“Shit, I don’t care about that! I thought you’d found more about Gaia!”
“No, I’m trying to catch up on other stuff, and you should care about this because it could mean—”
“Just tell me, was Jason smiling or frowning?”
“Um, neither, really. He didn’t seem upset. No, wait, he did smile when he said he’d see me at work. Happy?”
Trish sat down to eat as she said, “Yes. Good.”
* * *
Trish set her things in her office and then went directly to Jason’s, where she found him pacing while on the phone. He held up a finger to indicate he was almost done.
When he hung up he said, “It’s a good day already. It turns out there’s a small sustainability conference in Seattle on right now, and they’d be thrilled to have me pop in for a quick panel discussion right after we arrive.” He closed his door and continued more quietly, “That’ll give us a reason for being there, or me at least, and still leave us plenty of time for our real mission. Plus it’s small enough that it won’t make any significant press.”
Trish began to speak, but he interrupted her. “Ah, ah, I know, you’ve come to nag, but you don’t need to. I’ve been a good boy and done all the stuff on my list. And you’re going to love this! I’ve found the perfect way to swap us between the two vans without you having to hack in to falsify the GPS record!”
He bounded over to his computer and pointed to a satellite map on the screen. “There’s this shallow creek bed here which shouldn’t be a problem for us to cross. On this side is a defunct tree nursery, so we can park in back of it, and nobody will see us go down the hill to the creek. On the other side is an open meadow, and just beyond that is this mall,” he said, opening a browser window, “which happens to be owned by Popucorp, which we’ve been courting for two years to get them into our Green Consumer initiative. That’s a perfect excuse for us to have been down there from Seattle and for me to have brought you two along, because on the chance that anyone bothers to trace our movements we can claim we were checking out the mall for business purposes! Why are you looking at me like that? I thought you’d be happy.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I don’t know why. I haven’t felt such hopeful anticipation for years!” He started to sit at his desk but then exclaimed, “Oh yeah!” and leapt back up to cross the room to his bookshelves.
“That’s exactly it,” Trish said, following him. “Jason, stop for a minute.” She put her hands on his arms and made him turn to look at her. “Come on, stop for just one second.”
“But I need to—”
“Stop. Take a breath,” she ordered.
He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at her.
Trish lifted her hands and said, “I get that you’re excited. We all are. But you need to be realistic about this.”
“I am!”
“No, you’re not. You’re acting like a boy about to pick up the puppy he’s wanted for as long as he can remember. It might not work out like you expect.”
“I have no intention of treating her like a pet.”
“But you have this mental image of her as being a certain kind of person. You’ve scrounged up tiny bits of information over a century and used that to create a character in your head that might not exist in real life. You really don’t know much about her.”
“I don’t need to. It’s not like I’m marrying her—I just want to know her.”
“What if it’s not actually her? Or even if it is, what if she doesn’t want to know you?”
Jason’s mouth opened to speak, but he remained silent as he contemplated that latter, horrible thought.
“What if she doesn’t want to know anybody?” Trish continued. “You went through a time by yourself when you didn’t want anything to do with anyone.”
“That was different. I had become a monster,” he replied in low whisper. “I needed to find my humanity again without risking anyone else.”
“And she was living off by herself in the woods when someone grabbed her and stuffed her in a hole for about a decade. What kind of mood would you be in?”
His jaw set and his brow furrowed deeply.
“You’d want to kill someone. It’s okay to admit that. I’d want to,” she said.
He tried to look away, but Trish put her hands on his cheeks and forced him to maintain eye contact with her. “Jason, I don’t want to upset you, but I can’t stand the thought of you getting a broken heart over this. You don’t know who or what is down there. I hope it is her and that she’s a great person, but we can’t go in there assuming that. You’ve got to go in with your head, not your heart.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why does that advice sound familiar?”
“Because I’m quoting you, and you know it.”
“Did you listen to me at the time?”
Trish snorted. “Hardly! I was a stupid teenager, and you were bumming me out. But you were right.”
He pointed at her and demanded, “I want that in writing.”
Trish threw her hands in the air dramatically and went to the desk. She grabbed a piece of scrap paper and a thick marker and wrote in block letters, “JASON WAS RIGHT”.
When she handed it to him, he said, “I’m going to keep this, you know.” As he tucked the note into his wallet, he admitted, “I understand what you’re saying, and you’re probably right.”
Trish seized the marker again and thrust it toward him.
He rolled his eyes and said, “Put it away,” but she just grinned at him so he snatched it out of her hand and tossed it onto the desk. “I promise to try to keep a level head, okay?”
“It’s not your head I’m worried about.”
“I promise to keep my heart out of it as best I can too. Now please go tell Don that I’m about to send both of you an email about my panel discussion and suggest we check out this mall. That way it’s in the record, but I don’t want him wondering what the hell I’m talking about and sending me a suspicious reply.”
Trish groaned. “He probably would, too. Fine. I’m going, but you calm down. If you’re acting too giddy someone’s going to notice that too.”
“Fair enough.”
Trish left, wondering petulantly why it should fall to her to have to manage the emotional whims and social foibles of two such bizarre men.
* * *
By the night before they were to leave, Jason’s mood had flipped back to worry and desperate longing. He’d told Trish and Don to get lots of sleep but failed to take the advice himself and instead went to the gallery to sit gazing at the portrait some more.
Not long after he arrived, Trish came in and said accusingly, “I thought you were headed to bed.”
“By and by,” he said quietly. Then he recited,
Longing is like the Seed
That wrestles in the Ground,
Believing if it intercede
It shall at length be found.
The Hour, and the Clime —
Each Circumstance unknown,
What Constancy must be achieved
Before it see the Sun!
Trish sat beside him. “Who wrote that?”
“Dickinson. It seemed apropos. She ought not to be trapped there a single extra moment, let alone a day, before she can come forth to see the sun again.”
Trish laughed. “‘Ought not’? And ‘by and by’?”
“Hmm, what?”
“I can tell your head is in the past when you get into the poetry and old-timey talk.”
He tore his eyes away from the portrait long enough to give Trish a puzzled look.
“Whenever you tell your old stories or look at that picture or think about Gaia, your British accent creeps back a little bit and you say things like ‘ought not’ instead of ‘shouldn’t’.”
He shook his head and returned his gaze to the green eyes as he muttered, “Rubbish.”
“Sure, that refutes it.”
“It’s perfectly acceptable Quee
n’s English,” he protested.
“Sure, but which queen?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea of what you’re on about.”
Trish laughed again, patted his arm, and rose. “If you say so.” She left, calling, “Good night!” behind her as she went.
Jason let out a long, slow sigh. He rose as well, moving to stand directly in front of the portrait. He caressed the brass nameplate that said, “Lady Rose Davidson, 1894,” with his fingertips, lightly and reverentially.
Please be her, he thought. Please. He pressed his fingers against the name as if he could thus send his thoughts to her. I am coming for you, and I will make everything better, I swear it. Be her and be all right.
There he remained until he heard the grandfather clock in the library next door chime eleven o’clock. Then he went upstairs for what he knew would be a sleepless night.
* * *
They arrived in Seattle without incident, and Jason appeared on the discussion panel to great appreciation by the attendees, since he was well-respected in the field but not commonly seen in public. That was deliberate, of course; the fewer people who noticed his lack of aging, the longer he could continue as Jason Truitt.
They spent the remainder of that day preparing for their adventure and then went to bed as early as possible as to facilitate a speedy start in the morning.
The sun had only been up for a short time when Don dropped Trish and Jason off in their semi-disguised forms near a corporate vehicle rental facility several miles away from the Hamdon site. Don went to park at the mall and wait for them while Trish walked down the block to pick up the second van. Once she had it, she drove back to the bus bench where Jason sat waiting, looking like a dishevelled medical resident. She then drove them to a strip mall that backed onto a small field, on the other side of which was Hamdon BioTech.
When they were certain nobody was watching, they slipped down the embankment and hurried to the scattered trees at the side of the field. They made their way as carefully as possible to a grove of trees behind the research building’s closed loading dock. After analyzing the company’s purchase habits and looking up their typical courier schedule, Don had determined that this morning between 9:15 and 9:45 was the least likely time for anyone to be back there.
While hidden in the trees, Trish used a phone they’d purchased anonymously for this event to access the Trojan horse she’d set up in Hamdon’s network.
“I’m in,” she whispered. An impressively short time later she said, “Okay, their front desk security monitors are now looping on yesterday’s data from this time.”
“Hopefully there wasn’t anything exciting going on yesterday.”
Trish gave Jason a dirty look. “I did check, you know. You don’t keep me around to be stupid.”
“True. It’s fortunate your nefarious skills can finally be used for good.”
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t send me to reform school when you had the chance?” She tapped the phone again. “Back door is now unlocked as if it’s been legitimately card-swiped. Yay for technology over needing actual keys! Let’s go.”
Trish reached into the pocket of her lab coat, took out rubber gloves, and slipped them on. As they went up the steps, Jason closed his eyes.
“Anyone on the other side?” Trish asked.
“I don’t think so, no.”
They opened it and went in, trying not to look at the camera pointed at the door, just in case.
Using the floor plans they’d committed to memory, they were able to walk through the office unnoticed to the door to the mysterious central corridor. They had to go past Dr. Steele’s office, but since she was away with her assistant, nobody was there to see them. Trish tapped on her phone again, and the red light on the door’s panel turned green.
Inside the corridor was a desk with a man sitting at a computer. Trish closed the door behind them as Jason stepped forward with a smile. They weren’t sure if he was a researcher or a security guard, but it didn’t matter.
“Who are you?” the man asked, rising from his chair.
“Hi! I’m Dr. Somebody!” Jason said with a grin as he stepped forward and extended a hand to shake.
“Who?” the man asked but automatically put out his hand anyway.
Jason grabbed it, pulled enough of the man’s consciousness out of him to send him into a deep sleep, and caught him as he fell, propping him up at his desk in such a way that it looked like he was napping on the job.
“I’ve got this lock scrambled so only I can open it,” Trish said, and then pointed behind Jason. “That’ll be the cleaning area.” A sign instructed all persons entering the “Project Zone” to remove their shoes, so they did, placing them on a tray to the side.
They passed through a curtain of thick strips of plastic into a small enclosure. Trish pressed a red button familiar to them both from other laboratories with sensitive equipment. A sudden rush of air swirled around them. Trish temporarily took off her wig and shook it in the air stream, and Jason ran his hands roughly through his hair. But instead of the air stream ending as they were used to, in the last moments a foul-smelling fog accompanied it.
Trish coughed and then wheezed, “Did I just increase my cancer risk?”
“Quite possibly, sorry. Shit,” he said with a worried expression.
She shrugged it off. “I guess it’s better than death in the next few minutes.”
They passed through a second curtain and gave each other a thorough inspection for any stray plant material. Then each took a set of blue paper boots with white rubber soles from a tub on a table by the elevator door.
Trish pressed the elevator button, and the door opened. Inside, they kept their heads down in case the lift car was equipped with a camera she hadn’t been able to locate on the network.
The descent was slow and eerie. Jason whispered, “You okay?”
“Too late if I’m not.”
He started to react, but she waved him off. “What about you? With the draining? You’re not going to go all crazy-addict on me, are you?”
Jason muttered, “Takes more than a little knock-out for me to get a noticeable jolt. I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t, Trish. Just leave it be.”
When the elevator stopped and didn’t immediately open, they exchanged a look of panic, but then they heard a rattle from the other side and the doors slid apart.
A man in a lab coat with a nametag labelled Steve Bertille said, “What are you doing here? I thought you were—hey?” He stopped speaking and stared at them in confusion.
Jason once more smiled and stuck out a hand to shake. “Hi, Steve! Glad to meet you! I’m Dr. So-and-so from …” His voice trailed off as the man fell to floor, unconscious.
“Nice names,” Trish muttered. “Couldn’t you come up with something better?”
“Why? Most people I drain don’t remember the five minutes prior, let alone five seconds.”
They found themselves in a room reminiscent of a hospital on their left, with shelves full of medical items ranging from scrubs to a phlebotomist’s tray. The wall on that side featured a door beside a wide, curtained window above a long desk sporting a computer and several stacks of miscellaneous papers and surgical paraphernalia. The right side was set up as a research laboratory.
Trish pointed a photo on the desk of an elderly lady holding a gaudy pink cake with the name “Ethel” scrawled in blue frosting. “Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with someone that they can be a creepy-ass evil lab tech but have a picture of their grandma staring at them all damned day?” Shuddering, she peered at the monitor and said, “There’s a schedule on here, but it looks like they don’t have anything going on this week except routine stuff like food and linen changes.” She turned to Jason and added in a pained voice, “For someone named Anna.”
“Just get us in,” he whispered.
Trish tested access codes on the computer while Jason stepped forward slowly, his l
egs suddenly feeling as if they were surrounded by cold water, making him fear it was all a dream and he was about to wake to discover that the past few days hadn’t happened. But he did not wake; he reached the window and lifted the edge of the curtain with the back of his hand.
Beyond it was a brightly lit room, tiled on all surfaces, with a hospital bed in the far right corner and a toilet in an alcove in the middle of the far wall. Rails on the ceiling indicated that privacy curtains could have been available for both the bed and toilet, but the rails were empty, meaning anyone at the window had a full view of the room. The bed was unmade, and padded restraints with well-worn edges dangled from its frame.
In the far left corner was a woman sitting on the floor. She was dressed in pale blue hospital scrubs and beige rubberized socks, her head hidden behind her knees with long, dark hair draped over her arms and her hands locked around her shins. She was rocking slowly, lightly bumping the wall to her left repeatedly, her shoulders tilted slightly away from the door as if shielding herself against anything that might enter.
Jason almost touched the window with the fingertips of his right hand, but then he remembered he wasn’t gloved and pulled them back just in time. “Oh shit,” he whispered. “That’s not good.”
Trish leaned to look through the window. “No, it isn’t. You sure about this?”
Jason nodded.
Trish removed Steve’s lanyard with his photo ID and security card, slid the card through a reader by the computer, and entered a code on the keyboard. The light beside the door’s handle changed from red to green, and they heard a soft click.
Jason suddenly thought better of wearing a lab coat for his first conversation with the woman he’d sought for more than a century, so he took it off and tossed it on the chair as Trish opened the door and stood aside to let him enter first.
As he went inside, the woman lifted her head to look at him but otherwise retained her defensive posture. He was stunned motionless for a moment when he saw the green eyes he knew so well and could now confirm had not been enhanced for aesthetics in the portrait. They were as bright as depicted but fixed on him with a baleful stare instead of the far-away sadness to which he’d grown accustomed.
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