sentence trails off as he gestures vaguely at me.
Enough said. Ascension Labs has been engineering a better future through questionable practices for years. Numerous scientists, dozens of hypotheses and experiments based on the belief that life is absolute, death is optional. The type of practices my father built on to resurrect me. The same practices I shut down – or thought I had.
“Even if you succeed in shutting it down here,” he adds like he’s reading my thoughts, “there are satellite labs, investors and shareholders with agendas. It’s impossible to stop it all – especially since her living and breathing means the experiment isn’t over. She is one of your father’s pet projects.”
Wait…
This shoves the past couple years under glaring new light.
“She’s an experiment ,” I force the word out. “Hailey is a product of the lab, and my dad set me up with her?”
“I understand you’re upset.”
“Pissed off is more like it.”
“It doesn’t do you any good, now.” Paul faces the portrait of my family. “You know how your father was,” he says, his voice dead even. “He did what he wanted, had ends he intended to meet, and he wanted you with Hailey.”
“And you just let him?”
“You know as well as I that your father…” he pauses, lays the family photo on its face, and spares my mother’s image a lingering glance, “…had ways of inspiring obedience.”
He did. Reward and punishment, manipulation and lies. Trying to understand my father’s motives feels like dipping a toe in a septic tank. Dark, unknown depths of shit. Do I really want to find the bottom?
How is any of this OK? A person being a lab project is wrong on many levels. The sad irony is, in some ways, I am one. Still, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Hailey is overtly brilliant, criminally cunning, pretty to the point of surreal.
What else? To what end?
Why can’t I be free of Hailey Westmore?
“So how do I deal with her if I can’t get rid of her?” My voice scales up in timbre, ripe with my frustration. “If she goes public with my files, they’ll lock me away in a lab somewhere. I’ll die without my weekly inoculation!”
“It’ll also bring down Ascension…” he says in a soft voice. Paul paces back and forth behind his desk, touching this, adjusting that. He stops at the picture of the three of us, the muscles around his eyes tightening a little.
“Paul?”
“Let me talk to her.” There’s steel in his voice, and I can’t help but hope he can hone it sharp enough to cut the green-eyed devil of an experiment loose. “She’s due for blood work in the morning. I’ll call her into the office for a chat.”
Most of me wants to refuse. If he won’t get rid of her, then I will have to deal with Hailey on my own. I am the one she’s threatening, after all. If I go down, so does all of Ascension, which doesn’t make any sense. As close as Hailey and I used to be, I know she’s making threats for a reason. I feel like a ball in an old school pinball game, whacked from paddle to bumper and back. She’s planning something, and so far avoiding her isn’t working out so well.
Choking on my pride, I nod.
The look on Paul’s face says, “That’s a good boy . ”
“I’ll keep you informed,” he says.
His lab coat falls to the floor when he steps around the desk. His warm, familiar smile comes back when he claps a hand on my shoulder. I nod when he mentions getting some rest, and allow myself to be steered from the office. Paul does nothing to fill up the awkward silence as he guides me down the hall.
Words are empty, anyway. Action means everything. And apparently he can’t do a damn thing when it comes to Hailey and Ascension Labs. Why was he left in charge if he can’t actually do anything? Is it possible for my father to meddle with people from beyond the grave?
Knowing him, leaving Hailey on the loose and Paul’s hands tied, I have to say yes.
Hurry up!
Enough said. Ascension Labs has been engineering a better future through questionable practices for years. Numerous scientists, dozens of hypotheses and experiments based on the belief that life is absolute, death is optional. The type of practices my father built on to resurrect me. The same practices I shut down – or thought I had.
“Even if you succeed in shutting it down here,” he adds like he’s reading my thoughts, “there are satellite labs, investors and shareholders with agendas. It’s impossible to stop it all – especially since her living and breathing means the experiment isn’t over. She is one of your father’s pet projects.”
Wait…
This shoves the past couple years under glaring new light.
“She’s an experiment ,” I force the word out. “Hailey is a product of the lab, and my dad set me up with her?”
“I understand you’re upset.”
“Pissed off is more like it.”
“It doesn’t do you any good, now.” Paul faces the portrait of my family. “You know how your father was,” he says, his voice dead even. “He did what he wanted, had ends he intended to meet, and he wanted you with Hailey.”
“And you just let him?”
“You know as well as I that your father…” he pauses, lays the family photo on its face, and spares my mother’s image a lingering glance, “…had ways of inspiring obedience.”
He did. Reward and punishment, manipulation and lies. Trying to understand my father’s motives feels like dipping a toe in a septic tank. Dark, unknown depths of shit. Do I really want to find the bottom?
How is any of this OK? A person being a lab project is wrong on many levels. The sad irony is, in some ways, I am one. Still, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Hailey is overtly brilliant, criminally cunning, pretty to the point of surreal.
What else? To what end?
Why can’t I be free of Hailey Westmore?
“So how do I deal with her if I can’t get rid of her?” My voice scales up in timbre, ripe with my frustration. “If she goes public with my files, they’ll lock me away in a lab somewhere. I’ll die without my weekly inoculation!”
“It’ll also bring down Ascension…” he says in a soft voice. Paul paces back and forth behind his desk, touching this, adjusting that. He stops at the picture of the three of us, the muscles around his eyes tightening a little.
“Paul?”
“Let me talk to her.” There’s steel in his voice, and I can’t help but hope he can hone it sharp enough to cut the green-eyed devil of an experiment loose. “She’s due for blood work in the morning. I’ll call her into the office for a chat.”
Most of me wants to refuse. If he won’t get rid of her, then I will have to deal with Hailey on my own. I am the one she’s threatening, after all. If I go down, so does all of Ascension, which doesn’t make any sense. As close as Hailey and I used to be, I know she’s making threats for a reason. I feel like a ball in an old school pinball game, whacked from paddle to bumper and back. She’s planning something, and so far avoiding her isn’t working out so well.
Choking on my pride, I nod.
The look on Paul’s face says, “That’s a good boy . ”
“I’ll keep you informed,” he says.
His lab coat falls to the floor when he steps around the desk. His warm, familiar smile comes back when he claps a hand on my shoulder. I nod when he mentions getting some rest, and allow myself to be steered from the office. Paul does nothing to fill up the awkward silence as he guides me down the hall.
Words are empty, anyway. Action means everything. And apparently he can’t do a damn thing when it comes to Hailey and Ascension Labs. Why was he left in charge if he can’t actually do anything? Is it possible for my father to meddle with people from beyond the grave?
Knowing him, leaving Hailey on the loose and Paul’s hands tied, I have to say yes.
Hurry up!
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