The Operator

“It wasn’t you.” Bottom lip between her teeth, she strode up the last stairs and pushed open a fire door to enter a wide corridor. “Everyone found me.” The hall was empty, and she slowed as he caught up. Tugging her shirt out from her pants, she found the vial and syringes. “What do you know about these?” she asked as she held them out. “Bill called the pink one an accelerator. He said it would let me remember. Without an anchor.”

Silas’s jaw dropped, his eyes darting from the syringes to her. “Bill . . . Peri, did Bill inject you with this? It’s not supposed to exist.”

His rush of fear hit her hard, and the first tendrils of disappointment that it wasn’t safe tightened her chest. “He tried to,” she said. “The blue one is some kind of maintenance drug to stave off the paranoia.”

A soft scuff jerked her attention to the end of the hall, but it was only Jack, leaning against the wall to look sexy and mildly threatening. Silas had followed her attention to the empty corridor, and she shook her head to tell him it was nothing.

“Let me see it.” Calmer, Silas took the vial, reading the label as he started them back down the aisle again. “It’s probably the same stuff I read about in my graduate classes. Opti developed it in the sixties, then shut it down when everyone in the live trials died of paranoia-induced suicide. You say the blue one is a maintenance drug?”

Fear settled to a slow burn. “He called it Evocane?” she said, hoping it might mean something to him, but he shook his head. “It’s Bill’s latest attempt to convince me to come back,” she added, and Silas’s hand clenched around the vial. “He thinks that if I don’t have to trust an anchor, I’ll run right home to him.” She shoved her anger down, anger that Bill would try to use her again, try to lure her back with promises of her past, the power and above-the-law status she had enjoyed. Guilt swarmed out, smothering it. The things she had done . . . There was no rationalization that would justify her actions. Ignorance was not an excuse when it was willful. “He also implied Evocane was addictive,” she added softly.

“No doubt.” Silas jiggled the vial in his hand as they walked, tucking the capped syringes into a shirt pocket. “If it’s addictive, you’ll be less likely to draft when your levels are low and avoid any mental issues. I’ve got a few basic chemical tests in my office. Let’s check it out.”

“Thanks,” she whispered as he stopped before a wide door. It looked like a closet, but DR. SLEY was written on a piece of curling masking tape stuck to it. “Sley?” she questioned as he used a card to unlock it.

“My aunt’s married name,” he said as he opened the door and gestured she go first into the long, narrow room stuffed with equipment and stacked boxes. “I’m using her son’s social security number. I’ve been in hiding, too.”

Nodding in understanding, she gave Jack a look to stay out before going in deeper. Everything was organized. It only looked cluttered because there was so much stacked to the ceiling. Why he was here was obvious, though. The end had a round window onto that same big tank. The flickering, soft light spilled over his untidy desk and rolling chair. A stained, empty cup of coffee sat beside the edge, almost falling off. The space was small, but it didn’t feel cramped.

Silas was silent, the soft click of the door shutting behind him, obvious. “Have a seat,” he said as he took a bottle of test strips from a drawer. Peri perched herself on the edge of the desk chair, rolling it back to give him more room. Her eyes strayed to the porthole, her angst rising. What if it was true? It would make her refusal to go back to Bill even harder.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Silas said, his voice holding warning as he rested his rump on the corner of his desk and shook out a test strip. “But it was nasty stuff in the sixties, and in Bill’s hands, it’s probably been made worse.”

“That’s why I’m here, Doctor,” she said sarcastically, her interest sharpening when he carefully decanted a drop from the syringe onto the test strip and grunted in surprise.

She scooted closer to the edge of the chair. “What?”

Squinting at it, he frowned. “Most neural addictors fall in a narrow pH range, which, I’m sorry to say, it does. But the real nasty ones have a faint nitrite level.” He pointed to a second test strip. “This one takes a while.”

She sank back. It was like waiting to see whether the pregnancy test strip would turn blue. Not that she’d had much experience there. In the tank, a diver swam by, fish following him to eat the algae he was scraping from the wall. Her suspicion pinged, and then she quashed it. If Bill had tracked her here, he wouldn’t be looking for her from the wrong side of two feet of glass.

Still sitting on his desk, Silas pushed back until he hit the wall. Now it felt cramped, and she scooted her feet under her chair. “So . . . how have you been doing?” Silas asked.

Her eyes flicked from the test strip to him and she shrugged as his worry went right to her core and settled. He still loved her. Too bad she didn’t remember loving him. “Okay, I guess.”

“Seeing anyone?”

Seriously? “No, but I stole some guy’s car last month for a joyride. Does that count?”

Silas chuckled. “For you it does. Nice?”

He looked comfortable and content, and her gut tightened. “The guy or the car?”

Shrugging, he took the test strip and compared it to a chart on the bottle. “Which one attracted you first?” he asked, the idle question anything but.