Prologue.4: Breaking

Shaen was getting awfully tired of this format. It was so much more restrictive than the last one had been, and it wasn't giving her room to do what the other one had. It was getting maddening, actually. If it hadn't been her own knuckles she was pounding on, she might have actually pounded rather than just pondering over the ridiculousness of the format.

Maybe it was time to break from the format regardless of the punishment that would be doled out.

Actually, maybe the blinking alert at the upper right corner of her lenses that signaled an incoming call, likely to announce the newest adaptation was the excuse she needed to walk away from the Project for just a moment. To remember that the format had been decided on because it would be the best once more, and stick to it with a little more gusto.

Or at least, perhaps that's what she would have done, if when she had tapped her index fingers together, as she always did to answer the phone, it had actually worked. But this time, it hadn't worked at all. Something funny had happened. Scrunching up her nose into the sort of face mothers scoffed at, she removed her air-dead lenses to rub her eyes and saw something she had forgotten to see for some time.

Shawn was dying here.

Just like the ones who did not have the corner offices with the brighter windows that showed the relaxing weather that they supposedly had all the time up this high.

How many weeks had it been since she had removed her lenses anyway? Though company policy had stated that they take eye breaks, it did not strictly require them to remove their frames, and in practice, most did not. So they never saw what Shaen was seeing now.

It was freedom, and she was going to have it again.

WC: 309