T wo classes today , both of them early. Thalia passes me slip after slip of paper like we’re back in high school. It’s hard enough to concentrate on the lecture as it is, but with her constant questioning, it’s a miracle I manage to take any notes at all. Over lunch, she asks me if I’m going home to change before I go and meet with Raphael.

“Nope,” I tell her, taking a bite of my wrap. “He said I should wear whatever makes me comfortable.”

Concern flashes across Thalia’s face. “It’s probably a test, Beth. You should still wear something smart.”

“What’s wrong with this?” I look down at myself, at the pale blue strappy shirt and the black jeans I’m wearing. When I look up, Thalia’s nose is wrinkled.

“My father says jeans are blue collar working men’s clothes. They’re not smart or professional.”

“Might I point out that you’re wearing jeans right now. And also, your father is in his seventies. Of course he thinks that. He’d probably wear a shirt and tie to go hiking, if he could still hike.”

The troubled look doesn’t leave Thalia’s face. “I don’t know, Beth…”

“He wears jeans. Why shouldn’t I?”

“North ? Raphael North was wearing jeans when you met him?”

“Yes. Ripped jeans. And a t-shirt.”

“You’re fucking with me. That man never left his apartment unless that perfect body of his was expertly packaged in a Giorgio Armani three-piece.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Thalia. He was very casual the other day. Very casual. He practically laughed at me when I said you’d forced me to wear business attire. I’m going to our meeting this afternoon wearing this, or I’m not going at all. It’s that simple.”

“You might want to wipe your chin before you get chipotle sauce all over yourself, then,” she says dryly, pointing at my face. I use my napkin just in the nick of time, barely catching the dollop of sauce that was about to land in my lap.

“You’re going to let him win this time, right?” Thalia says.

“Yeah, this time I’ll make sure I’m paying attention. So long as he doesn’t offend me the moment I walk through the door, I should be okay.” Even as I say this, I know the chances of that happening are slim to none. The man doesn’t seem to be capable of opening his mouth without saying something to upset me.

By four o’clock, I’ve worked myself into a ball of nerves again. Nate calls me from outside my building, and I go jump into the Tesla, opening my own door and climbing into the backseat before he can stop me.

“You’re trouble,” he says, laughing. “I know it when I see it, and you are trouble with a capital T. You’d have to be to come back for a second round with Raphael.”

We laugh and joke on the way over to the Osiris Building, the drive much quicker than it was on Saturday. I try not to worry about the text faux pas from last night. I try not to worry, period. Easier said than done, though. I toe off my sneakers in the elevator and hand them over to Nate. He smirks when he sees my freshly painted plum toenails, but he doesn’t say anything. I gave myself a full pedicure last night before I went to bed. My feet have never looked better.

Nate buzzes on the doorbell by the glass door again, then gives me a squeeze on the shoulder. “Give him hell, spitfire.”

I laugh under my breath. “I’ll try.”

Today, the curtain on the other side of the door doesn’t go back. The door just swings open, and there is Raphael—tall, cheeks a little red, eyes wild, hair wet again. There are damp spots on his shoulders too, making the dark, burned red of his polo shirt even darker. His eyes blaze when he looks at me. “You’re early,” he states.

“Am I?”

“Yes. Fifteen minutes early.”

“I’m sorry, would you like me to come back later then?” I’m joking, but it’s very obvious that Raphael is considering saying yes. He frowns slightly, and then steps away from the door, holding it open for me.

“No. It’s fine,” he says tightly. “Go on through. We’re playing in the lounge again, by the window.”

I go inside, walking the long length of the penthouse, aware that every single one of the doors that line the hallway toward the lounge are all closed again. No chance of seeing what lies beyond. Calling the space at the other end of the hallway a lounge simply doesn’t do it justice. It would be more appropriate to call it a loft, or even a hangar. The chess set is set up exactly where it was two days ago. I sit down in the same chair, and Raphael sits opposite me. He takes hold of the chessboard, though, spinning it around so that the black pieces are in front of me, and the copper pieces are in front of him.

“Fair’s fair,” he says.

So today, I will have the advantage of going first. How very generous of him. He seems a little tense today. More than he was on our first meeting, which is saying something. The muscles in his jaw are popping as he grinds his teeth together. A small vein stands out at his temple. I can’t stop staring at it. There’s something about him right now. Not just one thing, but a number of small things that, combined, make him thoroughly intriguing. I can tell something’s bothering him, but I can’t tell what will happen if I ask him if he’s okay. There’s a prickly energy pouring off him as he eyes the board. It’s as though he could snap and explode at any second. He’s been silent since he switched the board around, but his body language is absolutely screaming.

I take my cue from him and I keep quiet. I open the game, already plotting how I will lose. Raphael doesn’t look up at me. He watches the board with such a single-minded focus that I doubt he really even knows I’m here. I can’t decide which version of Raphael is more unnerving: the impolite version of him that asks impolite questions, or the brooding, silent version of him that hardly acknowledges my presence. He plays furiously, barely waiting for me to put down my pieces before he’s picking up one of his and making his next move.

Five minutes pass.

Ten.

Then fifteen.

I claim his pieces, and he claims mine. Twenty minutes into the game, he slumps back in his chair, rubbing his index finger along the line of his chin, looking out of the window. “Congratulations,” he says.

“I’m sorry, what ?”

“Congratulations. You have me in four moves.”

“No, no, I—” I check the board, and I see it. Four simple moves and my rook will have him in checkmate. Damn it! How the hell did that even happen ? I pinch the bridge of my nose, sighing. “Would you like to go again?” I ask. “That was a pretty fast game.”

“Honestly, I don’t want to play. I’ve had an…interesting day.”

“Oh. Okay, well…” What does that mean? Am I being dismissed? He doesn’t seem like he’s in the mood for company. Not that he did last time, either, but there you go.

“Do you read?” Raphael says.

“Yes, of course. I read all the time.”

He finally tears his gaze away from the window, looking right at me. “Have you ever read any of Anatoly Vasiliev’s books?”

“No, I haven’t.”

He grunts, a sound of disappointment. “He wrote a novel called, Waking Dreams in the Garden of Men . It’s about this guy who wakes up one morning, goes to work…” Raphael pauses, looking out over the city again, frowning, as if something’s caught his attention. “He goes to work, and all of his friends, the people he’s worked with for many years, are all gone. Replaced with strangers, who all seem to know him, know personal details about his life, his family…they all seem to share personal experiences with him, and yet he doesn’t know a single one of them. When he goes home, there’s a guy waiting for him inside his house. He claims he’s his brother, but the man doesn’t have a brother. He has sisters. Three sisters. He checks his house for their photographs so he can show them to the imposter who’s broken into his home, but all he can find are pictures of the two of them together. He spends the rest of the book trying to figure out if he’s dreaming in this bizarre new world, or if his other life was the dream all along, and where he finds himself now is real.”

“That sounds confusing,” I offer. “I’m not sure it’s my kind of book.”

“It’s horrible,” he says slowly. “It’s not anyone’s kind of book.”

“Then why did you read it?”

He blinks at me, like this is the most bizarre question I could possibly have asked in this moment. “Because it’s a work of fiction,” he says. “I like reading fiction. It’s not real. You can close the book and end the story whenever you like. Would you like to go up to the roof with me now, Ms. Dreymon?”

“The roof? I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s…cold .” Cold is the first word that springs to mind. What I want to say is it’s too fucking high. I’m afraid I’ll fall over the railings and tumble to my death.

“Okay,” Raphael says. “In that case, would you like to see something no one else has ever seen before?”

Thalia would have a quip about his dick on the tip of her tongue right now. She’d definitely have some crass little comment to fire back at him. Plenty of women have seen Raphael’s dick if the media are to be believed, but she’d make it work somehow. Instead, I say, “Okay. So long as it doesn’t involve heights.”

Raphael smirks—the first sign of amusement from him since, well…since we met. “No heights, I promise.”

He gets up and holds out his hand to me. “Come with me.”

My hand feels dwarfed in his; it’s been a long time since I’ve been held by my hand, and it’s a strange feeling. A thrill of…something fires through me. His skin is hot, burning almost. His fingers intertwine with mine, and I can’t hide my surprise. It’s not the way someone would take another person’s hand if they’re showing them the way. It’s the handhold of lovers, people who care deeply about each other. Raphael doesn’t seem to notice the startled look on my face as he guides me toward the door he disappeared through at the end of our last meeting. Nor does he let go of my hand. He’s a man on a mission as he pulls me through the door and into a short hallway. This time there are no doors on either side, only a wide marble staircase leading upward at the other end of the hall. There are mountings, on the walls, though. Gold hooks drilled into the bare brickwork, where pictures obviously used to hang. They’ve all been removed now, though, it seems.

Raphael finally releases his hold on me at the foot of the stairs. “Are you afraid of the dark?” he asks, as he begins to head up.

“No.”

“Good. This test room has to be completely pitch black for the technology to work.”

At the top of the stairs, he hurries me along another hallway—this place is huge—and then opens a door to his right. Flicking a light on, he gestures me inside, then closes the door behind me. The room is small, maybe only four meters by six. The walls are lined with a thick, black felt, and the floor is protected with some sort of rubberized coating. My pulse races away from me as Raphael locks the door. Shit, shit, shit…

“Don’t lock yourself away with people you don’t know. Never be alone with people, especially men, Elizabeth. It’s not safe. It’s never safe.” My mother’s words echo inside my mind, like a death toll. I should be more careful. I should have asked to keep the door open or something. If he’s locked it…

“Don’t look so afraid,” Raphael says abruptly. “You’re in no danger. I know what this must look like.”

“Oh? I don’t know what you mean.” I squirm, rubbing my hand against the back of my neck. Fuck. I must be so easy to read.

“This room looks like some sort of torture chamber. It isn’t. You just have to trust me,” Raphael says.

Trust is earned, not freely given, though. My heart is skipping all over the damn place as he moves to stand in front of a computer sitting on a desk against the wall. The desk and the computer are the only items of furniture in here. A bundle of black cables hang down from the center of the ceiling. Raphael opens a drawer in the desk and takes out a soft shell container, which he unzips. Inside: some kind of headset. No, not a headset. Way less bulky. More like a pair of glasses that wrap all the way around my head, encompassing my peripherals. He connects the glasses to the cables that hang down from the ceiling, then he also connects a series of what look like electrode pads to the glasses, too.

Then he turns to me. “Are you feeling brave, Ms. Dreymon?”

I’m absolutely, categorically not feeling brave. Telling Raphael so seems impossible, though. He seems so…solid . So damn confident of every move he makes. I study the strange VR glasses, tapping my fingers nervously against my legs.

“What is it?” I ask. “What’s it for?”

He looks down at the equipment he’s holding and shrugs. “It’s a virtual reality simulator. Nothing more.”

“What is it going to show me?”

“Something profound.” There’s a weight and gravity to his words that sends chills down my spine.

“And…it’s not dangerous?”

“Most definitely not.”

“Okay, then. Sure, I’ll try it.” Aside from the idea of being completely vulnerable and at his mercy while I’m wearing the VR glasses, I am intrigued. It’s not every day someone offers you the chance to witness something never seen before. Something profound. And Raphael doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to exaggerate. His movements are quick and self-assured as he first connects the electrodes to my temples and at the base of my skull.

“You might feel a slight pulsing sensation,” he says. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

I don’t feel anything at first, but as he slides the arms of the VR glasses over my ears, a gentle throbbing sensation, not painful, just strange, beings to pulse at my temples. Raphael is standing so close. Close enough that I can see the pale, almost silver flecks in his remarkably green eyes. The corner of his mouth twitches as he looks down at me, apparently transfixed. He smells like the ocean. Like something fresh and wild and untamable—a natural, clean and heady smell that leaves me breathless.

“You’re nervous,” he says softly.

“I’m fine.”

“Your pupils are dilated.”

“So are yours.”

Raphael angles his head to one side, observing me. He keeps doing this, as if he’s caught off guard by me in some way, sucked deep into some train of thought I’m not privy to. Silence fills the small room, echoing off the walls.

Five…

Six…

Seven…

Eight…

He seems to land back in the moment with a jarring shock. Inhaling deeply through his nose, he quickly finishes hooking everything up to the VR glasses, then he places it down over my eyes.

“Can you see anything?” he asks.

“No.” And I really can’t. I’m in utter darkness. Not the kind of darkness you experience when you close your eyes. This is the kind of darkness you experience underground, deep down in the bowels of the earth, where there are no lights to guide you. It’s an absolute darkness that reaches inside you and settles heavily inside your mind—a living, breathing kind of darkness.

“The throbbing will intensify now,” Raphael says. He’s moved away from me. I can sense that he’s on the side of the room, over by the computer. My suspicions are confirmed when I hear the tapping of keys, and then the low hum of something mechanical booting up.

I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans; I don’t want him to notice that they’re shaking, or that I’m clenching them into fists. The throbbing, just a dull thump a moment ago, grows until it’s more of a solid drumming at the both sides of my head. Still it doesn’t hurt, but the sensation is kind of unsettling.

“Okay. Are you ready?” Raphael asks.

“Yes. I’m ready.”

“Good. You might notice a series of flashes. Tell me what you see.”

At first there’s nothing. I wait, holding my breath. The blackness envelops me, never ending.

“Nothing?” Raphael asks.

“No, not yet.”

“Okay, how about now?”

There’s an odd buzzing in my head, and then all of a sudden it’s like a light switch has been turned on. A bright blue light fills my vision. It’s everywhere—up, down, left and right. Bright, sky blue everywhere I look.

“Wow. I can’t see my body,” I say, looking down. “Everything’s just…blue.”

“And what about now?” The color instantly shifts to red.

“Red,” I answer.

“And…how about now?”

“Purple.”

“Good. Tell me the names of the all the colors you see as you see them. And be specific. Not just red, blue, green. What shade are they? What do they remind you of?”

“Okay. Everything is yellow now. The color of pale butter. Spring sunshine. Now, mint. Or aqua. The color of the ocean in Malta.” The color changes every five seconds or so, morphing from one hue and tone to the next. “Orange, the color of amber and citrine stones. Green again, Irish green, the color of emeralds and healthy grass. The color…the color of your eyes. Now pink, dusky, the color of rose petals and my favorite blush.”

God. The color of your eyes? What the hell is wrong with me? I wish that hadn’t slipped free. My mouth was moving before I could put a stop to it, though. Fuck. My. Life.

We continue on for another five minutes. Ten. I manage to find names and descriptions for so many different colors. My apprehension, along with my embarrassment, melts away as we continue with our game, until Raphael finally tells me it’s over. Disappointment floods me. I’ve never experienced virtual reality before, but I’ve heard amazing things about it. The landscapes and vistas created by Raphael’s company, North Industries, are meant to be the very best, most impressive graphics in VR. So, while the colors he just showed me were crisp, vivid and bright, I can’t help but feel a little cheated. How on earth does he think that was profound?

Raphael removes the VR glasses, and everything is still pitch black. I can’t even see the light coming from the computer screen. Panic grips hold of me, then, slamming into me with the force of a ten-ton truck. “Why can’t I see?” I ask. My voice is edged with panic. I reach out, my hands scrambling, and I find Raphael’s arm. “I can’t see. Oh, shit,” I whisper.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Raphael takes my hand, squeezing it. “The electrodes on your temples are disrupting the electrical pulses from your eyes to your brain, preventing messages from traveling down your optic nerve. That’s what the throbbing sensation is.”

“What? Why? Take them off!”

Raphael grabs hold of my wrists now, stopping me from ripping the electrodes from my skin. “Stay calm. Stay calm. Beth, listen to me. Stay calm. You’re not blind. Not really. It’s temporary. The moment I remove the electrodes, you’ll be able to see perfectly again. But first, I want you to listen to me.” His hands, locked around my wrists, are strong. I panic for a second, trying to tear myself free, but he holds on fast. Taking a deep breath, I force myself to stop fighting. This is going to be okay. This is going to be okay, Beth . I say it to myself over and over again.

“That’s it,” Raphael says soothingly. “You’re doing great. Now…the electrodes have a secondary purpose. While they’re blocking electrical impulses from your eyes to your brain, they’re also redirecting a secondary set of impulses directly from the glasses. The impulses are sending visual data directly into your brain, bypassing the eyes altogether. Do you understand what that means?”

“No, not really,” I say, swallowing thickly.

Raphael doesn’t say anything. He continues to hold onto my wrists, and I can hear his breathing, slow and steady, close to my ear. I can feel the warmth of it skating across my skin. “Think about it,” he says softly.

I calm my mind, doing as he asks. Despite being filled with the overwhelming fear that this change in my vision is permanent, the feel of him so close to me is strangely comforting. I turn over the information he just gave me in my mind, slowly making sense of it.

If the VR glasses can transfer visual information directly into a person’s mind, completely bypassing their eyes, then…

Then…

“Oh my god,” I whisper. “Oh my…god!” I sob, the sound choked and filled with emotion, echoing around the small room. “If you can do this…if you can transfer visual data like this into someone’s brain…”

Raphael lets go of me. Slowly he removes the electrodes from the sides of my head, from the base of my neck. One moment I’m drowning in darkness, the next I’m back in the dimly lit, small room, and Raphael is standing in front of me, a tiny ghost of a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. He looks so different when he’s almost smiling. The tense quality that shrouds him falls away, and I see the makings of an entirely different person altogether, hovering there in the shadows.

“You can make people see,” I whisper. “This technology can make…the blind see.”

He nods slowly, and I cover my mouth with both hands. For some reason my eyes are filling with tears.

“It’s just colors at the moment. But we’re developing the technology fast. Soon it will be basic images. Within the next few years, we’re hoping we’ll be able to transmit exact read outs of a person’s surroundings through even smaller sensors that look identical to reading glasses.”

“So…” I can barely form coherent thoughts right now. “You’re saying that someone who’s been blind their whole lives…will finally be able to see what they look like? They’ll be able to see what their parents, their children, their wives and their husbands look like?”

Raphael nods.

I look at the glasses he’s holding in both of his hands, and then I look up at him. “You did this? You figured out how to do it?”

“The idea was mine. The basic science was mine. The project required more than basic science, though. A whole team of scientists and engineers have slaved on this over the past three years. They’re miracle workers.”

I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of a single thing that comes close to being enough . Instead, I reach out and I take the VR glasses from Raphael, turning it over, memorizing the lines and the shape of it.

“This…this is going to change so many lives,” I whisper.

Raphael’s smile evaporates. He turns away, clearing his throat as he shuts down a complex looking operating system on the computer screen. With his back still to me, he says, “I’m afraid I have a meeting now, Ms. Dreymon. It’s time for you to go.”

“Oh. Of course.”

His head is lowered when he spins back around, holding out his hand for the VR glasses. “Do you think you can find your own way out again?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Wednesday. I want to play again. Are you available?”

“I—I have a late class on Wednesday. I won’t be free until after six.”

“Then come at seven. You can eat here with me while we play. Agreed?”

Eat here? With him? Dinner? The suggestion leaves me a little surprised, but I can see from the void expression he’s wearing that he doesn’t mean dinner . He means the consumption of sustenance while we play our game and nothing more. “Yes, that should work.”

“Perfect. Goodbye, Ms. Dreymon.” He turns back to his computer screen, and that’s it. I’ve been summarily dismissed.

I make my way out of the room, down the stairs, through the lounge, down the hallway and back to the glass door, and for some reason I feel the need to run. To get away from the penthouse as quickly as I can. My heart is slamming in my chest, but I can’t seem to figure out why. I pull open the glass door, fully expecting Nate to be there waiting for me, but he’s not. Instead, a tall, fair haired guy wearing a pair of Ray Bans and a pale blue Ralph Lauren polo shirt stands in my way, his hand raised, his finger outstretched, by the looks of things a second away from ringing the doorbell. The guy reels back at the same time I do, hand on his chest. “Jesus fucking wept, you scared me. What the—who are you ?” He eyes my bare feet, eyebrow raised.

“I’m Beth. I’m…I’m sorry.” Beyond flustered, I sidle past the tall, handsome guy in the doorway, skirting along the wall in the anteroom. “Mr. North said I should see myself out.”

The amused look on the guy’s face transforms into something else. Something like intrigue. “Well, well. Raphael’s been keeping secrets. I’m Paxton Ross. Pax, if you and I are going to be friends. I went to boarding school with Mr. North back in the day. How, pray tell, do you know him?”

“I—” Well, shit. What am I supposed to say? Raphael doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to ever let anything ruffle his feathers, but he probably doesn’t want a longstanding friend knowing he’s been responding to weird ads on the internet. “I met him through a mutual friend,” I say, scrambling.

“Oh? Which friend might that be?”

“Thalia. Thalia Johnson.”

Pax raises his chin, narrowing his eyes at me. He looks more than a little suspicious. The look fades, though. “Ah, yeah. Thalia. I know her father fairly well. How’s she doing at college? Columbia, right? She’s studying law?”

A jolt of electricity burns through me like lightning. I reeled off Thalia’s name without thinking, assuming he would accept my word at face value. I didn’t for a second think he would really know her. And if Pax knows her, then…does Raphael actually know her, too? “Yes. That’s how she and I met,” I explain. “I’m also studying law.”

Pax gives me a tight-lipped smile, and then looks over my shoulder into the penthouse beyond. “All right. Well, it was lovely to meet you, Beth. Hopefully we’ll run into each other again sooner rather than later.”

“Yes, I’d like that. Have a good meeting.”

In the elevator, I almost forget to open the hidden closest and retrieve my sneakers. On the ground floor, Nate is still nowhere to be seen. I order an Uber and I wait out in front of the building, on edge and uneasy. As soon as I get home, I call Thalia, the dial tone endlessly ringing out in my ear.

For once, she’s the one who doesn’t pick up.