Back To You | complete

Prologue

Prologue: Harbinger

O L I V I A

I bit the end of my pen as I stared at the screens in front of me. I had almost finished debugging the code but it kept reiterating the same error. Probably just a damned semicolon somewhere. I stared harder, scrolled down, and stared a bit more. I bit on the pen more harshly in frustration when I came up empty.

"That's my pen, Liv," I heard Brian say. I ignored him, scanning the document further. "Liv?"

"She's in the zone," Jane told him. "You won't get an answer out of her till she is finished."

"She's murdering my favorite pen in cold blood!" He protested.

"You should've thought of that before you gave her that. You've known her for-"

"Ha!" I muttered, tuning them out. I dropped the pen from my mouth and it clattered on my desk. Now I knew what was wrong. Apparently, you can't just use the variable without declaring it in the first place. Eh, who would've thought? I added the variable declaration, saved, pressed F5, and voila! Compiled with zero errors. "Now that's what I'm talking out baby." I swiveled in my chair, suddenly joyous. Two pairs of inquisitive and questioning eyes met mine.

"Shut up," I told them.

"Nobody said anything," Brian deadpanned.

"Yeah, but you're thinking it so loud it's annoying." I rolled my eyes with a half smile. "I know I'm crazy, you don't have to tell that every few hours."

"Hun," he humphed. "Are you done with that program?"

I looked at him blankly.

"Yeah, you are." He faced his screens. "Email me your progress. You too, Jane. I need to send our reports for this week by this evening."

"Aye aye, boss." She gave him a mock salute he didn't see. I chuckled.

I wordlessly got back to work. I had a lot of things to do. I had just finished debugging the program I had been working on for a week along with other things. My desk board was still full of post-it notes goading me to pick up more pending tasks. Work was endless.

I sighed deeply and saved my program. I pushed it to the cloud and switched the tabs to where my mail was open. I deftly typed out my week's progress in a new draft and CCed Jane, quickly sending it to Brian.

"Check your inbox," I told him, not moving my eyes from the screens.

"That was fast." Brian hummed approvingly when his desktop pinged with the notification just as I finished speaking. "Jane, I'm still waiting for yours."

"Oh, shut it," she replied. Anyone could hear the light scowl in her words. "I'm on it."

Brian just exhaled loudly. I pressed my lips together to hold in a laugh.

My phone chimed with a notification. I ignored it, plucking the post-it with my finished task and throwing it in the dustbin under my desk. I chose a new task and tacked it where the old one was.

My phone chimed again. And again. And again.

Who had suddenly remembered that I was alive?

"Who's that?" Jane asked curiously. She was aware of how little life the three people occupying the room had.

"I'd like to know that too," I muttered, picking up my phone which had still not shut up. I unlocked it and quickly scanned the notifications. I had apparently been added to a new WhatsApp group titled 'Surprise'. I felt my eyebrows pucker as I went through the description.