@annalis-e--shadowofpanem
Early. Mallory had slept barely three hours, but she didn’t feel it. She was one of those people who could burn through a couple of days without sleep. She got up, pulled on some clothes and paced the halls. It was eerily quiet in the Upton residence. The kitchen which had been the center of the world sat darkened and slumbering. There was the sound of keyboard keys clicking from the narrow flight of stairs which led down to the basement. The Texan approached curiously. When her foot touched down at the bottom, she glimpsed one of the older shadows sat at a work bench, eyes locked to a microscope.
“Hello Mallory.” She uttered quietly without looking up. She adjusted the glass slide she was peering at slightly.
“You’ve learned my footsteps already?”
“That’d be impressive, wouldn’t it? But the honest answer is more that I know the footsteps of everyone else in this house so well…that like so much in life and science…” The Englishwoman looked up from her work. “…It’s a process of elimination.”
Mallory nodded. Unthinkingly she reached into her pocket and closed her hand around her phone. “We’re flying out to this Tral Hus place today, anythin’ you can tell me about it?”
Florence rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept.
“Have you spoken to Go go?”
“Then I honestly don’t think I can do any better.”
“Where is Go go by the way?” Mallory glanced back over her shoulder, almost as if she expected to see the former bodyguard following her down the stairs.
Florence smiled knowingly. “I’m guessing by that, that whoever it is you keep in your phone has been asleep for the last six hours or so? The person who seems to know a lot of things?” Mallory braced, her fingers tightening.
The scientist waved her hand in a gesture of apology. “Force of habit, I read people. Go go left for the airport about two hours ago…and I’m actually quite glad that I get to be the one to tell you – your, albeit slightly crazy plan, actually paid off. O-ren met Beatrix in Celina Texas not long ago. They are both unharmed, and Bebe is reunited with her mother.”
Mallory’s mouth dropped open. She’d been so tied up chasing leads on London that Beatrix had momentarily vanished from her vision. She smiled. It felt good. It was hard to pin down – Mallory was not the best at internal examination, but her conscience lifted.
Florence gave a tired laugh. “As it would happen, no shit.”
Mallory shook her head, still smiling. “Has Go go flown out to meet O-ren?”
Florence nodded. “That’s the general idea. Their movements beyond that are their own. But we’ll keep tabs on them. I feel certain we’ll hear from them soon either way.” Florence pulled the slide out from under the microscope and slid it back into a rack, pushing the rack back into a refrigerator unit. She tapped a few keys on the lab computer and a programme began whirring. Mallory stood slightly awkwardly a ways off.
“You seem, I don’t know…A little more understanding than the others? Sorta kinder?”
“There’s a fair number of people who would agree with you, and they’re dead.”
The reply crossed the basement like a shot. Mallory stood speechless.
Floss stood up. “That’s exactly the kind of assumption that’ll get you killed, especially walking into Agnes’ neck of the woods. You let her near you and you’ll be lucky if you have time to regret it.”
“That sounds like experiential data.”
Floss paused with her mouth open, brow furrowed. Mallory pinned her with a nervous but stubborn gaze.
The scientist folded her arms and the frown melted into a look a genuine appreciation.
“You’re right. And you’re not unintelligent, you’re not unexperienced. There is some talk that you have Shadow methods. I just don’t want you to be…dazzled by what you see, in any way. And whatever you do…” Floss paced across the basement till Mallory was in front of her. “Don’t get it into your head that you can take Agnes on, please. I’m asking you for your own sake and the sake of the people who are escorting you. They’re taking their own risks too.”
Mallory gave a slight but decisive nod. Floss sighed with relief.
“Are you religious Mallory?”
The Viper shook her head, slightly taken aback by the question. “Not really, my mom is. My dad and brother not so much.”
Florence reached into a half unpacked cardboard box.
“I’m much the same. But you know, I actually prayed last night, for the first time in a very long time, and it might have done me some good. And it made me think about…here it is…” Floss pulled a thin gold chain from the box; it bore a tiny gold medallion. She held it out to Mallory. The Viper took it cautiously, looking at Floss with a steepled brow.
“Are you planting a bug on me?”
“Only if you count the watchful eye of St. Christopher. It was my mothers. I never wore it, but I could never throw it away either. I think you need it more than me, you have a journey to undertake.”
Something twinged in Mallory’s chest, she’d never understood her mom’s faith. But then, she’d never really tried. She closed her hand around the simple piece of metal. Floss patted her shoulder.
“Maybe try and get a bit more rest? No doubt Amy will be up at the crack of dawn to usher you onto a plane.”
The scientist disappeared up the steps where Mallory heard the sound of a kettle boiling and tea being made. She tucked the gift into her phone case and returned to her room. Sleep wasn’t an option, so she checked and rechecked her bags. The outfits went into the suitcase. By the time Amy knocked in the door Mallory was all but standing right behind it.
And only then did she remember what she’d done the day before…and a little of the confidence she’d built up in her adrenaline and sleep deprivation crumbled under Amy’s gaze. For a horribly telling moment she felt naked, and she didn’t even know if she felt ashamed about it. She swallowed thickly.
Molly touched Pan before the simple boundary of her skin made it there; swinging her feet onto the floor and extending a hand, her reach brushed up the back of Pan’s neck, as if she were cradling her head. And then her arms enfolded her, knelt on the quiet bedroom floor.
For a moment Molly wanted the same thing. An endless expanse of quiet mornings filled with nothing but sketched architectural drawings and breakfast and milkshakes. In a world a little way off O-ren was coming to visit, with the creases at the corners of her eyes full of age and laughter. And Eleanor would be there too. This was home, or it would be.
As best she could, Molly took the life she could feel the shape of and held it out reach-wise to Pan. She kissed the side of Pan’s neck.
“I want to, I want to, I want to.” She whispered it, then leaned back. Her eyes gleamed.
“But we gotta meet this thing first.” She smiled. “If I’d never made the leap and run barefoot across what felt like half a state of forest I’d have never found you…Try not to think of it as a challenge, it’ll take a while, but we’re on our way to meet Bowen, and Jiayi.”
Molly stood up, and gently, but with a strength belied by her delicate frame, helped Pan to her feet.
Slowly, over the course of the morning and breakfast and last arrangements for travel, The Upton Residence emptied.
Floss didn’t hear the Eboncry depart, but she felt the brief thrum of the jet engines through the walls of the basement. And for about a half hour even after that she sat in the same position, fingers knitted together under her chin, reading and re-reading the DNA analysis that sat unyielding on the monitor. It hurt when she blinked. She petulantly reached down and hit the enter key again, as if refreshing the data might change it. It did not.
Her peers had departed for enormous, world changing tasks, the test tube rattling and computer readouts of an introvert scientist paled in comparison. But this was Floss’ mountain; and to her nothing mattered more in this moment.
It's a preliminary analysis, you don’t have a full sequencer.
Her intently rational mind coached her thus. Truth, perhaps. But she was good at what she did. She could see the pattern, the way an artist can pick out negative space. It stood there stark and perfect. It was hard to gauge if the results would be the same for the other Somnia, they each possessed distinct compounds, if only slightly, the sequence would be different.
Nonetheless, the fate tied to the blonde hair in the sample tube was definite.
Florence turned over the possibilities; this would be far from the first time The Shadows had utilised genetic techniques. Perhaps it was a mistake, an oversight? Once programmed perhaps the possibility of genetic reversal was simply never entertained, as such the ramifications would never have been discovered.
But a twitchy, paranoid little impulse at the back of Floss’ neck smelled design. It was just possible that whoever built this thing put a barb on the hook.
With a deep breath she collapsed the analysis window and pulled up her email. She began typing Deborah’s name into the recipient box. She stopped. Deleted it. She typed out a handle that had become an almost welcome interloper during Pan’s struggle with her pregnancy;
[Amber, look I know you’re busy with Koa and Paris but I need help, and I need it to go through a quiet channel.
Get rid of this as soon as you’ve read it and contact me however you like, have my microwave read it out to me via the LED display if you have to.
I need to know who wrote the Umbrae Somnia gene codes. The exact person, if they exist.
Florence hit send and laced her fingers back together, resting them against her forehead with her elbows on the workbench, and in her head recited the part of the message she didn’t dare put through any network:
…Because I can take the coding out. Heck it wouldn’t even take that long, a couple of modified T cell infusions and voila.
And Leslie would be fine for a day, a week, a month. And then she’d start noticing that she couldn’t read so well, and then she couldn’t see colours, or shapes, or light. And then she’d be blind, utterly blind. Because the gene expression that has been altered and subsequently held in check by the Somnia sequence would cause complete deterioration of the optic nerves and optic chiasm.
I don’t think she’d ever fly a plane again.
She’s been through too much, we can’t do that to her.
God help me if I get my hands on who wrote this.
