XXX - This needs a review later
555 - Here is room for a clue

The last men left the conference room, and Tim turned around to Phoebe.
"What the hell was that back there?"
Phoebe sighed and looked up from the table, straight into the eyes of the much older man before her. People seem more trustworthy when you look them in the eye, she had read in a folder meant for the communications department. She needed trustworthy right now, if anything went wrong then, well, everything would go wrong.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't had let myself go like that." She looked away again, afraid to over-do it.
"I'm still trying to catch up with all the work Rowena has left. I haven't even seen all of the code-"
"But you were assisting Rowena, isn't that right? That means you've been looking into the code for months. I understand you've had to settle into the job for a bit, but you've been on for what, two weeks now, maybe three? I expect more than that from you, especially from you, you understand that right?"
Tim didn't sound angry, annoyed perhaps, maybe even frustrated. Good, Phoebe thought. He might pay less attention to what she was actually trying to do.
"Yes, but a substantial amount of the code was locked. I'm sorry, I'll work harder, but I'm afraid that I'm going to make mistakes soon-"
He broke her off again.
"Have you been sleeping?"
"No... I mean yes, I've slept. Not a lot, but I can manage. And I thought, the next meeting is after the weekend, and I'll have to wait for the Services report anyway, so I could maybe get six hours of sleep in on Sunday..."
It was true she hadn't slept much. That was always true. Now that she thought about it, she didn't have to lie that much at all.
"How much did you sleep Phoebe?" Tim asked, while pulling her schedule up on the screen in front of him. He sighed.
"Thirty hours this week. You know that's a problem, right?"
Phoebe nodded and tried as subtly as she could to look like a lifeless bag of potatoes. Tim looked her in the eye and leaned slightly towards her. He put a hint of a smile on his face. She recognized it, from the folder about empathy, also for the communications department. She wondered how many times he had practiced that smile in front of the mirror.
"Phoebe, I understand this might be hard for you. I know Rowena ment a lot to you, maybe we are asking to much of you, you know that if you need to take a break you can always ask, and we can think of a solution."
That was bullshit, and they both knew it. Tim needed her. The whole board needed her. There was even a slight chance this whole company would go bankrupt if she took a few weeks off. Which is why they wouldn't let her. But she didn't need a few weeks. A few hours, that's all it would take.
"I don't think a break is necessary," she could see his smile getting a bit broader, a bit more honest.
"Well, at least take the night off then. Maybe even the morning. And then we'll see how it goes." Tim didn't wait for an answer and stood up from the table.
"Yeah, thanks! You know better than anyone that I don't want to cause any problems." She said, and looked him in the eye again for good measure.

She stood up as soon as the door closed. She turned her laptop upside down and removed the accu and hard drive. Then she carefully freed the letters 555 from her keyboard. She arranged the pieces of her technological puzzle, clicked some letters into place and carefully removed the casing of the hard drive. The actual hard drive had been removed many years ago, when a secret phone had just been an interesting experiment to test the limits of the surveillance here. Now it was her connection to the outside world.

The screen lit up. Phoebe put in a what others would call absurd long password, navigated through some menus and then put the phone to her hear.

"Hi, it's me. No problems so far. The presentation starts at nine, I'll make sure you are on the guest list." A few seconds later she ended the call and put her laptop back together. Afterwards she went straight to her rooms. She had four hours to catch some sleep.