Page 75 of Lovely Darkness

“Well. Thanks, I guess. I appreciate that. I hope that’s what you find out for Wendy, too.”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s not gonna end that way for Wendy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, Merc, I do.”

He’s got a look in his eyes. Something that tells me there’s more going on here than I can currently see. But then he’s got his phone out and he gets up and walks down the stairs. I just barely catch him saying Johnny’s name before he trails off, leaving me alone in the room with the box of files.

I take out a few more, looking for clues, but there’s really nothing in these folders but bloodlines. Pedigrees. Which leads one to believe this information is indeed about animals and not humans, but this is the Company we’re talking about.

Breeding is kind of their thing.

That’s how we got here.

In fact, one of the numbers on these charts could belong to one of my girls.

All of my girls.

Nick comes back up the stairs holding the phone out, the face of a young woman on the screen. She’s got long dark hair and there’s a kid talking in the background. Something about candy bars. “I’ve got her on vid call,” Nick says. “Hold that file up, Merc.”

I do, and Nick places the phone close enough for Megan to get a good look.

She studies it for a moment, her brows scrunching together a little. “Turn the page.” I do that and she shakes her head. “Well, it’s familiar, of course. Turn the page.”

“They’re all like that,” Nick says. “Just numbers and crossings. What do you make of it?”

“I can’t really tell. It’s definitely weird. I mean, all my rats had pedigrees too. But there’s no information here. I’m thinking the information has been compartmentalized to keep the true meaning of what this is a secret. How many pages total?”

“Nine,” I say.

“All like this?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s a lot of generations for humans. But…”

She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to. But the Company goes back longer than nine generations, is what she’s thinking.

“Rats then?” Nick offers. “Because nine generations in rat breeding is what, a year or two?”

“Normal rats? Yes. But the longevity rats? It would take a decade at least.”

“That kind of fits,” Nick says. “That would put Donovan and Carter at what, age twenty?”

“I’m afraid I just can’t say for sure, guys. I’m sorry. I wish I could be of more help.”

Nick and I both sigh. “That’s OK,” he says. “Thanks for looking. Tell Johnny I said thanks, too.”

She smiles into the phone camera, flutters her fingers in a wave, and then ends her side of the call.

“That was kind of a bust,” Nick says.

“Not really,” I say. “At least we have a professional opinion that this is unusual and it’s only half of what should be in this file. So it was a good find.”

“Yeah.” Nick does not sound convinced. He scrubs his hands up and down his face as he stares blankly off into the corner.

“What are you thinking?”