Wendy shrugs. “Maybe.”
“People crossings?”
“It’s hard to tell. We’re standing in the middle of a giant rat experiment, so there’s no reason to suspect they’re not the rat files.”
“But you do suspect they’re not the rat files. What do you think they are?”
She sighs. Looks me straight in the eyes. “The nests. Girls. Boys. Company kids. That’s what I think it is. I think Carter, maybe Donovan, too, were doing preliminary things here. But the final projects were probably in the nests.”
“Lemme see.” She hands me the file and I flip through it. “I guess it could refer to humans, but like you said, we’re in the middle of a giant rat experiment and anyway, all the genetics were kept by Gerald Couture. Not Donovan and Carter.”
“But he’s their grandfather. And I’m not certain where I heard this, because it’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that Donovan inherited those records.”
“So this is his office, and not Carter’s?”
“I don’t know. We should ask Adam what he thinks. He would know.”
Yeah. He would know. But would he tell me? And if he did, should I believe anything he says?
His revelations last night and this morning caught me off guard. But they were neither surprising nor enlightening. Am I his long-lost dead brother? Who knows? There are so many connections between all of us at this point, maybe we’re all related? Maybe we’re all just part of the same sick experiment?
But I’m not going to bother Wendy with any of this.
I’m not the reason we’re here. She is.
And I will not be distracted by Adam’s demons.
“Whoa.”
“What?” I turn to Wendy. She’s crouched down with the open bottom drawer in front of her and holding an open notebook. “What did you find?”
She hesitates before answering. “Mmm. I’m not sure.” Another pause. Then she says, “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit what? What did you find?”
“Look.” She stands up and shoves the notebook at me. Which is really a binder, now that I can see it properly. It’s nothing special. One of those three-inch spines, vinyl-covered binders you might see in government offices. And it looks old. The corners are jagged and ripped.
I take it from her and focus in the dim light. “Oh, shit. What’s this?”
“Right? What the hell?”
The open page is an eight by ten photo on the left side and some kind of… I dunno. Resume, maybe, on the right. “Do you know who this is?” I ask.
“Gerald Couture?”
“Yeah. Good guess. But he’s young.” I squint my eyes and look at the date. “That can’t be right.”
“What’s it say?” Wendy pulls the notebook towards her. “Nineteen ten.” Her face scrunches up. I can see her doing the mental math. It doesn’t add up. “That can’t be right. When was this taken?”
“Well…” I shrug. “I think that’s what the date is implying.”
“But that can’t be right. I mean—” She looks up at me. “That would make him what?”
“Well over a hundred,” I say.
“So.” She huffs. “This whole longevity thing is real?”
I take the binder and close it up. “I don’t know. But he’s dead now, so…”
We both kinda chuckle. It’s really appropriate, but we do it anyway.
“Yeah,” Wendy says. “I guess the rat experiments only take you so far.”
“They definitely can’t stop a bullet.” I point to the other side of the spread where the writing is. “Look at this page, Wen. What is this language?”
She leans in and looks. “Couldn’t tell you.”
“Russian?”
She studies it again. “I don’t think so. The letters are weird. It almost looks like a code.”
“Great,” I sigh. “Another fucking mystery.”
“Well,” Wendy says. “We’re not gonna solve it down here. We should take all this. How many files are there in this whole cabinet?”
“I don’t know.” I feel drained all of a sudden. Like this shit is catching up to me and I’m just too old for it.
Wendy shuffles through the file drawers. “Hmm. Looks like it’s just this one here. About thirty files, maybe?” She looks over her shoulder at me. “We can handle thirty files, right?”
“Put them in the box. We’ll take them with us.”
She picks up an armful and plops them in and I put the binder on top. Half a minute later, we’re going back upstairs, each of us carrying one side of the box by the handles, and the smell hits us. “Someone really will need to clean this place up. If the locals find it—”
Wendy stops ahead of me just as we’re about to enter the main hallway. She puts a hand on my shoulder. “That’s not your problem, Nick. Don’t make everything your problem.”
I smile. And I want to kiss her. But there’s a heavy box between us and, anyway, not here. I just want her alone. I want her to myself. I want the whole world to go away.
Just go away.
That’s all I’ve wanted for the past however many years since I started figuring out how much she needed and how little she was being offered. If we could just be left alone, we would figure it all out.