Chapter 11
Lydia
I wake up one morning to find Simon wearing a suit. That’s odd.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m going into the office, and you’re coming with me,” he says.
That idea makes me feel a little sick. The office is where I did the bad thing.
“It’s weird that the police haven’t come looking for Veronica the way they did for you,” I comment.
Truth is I’ve been getting increasingly nervous about getting in trouble for Veronica’s disappearance.
I have the feeling it’s going to lead back to me somehow.
I’m not a good criminal. I’m an opportunist. I don’t know if there were cameras in the office.
I bet there were. Maybe not in Veronica’s office specifically, but in the hall.
They’ll see her go in and never come out.
They’ll want to question me about the cat, I’m sure.
As we drive to the office, I convince myself not to worry too much. The company is never going to admit the tech they have, and that means the police are never going to be able to solve any missing person’s case. It will be a closed room mystery forever.
I still feel quite guilty, though. If she got hurt, or if she didn’t manage to change back, or if… If a thousand different bad things happened, each and every one of them would be my fault.
I shadow Simon closely once we get into work.
That’s what he wants anyway, and I figure it’s the safest option.
People rarely talk to me when I am with him anyway.
He has all the authority and gravitas and that makes others speak to him first. I’ve gone out of my way to dress as conservatively and book nerdy as possible to also help blend into the background.
I’ve done everything I can to avoid detection, in other words.
I expected the place to be all tense and weird, but it’s just like any other day.
People are bustling about working, or hardly working as the corporate case may be.
The mood is pretty good, all things considered.
We walk past a man in a white coat with a jelly donut that is trying its best to drip down his sleeve, but he’s wrangling it masterfully.
He salutes Simon with the donut on the way past.
“People really don’t seem to care she’s not here,” I whisper to him.
“Quiet,” he says firmly.
He has a cooler with him, stacked with ice.
We go right to his office, to his secret fridge, and he starts decanting all the ‘do not touchiest’ vials into it.
He’s moving calmly, but with undeniable urgency.
I wonder what his thinking is. Is he taking work things home?
Or is he going to destroy the evidence of what was happening here? It’s probably both.
“Ah, I was told the two of you had finally decided to make an appearance at the office. Doctor Seek, Lydia. I’d like to see the pair of you in my office.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands erect as I hear a voice I never expected to hear again coming from behind me.
I whirl around to see Veronica standing there, every inch a human woman.
She is wearing a pantsuit cut in a diabolically good way, the flare of the blazer making the most of the sway of her hip.
Her blonde hair has been cut into an even more razor-sharp chin-length bob.
It looks good. She looks incredibly good, actually.
Given how rough Simon was when he finally made it out of wolf form, I am surprised.
“You can leave those samples where they are,” she says. “You won’t be working from home anymore. I’ve decided the risks of unsupervised science are simply too great.”
Simon takes me by the hand and pulls me close, but nods to Veronica, and the three of us proceed through the halls in a very disparate set of moods.
Veronica is triumphant, while I am terrified.
Simon is hard to read, but it is safe to guess he’s probably relieved she is alive and annoyed that he didn’t get to finish what he was doing.
“Close the door behind you,” she says as she walks around her desk and takes a seat.
She faces the pair of us with her hands clasped in front of her. Neither Simon nor I sit, and she does not ask us to. I have the feeling of being sent to the headmistress’ office, like I am in trouble, but not of the serious legal kind.
“I hunted and ate a rat,” she begins.
That’s it. I lose it immediately. How can I not laugh at such a bold statement? The idea of this polished woman eating a raw rat is far too viscerally intense for me to maintain composure.
I try to bite back my laughter, but it doesn’t work. After a second or two, Simon swats my ass hard enough to make me squeak. From then on, I content myself with muffled little giggles.
“I’m glad you find that amusing,” she says. “I can assure you it is one of the last things you will find funny for a very long time. What you did was erratic, capricious, dangerous, and frankly unfathomably cruel. But it was also wrong.”
I bite my lower lip in the effort not to show any mirth outwardly. I can feel Simon glowering at me so hard I don’t dare even look at him. I keep my eyes on Veronica. She’s the one I wronged, after all.
“I am sorry,” I say. “I really didn’t…”
“Didn’t mean to taint my beverage with a formula designed to rewrite my very DNA?”
“No, I didn’t mean for you to get let out of the bathroom,” I say. “That’s Simon’s fault. He wouldn’t listen, and then he wouldn’t let me go after you. I never intended for any real harm to come to you.”
“Oh? What did you intend?” Her voice is cold as ice.
“I suppose… I guess… I wanted to teach you a lesson.”
“Teaching lessons,” she nods, steepling her fingers. “That’s a fine turn of phrase in these circumstances, isn’t it. I also feel inclined to ensure that some lessons are taught now, as I am sure you can imagine.”
I am so fucked. But I am also relieved. She is okay, and that is what really matters. I don’t know what I would have done if she’d gotten seriously hurt, or worse. I would have felt guilty literally forever, I think.
“I’ve dealt with her,” Simon says. “She has had it made very clear to her how unacceptable that was.”
“Oh, I am sure you have, but that’s not really enough for my liking,” Veronica says. “I understand that young ladies like Lydia have to be taught lessons very harshly if they are to retain them at all. Otherwise they quickly forget and go on to be serial offenders.”
I start to feel lightheaded. Then I realize I am holding my breath. I don’t know what the hell this woman wants to do to me, but I know it won’t be good.
“Honey badger,” I say.
“Excuse me?” Veronica frowns at me.
“If you’re going to turn me into something for revenge, I’d like to be a honey badger. They can be bitten by snakes and sleep it off. They resonate with me.”
I wasn’t actually trying to be sassy, but it’s leaking out of me anyway.
“I was not going to do that to you,” she says.
“Aw, you don’t want me hurt?”
“You could be pregnant by now,” Veronica says. “If so, I don’t want to risk the outcome of the experiment.”
“You mean the baby.”
“I mean the property of Z-Corporation that may or may not be growing inside you.”
“I don’t want her going off the premises again until the experiment is finalized,” Veronica says to Simon.
She isn’t even speaking to me anymore. She’s talking to him like I’m something for him to handle.
The gloves are off now. The mask has fallen.
I pushed her too far and now she doesn’t have to pretend to be human anymore.
“I shouldn’t have turned you into a cat,” I say, feeling very witch-like in the process. “I should have turned you into a dog, because you’re a bi—”
I don’t get the full words out because Simon clamps his hand over my mouth and snugs me back against his body as if he’s pulling me away from a fight in a dive bar.
“Take her to the thirteenth floor,” she says. “I don’t want to see her again. Then come back, and you and I can discuss if our working relationship can continue.”
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s not get overly emotional. I’m sure there’s an agreement that can be come to.”
“I am sure there is,” she says. “But let’s get the problem out of the room before we decide how to solve it.”
“I am not a problem!”
“We should talk privately. One moment,” Simon says to Veronica, taking me by the hand and escorting me out of the room.
When we get out into the hall, we discover that it is filled with burly men. At least a dozen of them, maybe more. Simon is strong, but he’s not strong enough to fight a rugby team.
By the looks on their faces, it is clear that they’ve come for me. Veronica has apparently instituted new levels of security at the company.
“We’re to escort the specimen,” the leader says.
He has to be at least twelve feet tall. Okay, maybe closer to seven feet, but he is insanely tall, he is also very bearded, and he has the gaze of a man who eats rocks for fun.
Just a super intense dead stare that tells me he dehumanized the rest of our species a long time ago and considers my life about as valuable as a paperclip.
“She’s in the office,” Simon says, not missing a beat. “Veronica is still briefing her.”
“Who is the girl with you?”
“This is Amanda Flan. She’s a biochemist from Lucerne. I’m going to take her to the lab to get her started, then I’ll be back to deal with Lydia.”
“Bonjour,” I say, taking a shot at what they might speak in Lucerne. Switzerland has four languages that could be at play.
The hall clears as the barrier of bodies spreads to either side of the passage to allow us to get through. Simon walks me away, his hand on my back as he escorts me from danger.
He takes me out one of the rear doors. The front will likely have more men, he reasons. The back of the building is pretty well fortified too, but there are no armed men there. A tall concrete wall separates the back of the building from the street beyond, which is elevated and on an angle.
“Stop!”
Even if the shout didn’t come from behind us, it would be obvious that we’ve been discovered.
The sound of heavy boots coming down the hall behind us is really fucking loud.
They’ve worked out Simon’s ruse, and they’re coming for us.
No. Not us. Me. They want to stick me in a lab cell and breed me and now it’s way more scary than it is hot.
The world slides by suddenly as Simon picks me up over his head and hoists me to the top of the wall.
“Run,” he says.
“What?”
“I’ll hold them off. You get out of here. You’ve got your phone. I’ll message you with a safe location soon. Don’t go to your house, or mine.” He boosts me up and I pull myself over the ledge, finding myself on the street beyond the building.
Behind me, men are pouring out the door. I have to run, because I know they’ll be scaling that concrete wall like it’s not even there and then I’ll be caught and this will all be for nothing.
The last thing I see is Simon being swarmed by guys and trying to block them. I run through traffic and by some twist of fate, there’s a group e-bike just sitting on the other side of the road. I am on that thing in an instant, putting miles between me and my pursuers.
I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do.
I feel hunted.
I’m worried for Simon.
I’m terrified for myself. I have to stay away from everything familiar. So I go to a gym. I have a membership I’ve been paying for, for almost a year, but I only went once. They’ll never think to look for me here.
I’m not dressed for the gym, but there’s a café there, so I sit there and I scroll on my phone hoping that Simon will call me soon.
I’m so glad I’m at a café. I get something to eat. I get something to drink. I wait. And then I wait longer. And then I start to freak out a little. More than a little. What’s taking him so long? Have they taken him prisoner?
The gym is 24/7, so I have that going for me. Then I think about maybe seeing if internet cafés still exist. They do in Japan. Maybe they do here.
* * *
It is 3:00 in the morning when my phone rings. I am half asleep at the table. There are a few people here working out. I can hear the distant squeak of an elliptical trainer that needs oil.
“Sorry,” Simon says. “It took some time to convince them to leave us alone.”
“You convinced them?”
“Meet me in the park at 6:00 a.m.,” he says. “By the newsstand.”
“Why? If Veronica’s chill, why can’t I just go home? Why can’t you just come and get me now?”
“Chill would be an overstatement,” he says.
There’s a weird glitch for a moment. It sounds like he coughed, or said a word wrong. Something about it makes me feel weird. And suspicious.
My brain is sleepy and slow, and that’s probably why it took me so long to realize why the hair on the back of my neck is standing up in a classic uncanny valley reaction.
I am not talking to him at all. They’ve trained a machine on his voice and now they’re using it to lure me in.
I am impressed and horrified in equal measure.
“Okay. I’ll see you at 6:00 a.m.,” I say. “At the newsstand.”
At 5.30 a.m., I am up a tree near the newsstand, and there are several groups of people milling about trying to look casual and failing.
Bunches of men in long shorts and polo shirts and baseball caps that all look too new, and trainers that also look like they’ve never been worn are conspicuous as hell, as is the way they’re spaced out around the newsstand like they’ve taken up twelve, three, six, and nine on a clock.
Veronica has called in tactical teams on me.
She’s not going to catch me that easily.