by Rachel Caine
This part of the building looked new, shiny, and sterile. It was bustling with activity – grad students, professors, people in suits who looked like official government types, or maybe private industry. It was often groups composed of all of those, huddled together, walking and talking. She caught snatches of conversations about genetics, about drug therapies, about nanotech, and that was all in only a two-minute brisk walk. Dr Anderson exchanged nods with most of them, but there was no small talk.
Dr Anderson’s lab was marked with a simple white card in the slot that said RESTRICTED. Nothing else on the card … but when Claire moved to the side a little to allow Anderson to swipe through, she saw that there was something else on the paper, after all. The Founder’s logo had been printed on it holographically, so it was only visible from certain angles.
The door made a soft sighing sound as it opened, and a puff of cool air that smelt like metal and chemicals washed over Claire. Dr Anderson shut it behind her, and Claire badged through. She didn’t need to be told twice about the security measures.
Inside it was … well, Myrnin’s lab, only sane, orderly, and clean. But she recognised a lot of what was going on at each of the worktables, though instead of using Dark Ages alchemical techniques, Dr Anderson had modern chemistry set-ups and state-of-the-art instruments and computers. It was like porn, but for science geeks. ‘Wow,’ Claire breathed, and ran her fingers tentatively over a brushed-steel worktable, not quite daring to get her fingerprints on any of the blindingly cool equipment yet. ‘You’re—’
‘Well funded? Yes. Amelie wanted to establish another, less chaotic method of research to validate and record Myrnin’s discoveries. You know him; he’s brilliant, and he’s the living embodiment of chaos theory. So my job is to find out why his discoveries work, document and make them easily reproducible with modern equipment and techniques. And now that’s your job, too.’
‘I was already doing that. Trying to, anyway. When he’d let me.’
Dr Anderson sent her a warm, knowing smile. ‘Yeah, I know how that goes. Working for Myrnin means being zookeeper, nanny and best friend. Trouble is, knowing when each of those things is necessary, because making a mistake means you become a Happy Meal. Badge of honour for you to have survived the experience, Claire. And for getting the hell out of Morganville. Bet you think the worst is over, right?’
Claire shuddered, thinking about the draug, and Bishop, about the thousand life-threatening moments she’d made it through since coming to town. ‘Hopefully,’ she said.
‘You’re wrong,’ Dr Anderson said. She sounded certain, and sober. ‘You live there, at that level, it’s like living inside a video game. Surviving is a high, an achievement. Then you come out here into the real world, and the PTSD starts to set in … because nobody cares what you went through, or that you survived it, and your body’s used to a constant adrenaline pump. It’s like coming off a drug. If it hasn’t hit you yet, it will … normal life takes a lot of getting used to, Claire. But if you need to talk to someone, well, I’ve been through it. What’s the biggest thing you’re missing so far?’
‘Shane,’ Claire said. Her throat got tight and raw, and for a moment she couldn’t go on. ‘My boyfriend.’
‘Ah,’ Anderson said. Nothing else. Her eyebrows went up, but she didn’t ask anything, and after she’d waited a moment she got the idea Claire wasn’t going to tell, either. ‘Let me give you the tour, then. I assume you’re familiar with Myrnin’s dimensional portals? Did he teach you how to operate them?’
From there, the hours passed fast, full of technical discussions and equations, lightning-fast chains of thought as each of them built on the other’s ideas and work. By noon, they had a working mathematical expression of how the portals worked, and Claire matched it up against the work she’d done with Myrnin on the same thing.
Dr Anderson’s final version was better, cleaner and covered more theoretical ground.
The afternoon was spent learning equipment, most of which Claire had never seen, though some of it she’d heard about. Most fascinating was a genetic sequencer hard at work cracking the code of vampire DNA. ‘It’s deceptively human,’ Dr Anderson said. ‘Tough to tell the difference, because there’s really very little to find. It’s almost as if the DNA was only part of the equation for how vampires change – it’s not just a physical process. And I don’t have any equipment that can capture something that only happens on the spiritual plane, at least, not yet.’
‘I might,’ Claire said. She felt tentative about it, and a little overwhelmed by what Dr Anderson was doing in this very sparkly lab; who was she to pretend to be an inventor? It didn’t feel nearly as weird when she was with Myrnin; everything seemed possible.
Here, she felt very … young. And inexperienced.
But she had Dr Anderson’s undivided attention. ‘Go on.’
‘I … I thought that since Myrnin had made machines that interacted with vampire powers, then it might be possible to make another machine to cancel them.’
There was a long, strange silence, and Claire felt herself growing hot and uncomfortable under Anderson’s steady stare. Then her professor said, very carefully, ‘Do you have such a device?’
‘Maybe? I mean, I know it can amplify vampire emotions. I think if I can use it in reverse, it could make them afraid instead of angry, cancel out their aggression and hunger … It’s all really just a guess right now.’
‘But you built it.’
‘I have a prototype.’
‘Where?’
Dr Anderson was taking this way more seriously than Claire had ever expected. Even Myrnin hadn’t seemed so impressed. ‘It’s packed, they’re delivering it with all my stuff this week.’
‘You shipped it?’
‘I thought it might be hard to get it through security at the airport.’
‘Ah. Excellent point. But you really thought it was safer to trust it to a moving company? Do the vampires know you have this device?’
‘Myrnin does.’
‘And has he told Amelie?’
‘I don’t know,’ Claire said. She felt more than a little off balance, as if she had done something bad but she wasn’t sure what exactly it was. ‘Shouldn’t he have?’
‘If he thinks you’re worth keeping alive, he won’t,’ Dr Anderson said. She had a remote, calculating look in her blue eyes, suddenly, and it was chilling. ‘The last thing Amelie would want is a device like that, capable of giving humans a way to control vampires. When is this device scheduled to arrive here?’
‘Um, tomorrow, I think. They’re just supposed to put the boxes in my bedroom if I’m out.’
‘Don’t be out,’ Anderson said. ‘Be home. Check the box you put it in before they leave, and then call me as soon as you’re alone and I will arrange for an escort. I want this device of yours put in the secured area as soon as possible, just in case it works as you say. Vampires don’t like us developing new weapons against them, Claire. I’ve seen others end up dead for simply talking about one, and you’ve actually made one. This is something that Amelie can’t, and won’t, ignore. I’m really surprised that Myrnin allowed this at all, and even more surprised that he hasn’t told Amelie about it.’
Claire thought, with a sudden burst of cold inside, about what had happened to Shane’s family when they’d left Morganville. Amelie had been dead set on keeping her secrets, and when Shane’s mother had begun remembering too much, talking too much, she’d ended up dead. It was pure luck that Shane and his father hadn’t died, too.
What she had done in developing this device – no, this weapon – was a whole lot worse than just blabbing about Morganville. It could be a real threat to them. To their very lives.
Dr Anderson was right. It was something the vampires wouldn’t ignore … and now that she was out of Morganville, accidents could happen. None of her friends would know the difference.
She was alone.
‘Hey,’ Dr Anderson said, and gave her a small, careful smile.
‘Easy. You look a little spooked.’
Claire nodded, unable to say much.
‘You got used to thinking of yourself as safe from them, didn’t you? That they were on your side. It’s easy to make that mistake. They will treat you as an asset, or even as a friend, right up until you cross the line and become a threat, Claire; you’ve already done that, even if they don’t know it yet. You’ve gone from Amelie’s subject to Amelie’s enemy, even though technically you’ve never turned against her … she won’t wait for the actual betrayal. Just the seeds of it are enough.’ Anderson’s eyes were still calculating, still cool. ‘Are you armed?’
‘No. It’s the real world. I didn’t think I needed to … there are laws against it, right?’
‘Would you rather be fined for carrying a concealed knife, or dead in an alley?’
‘Are those my only options?’
Dr Anderson’s smile warmed up, and the seriousness faded a bit. Just a bit. ‘Not necessarily, but I believe in planning for the worst case scenario.’
‘You’d really like my boyfriend Shane,’ Claire said. ‘Okay. I’m used to carrying a knife – silver, right?’
‘We have new processes that allow us to have just a silver layer on the edge. It’s more reliable and holds sharpness well.’ Dr Anderson walked to a locked cabinet and opened it with a palm print and complicated code punched into the keypad; she reached in and came out with a knife in a leather scabbard. It was dauntingly large, and when she handed it over, it felt heavier than Claire was used to carrying.
‘Do you have anything …’
‘Smaller? No. Sorry. It’ll fit in a backpack handily. If you want to carry it on your person, I’d advise you to take up the current trend of carrying gigantic handbags. Watch the edge. It’s sharp enough to slice anything but diamond. And for God’s sake, carry it, Claire. You’re no good to me at all if you’re dead. Until you start working, I can’t even be sure you’re any good to me at all, but I’m willing to give you the chance.’ Anderson patted her on the shoulder in an impersonally kind sort of way. ‘What time is it? – Oh, damn, I have a class to teach in twenty minutes. Lab rules: you’ll be here bright and early every day. I arrive at six a.m.; I’ll expect you no later than seven. You don’t arrive before me, and you don’t stay after. If I decide that you’re reliable, I’ll start allowing you to remain in the lab while I’m teaching, but you’ll have a period of evaluation before that happens, and of course the lab’s sensors will monitor everything you do. That’s not meant as a threat, just clarity – I’d rather you aren’t surprised by the level of observation you have here.’
It was nothing but surprising, but Claire didn’t really mind; she accepted the need for security. She wasn’t sure how to read Dr Anderson, though, and she thought her new mentor felt the same about her. Well, at least she gave me a knife, Claire thought. That said something … but what, exactly, Claire wasn’t quite sure.
Dr Anderson had already dismissed her, clearly, because she was shuffling through a stack of papers and ignoring Claire’s tentative goodbye wave, so Claire headed back to the door. There was a second badge station, and she used it to unlock her way out into the hallway. Disorientation set in for a few seconds, because there were few signs and the clean white tile looked the same in any direction, but she finally figured out how they’d come in, and badged out for a second time before returning to normal college surroundings. It felt weird, coming from that high-tech world to one where people her age were laughing, throwing footballs on the lawn and flirting as if it was the most important skill in the world.
Maybe the normal world isn’t as normal as I expected.
That was a sobering thought.
She headed across the busy campus grounds, and the knife stuck in her backpack felt strange; she checked often to see if somehow the outline of it was visible, but of course it wasn’t. It was like a sliver of her old life sticking into her new one, and she didn’t know how to feel about it.
Turned out, she had reason to be happy.
Claire crossed Albany Street and headed for Chicago Pizza, because suddenly she was starving, and it was one place she’d tried before, so a little bit familiar … and as she got her pizza slice and soda and negotiated through the packed room for a little table at the wall, she saw someone standing on the other side of the window, looking in.
Someone she recognised.
Derrick.
Liz’s stalker ex wasn’t just checking out the day’s pie offerings … he was staring right at her, boring his gaze in hard as a drill. The shock made Claire’s heart kick up hard, and she instinctively pushed back from the table and reached down for the pack leaning against her knee – survival instincts, even though Derrick wasn’t doing anything but looking at her.
It was something in his eyes. Something just … wrong.
There was no chair on the other side of her tiny table, but someone got up and left, and Derrick pushed in the door as that student pushed out. He grabbed the chair along the way and dragged it noisily over to Claire’s table, where he sat, put his elbows on the table and said, ‘Hey, Claire. How was your day?’
She was not up for small talk. Something she’d learnt from Shane: there was a time for distracting chatter, and a time for shutting up and watching, and this was definitely a guy she could not afford to play games with. It was his game, his rules. She couldn’t win it. ‘You need to leave me alone, Derrick,’ she said, and she didn’t try to keep her voice down, either. The restaurant was packed with people, and some of them looked over – not alarmed, just curious onlookers. ‘Walk away right now.’
‘I’m not doing anything, Claire, c’mon. I just want to be friends. Liz is special to me; I ought to get to know the people she likes, right?’
‘Liz doesn’t want to see you. I don’t want to see you.’ Claire stood up suddenly, and the sound of her chair going over backward was very loud. Conversational buzz around them stopped. ‘You need to leave, right now.’
‘Or?’ Derrick didn’t seem alarmed at all. ‘You’ll call the cops and tell them I was politely making conversation?’
Claire didn’t even think about what she was going to do. If she had, she probably would have second-guessed it.
She picked up her full soda and flung it right in his face.
He gasped, jumped out of his chair, and stood there dripping and furious. Ice chunks glittered in his hair, and his shirt was stained and soaked.
Someone nearby started a slow clap. Others joined in.
Derrick’s menace was no longer simmering beneath the surface. He stared at Claire as if he intended to bite chunks out of her, and the small table between them didn’t seem like much, if any, protection. Neither did the people around them, who might cheer a gutsy move but would run from a fight.
She’d never missed having Shane at her back so much.
Derrick took in a deep breath, twitched all over, and forced out a smile that was all teeth. ‘All these people are witnesses. I never raised a hand to her, okay? She’s the one who assaulted me.’ He raised both hands, brushed the ice out of his hair, and backed away from the table, and Claire. ‘Damn, girl, back off the caffeine. I’m out.’ He sounded like a regular guy now, bemused by her reaction, and the clapping faded off. ‘Sorry if I scared you, I didn’t mean to.’ It sounded sincere. All of a sudden, the tide of popular sentiment was turning around them.
‘Yes, you did,’ Claire said flatly. ‘You know it and I know it. But you don’t scare me, Derrick. I’ve—’ Killed scarier things than you, she almost said, but that would sound way wrong in this place, this time. ‘I’ve known plenty of guys worse than you. I’m still standing.’
‘Chick’s crazy,’ he said, to no one in particular – just a pronouncement, and it seemed like some of the others agreed with him. Some didn’t. One girl was frowning at Derrick, clearly alarmed; at least a couple of guys were not on his side, either. One of them – a big enough fellow – stood up.
‘Maybe just go, man,’ he
said.
‘Why not her?’ Derrick shot back.
The guy shrugged. ‘Well, she’s got pizza. You don’t.’
It was a mild, but valid, point, and right then, one of the employees – probably the manager, Claire thought – came out from behind the counter and fixed Derrick, then Claire, with quelling looks. ‘Whatever’s going on, it stops here,’ he said. ‘Or I call the cops.’
‘No problem,’ Derrick said. He was still holding up his hands. ‘I’m going, man.’
He did, backing through the door, but as he walked past the plate glass window where Claire had first seen him, he sent her a quick, sideways look that was so malignant it might have caused cancer.
She was shaking all over, she realised – the aftermath of the adrenaline flood. She put her chair back upright and asked at the counter for some paper towel. The soda had mostly landed on the floor around Derrick’s chair, and she cleaned it up without complaint, and quietly apologised to those around her. They shrugged it off.
The pizza tasted like dust and cardboard, delicious as it probably was, and she ate fast, with her eyes fixed on that plate glass window.
Dreading the moment when she would have to step outside.
‘Hey.’ Claire flinched, but it was the boy who’d stood up to Derrick at the end; he’d walked up to her side, but she hadn’t noticed, because she’d been so intent on the window. ‘You worried about him?’
She laughed shakily. ‘A little, yeah.’
‘There’s a back door,’ he said. ‘It lets out on an alley but it’s only a quick run to the street. If he’s watching the front, you can duck him for now. But if you want my opinion, call the cops. There’s something not right about him.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I know.’ She stuck out her hand, and he shook it. ‘Thanks. I’m Claire, by the way.’
‘Grant,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
He didn’t offer to walk her home, but she wouldn’t have accepted, anyway; right now, the knife in her bag was the only thing she felt inclined to put her trust in.