Syte Scraps (Unfinished WIPs)

Vulf sat at his desk, a growing pile of crumpled paper beside him. A red pen, nearly out of ink, was clutched in his hand, the color skipping and stuttering as he scribbled down his thoughts in bold red text.

The staff here at VPNetwork have been taking note of your performance.

No, that was an awful opening line. Vulf struck it out, a thin red line bisecting the words in half.

I am glad to have invested in you. Your dividends are profitable.

…No, no. A second line was scrawled through the sentence.

I think we work really, really well together.

He scratched the words out of the page, bristling as the paper ripped beneath his penpoint. Scowling, Vulf balled up the paper, adding another document to the growing pile. It was beginning to clutter up the place, the scenery stuttering from the growing cache of data. He'd get to it later- compress it into a zip, give it to Strike to gnaw on, or something. Ensure it was destroyed, ensure that nobody would see it.

A blank document was all but slammed down onto the table. Vulf just had to try again- he'd get it perfect, eventually. And he had to get it perfect- Xander wouldn't settle for anything less, he was sure of it.

An alert caught his attention, a bright red icon in the corner of his vision. He'd been ignoring them for the past hour or so- his clients could wait, he was doing something.

[...]

I have found that I harbor a particular internal loneliness, one that has haunted every moment of my life since the culmination of my infection. I had taken this perpetual isolation as a fact of life, an illness of which I was permanently afflicted. But I do believe that I was not entirely correct, on that front. For I have been subject to a series of brief reprieves, of which you h

At once, the file was closed.

Xander crumpled the page, standing up from the elaborate writing desk he had been hunched over. His aching back- which had never been in the best shape, no thanks to his host- complained as he stretched.