“Not any?” she asked, teasing at first. And then her face fell. “Oh no. Val.”
“Your sympathy is charming, but unnecessary, I assure you. As to your question: I don’t know if they’d be friendly toward you, per se, but there are others. Ones who won’t want any part of any foolish war my relatives see fit to stir up. And who certainly wouldn’t approve of the things they do here in this house.”
Annabel nodded.
“What do you think of my brother? Now that’s he awake.”
She blinked, clearly surprised by the question. But didn’t answer right away; chewed at her lip a moment. Finally, she said, tone careful, “He calls you Radu when he talks about you.”
A burning sensation blossomed in the pit of his stomach, hot and furious. Pain like a wound. He sucked a quick breath through his teeth and lifted his head, stiffened his neck, shoved uselessly at the old waves of rage that lapped and frothed inside him. “Well,” he said, aiming for crisp, coming off tense. “He would. Valerian was my mother’s chosen name for me. It’s the name my father wanted that always turns up in the history books.”
The cat rolled over onto its back and reached up with her ginger paws to bat at his fingertips. Her little claws hooked in his skin, sharp enough to make him smile.
“I’m sorry,” Annabel said.
“Don’t be,” he snapped, and regretted letting his composure slip. He tickled the cat’s soft belly with his fingers and tried to regain his bored, lofty tone. “So what goes on upstairs? With all you aboveground dwellers.”
He thought that would earn an eye roll, or at least one of her snorting little laughs. But instead, she frowned.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but that awful old Dr. Talbot is up to something.”
*
The first cold prick of the needle was a relief unto itself. Jake had never tried recreational drugs in his life – had never taken a single hit off a joint, no matter how much the other boys had teased and prodded – so he didn’t know for sure that this was what a junkie felt like, but he suspected it probably was. The prep alone was enough to have his muscles unclenching, his jaw slowly relaxing. Rolling up his sleeve. The cool touch of the nurse’s fingertips on his arm. Pressure of the tourniquet. The tap, tap, tap of her nail on the syringe brought all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to attention. And then the sharp, bee-sting bite of the needle going in.
He breathed out, slow and deep, relaxing each limb, willing the constant tension in his stomach away. The serum, the pale, translucent pink of blood plasma, hit his veins with its usual warm fizz. Like champagne moving through his blood, effervescent and invigorating, bringing with it a sense of calm, and a surge of strength, that he suspected must be the work of strong opiates.
He supposed he’d broken his clean streak, then.
Not that it mattered.
“Alright,” the nurse said, cheerful but soothing. “Great job.” The plunger depressed the last of the serum and she withdrew the needle with a practiced movement, pressing a cotton ball to the pinprick with her other hand. “Bend your arm,” she said, but didn’t have to; he was old hat at this by now.
He bent his arm, putting pressure on the cotton ball, and allowed himself to enjoy the pleasant buzzing in his head while she trashed the syringe and set about finding him a Band-Aid in one of the drawers by the sink.
Jake had joined the program six months ago, and by now, the novelty of his surroundings had dulled to normalcy. It was amazing, he thought, how quickly humans adapted and then grew complacent; nothing stayed fascinating for long.
Although Blackmere Manor worked hard to do so.
The exam room, where he now sat on a paper-covered, padded table, was one of several in the basement of the manor house. Three white sheetrock walls encircled a standard box-shaped space, sink and bank of cabinets in one corner, exam table, biohazard disposal box. But the far wall was composed of old, worn-smooth stone, patches of lichen and damp crawling across its surface. Overhead, the fluorescent tube fixtures hung suspended from long chains hooked into a vaulted stone ceiling laced with modern pipes and wires that clung like poison ivy vines.
“Here we go,” the nurse – he thought her name was June – said, bustling back up to him. “Let’s see the war wound.” She chuckled at her own joke.
Jake extended his arm without cracking a smile and watched her smooth a bandage over the injection site. He’d seen war wounds. This wasn’t one of them.
“Okay, major,” she said, and he didn’t correct her. He’d told her, and all the other nurses, that he’d been discharged and shouldn’t be addressed by his rank anymore. None of them had listened. “Hop down and I’ll take you to see Dr. Talbot.”
Jake unrolled his sleeve and slid off the table, following obediently behind June as she opened the door and led him out into a bright white hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. That was the thing that always stuck out from the rest of the manufactured hospital environment in the basement of Blackmere Manor: the reinforced, medieval-style doors, silly-looking in their modern frames. He’d always wondered if they were original to the mansion, a stab at blending the old aesthetic into the utilitarian blandness of the lab; but then he’d heard the screams, and he’d begun to think they were practical doors, designed to keep people out…or in.
The hallway where he received his regular injections opened into a wider hall, this one lined with labs, full of techs and scientists in white coats hurrying back and forth, eyes glued to the tablets they carried. They swiped their way in and out of doors with key cards, never sparing so much as a glance at Jake or his nurse escort.
That hall led to a massive room with soaring cathedral ceilings, and no windows, the heavy dark stone giving the place the air of an underground sanctuary…or a massive tomb. Jake had no idea what happened here, only that there were more scientists, and lots of tables heaped with expensive-looking equipment, voices echoing off the walls.
A banded and studded wooden door set along one wall led to a narrow, cramped, lamplit room that looked like it had once been a storage area of some sort, and which now served as Dr. Talbot’s office. One of them, at least. On his first visit here, his eyes bandaged, Jake had been led into a room that felt wide and airy, and smelled of lilies, and whose floor had been slick hardwood that clicked beneath his shoes when he walked. This was definitely not that room.
The nurse gave a cursory knock, then heaved the door open and announced, “Major Treadwell is here for his appointment, sir.”
“Oh, good, send him in,” the doctor replied, voice lifting in that eager way Jake had come to expect as normal.
It set his teeth on edge.
Nurse June motioned Jake in and then closed him in with Dr. Talbot – and the man in a black suit seated off to the side of Dr. Talbot’s desk, lenses of his glasses catching the lamplight, legs crossed at the knee, tidy white hands clasped together in his lap.
Jake pegged him as a suit right away, some alphabet agency type with friends in high places; the sort of man who’d never broken one of his manicured nails, never served his country, nor his city, nor his community in the capacity of a warrior.
“Good evening, Major Treadwell,” Dr. Talbot greeted, sitting forward eagerly and folding his hands together on the desk. “I trust your treatment went well?”
Jake halted in front of the desk and fell into parade rest out of old habit. “Yes, sir.”
“You’re feeling well?”
“Very well, sir.” And he was. Fit, and vital, energy coursing through his veins in a way it hadn’t since Basic.