At first, I froze.
All my muscles were paralysed, though I couldn't quite pinpoint which emotion had brought about this change. Fear? Terror? Or perhaps just pure surprise, because if I'd had to pick the person most likely to be found down a deserted BioPlus corridor, looking as guilty as I did, Jace Snowdon would've been the last person on my list.
Eventually, my body seemed to unstick itself, and realising this was enough to steer me around the corner. I kept my eyes trained on Jace, like a second's lapse in concentration might see him vanishing in front of me. If that happened, the curiosity might've killed me.
I knew we recognised each other. This was not the face of somebody encountering a complete stranger: not the way Jace's eyes were sweeping over me, mouth parted like he was struggling to scrape together some words. Bizarrely, it was the first time I felt like I had the upper hand in the situation.
"You." His voice came out barely louder than a whisper, hardly working wonders to make him seem less vulnerable. "It's you again."
"I could say the same thing," I said, briefly wondering where the confidence in my tone was coming from – it certainly wasn't inside my head. "If I'd had to make a bet on the place we'd meet again, it definitely wouldn't have been here."
Only then did he seem to realise exactly what he was doing; both hands dropped from the handle he'd been trying, but his step back ended up looking more suspicious than anything else. There was no sign on the door, but a small glass panel revealed some kind of office setup, and I could see an entire row of filing cabinets against the opposite wall. The keypad on the door was old-fashioned: a metal pad with numbered buttons, obviously not a part of the alarm-triggered circuit.
"What are you doing?"
I hadn't really expected this to get me an answer, but I was suddenly aware of the way Jace was looking at me, studying my face a little too closely. "Your eyes," he said, almost to himself. "Something's different. You had blue eyes last time I saw you."
"I have got blue eyes," I said quickly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No, you haven't." Even without a mirror, I knew exactly what he could see, but that didn't mean I wanted to talk about it. I was already having enough trouble trying not to squirm under his gaze. "They're green. A really dark green."
Instinctively, I broke eye contact, though I knew this would hardly be enough to deter him from the obvious. "You're seeing things," I told him. "Maybe you should get that checked out."
I knew he was still looking at me, and the obvious had already dawned on us, but there was still one bridge I was determined to keep him from crossing. I had to figure out a way to escape. Nothing good could come of standing here, continuing this conversation for any longer than it had already gone on. And yet my feet were rooted to the spot, suddenly two dead weights dragging me down.
Then, all at once, it happened. I could tell the realisation had struck him, almost hard enough to send him staggering backward. The flash of panic that crossed his eyes was unmissable.
"That's why you're here," he said in a strange tone. "You're a BioPlus. You're—"
"Don't." I didn't want him to say it, though the words were already firmly planted in both our heads. If nothing else, stalling felt like it might make things a little easier to bear.
"All this time..." I wondered if I was imagining the way he seemed to be backing off slowly, eyes glued to me like I might lunge at any moment. Then again, with my recent track record, maybe that was wiser than I wanted to admit. "I can't believe I didn't realise it before. You're—"
"Don't."
"You're... modified?"
I knew it was coming, but the words sent shockwaves through me regardless. Maybe it was a protective mechanism, built right into me: having every cell in my body unusually sensitive to hearing the word aloud. It would've at least explained the thousand-fold amplification of Jace's voice.
My silence was answer enough. "You are," he murmured, almost to himself. "Oh my God, you are."
"Stop."
"I knew it," he said slowly. "I knew there was something going on with you. Nobody can look like... well, like that and be one hundred per cent normal."
Among everything else, it was hardly the main priority, but I felt the sting of it all the same. "Like what?" I asked, making no effort to blunt the sharp edge of my voice. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Jace appeared to shrink backward, and I had to wonder whether I was really that intimidating. He was taller than me, but kind of skinny, and I guessed he had no telling whether super-strength had been inserted into my DNA. 'Well, you know," he said. "I'm just saying. The whole blonde-hair, blue-eyes, probably-turning-every-head-in-the-street thing. It's just not... it's not natural."
A spark of anger flickered within me. "And who are you to decide that?"
"Look, I'm not trying to offend you," he said, in something of a pathetic attempt to backtrack. "I swear."
"Really? Because you're doing a pretty terrible job."
"I just mean... this is kind of hard for me to process right now. The fact that you're one of them, you know... and you're standing right in front of me."
"You're standing inside BioPlus HQ," I muttered, half to myself, even though I knew he could hear. "I'm not sure what you thought you were going to find here."
It was then that his gaze dropped from mine, falling beneath eye level, like there was something fascinating about the gleaming white tile beneath our feet. The sudden shifty look was blindingly obvious.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked. "Your precious dad's all the way up on the seventh floor. I'm sure you're supposed to be up there with him, not snooping around locked doors."
"That's none of your business."
"Isn't it?" I quirked an eyebrow, but he wasn't looking at me: maybe he was worried they'd engineered mind-reading into the wiring of my brain. "I think being the one to catch you down here kind of makes it my business."
I looked back at the door and its small glass panel, but the darkened office gave no hints about its contents. None of the filing cabinets were labelled, and we were too far away to see them even if they were. "What a peculiar story," I mused. "Jace Snowdon, sneaking off during an official government investigation, trying to break into a storage room. The speculation writes itself, don't you think?"
"Are you threatening me?"
He was finally looking straight at me, and the tension between us seemed to crackle with electricity.
"Just making an observation."
"You are really not in a position to be making any sort of threat right now," he continued, sounding almost incredulous. "You just admitted to being modified. If I turned you in right now, you'd be taken away without even the luxury of a criminal trial."
"And if I turned you in right now, you'd find out that BioPlus are probably capable of much worse than the government."
"That's rubbish." He spoke too quickly, and not confidently enough to hide the flicker of doubt in his eyes. "The government is the highest power in the city. They could shut this entire company down if they have reason to."
"Is that what Daddy told you?"
"He didn't have to tell me anything," he snapped. "It's obvious. You don't know what you're talking about."
"You really want to test it out?"
"You really want to test me out?" The look Jace was directing at me almost took me aback; it certainly wasn't one that'd make it onto a BioNeutral broadcast. "You're not going to do anything."
"And neither are you."
The resultant silence held too much truth, just the sheer weight sending it sinking to the ground between us. The obvious had already dawned. Despite my tough façade, Jace had a point. My one fatal weakness was already out in the open, and getting on the wrong side of him could only be my one-way ticket to lifelong imprisonment. There'd been no official statement about the legal implications of modification, but I didn't need a genetically enhanced brain to work out it wouldn't be pleasant.
But whatever Jace was hiding obviously held consequences of its own. As long as I held onto it, maybe there was my protection.
We both stood on opposite sides, the middle ground between us, neither of us daring to take the first step forward. Just like that, we'd reached our stalemate.
"So what?" I asked eventually. "Where does this leave us?"
Jace sighed, running an agitated hand through his hair. It was this movement that first had me noticing his wrist – or, more specifically, the dark purple mark right in the centre, no bigger than a 5p coin. It looked like some kind of scar, but his arm dropped before I could get a good look. Without thinking, my own hand reached up to touch my neck, fingers brushing against the permanently hidden patch of skin.
"I don't know," he said. "I can't exactly say I have experience with this kind of thing."
"Likewise."
He looked about to say something more, his lips parted in consideration, but stopped as quickly as I realised. "You really shouldn't be here," he said instead. "Not anywhere around here, in fact. My dad's on the warpath, and, well... I don't think he would be so lenient if you two had a similar encounter."
"You should be turning me in." The words escaped me before I could stop them; I wasn't entirely sure where they were coming from. "This is exactly what you came here for. You've landed on a prime target, and you're... just going to let me go?"
Jace looked like he was having an equally hard time believing it. "Yeah," he said in resignation. "I guess I am."
"Must be some secret you're hiding here."
Though it was half intended as a joke, I failed to draw as much as a smile out of him. Then again, with the ear-splitting alarm still blaring above us, I guessed it wasn't the best place for humour. "Right."
I studied him, my gaze lingering for a few seconds, before I dared to say it. "I might be able to help you."
He raised an eyebrow, though the site was partially obscured behind his thick frames. Just looking at them left me with a hundred questions. Contact lenses were ridiculously cheap; I didn't know anybody who stuck to old-fashioned glasses. Maybe it was some kind of subtle anti-modification message of BioNeutral's, like a reinforcement of the notion that Max Snowdon's son was not perfect.
"What?"
I didn't know why I'd said it, but it seemed like something in Jace's expression was drawing the words out of me. "I mean," I continued, "if you're looking for something in this building, you're going to have a pretty tough time unless you know what you're doing."
Why was I still talking? It was totally illogical, and any ounce of sense left in me should've sent me bolting in the opposite direction. For all I knew, Jace's determination to get into BioPlus' confidential files could've been a government move to dig up dirt on me. And yet there was something about this whole thing that hinted it was more than that; Jace's father would no doubt praise any sort of snooping that might help a government takedown. That wouldn't be such a closely guarded secret.
No... the air of suspicion surrounding him was something else entirely. And if I was going to delve further, the next move had to come from my side.
But Jace's dubious look made the two feet between us seem like a precautionary measure. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying these old-fashioned keypads aren't triggered by the alarm system. But if you're looking for something... well, there's pretty much a building-wide security lapse going on upstairs. The emergency setting opens a lot of doors. Seems like a bad move to let that kind of opportunity go to waste."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"The same reason we're both still standing here, I guess." I spared a glance for the door between us, before looking back. "The same reason neither of us are running down the corridor right now, fighting to turn the other in."
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything. Silence – at least however much silence there could be with the alarm still deafening us – had as much of a place in the conversation as any of our words. And then Jace's voice dared to shatter it.
"Thanks."
That was it. Like the one word was all we needed.
Voices were growing somewhere down a distant corridor, my cue to get moving. My eyes lingered on Jace for a few seconds, but I had to tear myself away, forcing my feet to unstick themselves from the floor and move on.
But I didn't get more than five steps down the hall before it stopped me in my tracks. The small voice, exactly what I'd been hearing for the last five minutes, yet somehow different in every other way.
"Her name was Eden."
I froze, stopping so suddenly the high-pitched squeak of my shoe echoed through the corridor. With the words ringing in my ears, I turned, suddenly unsettled by the way Jace was looking at me.
"Sorry?"
"What I was looking for." His voice was tinged with desperation. "Eden Clarke. I just thought... maybe the name might ring a bell? Maybe you've heard of it."
But if he was looking for an answer, he'd chosen the worst possible moment. The questions that surfaced came with such force I could've stumbled backward. Based on his expression alone, there were a hundred things I could've asked: even glass couldn't dilute the flash of panic swimming across his eyes. It was something. And yet drawing out the truth was going to take more than a string of words.
"No," I said eventually. "I haven't."
If Jace tried to hide his disappointment, he did a terrible job. The despondence seeped through his entire being, pressing down his posture, uncurling the fingers that had been digging into sore palms. "Oh. Right."
"I'm sorry," I offered.
"Oh, no..." He ducked his head. "It was just a stupid question. I just thought, you know, maybe..."
His hands had moved together, and he was running a thumb over the mark on his wrist, like the steady motion might erase it altogether. I wasn't sure why it was so difficult to look away. "Who is she?"
He looked up in mild surprise, our eyes catching for a fraction of a second. "Nobody," he said. "Just... nobody. Don't worry about it."
Like that was possible. Every inch of me ached with curiosity, dragging me closer. But I couldn't stay. The alarm, still ringing in my ears, was enough of a reminder that I had to keep moving. The risks I'd already taken were swelling around me, and whatever luck I was running on was fast evaporating. I had to get out – as fast as possible.
"Well," I said, "good luck."
This time, he managed to muster a smile, but it was painfully weak. "Yeah. You too."
I forced my feet in the opposite direction, following the arrow on the wall pointing to the front of the building. Jace's own footsteps echoed behind me. I had to force myself to keep my head straight, resisting the gnawing temptation to glance back, if only because I didn't need anything making it harder to leave.
***
I managed to find my way back to the main lobby. Panicked voices kept me hidden behind a corner for at least five minutes, after which I finally got the courage to make a dash for it. When somebody caught my arm, my first instinct was to tug it away, but they kept a tight enough grip to have me twist my head and realise it was my dad.
I could've cried in relief.
"Come on," he said urgently. "We need to go."
A BioPlus security guard was hovering nearby, and he yanked the main doors open to let us out. On the street, it was pouring with rain, and the shower of cold water soaked me to the bone in a matter of seconds.
Later that evening, when Mum had permitted us to move family dinner into the kitchen so we could keep the TV on in the background, the news broadcast was inevitable. But it still made all of us freeze on the spot.
"Earlier today, genetic testing company BioPlus found themselves at the centre of a government investigation," the newsreader said, as a photograph of the glass-panelled building appeared behind her. "Max Snowdon headed an unannounced arrival to HQ, but a fault in the alarm system meant the relevant evidence was unable to be retrieved."
The screen changed, and the BioNeutral leader appeared in front of the main entrance, the glass doors in the background criss-crossed with bright green tape. "Unfortunately, an emergency protocol activated upon our entry to the building meant we were unable to access a number of pieces of vital evidence." He was leaning a little too close to the reporters' microphones, so his anger seemed to crackle with the feedback. "Several senior members of staff were detained for resisting government instruction. The building will remain closed until the investigation can be completed."
When the shot moved, skipping forward a few minutes of the speech, I noticed the figure in the background. Jace stood a couple of paces behind his father, posture unnaturally straight, staring directly into the camera with an expression frozen in time.
We weren't anywhere near each other. Not only were we separated by miles across the city, there were hours between me and that moment, stretching the distance even wider.
And yet, as I found myself fixated on his pixelated image, I couldn't help wondering if Jace knew he was staring right at me.
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Hi, guys! You have no idea how much of a struggle it was getting this chapter up this week. I've had so much to do, but I powered through on Wednesday afternoon so I could be on time with the update. Please please please don't take my Friday updates as set in stone, because my uni work is getting crazy (and I have to start revising in about a month's time). I will do my absolute best but there are no longer any guarantees.
Also, I have some really exciting news that I can't share right at the moment I'm writing this, but it'll probably be plastered all over my social media in a few hours. Basically, make sure you're following me on everything, and keep your eyes peeled. I can't wait!
- Leigh