Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
It is built conically, much wider at the base than it is at the top. The many floors are curved to create a calm flow. On a crisp morning, or sunny evening, there is a serenity to the building that I like to think anchors us all to the greater purpose.
She allows me to direct her, and at my touch she even moves a little closer to me. I think she is overwhelmed by the size of the space. She had a similar look at the port.
“It’s so big,” she says. “How many floors is it?”
“A few hundred,” I tell her. “But most of them are unoccupied at the moment.”
“Are we going to go all the way to the very top?”
The question is adorable. The way humans think has caught me off guard. I knew she had a simple animal brain, but being asked if we will ascend for the sheer sake of ascending is such a perfect example of the human condition. She sees a thing, and she wants to know how far she can go with it. She is going to be perfect for the experiment.
“We can,” I tell her. “The lab we are going to be working in is about three-quarters of the way up.”
“Why?”
“Why is it three-quarters of the way up?”
“Yes,” she says. “Why is it there?”
“Because that is where it is located,” I say, slightly confused by her question, but mostly sure that it is a nonsense inquiry. She wants to know why things are because she wants to know. It’s not deeper than that.
I guide her through the foyer of the building, which is not built with a reception. We have security, and that is it. Nobody is coming here to get help from a cheerful receptionist.
“There are so many guards,” she says. “Why are they so heavily armed?”
“Well, we do all have four arms,” I quip.
She lets out a groan, followed by a little laugh that helps her get past the wall of security without any more fear.
We step into an elevator.
“We have these on Earth,” she says. “It’s so interesting how creatures across all kinds of planes of things all end up coming up with the same solutions to the same problems, huh?”
“Indeed,” I say, enjoying her prattling as we make our way up the building.
We are around halfway up when the elevator stops and Drak steps in.
Drak is my closest counterpart. He works under me, technically, but I tend not to make too much of it because he is very dedicated to his work, needs close to no managing, and very much hates being reminded he is not in charge.
“Where’s the human?” Drak asks. “Did she miss the flight?”
“She’s with me,” I say. He knows that, because he can see her on the leash. He’s pretending not to see her just to be an asshole. I glance down, and see that she did step back behind me when he got in. Maybe she wanted to make space for him, or maybe she found him intimidating. Either response would have been reasonable. Drak is a polarizing and intimidating figure. He is missing his lower left arm and his left eye. There are a great many stories as to why that is, but nobody really knows the truth.
“Oh, see, usually lab supplies stay in the lab,” he says with maximum passive-aggression.
“She’s not a flask of acid. She’s a living being. An intelligent one. I took her with me to ensure that nothing happened after the warp incident. It was better than leaving her in the medical bay all night.”
He snorts at me, then looks at her, and snorts again. “Don’t get attached,” he says. “She’s part of the machinery.”
“What does that mean?” Evie asks me. “Part of the machinery? What machinery?”
Drak’s brows rise, but he does not say anything. He does not consider the human to be a real person, as it were. He performs a lot of experiments on living things, and I am not entirely convinced that he sees members of his own kind as being particularly untouchable. Essentially, Drak would take anybody to pieces if it served one of his creations.
“Don’t worry about him,” I say. “I am taking you into my office. We have some matters to attend to there.”
“The training phase,” Drak says. “For now, you’ll need that body to create the mind we need.”
I give him a death stare. I do not want him to frighten Evie. I can feel her pulling back on the leash to try to get away from him by going around to the other side of me. I let it out to allow her to do that. I don’t want him anywhere near her.
* * *
Evie
That alien freaked me out. I’ve seen a lot of strange things among the aliens. I’ve hung out with the Antari guard who had more eyes than I’ve had hot dinners. Nobody has freaked me out the way that Drak just did. I don’t want to put it down to his physical problems. I think you could be missing an arm and still seem very chill. He seemed the absolute opposite of very chill.