It would be impossible for her to disappoint me, as I very much do not want her to do a good job anyway.
“I’m sure I won’t,” I say.
She settles down at a desk near the mouse, and I return to work. I find her presence not entirely unpleasant. She has a quiet, kind energy about her. She is clearly the studious type.
For the next hour, the lab is less lonely than usual. I never noticed that it was lonely before. That’s interesting. I like my privacy and my space. Usually people feel like an intrusion. She doesn’t.
I glance over from time to time and see her immersed in the work. She’s really interested in it, and she’s asked no questions because she’s too busy reading and making notes. I decide to do a little stroll-by, like a teacher to see what she’s written, but much like a nervous student, she hides the paper behind her arm.
I smile to myself, then put two fingers on my notes and pull them down enough that she has to look at me.
“Enjoying the material?”
“This is fascinating,” she says. “I never thought I’d get to use my bio-med classes. I didn’t do enough of them to qualify, but I think I understand what I’m looking at, and it’s genius!”
That is a very gratifying response. In this industry, people are called geniuses all the time. But something in the truly genuine way she uses the word softens me toward her a little more.
Dammit. Veronica knew precisely what she was doing when she picked this girl for me. I am attracted, and that is a dangerous thing given what I am up to here. I cannot afford distractions.
But she’s not supposed to be a distraction. She’s supposed to be a vessel. You see, what Veronica knows, and what I am not supposed to have been doing, is experimenting with my own formulas. On myself.
There’s a question as to what would happen if someone taking these products were to impregnate a woman. Would the DNA changes be passed through the sperm? We can sequence them, of course. But you never really know what nature is going to do until she actually does it.
Lydia is looking over my shoulder, I notice.
I lift a querying brow at her.
“What other animals do you have back there?”
“You don’t have access to the research yet to be done, so you don’t need to know that,” I tell her. I don’t want her going back into my more private areas. “This room is fine to look at with supervision, but I don’t want you going any further into the lab, am I clear?”
She nods meekly, and I assume she’s going to do as she is told. So far she has been polite and obedient, as well as pretty.
We break for lunch. I go out to get something from the cafeteria. I think about asking her if she wants to come with me, but Ifigure she is an adult and she is also buried in my notes with apparent intense concentration.
I go and get lunch.
“What do you think of our newest hire?” The question is addressed to me by a sleekly dressed middle-aged woman with amazing hair, perfect makeup, and a streak of steel inside her soul that intimidates and terrifies lesser men.
Veronica does not usually bother with the cafeteria, but today she is lurking, holding a fruit salad I am almost certain she is not going to eat. She needs it as an excuse to speak to me. Interesting, given she could just summon me to her office. But this interaction is supposed to be casual—and I suppose it is, in the way a shark in a shoal of fish is casual.
That is why there’s a small but complete dead zone around her. Everybody avoids Veronica. She has the air of a woman who has complete control and will do what she wants with it. The board loves her. Her management style has turned this faction of the company into an even more profitable endeavor.
My relationship to her is somewhat complicated. I am too personally and financially well-endowed to care about her power, but she does have influence over what can be done here.
“Lydia seems like she’s going to be very efficient,” I say.
Veronica smiles. “She’s of good age and good health, and I assume you find her attractive…”
The woman has all the subtlety of a madam. For a moment, this modern café fades away and is replaced mentally with an old Western saloon, and Veronica is not the manager, she’s the lady handling the working girls.
“I’m going to maintain professional boundaries,” I tell Veronica. We both know I am lying. The girl in my lab is the sweetest, most fuckable little treat I have laid eyes on in a while.
“What you do in your personal lives is none of my concern.” Veronica winks, turns on her heel, and stalks out of the cafeteria, dropping the fruit salad in the trash on the way out. The entire room seems to breathe a sigh of relief as she leaves, and conversation picks up a level as the other employees return to their regular interactions. The ice queen has left the room and spring has returned to our little Narnia.
I get my usual, a corned beef sandwich, and I eat it at the table with John Egan and Stewart Black. John runs the security systems, the cameras in particular, and I like him on my side so he doesn’t let anybody know that the ones in my lab don’t work. Stewart is head of provisioning. He can get me anything I want or need, and he does. I also play a useful role in this little ecosystem that exists in plain sight here in the middle of the building in the middle of the day.
People like Veronica think that power is knowing rich people and seeking out contacts in government and the military, but having been born into such a world I am well aware that true power is found in these smaller, quieter places. If people like John and Stewart won’t help you, it doesn’t matter how many big names you know.
