Page 80 of Sucker For You

“Anyway, how can I help? The printer?”

She didn’t need the printer. And there were no octopuses in the MORI’s computer wing.

Isabel grabbed a random pile of documents filed on a nearby chair: graphs from an acoustic community ecology study, apparently. “This?”

He shrugged. “Can you take down the sign on your way out?”

She nodded again, and retreated back into the wet lab.

MORI’s personnel were still out on the deck watching stampeding dolphins. Her investigation into the tech department had taken no more than five minutes. Now she had her answer about the Keep Out sign, crumpled in her hand.

Which was good.

Less good was this: she was no closer to uncovering the institute’s secret cephalopod experiments than she’d been in her first volunteer shift. Not that there weren’t fascinating studies occurring at MORI. There were. The graphs on acoustic ecology she’d picked up in the computer lab identified animals at various ocean depths, and matched their oral signatures by species. There was research on the life pace of deep-water creatures, aiming to understand their recovery rates and resilience; remote-operated vehicular investigations concerning hadal sponge communities; and surveys on how and why animals manipulated bioluminescence. Not to mention the millions of data points generated by the researchers’ care, feeding, and observation of the lab organisms. There were no locked doors, however. No scalpels. No hacksaws. There were syringes, but the majority were for administering veterinary shots to eels with bacterial infections—or, more charmingly, feeding formula to the otter pup. No restricted rooms flashed klaxons and warnings for trespassers to beware.

Wes would say that her Keep Out sign had been a red herring.

A fish, he would have laughed.

She didn’t.

Despite the lack of klaxons, she was wary: of MORI and her failures here—and, outside the lab, wary of straying beyond the questions on her napkin list.

Wary of herself.

Stashing her ecology graphs on a bench of microscopes, Isabel grabbed a mop and began to swab down the lab’s squidsplatteredfloor. Imagining Wes and his laughter had already heated her cheeks with shame, so why not add exertion and frustration to the mix, by scrubbing fiercely at a cluster of entrails?

She shouldn’t have revealed so much to him on Friday.

Swish, rinse.

She shouldn’t.

Except that he’d been disparaging his intelligence, dismissing his value and his goodness—and she’d been unable to choke back her protests into the lonely safety of silence. She’d lost her fight to swallow the rest of it, too: all those cheap, sordid facts about herself. Very real and very grubby facts, not justcold fishjabs that he could somehow transform from her hurt to his admiration. So she’d told him everything.

(Almost everything.)

She wrung out her mop and selected a squeegee, scraping its edge over the guts stuck on a drain. MORI filtered its laboratory runoff before the water rejoined Monterey Bay. Not all institutes were so fastidious.

Rasp, scrape.

The effluvia came free. It speckled her boots.

Despite what she’d so foolishly told him, he hadn’t recoiled in disgust.

Scrape, swish.

Had shewantedhim to reject her?

Child exhibits attachment issues.

The Canadian government had provided Isabel with a copy of her file after she’d been discharged from the care system. Its charts and notes had contained a clinical dissection of her body and her brain; she’d agreed with most of the analysis:

Female neonatal infant (called “Isabel Wright” by retrieval staff) recovered from safe haven box at Vancouver General Hospital. Infant presents no physical trauma, but is reactive to touch.

Child exhibits attachment issues and lacks meaningful connection with peers.

. . . excels academically but struggles socially.