Chapter 24
She went to work. It had taken a great deal of arguing to get Sam to stay behind, but there was no way she could explain taking him into the lab with her.
She needed an escape from the apartment. The thought of spending all day twiddling her thumbs, waiting for Logan to come home so she could enact the stupidest idea she’d ever had, was unbearable to her.
The door creaked on its hinges as she stepped into the lab.
Brenda straightened from where she’d been stooped over a slide, frowning at her. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to take the day off.”
Ophelia pulled her scarf off.
“I thought better of it,” she said, shrugging out of her coat. “We have so much progress to make in such little time. I would hate to be the reason we fall further behind.”
“Everything in this world doesn’t rest on your shoulders. You do know that, right?” Brenda grabbed her shoulder and shook her gently. “I was relieved when you said you were taking a day for yourself. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
“I’m feeling a lot better,” she said, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. “Besides, I wanted to review the results of our last genetic study. Gavin sequenced that new lily hybrid, didn’t he?”
“So he did.” Brenda sighed, throwing her hands up. “I guess it all works out. He called out sick today, anyway. His kids have got that cough that’s going around.”
With relief, Ophelia made her way to her bench and roused her holographic desktop.
She pulled up the results on the translucent screen and stood back, biting her cuticle as she studied it against the last three failed hybrids.
For all that they had advanced in isolating genes, turning them on and off with epigenetic factors could still be a crapshoot.
The door shrieked again, but she was too lost in thought to glance back.
“Can I help you?” Brenda asked, stirring the air as she walked past Ophelia.
“I hope so.”
Ophelia stiffened.
No. There was no way. He wouldn’t.
She turned in horror to find Sam standing at the door in one of Logan’s suits.
“They sent me from the head office to check on your progress,” he said—the rotten, lying machine. “I was hoping someone could give it to me in layman’s terms.”
Brenda toyed with the end of one of her locs, clearly not immune to Sam’s universally attractive good looks. “Oh, well. We haven’t been introduced yet, Mr…?”
“Samuel Nolan.” He held out his hand for a shake, meeting Ophelia’s gaze over Brenda’s shoulder.
I’m going to kill you, she mouthed.
He grinned.
“Well, where would you like to get started, Mr. Nolan?” Brenda asked. “I could show you around since it’s your first time at the facility.”
“I can do that,” Ophelia said hastily, stepping away from her workstation. “I’m stumped at the moment, anyway.”
For a moment, she thought Brenda might argue. Instead, her supervisor gave a wistful sigh. “Alright, then. Let me know if you need anything.”
With one last lingering look at Sam, she walked away.
“Right this way, Mr. Nolan,” Ophelia said, gesturing that he should follow her. “We can start in the back and work our way forward.”
His grin spread, and she had a terrible longing to kick him in his metal shin. “Yes, miss…?”
She ground her teeth as she smiled. “Ophelia.”
“Ophelia,” he purred, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “A pleasure.”
Despite everything, she blushed. She had to shake him off or else lose her backbone.
She led him past the rows of tables and the hood vents, past the employee lounge and the heavy equipment storage.
They stepped into the room that held their small-scale hydroponic farm, and she shut the door behind them, plunging them into darkness.
“Are you insane?” she hissed.
“Perhaps. It is a human standard, so I cannot say if it applies to me.” He clasped his hands behind his back, wandering deeper into the room. “This is where you work?”
She smoothed her hair back, suddenly uncertain. What would he think of it? Logan had never bothered to visit her at work. It had been clear that he found her job silly, so she guessed a visit would have been beneath him. Would Sam find her career choice similarly lacking?
“Yes,” she said.
The flowers in the room, deprived of light, began to glow softly. They were dim neon shades of blue and green. Sam brushed his fingers over the petals of a green rose.
“These are pretty.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
“So, this is what you do. You make flowers glow.”
The rose bounced on its stem as he released it.
Her throat tightened with uncertainty. With less conviction, she said, “Yes.”
“That’s a noble endeavor.” He was lit from beneath his chin in dim blue light as he walked down the aisle.
Relief made her blow out a breath. “You really think so?”
“Yes. Flowers are part of human communication. They show affection, sympathy, concern, longing… There is a long and storied history between humanity and their flowers.”
“That’s… how I feel, too,” she said, stunned. “I know I’m not changing the world, but… I’m making people smile. That means something in a world like this. Doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It does.” He smiled at her and stepped closer, winding his arms around her as she wriggled and made sounds of protest. “Hush. The others will hear you.”
She stopped, mortified by the thought. “We can’t do this. I’m at work.”
“Do what?” he asked, resting his chin atop her head.
“This!”
“You’re stressed,” he said, immune to her annoyance. “I am helping.”
She sighed, standing limply in his grip. After a moment, she couldn’t deny that it was working. Some of the stress melted out of her shoulders. She wound her arms around his waist and sank her weight into him.
“There,” he said approvingly, rubbing circles over her back. “Doesn’t that feel better?”
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“You should not have come,” he countered. “I told you I did not want to be parted from you.”
She huffed. “We can’t be together all the time.”
“Why not?”
His obstinacy made her laugh. “Because! Everyone has to split up sometimes.”
“No.”
“This is ridiculous,” she said, gently pushing away. “I have to get back to work.”
He straightened his suit. “Alright. Where are we going?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “You are going home. You’ve had your fun.”
“No.”
“Sam…”
“No.”
She buried her face in her hands. “Fine. Fine! Get me fired, see if I care.”
“You won’t get fired,” he said, following her back to the door. “Show me what you’re working on.”
Reluctantly, she led him back out into the lab. She was so busy keeping an eye on Sam that she nearly toppled over Tom with an armful of slides.
“Shoot, I’m so sorry!” she said, catching the tray he was holding before it could go over.
“Nah, it was probably my fault.” He flashed a winning smile at her, then winked at Sam over her shoulder. “I’ve got a bit of a reputation around here for getting distracted.” He balanced the tray in one hand and extended the other to Sam. “I’m Tom.”
“Sam,” he said, shaking the man’s hand hard. “I’m from the head office.”
“So I heard.”
“How are your kids doing?” Ophelia asked, trying to divert the conversation away from Sam’s mountain of lies. “And Andy, too?”
Tom had a too-tight smile on his face as he nodded. “Good! Yeah, they’re good.”
Ophelia set a hand on his arm, giving him a sympathetic look.
He blinked fast and swallowed hard.
“They’re good,” he insisted. “Thanks for asking, Effie. Hey, I gotta take these over…”
“Oh! Of course, sorry.” She stepped out of his way.
“He was lying,” Sam whispered.
“Yeah.” She sighed, turning to him. “His husband is one of the people suffering from bone deterioration after working at the Starfront factory out in Arlington. The class action is taking forever, so they’re all living on Tom’s income and insurance.
If we can’t pull this off…” She rubbed at her aching heart. “They could lose everything.”
Sam’s expression was inscrutable. His eyes followed Tom. “Then you must.”
That little display of humanity was heartening to her. “Come on.”
She led him back to her workbench. He stroked his chin, leaning in as he studied the results she’d been looking at.
“These are the genomes of your flowers?” he asked.
“Yes, the last three hybrids Gavin and I produced.” She rearranged the reports around until the sequences layered over each other.
“Here you can see the genes we spliced in to make the flowers glow. This one contains the information the flower uses to create the glowing molecule, and this section seems to control the production of the enzyme luciferase—together, they create the glow.”
“What is the issue you’re having?” he asked.
“The glow doesn’t last. You can’t market a glowing bouquet if the plant stops glowing in an hour after being cut.”
“Why not just sell the plant?”
“We do, but the genes aren’t stable. The new growth has a tendency to revert to the original phenotype.
We get a lot of complaints and refund demands that aren’t great for the company’s bottom line.
” She sat on her stool, resting her arm against the glossy tabletop and perching her chin in her hand.
“Besides, houseplant retail isn’t bad, but it’s got nothing on the wedding sector.
They want Blue Fairy flowers at the top of every vendor’s list. That’s the big money. ”
She bit her lip, peering at Sam’s beautiful face out of the corner of her eye.
Why did it feel so good to talk shop with him?
She’d never done this with Logan—his eyes had glazed over despite his politely interested smile every time she’d tried.
In the scheme of things, her job was a silly one…
but it mattered to her. She loved it. It meant so much that he was genuinely interested in what she had to say about it.
“What solutions are you working on?” he asked.
She leaned in, pointing to a section of DNA.
“I’m trying to create redundancy in these genes.
It could go horribly wrong,” she admitted wryly.
“Sometimes, repeating genes too many times results in a weird expression, but if I can pull it off, I think I can convince the plant to make more of the enzyme than it can use during its lifespan, meaning I can improve the longevity of the resulting glow to the limit of the molecule’s degradation. ”
“What do you need to do to make it happen?”
“Right now?” She gave him a wry look. “Nothing. I used up my last graft on Friday. I have to wait for one of my cultivated plants to produce a bud so I can test my theory. That’s the downside of working with plants. There’s a lot of waiting.”
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he said more loudly than necessary.
A few curious colleagues turned to look.
“It might run long since I plan to pick your brain. If your supervisor doesn’t object…” He gave Brenda, one of the snooping onlookers, a questioning look.
“Please, take her!” Brenda said without hesitation. “Keep her, in fact! She’s all yours today.”