“Who? Me?” I asked, surprised.
Anvi laughed brightly and pulled on her backpack. It had glittery, brightly colored patches. My plain black bag seemedpositively depressing by contrast. “Yeah, duh, both of you guys. Shouldn’t we, like, celebrate?”
I looked at Nathan uneasily. He seemed uncomfortable, too. “Um, maybe another time,” I said. Anvi’s face crumpled. “Sorry, I’m just really tired.” Which was also true, even if my main motivation was escaping Nathan’s presence.
“Okay, fine. Pinky promise?” Anvi held her pinky out to me.
“Pinky promise,” I agreed, wrapping her finger with mine. Was this what having a younger sister was like?
“You too,” Anvi said, holding out her pinky to Nathan. His face was so severe I thought he was going to yell at her, but he conceded the pinky promise.
“See you guys later, then,” she said, breezing out into the hallway.
Nathan and I were left alone. Lisbeth had disappeared much earlier, saying something about lunch meetings with funders.
I took a deep breath and remembered my earlier resolve to not be intimidated by him. Even if he was, by definition, intimidating. “You shouldn’t be so hard on her.”
Nathan furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“The freezer door thing. You didn’t need to snap at her.” His eye contact was too intense, so I turned away to pack up my bag.
He was quiet for so long that I thought he’d left the room. But no, he was there, still frowning. “She needs to keep those doors closed as much as possible. Perhaps she hasn’t worked with a low-temperature freezer before, so I told her to be careful.”
“No, you just told her to close the door. And the way you said it was not nice,” I said, exasperated.
“I didn’t realize simple instructions needed to be ‘nice,’” he replied with a hint of annoyance. “This is a private research facility, not the university. The equipment needs to be treated with care.”
“Sheknowsthat. We allknowthat. So next time, just… be nicer.”
He stood still, and his expression moved inward, as if he were absorbing what I’d said. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked.
“Yes, I’ll try to be nicer next time.”
This was even more unnerving than when he’d half-joked with me earlier. I hiked my bag further up on my shoulder. “Great. Well, goodnight.” Then I fled the building.
As soon as I made it out onto the street, I called Maggie, the only Omega I’d kept in contact with after she’d left the Center. I figured she might be at work, but she’d asked for a full debrief of my first day.
“Hi! How was it? Did you already cure all the stem cells?” Maggie said, picking up after half a ring.
I laughed. I was pretty sure she was joking. “It was… okay. Not a total disaster. But also not perfect.”
“‘Not a total disaster’ is encouraging.”
“I guess. But do you remember that rude Alpha I told you about in my last lab? Dr. Manalo?” I paused. “Who said no one would take me seriously? He’s the senior associate on the study.”
“Fuck. That’s bad, right? Is he gonna sabotage you or something?”
“It’s not ideal.” I crossed the street in the middle of a crowd of people, some wearing scrubs since we were so close to a few of the city’s best hospitals. “But no, I don’t think he’d sabotage me. He’s just a jerk. But I told him to back off the intern. She’s very sweet, and I don’t want him to ruin it for her.”
“Good for you. Fuck the patriarchy, etc.,” she said. I heard someone yell something in the background, and suddenly Maggie was yelling back: “Hey, fuck you too, buddy! At least I’m not the one stupid enough to try to escape through the sewer like a goddamn cartoon character.”
“Fun day at work?”
“Yeah, it’s always a fucking blast over here. Some jagoff tried to rob a bank and then fell down a manhole. Such is the glamorous life of the FPD. But how was everything other than the horrible man?”
“The lab is amazing. We’ve got the best equipment, all brand new, and I don’t have to share it with anyone else. I’m not vying for attention. I just get to do what I want all day.” Now that I wasn’t in Nathan’s presence, things seemed a lot brighter, even as a cold, miserable drizzle crept down my collar.
