It’s surprising how clear the conversation is like this. They’re not making a decent effort to lower their voices, so that helps too.
There is an absolute pit in my stomach when they start talking about Simon’s personal breeding program. She knows about it. My mind whirs, and I remember back to when I tried to quit and she wouldn’t let me. What a bitch. Opposite of a girl’s girl.
As for Simon… he must have picked me out of all the applicants and decided that I would be the best receptacle for his addledgenes. That makes me feel a number of things, none of them particularly good.
He wanted to breed me the moment he laid eyes on me.
Then I hear about the military stuff, and that is bad too. It’s obvious that Veronica is basically blackmailing him. She has power, and I don’t like that.
The second I hear Simon’s footsteps coming, I take a step back and fill the cup with water. When he walks out, I am sipping from it. He will never know how very well I surveilled him in this moment.
“Back to work, boss?” I sound a little too bright, but hopefully he thinks that is for Veronica’s benefit.
“We will drop by the lab,” he says. His smile is tight. For Veronica’s benefit probably, but maybe mine as well.
He leaves, and I follow. As we leave, I can hear Veronica muttering under her breath. She sounds pissed. I’m kind of pleased by that. It means she’s not getting her own way.
She really wanted me to leave him to die in the woods. Now, given what he’s said about how he found his way back, if I hadn’t stayed, maybe that’s exactly what would have happened. Maybe she’d have gotten her wish.
Simon goes to the lab and starts gathering stuff up. He’s got the air of a man who is a bit worried security is going to show up and escort him from the building any time. He’s probably right to me. It’s obvious that Veronica didn’t plan for him to come back.
“Do you think she interfered with your formula to try to make you be stuck?”
“She doesn’t have the ability to understand what I do,” he says.
I’m not sure about that. I think he’s underestimating Veronica’s intellect and drive for power. But this isn’t the place to discuss that. And it’s the not even the main thing on my mind.
The thing I can’t stop thinking about is the fact that this company has been trying to breed me. They think they own me in some sense. Not legally, of course. You’re not technically allowed to do that to people anymore. But there are still ways of setting people up so they may as well be owned, and that’s what they’re doing to me. It’s what he’s doing to me, too. The man I just helped save. He’s been betraying me from the first day we met.
“What made you choose me?”
“Hm?” Simon is going through files, copying some to a thumb drive.
“Out of the applicants for the writing job. There must have been hundreds. Almost everybody can write these days. And I bet there were people with stronger biomedical backgrounds too.”
“Well, maybe,” he says, not entirely focusing on me even as he answers. “But you are very qualified.”
“Hm,” I say.
“What is it, Lydia? What are you really trying to ask?” He turns toward me, giving me his full attention all of a sudden, and I immediately blush and back down. I don’t want to play my hand too soon, and I don’t want to ruin the nice moments we’ve been having. He was so touched when he realized I waited for him. I liked the way that felt, when he was pleased with me.
But, of course, I have to deal with the part where he wants to knock me up with a chimera baby. Can’t just let that slide. That’s kind of a huge fucking deal.
“Nothing,” I say, when I realize he asked me a question and is waiting for me to answer with his brows drawn down across his eyes in a hard line that makes me feel like squirming in front of him.
He takes in a breath and looks like he is about to say something, but the machine beeps and he is redirected back to his original activity, thank god. I think I was about to get in trouble there.
Trouble? Why would I even consider myself being in trouble? Of course I am not! He’s the one who should feel bad. He’s the one caught up in this terribly morally bankrupt scheme, and I am the one being used…
He looks over at me and I flash a quick smile.
It’s wrong how easy it is for handsome men to get away with terrible things. It’s really deeply wrong. Someone should do something about it.
“Here,” he says, giving me the drive. “Take this. I’m going to grab a few things, and then we can go.”
I’m going to do something about it.
We carry all the stuff out of the building and to his car. Simon stacks it in the trunk and we leave.
