Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
A look down the cars that were parked and she tried to do some math to give herself a delay. With all the matching blacked-out Suburbans, the three Mercedes sedans, and then something that looked like a spaceship with wheels, she couldn’t imagine what the value of the collection was.
“Lot of money in pharmaceuticals,” she muttered.
Getting out, she hit the button by the door and stepped over the laser eye so she didn’t impede the closing. Then she stopped. The garages were separated from the main house on the surface level, but connected by a subterranean tunnel. As she stared at the side entrance of the mansion, she pictured where it would take her: into the professional kitchen, where professional chefs would be making a professional-chef kind of meal for C.P. and herself… and whoever else was dining tonight, like lab staff or security.
Anxiety tightened her shoulders, and as she looked up to the sky, she searched the cloud cover that seemed to be thickening by inches with every lumen of light that was draining from the horizon. Darkness was encroaching upon the property, weaving out of the forest, crossing the meadow and making a bid for the house like an invader that meant to conquer. And yet the gloaming was beautiful, too, and she stayed where she was to watch the soft peach dim down until the very last of the sun’s glow was nothing but a hint of pale gray—
A figure came around the corner of the mansion, stepping off the edge of the terrace and following the little flagstone path that linked the back lawn to the velvet-black asphalt courtyard.
The cane and the uneven gait would have given Daniel’s identity away, but she knew him by his scent anyway. Her first instinct was to rush over, not because he was going to fall, but because she wanted to save him the effort of covering the distance—but he didn’t like when she coddled him.
Collecting herself, she put a determined smile on her face—
She never did get to speak the falsely cheerful hello. A blaze of light hit her retinas, blinding her so badly, she put her forearms up as a shield.
“Lydia?” Daniel called out as she stumbled back.
The light faded as quickly as it had come, and in the aftermath, there was no reorientation to the darkness, no reason for her retinas to readjust.
Because it hadn’t been light in the conventional sense.
“Lydia, what’s wrong?”
Daniel was right in front of her now, the cap to keep his balding head warm the first thing she noticed. It was on backwards, and the detail of the sewed-on tag was an absurd thing to notice.
“I’m okay,” she lied as she tried to focus. Tried not to think the flash was anything important. Tried to…
And yet is it really a surprise, she thought.
Her Finnish grandfather had always told her that if you wanted to see your future, you went out at the moment of first dawn, when the sun was just starting to warm the sky in the east. There, he had said, you would find what destiny was bringing you in a blaze of light.
And if you wanted to see your past…
Then you went out at gloaming. And waited for the same.
“Honest, I’m fine,” she mumbled as she reached out and wrapped her arms gently around Daniel’s narrow shoulders.
With a surge of emotion, she wanted to crush him to her. Hold him so hard neither of them could breathe. Bury her face into his neck and scent him until he was all she could smell.
Their goodbye was coming—and she had known that in the hypothetical. But the light she had just seen announced their parting as reality.
Daniel was more her past now, more than even her present. In spite of the fact that he was standing in front of her.
“Listen to me,” he said urgently as his arms came around her with a surprising strength. “I talked to Gus. I told him I’ll take Vita-12b. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to not lose you, to stay here with you. I don’t want you to be left alone and I’ve still got some fight in me, I promise—”
Lydia pulled back. “No, no, Daniel, I’ve been thinking. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like, what you’ve been through. I can’t ask you to—”
“But I want to. I’ll do it—”
“You don’t have to—”
Abruptly, he laughed in a burst—and then started coughing. After things with his lungs calmed down, he shook his head ruefully. “How is it possible that we got to the same place, just at different times?”
Lydia closed her eyes. He was telling her what she wanted to hear, what she’d thought the only solution was, but she’d reconsidered her desperation all day long.
More than that, though… the light just now told her everything she needed to know about what was going to happen next. Especially if he had resolved to take Vita-12b. When he’d been against it? She hadn’t seen what she’d just witnessed, even though she got home every night at the same time.