Hello, my gentle readers, as per an earlier suggestion, Chapter 5 is from Ema's POV! Enjoy!

Sometimes I wondered why they called them meetings in the first place- in this case the term "massive chewing-out" would have been about a million times more appropriate.

So I screwed up. Big deal. Like I even wanted to be a freaking detective anyway.... I tuned out the less than pleasant sound of my superior's yelling and focused instead on thoughts of that new brand of luminol I'd heard they were developing in Japan; the kind that didn't just turn blue when you got a positive reaction, but every shade from bubblegum pink to neon yellow.

Not that I have anything against blue- I like blue. Mr Wright wears blue....Or he used to anyway.

"Are you listening, Detective Skye?" boomed the dulcet tones of the Chief Detective.

"Yes, sir." I lied through my teeth. I, unfortunately, am a very good liar, which although in this business pays off, generally has consequences.

"I must say I'm surprised, Detective. Most employees would show at least some emotion when they're being faced with a 50 percent pay cut this month..."

What. The. HELL. Is. This? Oh, God, this is not my day today....

And I guessed God himself must have been having a pretty crappy day too, because to make matters worse, I heard emanating from the corridor the voice of a certain glimmerous fop, no doubt on his way from screwing another few secretaries.

They should print T-shirts or something: I Was Nailed By The Fop... They'd probably sell too.

But though the Almighty may have been pissed at me, some angel up there must have been on my side. Woven through the irritating German accent, half of which I was sure was affected anyway, was a very familiar voice. Mr Wright's here?

After the case in which he'd saved both me and my sister, Lana sent me off to Europe to study with Marie-Claire, a coroner friend of hers and, let me tell you, it deserves its reputation for turning out prodigy after prodigy. How could I compete with all these perfect genius children? There I was, a hopelessly naive sixteen year old girl who turned up on the first day of the forensics course waving a jar of fingerprinting powder, against kids who could recite the atomic masses and properties of every element on the periodic table and write out the code for entire DNA strands. What chance did I have?

I struggled through as best I could and fled back to America, desperate to take the test which I believed, in my childish way, would immediately restore me to the career and position of my choice where, I imagined, I would be surrounded by science all day long.

Of course I failed. I settled for second-best and became yet another generic detective, sniffing around the same crime scenes every day. The saddest thing in the world is when you look at a corpse and realise that you really don't care who they were, how they died, if they had any family- because to you, they're just another piece of paperwork to file, another testimony you have to give.

But then there was Mr. Wright. There was someone who needed me to remember, as much as I wanted to forget, someone who made me realise how selfish I'd been wallowing in my own misery, when he'd just lost almost everything that mattered to him. Maya. That name came up a lot. Maya had left. That much I gathered. He had a little girl now too- cuter than a rainbow marshmallow, who bounced up to me every time I visited and asked whether I was going "to make Daddy better today". I did my best- God only knows if it was enough.