Chapter 4 #2
“I wasn’t sure if you ate meat, so I erred on the side of caution. Plus, the campus deli’s cuts are nothing short of disgusting.”
“Guess I hadn’t noticed,” Dani said slowly, still trying to calibrate herself to the woman’s mood.
“I got you some coffee, too. Black, I assumed.”
“Black is perfect.” Dani had never met a style of coffee she didn’t like. She took the proffered paper cup and knocked it back.
“It’s hot,” Silva warned, but the coffee was already halfway gone by the end of her sentence. “Well, it’s that kind of afternoon, I suppose. Please help yourself to a sandwich. I’m just going to close the door so we aren’t disturbed.”
Dani was too busy digging in. It didn’t matter that she was anxious, or that Silva might think her rude. Her parents had taught her when to accept free food, and that was always.
She was nearly finished before Silva had shut the door and seated herself on the opposite side of her desk.
With a delicate awareness of her talon-like nails, the professor peeled away the paper from her own sandwich but didn’t pick it up.
Instead, she placed her elbows on the edge of the desk and leaned toward Dani with an expression that gentled the sharper features of her face.
It’s pity, Dani thought. Self-conscious, she swallowed the last bite of sandwich and set the crumpled wrapper on the desk. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Silva said. “I told you to help yourself.”
“Thank you for lunch. You didn’t have to.”
Silva waved a hand. “I should be thanking you. I appreciate you devoting some of your time to meeting with me.”
Dani had been so busy eating, she’d almost forgotten to worry about what the professor was about to say to her; but her fear crept back in now, a lioness stalking its prey.
“Before we go any further, there’s something I have to address.” Dani’s stomach clenched. “I must ask for your discretion when it comes to what we discuss today. If you could, I’d prefer you share as few details as possible with anyone.”
Well, that was confusing. If Silva was going to report Dani or the rest of the la ruota crew, she wouldn’t be asking to keep it a secret.
It didn’t rule out possible blackmail as an option, though.
Not only that, but it seemed to Dani that Silva was exercising massive restraint in her word choice, speaking carefully, like she was resisting the pull of Dani’s ability.
“Okay,” Dani said. “If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s keeping things to myself.”
Silva tilted her head and studied Dani like she’d uncovered an intriguing artifact. “That may well be,” she said, “but that isn’t true of anyone else you talk to, is it?”
And there it was. Dani’s muscles tensed, fingers curling into her palms. She had the sudden urge to walk out of Silva’s office. The professor reached out a soothing hand.
“I should have clarified this earlier,” Silva said, “but you’re not in trouble, nor do I think you did anything wrong.
I’ve just never seen anything so subtle and effective.
My little, ah, outburst about my grandmother happened almost without me noticing, and I could tell your classmates were behaving differently after you arrived, but it would have been easy to miss if I hadn’t been watching closely. How exactly did you manage it?”
For a moment Dani sat like a coiled spring, weighing her options.
Silva’s assurance that she wasn’t in trouble should have made her feel better, but it didn’t.
Dani couldn’t go back to being used. She’d gone to great pains to hide her ability from everybody, minus McKenna. It was isolating this way, but safer.
Yet Silva already knew, more or less, what Dani could do. Better that she got the full picture than think Dani was doing something underhanded, like using a spell to manipulate her friends. She swallowed her hesitation, wet her lips, and spoke.
“I don’t really know how to describe it,” Dani said.
Meaning she didn’t know how to make it sound valid, like palmistry or an elemental affiliation.
“As long as I can remember, people have just opened up to me, but it’s not something I do on purpose.
It’s not like they can’t lie or anything; they just give me a little more information than they otherwise might. ”
“Or give away their tells without realizing it.”
“Or that, yeah.”
Silva pushed her untouched sandwich to the side so she could lay her clasped hands on the desk. “I’ve never heard of anything quite like this,” she said. “The fact that it’s so casual makes it all the more interesting to me—and it’s virtually undetectable, unlike a charm.”
“You detected it,” Dani pointed out.
“Ah, but I was on the lookout for curious behaviors,” Silva said. “Most people don’t have any idea what’s happening, do they?”
Dani shook her head.
“They just think you’re easy to talk to.”
Dani lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
“And you have no control over it.”
“I mean, I can tell when it’s happening, but I can’t predict when it will or won’t. But if I change the subject, it can kind of stop the person from saying even more.”
“Quite fascinating,” Silva said. “Passive abilities are exceedingly rare, though not unheard of.” Dani would have liked to hear more about these heard-of cases, but the professor continued.
“In any case, I didn’t ask you here because I’d love to study you, though I would.
I believe your talent and its near invisibility would be especially suited to the project I’m working on. ”
“Okay,” Dani said, with her heart in her throat. Here we go.
“As you know, I’m an oneiromancer, with a particular interest in nightmares—but I’ve also been researching lucid dreaming and how dreamers can exercise control over their dream realms in general.”
She paused like Dani was supposed to say something, but Dani stayed silent. Silva took a breath, then asked, “Have you ever heard of OneiroLabs?”
Dani frowned. “The company with the tallest skyscraper in town? Yeah, kind of hard to miss it. They manufacture dream aids?”
“That’s the one. They’ve made millions off their pharmaceuticals, and they’re getting ready to announce their next big product in December.”
“What is it?” Dani asked, curious despite herself.
She’d never taken any of OneiroLabs’s pills, but she knew people swore by them: DreamLite, for dreamless sleep, and DreamRite, for guaranteed sweet dreams. They’d taken the world by storm when they’d first launched a few years ago.
Now one of the biggest employers in town, they’d had a booth at the career fair a few weeks ago and regularly recruited interns and fresh grads from Fox’s Leap.
“The full details on the product are forthcoming,” Silva said, “but it’s meant to activate lucid dreaming, allowing the user full comprehension of and control over their dreams.”
“Wow,” Dani said. “That sounds cool, actually.”
“That’s what they’re hoping you’ll say.”
“So it’s too good to be true?”
Silva took in a sharp breath, looking down at her hands for a moment, seemingly trying to decide how much to reveal—or fighting her Dani-generated urge to spill it all.
Dani wondered if the professor could actively feel her power.
She’d never actually had the chance to talk openly to someone who was on the other end of it.
McKenna wasn’t affected by it, and with Dani’s parents, Dani tried to never discuss it, hoping they’d forget it existed—wishful thinking, of course.
But she didn’t want to interrupt, so she shelved that question for later.
When Silva finally spoke, each syllable felt deliberate. “It’s not public knowledge, but things haven’t been going according to plan behind the scenes. They’ve been conducting clinical trials for the past few months, and apparently, it hasn’t been yielding the results they were hoping for.”
“What does that mean?”
“The product isn’t working as intended,” Silva clarified.
“I haven’t been able to uncover the specifics, but it seems there’s some kind of side effect they didn’t anticipate.
I’m not exactly surprised; lucid dreaming can be dangerous even when not chemically or magically induced.
Even so, they’re planning to announce in December and start mass manufacturing in the spring.
We’d like to stop that from happening, if the product really does pose a danger to the public. ”
“We?”
“My organization,” Silva said carefully. “I didn’t come to Fox’s Leap just to teach. I’ve been sent here to investigate OneiroLabs. They’ve become quite skilled at hiding from regulators, so we decided it’s time to take a different approach.”
“Hold on. You’re telling me you’re some kind of spy?”
Silva smiled. “I suppose you could say that.”
Dani had not expected this particular plot twist and didn’t know how to feel about it. “Okay,” she said, “I think I’m following you so far. You’re here to do ‘research’ on OneiroLabs’s new product and see what they’re hiding. But why come to Fox’s Leap? Why not get a job at OneiroLabs itself?”
Silva’s teeth clenched, and it took her a moment to respond.
“That would have been a great deal more complicated,” she said tightly.
She swallowed, then continued with less tension in her jaw.
“Their hiring process is stringent, not to mention lengthy. But it’s not just that—OneiroLabs has seen to it that Fox’s Leap is inextricably linked to this product.
Students make up the majority of their recruits for the clinical trials. ”
“Oh,” Dani said, remembering the flyer in the library. “I think I’ve seen them advertising around campus.”
“Yes, you’re the perfect target. After all, who’s going to notice a handful of exhausted students? Or a dozen, or fifty?”
“Wait … that guy we saw yesterday. The one who fell asleep at the water fountain?”