Smith had signed. They all had, because groceries didn’t buy themselves. But it had been a weird night. And it felt weird to insist on safety protocols following a lab leak, and the sudden panic at the American Minds Intact store had been weird as hell.
Everythingabout empaths was fucking weird. Maybe it was time for Smith to find another job.
The coffee finished with a loud hiss. Just as Smith reached for it, he heard a sound beyond the door, like soft shoes on the linoleum of the hall.
Smith paused. “Warren?” he called. “Hank?”
There was no answer.
Smith reached for his mug again, more slowly. He was used to a plethora of odd noises at night, bulbs flickering, machines beeping, the building settling. Except he’d put in fifteen years as night shift security. That had sounded like footsteps.
But then, he was a little jumpy from the other night. Maybe it was just the pipes, or Hank and Warren heading out for their perimeter check.
He picked up his mug and strode down the hall to his security room. He settled in his big leather chair, gaze on hismany monitors and the camera feeds around the building, and sipped from his mug.
The soft and measured patter came again,tap-tap-tapfrom the hall.
Smith whipped his head around. “Who’s there?”
No response. Nothing but the low hum of computer equipment surrounding him.
He stared at the door he’d left open behind him for a long moment, then shook himself. “Fucking paranoia,” he muttered to himself. And ugh, he’d sloshed his coffee when he jerked, droplets now speckling his khakis.
He set the coffee mug down on the desk and looked around for a napkin or paper towel.
“It’s Smith, isn’t it?”
Smith’s head shot up, his eyes going straight to the doorway. A brown-haired white man he didn’t recognize was standing in the frame, studying Smith with pale blue eyes behind glasses. He wore a white lab coat over his clothes, like a doctor, and was holding something in his hands, small and knit, by the looks of it, maybe a winter hat.
“No visitors,” Smith snapped out, his pounding heart making him extra sharp.
The man only rolled his eyes. He gestured at something out of sight down the hall. Then three more men were coming into the room, two large and brawny, the third holding a syringe.
Smith was out of his chair instantly. “What’s going on?” he said, pulse skyrocketing, his eyes widening.
“I’m afraid you’re being asked to expand your services to the company,” said the blue-eyed man in the lab coat as the other men approached. “Rather permanently.”
Chapter Seven
As the days go by after the murder of Senator Hannah Hathaway, we look to the governor to see who will be appointed to fill Hathaway’s seat and perhaps take up the mantle of her popular bill, S.B. 1437, which would introduce several safeguards around empaths and the use of empathy.
The bill has received vocal support from several institutions including American Minds Intact and Stone Solutions. “S.B. 1437 will codify much-needed protections for non-empaths,” said a member of the Stone Solutions leadership team. “We’ll bring our full support to see it pass.”
—Emerald Tribune, “Empathy debates heat up again in state senate”
Somewhere in downtown Seattle, a car alarm was going off. Grayson rolled to his back, caught momentarily between sleep and waking.
The wall stretches out in every direction, too high and too wide to see around. There’s no way over it, around it, or through it. Nothing to see but gray, and gray, and gray—
And the impression of wings, sleek feathers so black they glimmerwith ripples of light, like stars against a night sky or snowflakes catching in dark hair—
Grayson’s eyes popped open, everything disappearing in a burst of white: a smooth white ceiling, white crown molding, the white light of a winter morning pouring in through the windows.
He stared blankly into space for a long moment, hearing his own breaths fill the studio apartment he’d once slept in with Reece.
Had there just been—in the gray—
The ring of his phone filled the studio, and his thoughts slipped away like birds on the horizon. He reached for it, head still on the pillow as he hit Speakerphone. “Grayson.”
