Page 100 of Sky Song
“This is outrageous.” She looked deeply, genuinely upset. “Savage! Don’t think Dr. Ragberg won’t hear about it.” She escaped from the lab, and in the silence that followed, the squeaking of her footsteps gradually faded away.
“Emma, what has just happened?” Terrace was looking at Cricket with a baffled expression.
“Something is going on,” she said tiredly. “Something bad.”
Terrance made a noise deep in his throat. “It’s all Kim’s fault. If she hadn’t disappeared, everything would've been fine. It’s the stress of the unknown. Like, doom.”
“Yeah, doom,” Cricket echoed.
Salty pursed her bloodless lips and said nothing.
It wasn’t long before Cricket was summoned upstairs for a meeting with Dr. Ragberg. The fact that he found time to see her in between his patients told her how seriously he was taking the incident with Yanet.
She divested herself of her protective gear and took the elevator upstairs. It would be an unpleasant conversation, yet she remained strangely calm.
She knocked and he bid her to enter. His normally warm eyes were wintry.
“Hello, Dr. Ragberg.” Her heart gave a small squeeze. It was Dr. Ragberg. She could never in a million years imagine the need to maintain a poker face with him.
“I don’t have much time, yet I wanted to get a face-to-face with you to clear up some things,” he began.
“Of course.”
“Tell me what happened earlier today with Yanet.”
“We got into a confrontation.”
He looked surprised at her unflappable admission. “That’s what I’ve heard. Yanet came to me in tears. She said you bodily cornered her and wrestled her managing device away from her. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“Emma, can you explain?”
“I wanted to see what kinds of notes Yanet has been taking on that device.”
“You wanted to see… What prompted such abject curiosity?”
“Good question, Dr. Ragberg. But why are you fidgeting?”
He snapped to attention, his spine going ramrod straight. “Please explain your reasons to me,” he asked more coolly.
Cricket chose her words with care. After all, she couldn’t say too much without implicating herself. “There’s a supply room in our lab, Dr. Ragberg. Do you know which supply room I’m talking about?”
“Yes, I know. There is one.”
Cricket nodded. “Yanet goes there often. Sometimes she goes there when we’re working, but I’ve caught her going when the shifts change.”
“And you find it strange?”
“Yes, I do. When I caught her, she acted squirrely, like she thought the lab was empty and used that time to go in and out unobserved.”
“And you suspect her of some wrongdoing?”
Cricket stared him down. “Did you know that she goes there, Dr. Ragberg?”
His eyes flickered but didn’t leave hers. “Of course, Emma. Yanet reports to me.”
“Have you been in that room?”
