Hwa toed one of his ankles. “You’re lucky I don’t have time for you.”
She turned back to Síofra. He was clutching his head. He looked miserable. Hwa reached over and held him. The crowd gave them room. She ushered him to a banquette along the wall. He slid down and folded into himself. She stroked his hair. His face. His breath came light and fast and shallow. Like he was bleeding out.
“Oh, God, I’d forgotten how much things could hurt, Hwa, it hurts—”
“It’s probably just a migraine, eh?” Hwa tried to sound breezy. “I’ll find Joel, and then I’ll get you home, and get you sorted. Joel?”
Silence.
“Joel.” She swallowed hard. She made fists in Síofra’s suit jacket to keep her hands from shaking. This was just too much for one night. “Joel, goddamn it, you answer me right this fucking minute, or I swear to Christ—”
“Joel, you simply must understand.” Zachariah’s voice sounded in her ear. Joel had opened a live feed, rather than answering her. That meant he couldn’t answer. Or wasn’t at liberty to do so. Hwa scanned the room for him. He was nowhere she could see. “I plan to live a very long time. And your friend Daniel is a part of that plan.”
Hwa’s stomach turned over. I have great plans for Daniel, the old man had said. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ. Oh, fuck.
“Joel, where are you?” Hwa whispered. She toggled her vision. She found Joel. He was on the floor above her. She pressed her forehead to Síofra’s. “Hold on,” she said. “Hold on, Daniel.”
“My name.” He cracked a smile that was also a rictus of pain. He spoke through chattering teeth. “You know my name.”
“Goddamn right I do,” Hwa said. She ran.
*
The Lynch family stood gathered in a small meeting room above the forest. The floor was a one-way mirror looking down onto the red and gold of the trees below. The walls of the room were glass. Through it, Hwa could witness the aurora borealis rippling overhead, green and purple against the stars, a tingling in Hwa’s teeth, an itch across her muscles.
She hunkered close to the floor.
“The time has come,” Zachariah Lynch said. “Joel, you will inherit this company. That has been my plan since long before you were even alive. Even before you were but a blastema in your mother’s uterus. But I never intended for you to do it alone.”
She heard it in an odd stereo effect. Joel had opened his ears to her, and so now she heard it in both sets, organic and mechanical. Briefly, she wondered where her mother was down in that forest. Where Eileen was. Where everyone was. How she had reached this dark, hushed place herself. How it had come this far.
“I don’t believe in death.” Zachariah paused for breath. “I think death is a myth. A fairy tale, to keep humanity in line. Something to make us fear our own decision-making power. Something to make us tremble before the capacity of our own agency.”
A murmuring among the Lynches. A habitual agreement. Like an amen or a praise God. Like a hymn they’d been singing their whole lives.
“I have devoted my life to this company,” Zachariah said. He was leading Joel around the perimeter of the room, gesturing at the stars outside the glass. “I have tried to have what might be called a fulfilling existence. Tried to have it all. Work. Family. Space for art and culture. Some dreams.”
The old man turned to face Joel. In the dark, the buttons and switches on his breathing cuirass glowed and pulsed. “What I’ve learned is that no one can have it all.” His smile stretched wide and pale in the dark. “You can have it all, but not all at once.”
Joel frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying that I’m retiring,” Zachariah told him. “I’m saying that the time has come. The future I envisioned has taken too long to arrive. It’s time I made a transfer. Never enter a position without first designing your own exit strategy, Joel. Once you have it in place, you can run things the way you want without fearing the consequences. That’s the only way to innovate, in this world.”
“Exit strategy?” Joel cast his gaze to his brothers and sisters. They all looked elsewhere. Each of them held a picture in a frame. The images in the frames flickered: Zachariah old, then Zachariah young. Zachariah sick, then Zachariah healed. His whole history was told in those icons carried by his older, more devoted children. “Transfer?”
“Don’t look at them, look at me,” Zachariah murmured. “I’m the one who has put you in this position. You’re my heir! You’re the future of this company!”