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"What do you think that we do out there?"
"That's enough about that."
She didn't want to know. She knew that if she looked too closely, she'd lose this and the science, the greatest breakthrough of her lifetime would slip through her fingers. If she let this curious participant who always found some way under her skin start talking, he'd talk his way right through the thin walls keeping her in, keeping her strong with everything else going wrong in her life.
He subsided as he always did, let her put him down gently, let his eyelids flutter shut under the sedative.
Her home was as broken as her heart, her house as in shambles as everything in her life except—
The bright patterns of genes changing, obeying as they took in the new material.
New ways of thinking, new ways of functioning, healing, strength, reflexes. A human could be so much more, and the keys to unlocking it were in their hands. A map to the human genome, more sure than the star charts of old.
She closed her eyes to the broken house around her and her ears to his endless questions.
"I don't need to know about that."
His hands are sure, his stride is confident, and he's helping her, even if she knows he's helping himself.
But it's not just that. He'll manipulate, just like they taught him to, and lie or push his way until he finds some way to save himself, but she knows this glittering thing in his eyes the first time he softens and tells her why it matters so much. She knows the fear, the need to not know or experience.
He's lost.
There is no map for what they are. She lost herself to science and—
"I know you can't be that naive."
—he was lost inside himself before they gave him the pills like a lighthouse leading out of the dark.
"I got a long way to fall, doc."
There is no map. They're off the charts. She's floundering because he's sick and tossing and turning in the bed, and she's wondering after this, what next?
He wants her to leave. It's a kindness. Take the money, take the papers, and go. You can make it. You're a warrior.
She's shaking her head, tears stinging her eyes, as he becomes a pinprick in the dark. She pulls him against her like an anchor to her chest and hushes him softly with all the tenderness their broken pieces deserve.
She knows what happens next.
He looks strong and beautiful, smiling in the sun, fingers bent against the map. He doesn't scare her now because whatever looks out behind his eyes is whole in who he is. She isn't going to lose him, which gives her the breath to say:
"I was hoping we were lost."