“I say all of this to you,” Richard continued, “because I have strong reason to believe that you have this genetic anomaly. That you are what we in the Eschatorologic refer to as enhanced. And so, I want you to come back—I want to test you.”
“Test me?” Everly repeated faintly. “I’m sorry, you want to what?”
“It’s a simple enough process. Not too invasive.” Which implied that it was, at least a little bit, invasive. Everly’s pulse spiked, trying to process what Richard was telling her, what any of this was supposed to mean.
“Why would you possibly think I have this—this anomaly? Why me, Richard? You don’t even know me.”
Richard turned his body then so that he was facing her more directly. His eyes had lost the far-off glaze that had filled them only moments before. Now his attention was sharp, pointed. It reminded her of the funeral, when she had known he was watching her even when she couldn’t really see him. “Because your mother was enhanced,” he said. “And while it is not always a genetic trait that is passed down by birth, it does drastically increase your odds.”
Her mother. Everly thought back to the box of her mother’s belongings she’d found the day before. Thought of the photos of the woman with the coy smile and bright eyes.
Were you part of this? Everly found herself thinking.
“There’s more to it than that,” Richard said, eyeing Everly closely. “Your headaches cease when you’re inside the Eschatorologic, don’t they?”
Everly stared at him in shock. “How do you know about those?”
She hadn’t noticed before, but he was right: she’d never gotten the headaches while inside the building.
Richard continued by saying, “It’s all connected, you know. Return to the building, and you can keep the headaches away for good. They’re only the start; it’ll get worse from here on out. I should know, I’ve seen it before.” He paused very briefly before adding, “It’s imperative you return. You don’t understand how important you are, Everly.”
And that—that was what shattered the illusion, what went too far. Because Everly was many things, but important had certainly never been one of those, especially not to this man who hadn’t wanted to be part of her life for the first twenty-four years.
“No,” Everly said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what’s going on in that building, or what you’ve gotten yourself in the middle of, but I want no part of it.”
Richard opened his mouth to interject, but Everly plowed on, saying, “Test me? What does that even mean? You have no right to march in now, twenty-four years late, and tell me I’m important and decide that that’s enough to pull me into all of this. So unless you can give me a reason—a real, concrete reason—why I should go back, I’m done—done with that building, done with those people, and done with you.”
Sucking in a deep breath, Everly paused her tirade. She had never spoken like that before—to anyone. Staring at Richard, waiting to see what he would do, she expected to see shock in his eyes, or surprise at her outburst. Instead, she saw something she almost would have read as anger; anger, perhaps, that she’d dare to stand in the way of his progress, in the way of everything he’d been working toward?
Oh, he masked it well, putting on a somber face a moment later, but she’d seen it. He couldn’t hide who he was, beneath all his pretty and kind words. She might not know what he wanted with her, but she knew it was all for his own gain—knew it had nothing at all to do with helping her, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge that to himself.
But oh, he knew what he was doing. Richard looked at her with those faux-kind eyes and he said, simply enough, “I can tell you what happened to your father. He came to the building, you know. Only a few weeks before you.”
It was like a sledgehammer to her gut. Everly nearly bent over from the weight of Richard’s implications. He did know. He knew what happened to her dad. She was right, there really was more to it.
Everly studied him for another moment. This man to whom she owed nothing. Every survival instinct in her told her to run, to go home and never look back. It didn’t escape her that he still hadn’t even told her what this genetic anomaly was—he hadn’t told her anything.
But he knew what happened to her dad.
And he knew that would be enough to pull her back in.
“Okay,” she said. And that was that.
Chapter Fourteen
A snapshot of a moment:
Floor one: one life form, a frozen receptionist sitting regally behind her desk, staring out at empty air.
Floor two: six occupied rooms, a dozen empty ones. All occupants shared unsettlingly identical blue eyes. The hair was different, though. White for the first two, then mostly auburn with streaks of white, then red enough to burn the building down (hypothetically speaking, of course).
Floors three through one hundred: similar enough to floor two, with distinct variations in gender, eyes, hair, skin, height, weight, etc. But the pattern was the same.
Floor negative one: children. And mysteries.
Floor negative two: something deeper than a mystery, the negative space around a secret that no one even knew was a secret. Let’s just say there wasn’t anything down there. Nothing at all.
Except we can mention the black office with the person in black who still sat behind a too-large desk and still watched over a wall of screens, staring at the people trapped within.
And we can also now mention a second office. More of a lab, really. It contained a narrow metal desk with a single desktop computer sitting in the center. Shelves with organized boxes of equipment along one wall. Wobbly filing cabinets lined up along another.
And a chair. A chair that was sometimes empty, but right now held a scientist with unkempt gray hair and deeply blue eyes and a face that was buried in his hands as he bent over in that chair, eyes clenched shut, tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, fingers like claws that were in danger of digging into the skin of his face from how tightly locked in place he had them.
He had to be careful going forward. He had to be so, so careful. He’d almost lost her that afternoon, and he knew it. He couldn’t make any more mistakes.
She didn’t understand yet, but he’d make her see the truth. He’d make her see how valuable she was to the building and how much she needed to be there. How much he could help her, if only she’d let him. For the time being, he’d dangle what she wanted to know just out of reach, long enough so that he could get her to understand. Long enough for her to see there was no other way. Long enough for him to save her.
The scientist rolled his chair over to one of the filing cabinets and opened it. Inside was row after row of leatherbound notebooks. His prized possessions, he’d say on days when he was feeling overly sentimental.
Opening an unfinished volume, the scientist put pen to page.
We have so little time left, he thought as he wrote. So little time to do what must be done. It must happen now.
He knew what had happened before, all the other times, but with her it was different. There was precedent, but there was also a whole lot of chance. And scientists don’t like leaving much to chance.
One thing this scientist knew: he wouldn’t repeat his mistakes. He’d learned from his past, and this time, it was going to go right.
There was no longer any room for error.
