He stepped into the ultramodern kitchen and leaned into the huge stainless steel fridge. As great as the house was, he kinda wished his uncle hadn’t ordered the multi-million-dollar refurbishment of the interior. He’d loved the stone walls, the intricate moulded cornices, the original, sweeping ballroom. But when his uncle had dug into the hillside to create his three-level underground laboratory, he’d hired a decorator and ordered the builders to completely gut the place. Jake had come home during semester break to what felt like an entirely new house.
Except for his room. After weeks of pleading, his uncle had agreed to leave Jake’s room just as it was. Jake didn’t know what he would have done if he hadn’t been able to persuade him. His room was his muse – the place where most of his ideas came to him. It was his heart, his home. When he was away during semester he pined for it as though for a pet, a best friend, a sibling.
‘May I assist you, Master Jake?’
Adelheid appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, a crystal goblet in one hand, a polishing cloth in the other. Adelheid was something else Jake missed like crazy when he was away. He kicked the fridge door closed with his foot, balancing jars, a plate, and storage containers. He dumped them all onto a vast steel benchtop and rushed over to her. Taller than Adelheid for the first time, he gripped her around her slim, aproned waist and twirled her around like a ballerina in a jewellery box.
She slapped him across his bare shoulder, hard enough for the sound to echo off the shiny surfaces and to leave a crimson mark.
He grinned.
She frowned fearsomely, steel-grey hair scraped back from her face and imprisoned in a bun. But when she bustled by him into the kitchen, he glimpsed the tiniest upward tilt to her full lips. As usual, all of Adelheid’s attempts to appear formidable were undermined by the ageless beauty of her face.
She carefully placed the goblet up against a wall. Adelheid was another non-fan of the mega-renovation. She treasured the heirlooms now buried in glossy, handle-free cupboards, and whenever the Master was away she found them all and tended to them just as she always had.
‘Sandwich?’ said Jake. ‘I’m making one. Roast beef.’
‘Please, allow me,’ she said, moving towards the Tupperware. ‘And you know I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Uh uh,’ he said, moving in close to her. He knew that would do it. He was right; she stepped away from the bench.
Adelheid hated to be touched. That made him inexpressibly sad, because he remembered when he still wore nappies and she would smother his face in kisses and squeeze and hold him close every chance she got.
Jake knew that these memories really shouldn’t exist. Science told him that he couldn’t have these memories – that until the age of at least three he should have no verbal-pictorial recall of what had happened to him. The brain was simply not sufficiently developed to store such data. But Jake remembered many things, some seen from between the bars of his cot, and every one of his memories featuring Adelheid was well-worn and treasured.
As soon as he’d learned to walk and talk, however, the hugs had ceased. He missed them still; their absence was like a constant, faint toothache.
‘Let me make you a sandwich,’ he said. ‘It’s lunchtime.’
‘That’s my job,’ she growled.
‘I don’t care,’ he said.
Jake knew that Adelheid’s work in this house was more important to her than anything in the world, but he wanted to do something for her, for once.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ll make us both one.’
‘I’m busy. I don’t have time to stop.’
‘But I’m going to be using a knife,’ he said. ‘And what if I break something, like that glass you just left there?’
‘I could move it,’ she said, hands on hips.
‘Or you could sit down,’ he said, ‘and let me make you a sandwich. Don’t you like me any more?’
He sensed that she wanted to smack him again, but instead she climbed up onto a leather-and-steel bar stool.
‘I hate these chairs,’ she said.
‘I hear you,’ he responded.
He kept the grin from his face, watching her restraining herself from taking over while he made the sandwiches. Then he headed up to his room.
After walking through the clean lines and glittering glamour of the rest of the home, he smiled when he reached his doorway. It could not have been any more at odds with the rest of the house. A wide wooden arch inlaid with intricate carvings of leaves, berries and curlicues surrounded the heavy wooden door. He turned the handle and entered the tallest turret of the mansion – his bedroom and study.
He locked the door behind him.
Books and science journals lined the curved walls, squatted in corners in perilous towers and covered most surfaces of his sprawling desk. Six PCs took up the rest of the space, their cords and wires snaking across the mosaic-tiled floor. An arched window behind the desk overlooked the slate tiles of the rooftop and down to Lake Geneva.
He took his lunch to the back of the room and climbed the spiral staircase. He shoved his laptop aside and dropped down onto his bed. As he munched his sandwich, he stared absently at the view through another arched window, and thought about the note.
Even though he had every word – and even the shape of every letter – memorised, he reached behind him and felt around with his fingers until he found it, wedged into one of the curved nooks in the carved bedhead. He bent his legs and smoothed the paper out on his knee.
He wondered why the note was written in English and not German or Italian. Jake was fluent in six languages, including all of these, but English was not commonly used by the Swiss. He read the brief message again.
You are being watched. An enemy has learned of your emotion-synthesis model and seeks to use it for weaponry. I have further information about this and about the distillation of emotions 3, 7 and 9. Meet me on Saturday night, Level 4, in the campus library, 8.30 p.m. If anyone is with you, you’ll never hear from me again.
He slapped the note down on the bed. Since it had been delivered two days ago in an envelope with his academic transcript, he’d been trying to figure out who had sent it. One of the professors? How did the writer even know about his labelling system for the emotions? He’d never published it. Emotions three, seven and nine: fear, envy and shame. And who else out there could have realised the application of his research for weaponry?
He’d already decided that he would be at the library tonight. He just hadn’t completely figured out how he was going to get off the property without George finding out. But with his uncle away on a lecture tour, it was perfect timing…
A muffled crash sounded from downstairs in his study.
Jake sprang from the bed, praying that he hadn’t lost the order of the books stacked next to the fireplace. All of them were opened to the pages he was up to.
He bolted down the stairs, two at a time, and scanned the room, confused. Everything looked just as it had a few moments ago.
And then the noise sounded again. It was coming from -
Jake had never really believed that a person could actually faint from shock. But when the door to the storage cupboard under his desk swung open and a girl crawled out, the blood left his head in a rush and he saw stars.
When his vision cleared, two boys stood next to her, the shorter of the two leaning heavily on the other.
He would have cried out, but he’d forgotten how to do that.
‘Jake Grey?’ said the taller boy, the front of his shirt covered in blood.
Jake took a seat, right there on the tiles.
Acknowledgments