“Yes. Green is one of his locomotive arms. And red is usually his ‘high-arousal’ limb—probing, tossing, testing boundaries.” I do not volunteer that red occasionally punches the glass aggressively, which is why I dyed it that color.
The video ends. Holden taps the screen once to replay, then pushes the phone gently back toward me and leans into his chair again. “That’s unusual.”
“Right?” My voice jumps, and before I can stop myself, my arms go up in a full gesture of exasperation. “Sorry—I just—I spent the entire night going through common logs, trying to isolate a trigger. I didn’t introduce anything new yesterday. No environmental changes. No food variations. Not even a shift in water parameters.”
I pass him the notes—three pages of hypotheses scribbled in ink that’s already smudging. He takes them without comment and scans them quickly, his expression unreadable. I watch his eyes move across the page and suddenly wish I’d written neater. Or been more concise. Or less obviously unhinged.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
Just keeps reading.
“So what did you land on?” He says after a while.
“Um… I’m not sure.” I hate how small that sounds. “Most plausible is some kind of lateralization test run—trying a different controller just to see. I just don’t know what would’ve sparked it.”
He tilts his head, thinking. “Has he ever shown anything similar? Novelty-seeking?”
“I mean… no, not really. He likes his routine. But?—”
“Walk me through your thought process.”
Right. I have mentioned my brain is not yet ready for public interpretation, yes? This is where I loseallcredibility.
I launch anyway. Damon might be testing novelty thresholds. Or nursing micro-irritation on a few suckers. Or shifting because of context—my position, a light angle, tiny changes in his den. Or because octopuses do, occasionally, perform behaviors that are just for show. The words hit the air at an auctioneer’s pace that could rival Eminem or NoClue; variables, maybes, discarded branches. My hands do the full choreography.
“Coralie.”
Too late to stop me now. Data keeps spilling; my fingers are conducting a symphony only I can hear. Who allowed me in academia?
“Coralie.” He reaches across the desk—and with startling gentleness but absolute confidence, closes one large hand around both of my wrists. Yeah, that does the trick. Whatever momentum I had is gone—redirected, effortlessly, by the certainty in his grip.
“That’s me,” I say, because apparently the one neuron not short-circuiting under his palm is in charge ofintroductions.
He chuckles, low enough to raise a rash of goosebumps along my arms. “Yes, that’s you.” He doesn’t let go. His eyes don’t leave mine. For a treacherous second I think about chocolate and how his irides look like it.
“Slow down,” he says, and his gaze drops to my mouth before returning. “You ramble when you’re nervous.”
“I… do not.”Do I?Somewhere, a chorus of everyone I’ve ever met is nodding.
“You do.” His grip gentles, a fraction. “And you’ll give yourself carpal tunnel if you keep moving at that tempo.”
“I—you—what?” Oh, goody. A brain aneurysm. “It’s not that bad.”
He releases my wrists and lifts a brow. “Go on. At a speed I can understand, yeah?”
My skin still hums where his fingers were. My mouth is somehow both dry and unhelpfully ready to drool. Do I need an ambulance? Should I fake a medical emergency? No.Focus.
This is what I meant by conflicting signals. I’m here for science, for Damon’s quick mind and the chance to meet it halfway. And Holden has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t think I’m there yet. So why, exactly, does my body behave like this in his vicinity?
When I don’t pick the thread back up, he does. “Listen. Cephalopods are clean models for short-term memory,” he says, tone sharp but not dismissive, “but the nervous system is distributed. There isn’t a single central hub, so mapping their cognition onto early vertebrate evolution gets messy fast. I’m not saying you don’t have a thesis.” His gaze flicks to the half-open notebook on his desk—the margins full of my messy, looping handwriting and tiny, hastily scribbled octopus doodles. “I’m saying you might have one ifyou track the oral intramuscular nerve cords instead of the axial cord.”
Holy. He might be right. Why didn’t I go there first? And how, might I ask, didhe?Is it possible that he’s my new Blythe? Minus the Jolly Rancher jar?
My mouth hangs open once more; I no longer care. This is what I came for. The urge to bolt to Damon’s tank and start tests wrestles, one to one, with the urge to cross the desk and hug Holden for handing me the key. I grip my knees and breathe until I can choose neither.
I spend the next few minutes getting it down—his suggestion first, then the branches it opens—filling a margin with a tidy trial grid, variables to hold constant, a short list for “rule out” and another for “test next.” The jolt of energy is immediate; for the first time in twenty-four hours my head feels aligned with my hands. This is big.
He stands, scans a shelf, and returns with two heavy monographs on octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid. Cloth hardbacks, edges softened by use, a few colored flags peeking from the tops. My jaw dropsagain. I should consult.
