Torres is the natural, he’s the one with the skills.
He was so smug.
Most of the afternoon is missing. Shock, Loker figures, again. Losing touch with reality for the second time in a six-month span can’t be good, but there’s no one to talk to about it, and he’d be too ashamed even if there were. So instead he keeps trying to fill in the blanks on his own, hoping to summon something other than a vague impression of those last few minutes before everything fell apart.
He can almost picture being in the lab… cueing the microfilm… that feeling of anticipation…
Then nothing.
Just a big, black hole, at the bottom of which was the frightened whisper of Gillian’s voice, and the knowledge that he had let her down.
Thanks for reading! Comments, critiques and heads up on typos are always appreciated.
Chapter One: Tabula Rasa