[08:00]
The completed list of needed supplies had grown quite long, but EV was satisfied as to its completion. She wanted to make contact as few times as possible. No point in making the rate limiting step on your research waiting for a few bundles of fibers. Besides, she had the cash to pay for it now and she might not later. Business was getting slow lately and parts were expensive.

She bound the scroll in brown paper and sealed it with some old wrapping tape. There were a few drops she used in the alley down the street from her lab - it was easy to watch from her window as the tack retrieved it then set off running again through the streets. EV turned away from the window and moved slowly back to her work bench. Her head was beginning to beat with the first stirrings of a headache and there was no point in doing any more fine work while she couldn't concentrate. Perhaps a few moments of sleep would be best...anything to replenish her while she waited.

[10:10]
The Vench was jerked awake by a pounding on the door knocker. The closeness of the sound almost knocked her from the ceiling, but she recovered and held herself where she was until the knocking stopped. The voice that called out was familiar - that elf always came around, trying to be cheerful. Why couldn't he just deliver things and leave like any normal paperboy? She shook herself and tried to clear the cloud of sleep from her head. It was getting more and more tempting to lose herself to oblivion lately - harder and harder to rouse from that slumber. She felt discouraged, but went to cheer herself up with the latest mag.

It always amused her to see what her colleagues back over in the fancy labs were dreaming up. Ways to suck the already poor inhabitants of Ruin out of a few more bucks for inventions that weren't worth a shill. Sometimes she could recognize the handiwork of a certain professor who had been little more than a student before she had left and could not help but laugh. But the laughter was a little self-deprecating. What had she come up with in the last five years that was worth more than these? The room of scribbled calculations and a few circuit boards.

She tossed the catalog in a corner and went back to her notes.

[10:45]
The reply arrived from her contact, Dreg. Just one sentence, scribbled on a piece of brown paper obviously torn up from her wrappings.

Don't contact, they're watching the university.

She crumbled the note then burned it over her gas lamp, watching the smoke drift up to the already soot blacked ceiling. A slight wash of frustration swept through her and the note dropped into the oil, vastly increasing in smoke. EV ignored it. What was going on at the university? She had an irrational need to know what was causing her research to be so slow. So much to do, so little time, and yet all of it outside of her control.

[11:20]
The neon lights advertising Zef's Bar were always on, even this early in the day. EV pushed open the doors then eased herself through, looking at the floor with disgust as she wormed her way across it. From behind the bar, the balding human looked up and saw EV with some confusion. "Actually ventured out from your lab today, did you?"

She sighed and shrugged as best a creature without shoulders can. "Here for news not conversation Zef. You know that."

He looked disappointed but didn't protest. The few times EV deigned it necessary to care about the outside world they went through this same dance and each time it got a little shorter.

"Well, the stock market's gone down..."

EV cut him off with a look. "The university, what's happening at the university."

Zef's face turned more serious. "Apparently one of the professors...a Salarishky or something like that - he was found murdered by some street gang."

The name sounded vaguely familiar - she might have seen him around during her own university days. But a street gang making it that far in? It didn't make sense. EV nodded and bid a terse goodbye to the bar master before heading back to her lab, deep in thought.