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“No. I just want you to take accountability.”
“It was my fault,” Marlowe said. “And I’ve never stopped regretting it. I’ve spent the past decade trying to fix my mistakes.”
Jericho softened. “And have you fixed them?”
Marlowe’s eyes gleamed. “I think so. I’m much closer to a cure. Which is why I wanted your help, Jericho. You are the lone survivor of the Daedalus program. You can be the key to a cure for so many diseases.”
“You blackmailed me into it.”
“Yes. And I’m sorry. I want you to know now that it’s your choice. You can leave at any time. I am not telling you what to do. I’m asking for your help—not just for me and Marlowe Industries, of course, but for the country. You’d be helping everyone.” Marlowe leaned forward, his eyes glowing with some inner light. “You’re some sort of evolutionary jump! You are, quite literally, the Übermensch. That gunshot wound you took to your chest, it should’ve killed you. Instead, the wound healed in record time. Imagine: Superior strength and mental fitness. No illness! You’ll age more slowly. When your friends are suffering the aches and pains of forty-five, you’ll still look and feel like a man in his prime.”
“That sounds lonely,” Jericho said.
“Well. If I can isolate the cause, that serum will be available to more than just you.”
“What do I have to do?”
“First, there’s the new and improved serum. I’ve been perfecting it for years. All it needs to be perfect is a few drops of your blood mixed in and put through my patented purification system.”
Jericho winced. “How much of my blood?”
Marlowe pushed the concern away with a wave of his hand. “Oh, not much at all. A few vials should suffice until I figure out how to duplicate it. Then there’ll be physical endurance tests, of course. And mental tests as well, to see if we can push past normal human limits into superhuman strengths, into areas of the mind where we’ve never been able to reach before. It’s a new frontier! And you and I are the pioneers staking our claim. In a few weeks’ time, everyone will know your name, Jericho.”
Jericho drank his milk. “What if people find out about…” He pounded his chest.
Marlowe looked around. He lowered his voice. “They won’t if you don’t say anything. The machinery inside you saved your life, Jericho. It didn’t change who you are.”
And that, more than anything, was what Jericho needed to hear.
“Is there anything you need to make your life here more comfortable? Anything at all. Name it,” Marlowe said, and Jericho had to smile. Everything Marlowe did was big. Even his promises. Especially his promises.
“I’d like to be able to write to Evie.”
“The Diviner niece of my long-lost enemy,” Marlowe said coolly as he cut a second sandwich in two with an engraved silver butter knife that mostly mangled the job of it. “All right, then. I’ll have Ames bring around stationery and a typewriter. But the testing that happens here is strictly confidential, Jericho. I’m afraid all of your correspondence must be reviewed first. Part of Marlowe Industries policy.”
Jericho hadn’t counted on that. His letters to Evie and the others would need to be coded in some way.
“For the next few weeks, this”—Marlowe gestured to the room with the butter knife—“the house, the grounds, the woods—is your whole world. You’ll not be permitted to leave. You are our prize, and we have to keep you pure.” Marlowe beamed and bit into his sandwich.
Jericho settled into his room. It was grand, with a four-poster bed worthy of a king. He spread his long body out on it diagonally, taking up as much of the bed as possible. He scissored his arms and legs, laughing. So much space!
Do not stay.…
Startled, Jericho jolted upright and leaped to his feet.
“Hello?” he called to the empty room. It had been a woman’s voice, whispery and urgent. He opened the door and stuck his head out, peering left and right down the wing’s long, deserted hallway.
“Hello?” he said again, but there was no answer. He was alone.
Shaking it off, Jericho drew himself a bath, luxuriating in the deep tub, which he filled with fresh hot water twice just because he could and because there was no one—not Will or Sam or Evie—waiting for their turn. When he returned to his room, a bit pruny from his long soak, a new-model Underwood typewriter and a fresh stack of stationery sat atop the desk. Jericho dressed quickly and threaded a sheet of the fine paper around the typewriter’s cylinder and began a note.
Dear Evie,
I hope this letter finds you well. How is everything at the museum? I imagine Will is still pacing the floor and cataloging his ghost objects. Just as I’m certain Sam is still short.
That part didn’t require code. Take that, Sam.
