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“Understood.”

After the call ended, I stood by the window while the opera played through the library. The music had shifted throughout the evening and now a cello and violin moved together in a sensual dance, the melody low and aching.

Somewhere beneath this thunderstorm, Emilia Rossi was likely asleep or pretending to be. Given the timestamp on her application, I suspected the latter. She did not know yet that her proposal had reached my desk. The stranger seated in the last row of the conference ballroom four years ago had never forgotten her.

Within hours, Blackwood Hall would enter her life. She would know what we could offer Aurora long before she understood what her arrival meant to me.

With a single approval, I had invited Emilia Rossi into my world.

Chapter 2

Emilia

I thought it was going to be an ordinary Tuesday morning. By the end of it, ordinary would be the last word I used.

I noticed the email at 9:17 a.m. while sitting in my office on the fifth floor of the Columbia Medical Research Center. I was staring at a spreadsheet that had been the bane of my existence for the better part of the last two weeks. I glanced out the window, watching the city come alive despite the overcast skies. The fluorescent lights hummed above my head. I reached over and turned them off. I preferred the natural light filtering through the rain.

I took a sip of my coffee and looked at the numbers on my screen. They refused to become what I wanted them to be. That was the problem with numbers. They were impervious to what you needed from them; they simply told the truth. And perhaps that was exactly why I trusted them.

I had spent eight years building Project Aurora into a viable program with enough preliminary data to justify further development. Many had originally considered the idea too ambitious. Some of the greatest discoveries started with a question no one knew how to answer yet.

Ambition alone was not enough, though. I had weathered two failed funding rounds and defended the research to committees who listened eagerly but were more interested in financial returns than what patience might allow us to discover. I had learned to recognize the moment their interest shifted from possibility to marketability. I could see it in their eyes, usually when I explained that the best path forward was exploratory. Eventually, someone always asked the same question. How would Aurora outperform the treatments already on the market?

I let out a slow exhale and adjusted my screen, tilting it towards me. Maybe bringing the spreadsheet closer would reveal something I’d overlooked in the columns. Apparently, this was the stage of desperation we had reached. Priya, the senior research scientist on Project Aurora, had emailed the latest operating budget the night before, complete with color-coded notes and calculated columns, identifying which consumables we could delay and which orders needed to be placed to keep the work going. She had left a simple note at the end:

Please do not panic until after you sleep.

It was thoughtful advice, but impossible to follow. She had not known that I was finalizing our application to the Blackwood Institute Residency Program. The truth was that Project Aurora was in a precarious situation.

Not the science. Scientifically, we were closer than ever before. Our latest results were leading towards something meaningful. It was still early, but the data were pointing in one direction. We just needed to follow it. I hated talking about it outside of the lab because hope could become dangerous when spoken too soon. Still, the results were there.

Enough of this spreadsheet. Another minute longer felt medically inadvisable. I clicked into my inbox. There was an email about elevator maintenance and an announcement from the International Oncology Congress revealing that next year’s meeting would be held in Vienna. Then I saw it:

Blackwood Foundation: Project Aurora Funding Decision

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. Hope and the fear of rejection arrived in equal measure. I looked away from the screen, took one slow breath, and reminded myself the answer was just a click away.

And then I opened it.

Dear Dr. Rossi,

On behalf of the Blackwood Foundation and the Blackwood Hall Institute for Science and Fine Arts, we are pleased to inform you that Project Aurora has been selected as the sole recipient of the Blackwood Institute Residency Program.

I stopped breathing for a second. I read it again, more slowly, repeating the words to myself. Selected. Sole recipient. Blackwood Institute Residency Program. They were formal and matter-of-fact, just as grant language always was. I gripped the edge of my desk and kept reading.

The award will provide full funding for Project Aurora through the Blackwood Institute Residency Program, including personnel support, laboratory relocation, equipment acquisition, trial preparation, and every institutional resource necessary to continue the research.

That was not how the program was supposed to work. The original call for grant proposals stated that funding would be distributed across multiple projects. I had applied because even a fraction of those resources would have changed everything for Aurora.

Instead, Project Aurora had been the only project selected. And the award letter arrived less than ten hours after submission. As a scientist, I was trained to question unexpected results. This one felt impossible. I had applied almost as an act of desperation. The grant was incredibly competitive and so generously funded that everyone I spoke to about it assumed someone had misplaced a decimal point. Of course, money like that came with a condition. If accepted, the project had to relocate to Blackwood Hall.

Not just the research and equipment. The senior investigators assigned to Project Aurora would relocate as well, which meant Priya, Mateo, and me. We would work at Blackwood Hall and live in its residential towers for the duration of the residency. The terms were explicit about that, and unapologetic. Blackwood Hall did not fund from a distance. At the time, I told myself this was a problem for Future Emilia and Future Emilia would surely have the skills needed to figure it out. Present Emilia was just trying to keep the research alive.

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. It was half hysterical and half relief, and I felt a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders. I covered my mouth with one hand and closed my eyes briefly, trying to absorb what had just happened. I was sure if I looked at the email for a second longer, I would start sobbing.

My father would have been so proud. The thought arrived so quickly and with such clarity that it felt more like a presence than a memory. He would have called every relative, stopped every person he encountered at the grocery store, and told them about the victory Project Aurora had just achieved. Somehow, he always made it sound like a team effort between him and me.

I laughed at the thought. He had always believed in the project, years before there was enough data to justify his confidence. Whenever we encountered another obstacle, he never asked whether the project was worth continuing. He only asked what came next. The bittersweet part was that Project Aurora had always been working toward treating the same cancer that took his life.