Chasing the Unexpected

Chapter 12

On Monday morning at eight sharp, Nyla arrived punctually at Park Pharmaceuticals.

The HR completed her onboarding and showed her around the company, familiarizing her with the departments‘ locations. Afterward, she was escorted to the office of the R&D department manager.

The R&D manager, Genevieve Reeve, was a woman in her 40s with a neat short haircut. She was not one to smile easily, giving off a serious vibe.

“Have a seat,” she said after Nyla sat down. “I’ve reviewed your resume. You achieved quite a bit during your school days, but you haven’t been in the lab for the past few years. You’ll start as an assistant.”

“Okay.”

Genevieve approved of Nyla’s calm composure without any hint of dissatisfaction. She liked subordinates who were down–to–earth. So far, Nyla seemed reliable.

Genevieve stood up and addressed Nyla. “Let me introduce you to your colleagues.”

She led Nyla into the R&D department and raised her voice. “Everyone, hold on a moment. We have a new member in our department today. Nyla, please introduce yourself.”

Nyla stepped forward with a smile. “Hello, everyone. I’m Nyla Jayston, your new recruit in the R&D department. There’s a lot I may not be familiar with initially, so please guide me along the way.”

As soon as she finished speaking, a sudden exclamation came from her left. ‘Lucia! You added the wrong reagent!”

Nyla turned toward the voice and recognized the frantic woman tidying up the reagents. She was surprised to see Lucia there.

Lucia’s father, Clement Pollard, was the procurement manager at Harris Pharmaceuticals, where he and Harrison had developed a close friendship from their university days. As a result, the Jayston and Pollard families were quite close, and Nyla grew up alongside Lucia

However, after the Jaystons went bankrupt, the Pollards quickly distanced themselves, and Lucia even blocked Nyla.

Later, Nyla learned from Valarie that at a high school reunion, Lucia had claimed she never considered Nyla a friend and had only been nice to her because of her father’s job at Harris Pharmaceuticals

This revelation had made Nyla realize that not everyone who smiled at her genuinely liked her–some simply found her useful.

Genevieve looked at Lucia, frowning. “What’s going on? Aren’t you usually the most careful?”

Pouring out the reaction flask with the wrong reagent in a hurry, Lucia looked guilty as she glanced at Genevieve. “I got distracted for a moment. I’m sorry.”

Lucia usually did her work meticulously, so Genevieve didn’t continue to chastise her, just reminding her to be more careful next time.

“Since you have more experience in experiments, Nyla will assist you for now. Brief her on the lab protocols and get her up to speed.”

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Lucia lowered her head, concealing her underlying disdain. “Okay.”

After giving a few more instructions, Genevieve left.

Lucia looked at Nyla with a fake smile. “Nyla, I didn’t expect you to work at Park Pharmaceuticals. I saw you from a distance at the company gate a few days ago. I couldn’t believe it was really you.”

Nyla didn’t miss the hint of disdain in Lucia’s eyes. She looked at Lucia Indifferently without responding to her comment. “What do I need to do today?”

Lucia’s smile froze. She bit her lip, looking somewhat aggrieved. “Nyla, are you still blaming me for what happened before? When your father’s pharmaceutical factory had that incident… My family would have been affected too if I hadn’t distanced myself from you. You understand my situation, right?”

Although the others appeared to be focused on their work, they were all actually listening attentively. Given Lucia’s words and Nyla’s reaction, it seemed there was some past conflict between the two, and it was likely juicy gossip.

Nyla didn’t want to engage in reminiscing with her.

She said expressionlessly, “Ms. Pollard, I’m here to work, not to dwell on the past. Besides, you just added the wrong reagent, and the experiment needs to start over from scratch. If you don’t get a move on, the entire lab will have to work overtime because of your mistake.”

Lucia gritted her teeth inwardly upon seeing the unfriendly looks from her colleagues. She hadn’t. expected Nyla to become so sharp–tongued after all these years.

Still smiling and intentionally softening her voice, Lucia said, “You just started today, and there isn’t any specific work for you to do yet. You can start by washing those reagent bottles over there.”

Nyla glanced over where Lucia pointed, a corner where there were 70-80 reagent bottles needing cleaning. It seemed like she had been assigned all the accumulated reagent bottles in the entire lab.

Lucia’s smile grew a bit smug as she watched Nyla look at those bottles without saying a word. Once Nyla refused, she would go straight to Genevieve to tell on her.

Genevieve detested people who were both arrogant and incompetent, so she would surely start to dislike Nyla. This meant Lucia could easily manipulate her in the future.

However, Nyla didn’t say anything and simply walked toward the corner where the reagent bottles were piled up.

Watching Nyla’s back, Lucia smirked. Now that Nyla was in her hands, she could do whatever she wanted. She would make Nyla regret ever coming to work at Park Pharmaceuticals!

Nyla worked straight through until 9.00 p.m., cleaning all the reagent bottles.

When she finally put down the brush, she felt like her back wasn’t her own anymore.

She got home after 10:00 p.m. and took a shower before preparing to sleep. Just as she set down her phone, it pinged.

Nyla frowned slightly when she took a look. She recognized the profile picture–it was Clark’s secretary.

The day after she found out about Clark’s affair, she had deleted Jordyn from her contacts. She couldn’t believe Jordyn had the nerve to add her again.

Nyla ignored it, but Jordyn clearly wasn’t giving up. She sent a message.

Jordyn: [Ms. Jayston, I’m pregnant.]

Nyla froze, her fingers gripping the phone until they turned white.

After a pause of more than ten seconds, she calmed down. She took a screenshot and sent it to Clark, then promptly blocked Jordyn to avoid being revolted by her again.

Clark’s response came quickly.

Clark: [Nyla, this is an accident. I will handle it properly promise she won’t appear in front of you again.]

Nyla felt his promise was insincere. He had made similar promises before, and what had happened then?

She didn’t reply and simply deleted their chat history.

Over the next few days, whenever Nyla arrived at the lab, Lucia assigned her a bunch of menial tasks. As for lab protocols and how to conduct experiments, Lucia didn’t say a word.

Soon, a week passed.

On Friday evening, Genevieve came to the lab to check on Nyla’s progress.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Seeing her cleaning the lab, Genevieve frowned and asked Lucia, “What’s going on? I didn’t hire her to do menial tasks.”

Lucia put on an innocent look, somewhat helpless as she said, “It’s not that I don’t want to assign her work. She hasn’t done experiments in years, so she can only start with the basics. That’s why she’s only doing these tasks for now.”