Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus by Mira Grant Page B

“Please be clear in your answers. I need to be sure.”
    “If it’s not her, she has a twin sister,” said Maggie. “That’s not okay.”
    “It’s her,” said Alaric.
    “Okay. That’s what I needed to confirm.”
    “Dr. Abbey, I don’t think you understand.” Alaric was sounding more alarmed by the minute. “She’s a killer. That’s what she does. It’s what she lives for. She may have been upset when the Cat broke the rules, but that wasn’t going to stop her from putting a bullet in anyone who got in her way. You need to get her out of there. You’re not safe while she’s with you.”
    “I’ll take that under advisement. In the meantime, Alaric, send that article over; I need all the help I can get in dealing with this situation, so if you’ve got something you think will help, I want it. Both of you, congratulations again on your wedding—I hope you’ll be very happy together. Give everyone my best, and don’t call back.” I hung up without saying good-bye. Farewells weren’t really my style, and hadn’t been since my husband died. Maybe it was a silly superstition, but I live in a world where the dead walk: I can be superstitious if I want to.
    Alaric’s e-mail had already arrived, shunted though a dozen layers of increasingly sophisticated software to reach my inbox, where it waited for me to open it. I clicked. I opened. I read. And somewhere in the middle of his report, titled “Unspoken Tragedies of the American School System,” I began to cry. Thankfully, there was no one in the room with me but Joe, and Joe was loyal. Joe would never tell.
    4.
    “Is she awake?”
    “You asked us to notify you as soon as she woke up. I have not notified you. I value my position here in this lab, rather than outside in the wilds with no weapons and no references to show the next evil lab that I want to work for. Ergo, she has not woken up.” Jill didn’t look away from her computer as she spoke. Apparently, even being her boss didn’t put me above blood test results in her estimation. That was actually heartening. I signed her paychecks, but science was her real employer. That was exactly as things were meant to be.
    “The lab isn’t evil, it’s ethically challenged,” I said. “We do good things.”
    “I bet Frankenstein told himself the same thing,” said Jill, still typing. “She’s asleep, but she’s not deeply asleep. You could probably wake her up, if you wanted to go another five rounds with Sleeping Beauty: the horror movie edition.”
    “Were you always this rude and disrespectful?” I asked.
    “Not until my boss told me that talking back would help me on my annual reviews,” said Jill. She finally turned to look at me. “Do you want me to call Tom to come and play backup? He’s just down in his lab, playing with cannabis. You know, like he does every day.”
    “Yes, but this time he’s doing it because I asked him to,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I don’t think she’s here to hurt me. I think she’s genuinely here because she needs help, and because the last person she trusted to help her used her instead. Used her hard, and put her away broken.”
    “We’re not the Island of Misfit Toys,” protested Jill. “We can’t be responsible for every broken doll you come across.”
    “Why not?” I asked, amiably enough. “I decided to be responsible for you.”
    Jill didn’t have an answer for that, and so I turned away and walked out of the room, heading the few feet down the hall to the observation room where our mystery woman—who was becoming less mysterious with every moment that passed, even if she was becoming somewhat sadder at the same time—was waiting for me.
    She didn’t stir as I opened the door and stepped inside. I shut the door behind me, walking calmly to the seat I’d been occupying earlier. Routine was important when dealing with people who had every reason to be suspicious of you: It both made you predictable, which could be comforting, and