The clock ticked on. The sun had long fallen under the horizon, the room lit only by the harsh white light of academia from the slowly turning fan overhead. The spinning blades were on low so as not to disturb the many pages littering the large table. Once neat piles of books, meticulously organized by subject at first, now lay strewn over the dark wooden surface haphazardly, each book either thrown open to a relevant page or on the floor, discarded. Interspersed between the materials were hastily scrawled and messy notes, words and symbols hardly discernible to those who didn’t know Tyler’s particular hand.
Neither boy had looked up from their positions for hours, devouring knowledge and referencing obscure facts faster than any two beings should be able. Yet their determination was what
