Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

“Shouldn’t have told you I was a teacher.” He sighed heavily.

“Why not?”

“Women don’t like that. Randall says, ‘Never volunteer the information.’” The way he said the words made it clear he was quoting this Randall verbatim.

“But teaching is a noble profession. Educating the future doctors and scientists of the world.”

He looked up at her sadly. “There’s no money in it.”

“Not every woman is so mercenary. Randall is dating the wrong type.”

“My wife liked money. Ex-wife.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He sighed again and closed his eyes. “It broke my heart.”

Another twinge of pity. Of sadness. He would never say these things, she knew, if he weren’t high on her Ecstasy-truth serum hybrid. He was speaking more clearly now; the drug wasn’t wearing off, his mind was just adapting to working around it.

She patted his cheek and made her voice cheery. “If she was that easily bought, she probably isn’t worth crying over.”

His eyes opened again. They were a very gentle hazel, an even mix of green and soft gray. She tried to picture them intense – fitting under the baseball cap of the self-assured man meeting with de la Fuentes in the photos – and failed.

She didn’t know what she would do if he actually had dissociative identity disorder. She’d never worked with that before.

“You’re right,” he said. “I know you are. I need to see her for what she really was, not what I imagined she was.”

“Exactly. We build up these ideas of people, create the one we want to be with, and then try to keep the real person inside the false mold. It doesn’t always work out well.”

Gibberish. She had no idea what she was saying. She’d been in one semiserious relationship in her whole life, and it hadn’t lasted long. School had been prioritized before the guy, just like work had been prioritized before everything else for six years. Like how she now prioritized breathing over everything else. She had a problem with obsessiveness.

“Alex?”

“Yes?”

“Am I dying?”

She smiled reassuringly. “No. If I thought you were dying, I would have called an ambulance. You’ll be fine. I just want to double-check.”

“Okay. Will I have to have blood taken?”

“Maybe.”

He sighed. “Needles make me nervous.”

“It will be fine.”

She didn’t like that this bothered her – lying to him. But there was something about his simple trust, the way he seemed to ascribe the best motives to everything she did… She had to snap out of it.

“Thank you, Alex. Really.”

“Just doing my job.” Not a lie.

“Do you think you’ll call me?” he asked hopefully.

“Daniel, we’re definitely going to spend an evening together,” she promised. If he hadn’t been drugged, he would have heard the edge in her voice and seen the ice in her eyes.

The rest went almost too smoothly… did that mean something? Her paranoia level was already so high, it was hard to say if this new worry elevated it or not.

He got into the cab at the Rosslyn station without protest. She knew how he felt – she and Barnaby had tried out most of the nonlethal preparations to have some concrete experience with what they could do. This one was like dreaming a pleasant dream, where problems and worries were for someone else to figure out, and all one needed was a hand to hold and a nudge in the right direction. In their notes they’d nicknamed it Follow the Leader, though it had a more impressive name on the official reports.

It was a relaxing trip, and if it weren’t for the fact that she desperately needed her inhibitions, even back then, she might have indulged again.

She got him talking about the volleyball team he coached – he’d asked if he’d be back at school in time for practice – and he spent the entire cab ride telling her about the girls until she felt she knew all their names and their strengths on the court by heart. The cabbie paid no attention, humming along to some song too low for her to make out.

Daniel seemed mostly oblivious to the travel, but at a particularly long red light, he looked up and frowned.

“Your office is far away.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “It’s a hell of a commute.”

“Where do you live?”

“Bethesda.”

“That’s a nice place. Columbia Heights is not so nice. My part of it, at least.”

The cab started moving again. She was pleased; the plan was going very well. Even if they’d clocked her getting on and off the last train, they’d be hard-pressed to keep track of one cab in a sea of identical cabs twisting together through rush hour. Preparation felt like a magic spell sometimes. Like you could force events into the shape you wanted just by planning them thoroughly enough.

Daniel wasn’t as talkative now. This was the second phase of the drug’s action, and he would be getting more tired. She needed him to stay awake just a little bit longer.

“Why did you give me your number?” she asked when his lids started to droop.

He smiled dreamily. “I’ve never done that before.”

“Me either.”

“I’ll probably be embarrassed about it later.”

“Not if I call you, though, right?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, it was out of character.”

“So why did you do it?”

His soft eyes never left hers. “I like your face.”

“You mentioned that.”

“I really wanted to see it again. That made me brave.”

She frowned, guilt pulsing.

“Does that sound weird?” He seemed worried.

“No, it sounds very sweet. Not many men would tell a woman something like that.”

He blinked owlishly. “I wouldn’t usually. Too… cowardly.”

“You seem pretty brave to me.”

“I feel different. I think it’s you. I felt different as soon as I saw you smile.”

As soon as I roofied you, she amended in her head.

“Well, that’s quite a compliment,” she said. “And here we go, can you get up?”

“Sure. This is the airport.”

“Yes, that’s where my car is.”

His brow furrowed, then cleared. “Did you just get back from a trip?”

“I just got into town, yes.”

“I go on trips sometimes. I like to go to Mexico.”

She glanced up sharply. He was staring ahead, watching where he was walking. There was no sign of distress on his face. If she pushed him toward a secret, anything that was a pressure point, his docility would turn to suspicion. He might latch on to another stranger as his leader and try to escape. He might get agitated and call attention to her.

“What do you like about Mexico?” she asked carefully.

“The weather is hot and dry. I enjoy that. I’ve never lived in a really hot place, but I think I would like it. I get burned, though. I’ve never been able to tan. You look like you’ve spent some time in the sun.”

“No, just born this way.” She got her coloring from her absentee father. Genetic testing had informed her that he was a mix of many things, predominantly Korean, Hispanic, and Welsh. She’d always wondered what he’d looked like. The combination with her mother’s Scottish background had created in her an oddly ordinary face – she could have been from almost anywhere.

“That must be nice. I have to use sunblock, a lot of sunblock. Or I peel. It’s disgusting. I shouldn’t tell you that.”

She laughed. “I promise to forget it. What else do you like?”

“Working with my hands. I help build houses. Not in a skilled way; I just hammer where they tell me to. But the people are so kind and generous. I love that part.”

It was all very convincing, and she felt a thrill of fear. How could he stick to the story so well, so effortlessly, with the chemicals moving through his system right now? Unless he’d built up a resistance somehow. Unless her department had created an antidote, unless they’d prepped him and he was playing her. The goose bumps stood up on the back of her neck. It didn’t have to be the department that had prepared him. It could be his interactions with de la Fuentes. Who knew what kind of results strange drugs interacting with her own would have? She touched her tongue to the false cap on her back tooth. The department would have just killed her if that were the goal. De la Fuentes would probably want to punish her for attempting to interrupt his plans. But how would he know in advance? How could Daniel have made her as an opposing agent so quickly? She didn’t even actually work for anyone anymore.