They had been searching rooms for nearly an hour (relatively speaking, of course) with no success, and Everly was about to tell Luca that they should turn back and try going in the other direction, when he approached one more door, beckoning, with an uncertain expression, for her to touch it. Unlock it.
Inside was a room she recognized.
“Luca,” Everly said with a gasp, grabbing his arm. “This is Richard’s office!”
“Really?” Luca’s face pinched as he looked around—at the desk pushed to the side, the stainless steel table in the center of the room, the shelves full of equipment lining the back wall. The room was shadowed, with the lingering, dusty sensation that hinted at a lack of use.
“Well,” Luca said, “your gramps isn’t here. Should we look around, see if we can find anything?”
“Yeah,” Everly said, even though she felt wrong about it. She didn’t like digging through Richard’s life, even here, in this damp basement office that he clearly hadn’t returned to in some time. She cleared her throat and nodded toward the back wall, which was filled with a tight row of towering filing cabinets. “Let’s start with those. See what’s inside.”
They went over to the first cabinet, where Everly had to stand on her toes to reach the top drawer. It slid open with ease, and she pulled out a handful of files. Each file had a tab with a name on it, as well as a number. Everly opened the top folder from the pile in her arms, glancing down at its contents.
Maurice Thompson 002, the tab read. Inside was a picture of a man in his midtwenties with sandy blond hair and light green eyes hidden behind thick, seventies-style glasses. Luca came up and read over Everly’s shoulder.
“Initiation: October 14, 1967 (first). Mother: Lisa Monroe Thompson (negative). Father: William Thompson (negative). Status: Alive. STM: Positive. Current known iterations: Seven. Room: 207 (note, other living iterations B137, 206, 208, 209). Notes: Rarely stimulated, vague progress, little effect. Kept under surveillance. (Reference iterations 1, 2, 4–9).” Below that was a list of data that Everly was unable to follow, but the name in the file tickled at the back of her mind, just out of reach. Then she gasped.
“Maurice! Luca, I know who this is,” she said.
“Really? How?”
“He lives here, in the building. Richard brought me up to see him a while ago, when I first started visiting here. He’s one of the elderly people kept upstairs—he’s nearly comatose now, barely able to respond to his name.” She looked again at the file, at his picture that seemed so young and normal. “I can’t believe this is him. I can’t believe he’s been here that long.” Rereading the information, Everly’s eyes caught on what was listed as his initiation date: 1969. Did that mean he had been in the Eschatorologic for over fifty years? That would also mean, she realized, that he couldn’t have been brought in at a young age, like Michael or Luca. He had to have come in much later, as an adult.
Luca was looking over her shoulder at Maurice’s file, something clouding over his eyes as he stared at the man’s picture.
“Luca? What is it?”
He shook his head, then blinked and looked up at her. “Nothing,” he said quickly. “It’s nothing. He just . . . reminds me of something. Someone.”
Before Everly could ask what he meant, Luca reached up and pulled a new file out of the open drawer. He moved away, eyes pinned to the folder in his hands, and so Everly turned back to the stack she still held herself, opening a new file.
Inside, her eyes were first drawn to the picture—that of an elderly woman whose eyes looked dead, defeated. Her white hair was sparse and damp in the image, and she looked like she was barely able to keep her head lifted. The sight made Everly unbearably sad to look at. There was also something about the woman. She didn’t think that this woman was one of the people she had visited upstairs with Richard during her earlier days in the Eschatorologic, yet something about her appearance pulled at a string in Everly’s mind. She was missing something here. She just had no idea what.
Everly looked farther down on the first page in the file and read the rest of the woman’s information.
Katherine Morris 089. Initiation: April 11, 1999 (first). Mother: Elena Pemrose Morris (negative). Father: Jacques Leroy Morris (negative). Status: Alive. STM: Positive. Current known iterations: Three. Room: 702 (note, other living iterations B112, 701). Notes: All show strong progress, especially beta. Monitored closely, tested twice a month for further progress. Strong candidate. (Reference iterations 1, 3).
Frowning, Everly put Katherine’s file back into the drawer, then scanned the tabs of the other folders in her hands, reading the names and looking for more familiar ones. When she didn’t see any, she knelt, set the folders in her arms on the floor, and opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. Her eyes traced over the labels inside, freezing as she caught on a name she knew, and she yanked the file out, opening it to a picture of a young, bright-eyed boy, staring blankly out of the image.
Michael. There was no last name, just that. Just Michael. The picture they had of him was a younger one—he had to only be about five or six in it. Tearing her eyes away from the image, she looked down to scan the rest of the page.
Her blood froze. She read the first line, then had to go back and read it again. Read it a third time, and still it didn’t make sense.
Next to Michael’s name it read—Mother: Everly Tertium. Father: Luca Reyes.
Her mind went numb, unable to process or understand what she was reading. Why would his file say that? She was not Michael’s mother—she wasn’t anyone’s mother. And besides, Michael was ten, she thought, looking at his birthdate in the file. She would have been fourteen years old when he was born. None of what she was reading made any sense.
Also, there was the part about Luca being his father. Which would imply that they—
But no, they hadn’t. Obviously. It was all ridiculous Someone’s idea of a terrible joke. Whose? Richard’s? Jamie’s? This elusive Warden’s? What she wanted to know was why? Why would anyone put that in the file if it wasn’t true?
Everly’s eyes returned to the file almost against her will, drawn to her name written in it. Luca’s name. Then, she noticed the rest of the information that was included below, and she forced herself to keep reading.
Status: Alive. STM: Positive. Current known iterations: One. Room: B113. Notes: Highly stimulated, rapid progress, great effort. High priority. Kept under surveillance.
What did it all mean? Iteration? Stimulated? STM was the genetic anomaly Richard had told her about, way back when he had first tested her. Is that what this was all about? Everly quickly memorized the text, deciding she would have to think about it more later. As bizarre as it all was, their priority was still Caleb, and they weren’t getting any closer to him by looking at these files.
Everly snapped Michael’s folder shut, slipping it back into the drawer before Luca could see it. She didn’t know why, exactly; she knew he’d be just as shocked to read their names in that folder as she’d been. But there was some voice whispering in the back of her mind. This secret is mine, it told her. Don’t let him see it.
She didn’t understand what the voice meant, but she didn’t really want to show Luca, anyway. It was all too confusing, and she had enough on her mind as it was.
Something about the file struck her, though. She thought back to the few other files she’d flipped through, and on a hunch, started to leaf through more from the open drawer.
“What are you doing?” Luca asked, noticing as she opened file after file.
“It says in here who each residents’ parents were, and if they were enhanced or not. I’m looking for any where both parents had the genetic anomaly.” Because if Michael’s file was true—not that it possibly could be—it was the only one she’d seen so far where that was the case: where both parents were enhanced.
Luca joined her, opening more files of his own. She kept an eye on where he was pulling from, ensuring it was nowhere near where she’d stashed Michael’s file.
“All of these people either had only one parent who was enhanced or, in most cases, neither were.”
“That’s not too surprising,” Luca said, eyes locked on the file in his hands. “There aren’t too many of us to begin with.”
“I know, but . . . what do you think it would mean? If both parents were enhanced for someone?” What would it mean for Michael? What if it was true?
No. No, it wasn’t true.
Luca shrugged. “I don’t know if it would mean anything. And you’re right, none of these look like it’s ever been the case. So, I guess we have no way of knowing.”
