Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
The goat thing screams again.
Revulsions slams through me and I vomit. I can’t help it.
I throw up right on the concrete floor of the barn, unable to keep it in, unable to understand what I’m looking at, except to know that it’s wrong. It’s so wrong. My grandmother would be making the sign of the cross right now, swearing that this thing did not come from God, did not come from nature.
The goat doesn’t notice. It struggles, the sound wet, sluicing, its bare muscles rippling as it tries to escape its fate. The white filaments coming out of its eyes are coming out of its mouth too, poking out beneath the muscles like snakes.
Mycelia, I think. They’re not filaments, they’re mycelia.
It’s being devoured whole by the fungi.
I’m about to vomit again when suddenly I hear footsteps behind me.
I turn around, hand at my mouth, to see Nick walking toward me. With his face in silhouette, I can’t see his expression, but even he is putting me on alert. It’s the way he walks. Purposeful. Powerful.
“What is this?” I manage to say, trying to keep from throwing up again. “Nick. This poor baby goat. What’s happening to it?”
He stops beside me, and I can finally focus on his face. Gone is the hippie surfer dude who catches the wave breaks not far from here. He’s someone else now. Maybe the person he was always underneath.
“Something that you aren’t to repeat to anyone else,” he says. His brown eyes are hard, his words harder. “You didn’t see any of this.”
“But what is it?” I exclaim. “What happened to it?!”
He just stares at me. “You need to go back to your cohort and forget you ever saw this.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. I need to…”
The goat thing screams again.
“Please, just put it out of its misery!” I yell.
“I’ll deal with it,” he says. “Go back.”
But I feel like standing my ground.
“Or what?” I ask.
His eyes narrow. So damn cold. So damn serious. “I’ll get Everly and Michael to recite to you the NDA that you signed.”
“It never said anything about not talking about the things while we’re here!”
“Did you even read it?” he asks with a derisive snort. “I mean it, Sydney. Talk about this and you’ll have a lawsuit on your hands. How the fuck are you going to pay for that? You don’t have a job, you don’t even have a scholarship. You have nothing.”
My jaw clenches. Fuck him. He is just a bro in disguise, a corporate asshole underneath.
He jerks his head toward the light, and I go.
I’m both happy to be out of there and yet so fucking disturbed that when I leave the barn, I don’t even bother catching up with the other students who have already walked ahead, dispersing for lunch.
I go right to Kincaid’s office and bang on the door with my fist until he opens it.
His expression is both guarded and relieved. Happy to see me and yet…not.
“You’re early,” he says with a raise of his brow.
“Close the door,” I say quickly, rushing in and sitting down in the chair, my head in my hands, rocking back and forth like a mental patient.
I hear him close it, then lock it, and he comes over to me, crouching beside the chair, hand on my knee. “Syd,” he says softly. “What happened?”
I can tell from the way he says my name that he thinks I had another episode. That I’m going to talk about Farida’s ghost, or perhaps another student, or Amani.
I straighten up, moving my hands away. “I saw something just now. In the barn. Nick made me promise not to talk to anyone about it. Said the NDA is enforceable, even here.”
“What was it?” he asks, gazing up at me, brow furrowed.
“Was that a lie, what he said about the NDAs?”
“You don’t have to worry about that right now,” he says calmly, giving my knee a squeeze. “You’re allowed to tell me. Tell me what happened. What did you see?”
I take in a deep breath and fill him in, feeling queasy all over again. I can’t get the image of the pink creature out of my head.
“What…was that?” I ask.
His face has remained impassive this whole time. Nothing of what I’ve said has surprised him.
“It sounds like something that belonged to the lab,” he says.
“Something that you may have worked on?”
A dark brow arches up. “I have also signed NDAs, Syd.”
I give him a dirty look. “Oh. I see. A little hard to trust you when you’re not even allowed to be honest with me.”
“That’s what trust is,” he says simply. “It’s faith.”
“Well, pardon me if I’m not feeling faithful at the moment. Everywhere I look here there’s one steaming pile of lies after another.”
“Lies in order to protect the foundation,” Kincaid says, straightening up. He walks around his desk and sits down, folding his hands in front of him. Back to being my shrink again. “The work here is…” His eyes roam the room as he searches for the words. “Important.”