Vell continued scraping away at stone, once again heedless to the fact that everyone was staring at him.

“He does this a lot, huh?”

“Not usually this long,” Isabel said. Cyrus had arrived to walk his girlfriend back to the dorm after the study group disbanded, but no one had left yet. Towards the end of their study session, Vell had analyzed a few notes on a seven-lined rune, gotten a few wrinkles on his forehead, and then immediately started carving a complicated rune. Nobody wanted to interrupt him. Professor Nguyen had even allowed them to stay in their classroom after the official end of their study session. She knew the forehead wrinkles usually meant Vell had had some sort of epiphany, one she did not want to interrupt.

“How long’s it been?”

“About half an hour,” Amy said. “He didn’t get the first one right and then started over.”

Even in the midst of epiphany energy, Vell was not infallible. Given the complexity of his task, no one would be. Professor Nguyen held the failed rune in her hand and turned it over. Runes grew more complex and more intricate the more lines were added. As far as most people knew, the most complex runes in existence featured seven lines. The token Professor Nguyen was holding had eight lines on it.

Every line of every rune had to be carved in a specific order, in a specific direction, to a specific depth. The interweaving intricacy of every possible combination of carving lines and techniques usually required dozens of people working in tandem to analyze, experiment, and eliminate possibilities, with more manpower needed for every line added. Professor Nguyen herself had been part of teams of up to five-hundred people all trying to decode a single five-lined rune.

She turned the eight-lined rune over in her hands again, and let Vell continue to work alone.

The carving stopped as Vell flipped through the pages of a few textbooks to compare data with his own notes and plans. After contrasting his work with an existing model, Vell picked up his chisel again and carefully carved a single diagonal line across the top of his rune. He brushed the graphite dust off the stone token, examined his work, and then carefully grabbed a magical battery. He rerouted the mana contained within to his rune, and it took on a soft blue glow.

“Whoa! It works?”

“Did you doubt the man, Reg?”

“It glows, Reginald,” Professor Nguyen corrected. “To ascertain if it ‘works’, it must be tested.”

Vell picked up his pen and slapped the charged rune against its plastic surface. After a momentary spark of energy, the pen began to move in many different directions at once. Every component of the pen separated from each other and began to move in different directions. Even the tiny metal sphere fled its home in the ballpoint nib, and the ink contained within the reservoir separated from the whole, with the ink settling into a black puddle on the table top. An impressive, if messy, display.

“Well, congrats,” Isabel said. “You just invented the world’s first eight-lined rune.”

“Proper scientific inquiry requires repeat testing,” Nguyen reminded them.

“Right, yeah, I got to see if I can do this again,” Vell said. He picked up his notes, borrowed a new pen from Isabel, and started underlining and crossing out portions as necessary. Amy decided that her contribution to this process of invention would be cleaning up the ink puddle before it left too bad of a stain.

“So what exactly does this rune do other than turn a pen into a mess?”

“Well, it’s meant to be ‘separate’,” Vell explained. “I think it shares enough roots with the ‘disassemble’ rune for that to be the case, but it might be something slightly more specific. There are a lot of runic commands that could-”

Vell looked up from his notes, and his forehead got wrinkly again.

“Separate.”

“Vell, you can’t invent two brand new runes in one night,” Amy sighed. “At least not without letting us help so we can get co-credit.”

“Not a problem, got to go,” Vell said. He gathered up his new rune, his notes, and his carving materials, and ran off, trailing graphite dust behind him.

Lee put down a soldering iron long enough to yawn, and then picked it back up again.

“You really should not be working with that kind of equipment when you’re that tired,” Harley scolded. She was programming a new filtering technique into her own device, but typos were easier to fix than burnt fingers.

“I just can’t shake the feeling I’m close to a breakthrough,” Lee said. “We’re so close.”

Her oceanic mana harvesting project was only a few tenths of a percentage point away from being viable. They needed it to keep its impact on marine microorganisms consistently below one-percent lethal, and so far they were only managing one point four at best. She had to close that gap somehow.

“You need sleep,” Harley said. “If you’re close now, you’ll be close tomorrow morning.”

They were both closer to a solution than either of them knew. Thankfully, that solution was getting closer at rapid speeds.

“You might be right. Perhaps I should-”

“Lee!”

Vell was not usually one to barrel through doors, but he shoulder-checked his way into Lee’s lab anyway. He shuffled through the various items he held in his hands and then slammed a notebook and a single rune down on the table.

“I invented this rune-”

“You invented a new rune? That’s incr-”

“It’s not important right now,” Vell said. There was an unusually frantic edge to his voice. “The rune means ‘separate’.”

As he was still a bit breathless from his dead sprint to Lee’s lab, he pointed at a partially mana harvester on her workbench. Lee made the connections on her own.

“Harley’s filtration tech can’t properly sort out every possible form of marine life,” Lee said. “But if that same technology was running on magical commands to separate water from everything else…”

Lee looked down at the rune on the table and then at Vell and Harley.

“How fast can you get it working?”

“If Harley can get her stuff ready for rune networking, I can have it ready to go in twenty minutes,” Vell said.

“Still think we need sleep, Harley?”

“Fuck sleep,” Harley shouted. “We’re doing science, bitches!”

Harley put in an order for coffee and then got to work dismantling one of her smart filters while Lee gutted a prototype filter and Vell got to work carving runes.

The underwater pods that formed the Senior Labs were a convenient place to test a device built to work in the ocean waves. After tethering the freshly constructed filter and carefully closing the hatch leading to the outside, Lee grabbed her tablet to monitor the mana harvester’s efficiency.

“How’s it-”

“Shh.”

Lee shushed them and continued to stare the tablet. She’d had false starts before, and was not about to get her hopes up so quickly. Things as simple as differences in currents could push them over the limit. She held her tongue and held her breath for a solid minute. Vell brushed graphite dust off his hands and waited alongside Harley as Lee’s brow furrowed. Eventually, the tension dropped out of her shoulders.

“Vell, do you have everything you need to make another one?”

“Yeah, I’ve got plenty,” Vell said. He grabbed his chisel. “What do we need to work on?”

Lee dropped her tablet face up on the table, with one readout maximized. It said zero point eight.

“Nothing. But we need ten working prototypes to get approved. You up for nine more?”

“Hell yes, hell yes, hell fucking yes,” Harley shouted. She grabbed Lee and Vell by the shoulders and pulled them into a positively ferocious hug, then got back to work alongside them. Despite knowing exactly what they were doing this time, the work went a little slower. Lee’s hands were shaking, and she barely held back the tears in her eyes.

It worked. The first step she needed in her plan was in motion. She was going to be free of her parents. She was going to be free.

The promise of imminent freedom was unfulfilled as of yet, as Lee still had to wait for her parents to arrive and appraise her creation for themselves. Lee prepared herself to endure her parents, as she often did, by making tea. The tea set her mother had “gifted” her (actually a replica of a replica of the eighteenth replica, as Lee always shattered every tea set in a fit of rage after her parents left) clinked and clattered as Lee prepared the tea. It was a calming ritual as she prepared for her parents arrival.

The piping hot beverage had started to cool, and Lee was still sitting on her couch, waiting for her parents to arrive. In spite of their tardiness, a pleasant and not entirely insincere smile still rested on Lee’s face.

“They could at least text if they’re going to be late,” Vell said.

“We’re handing them billions of dollars on a platter and they can’t even show up on time,” Harley grumbled.

Vell and Harley did not need to be so restrained in their displeasure. Lee laughed off their concerns.

“As impatient as I should be, I’m finding it hard to be mad,” Lee said. “Knowing it’s all the last time is surprisingly liberating.”

She’d covertly contacted her allies in the Roentgen shareholders board to let them know they were almost ready to oust her father. Soon she would get the satisfaction of stealing her father’s company right out from under him, and then the satisfaction of destroying that company entirely. All the wealth they’d wrongfully accumulated would be used to pay back victims like Joan for the suffering Roentgen had caused. Lee had to stop herself from laughing maniacally at the idea. She could hear unfortunately familiar footsteps outside her dorm. A long and painful childhood had trained her to recognize when her parents were coming by the sound of their footsteps alone.

“Good morning XL-X8 C/P!”

Granger Burrows entered first, and cheerily greeted her daughter without ever actually coming near her. Noel walked through shortly after, already rubbing his hands together greedily.

“Hello Father. Mother,” Lee said. Her vocal facade was slightly more strained than usual. She never wanted to talk to her parents like this again, and she especially never wanted to hear the name “XL-X8 C/P” again. Soon she’d be able to burn every document with that name on it.

“You’re late,” Harley said.

“You’re here,” Noel Burrows said. He was less than enthused to see Vell, and especially not enthused to see Harley. “Why are you here?”

“As I mentioned, my friends did make invaluable contributions to the project,” Lee said.

“Of course, naturally,” Noel said. He’d stopped reading her email as soon as he got to the part where the mana harvester worked. Having spent an entire lifetime hiding his own stupidity, Noel played off his ignorance and took a seat to get comfortable. “So, how does it work?”

“Harley, why don’t you explain?”

As the small talk about the specifics of the oceanic mana harvester began, Lee went about drinking her tea with clockwork precision. The ritualistic movements of raising the tea cup to her lips, taking a carefully measured sip, and the setting her teacup down, then repeat, helped her stay sane in these prolonged conversations with the two worst human beings alive. Every inane comment, hurtful “joke”, and blatantly ignorant statement was swept away by the stiff routine of the teacup. She didn’t allow the fact that this was the first loop interrupt her routine, as she might have in the past. She was treating this as a rehearsal for her coup de grace, and wanted everything to go just right.

“Oh, I am glad we’ve finally got the nut cracked,” Noel said. Harley had finally put the function of the device in terms a simpleton like him could understand. She’d been two steps away from breaking out the crayons. “I needed good news today.”

“Rough day?” Harley asked, knowing full well it was about to get worse.

“Yes. You know I had to prevent a coup today?”

The teacup twitched in Lee’s hands, but the routine motions did not stop.

“Oh really?”

Her vocal facade was strained again, but this time in the other direction.

“Oh, yeah, a few members of the board hatched some scheme to replace me with someone,” Noel said. “Had to spend all morning firing people, and then getting that web of NDA’s, non-competes, and litigation just right to bankrupt them, you know?”

Harley and Vell struggled to contain their horror as they looked towards Lee. She never even twitched.

“How unfortunate.”

“It was a mess,” Noel said. “Once I find out who they were trying to replace me with, they’re-”

The sound of something exploding outside rattled every teacup except for the one in Lee’s hand, which was still going through its usual routine.

“Good god, is someone setting off fireworks?”

“No, no, fireworks are much sharper,” Lee said. “That was a concussive blast.”

Another loud burst sounded outside the window. Lee tilted her head in that direction.

“No, actually, now that I think about it, it seems less explosive in nature,” Lee said. “Perhaps a pipe being overfilled to the point of bursting.”

Another burst sounded, and this time the entire building shook. Noel’s natural cowardice took over, and he fled the room, leaving his wife and daughter behind. In fairness to him, Granger Burrows would also have left him behind, she was just slightly slower in leaving. Lee stayed behind, sipped at her tea, and took a deep breath.

“Lee…”

By the time the next explosion sounded, it was almost loud enough to drown out Lee’s scream of frustration.