Page 103 of Lucy Undying

But when the car pulls to a stop in front of a building, all my confusion about Dickie’s motivations evaporates. We’re at corporate headquarters. He lied to me.

“What the fuck, Dick. You told me I could come on the lab tour.”

Dickie exits and waits for me to climb out after him before answering. “You’re welcome to use whatever colorful language you wish on your own time, but I recommend trying to eliminate the cursing habit entirely. You need to convey the correct level of warmth and gravitas befitting your role as president of the company, and habits at home have a way of seeping into work. Also, this is the location for the lab tour. Come along.”

I drag my feet like the toddler he thinks I am. But once inside, we don’t use the elevators in the lobby. Instead, he takes me down a hall to a nondescript door I’ve never noticed. It doesn’t have any obvious security features. But something must happen, because there’s a clicking noise and then the door opens. A guard is on the other side.

Dickie walks straight by. I follow. My lawyer’s demonic grasshopper legs are so long I have to take a step and a half for every one of his. A glass door opens with a hiss of air. We step through and it seals again with an ominous sound. I’m already claustrophobic.

“I’m glad you suggested this,” Dickie says, flashing a badge at the vampire standing between us and an elevator door at the end of the hallway. “It’ll be much more efficient to do your treatments here, instead of at the I-Vee Center. We’ll combine them with our weekly meetings. Less time away from your studies, and you can start today. You’re looking unwell.”

My breathing gets shallower and faster. The elevator in front of me is a gate straight to hell. This was their goal the whole time. Seal me in and drain me dry. They’re finally going to finish what my mother started. They’re going to take my blood and my eggs and my soul, and then—

“Iris?” The way Dickie says it makes it clear it’s not the first time he’s just said my name.

“What?” I snap.

He gestures. Hanging on the wall are several white jumpsuits made of thin, paper-like material. “To keep things sterile in the lab.”

“Right. Yes.” Surely they wouldn’t have me dress up if I were a lamb being led to the slaughter. I awkwardly climb into my jumpsuit while Dickie puts his on with practiced ease. My curls are trapped beneath a humiliating hairnet, and, damn them, my phone is trapped beneath this suit. I can’t reach into my pocket and surreptitiously record anything.

The elevator doors open. No fiery flames of hell, no straight drop into a pit, just a vampire standing there, which at this point I’m so used to he barely registers. For a brief moment I think I’m getting past the fourth floor at last, but the vampire guard pushes the down button.

We’re going into a basement. The weight of the whole building is on top of us. I’m sweating with panic by the time we stop moving and the doors open.

I don’t know what I was expecting to be revealed. A dungeon, maybe. Torture chambers. A vampire rave, complete with human victims suspended from the ceiling like blood piñatas. As a teen I was convinced Goldaming Life had a whole underground S&M ring, but the only latex in sight is medical-grade.

It looks like a regular lab, or at least what movies and television have taught me they look like. Machines buzz and whir, whole banks of them doing things I can’t begin to guess at. Anonymously white-clad workers stare down at charts and tubes while others enter things into computers. The main area is huge and open, but at the end is a hallway. There are several curtained-off sections there, like you’d find in an emergency room. All the curtains are closed.

“Hello, welcome,” a woman says. I’ve met her before. Susan something or other, high up in the corporate side of things. She has the sort of motionless face designed for photographs, not real life. Pretty, but nothing moves quite the way it should. “So happy to have you here, Miss Goldaming. Shall we get started?”

She efficiently escorts me from one thing to the next. I’m shown machines and given specs for them that mean nothing to me; I’m introduced to lab techs who tell me their roles in such specific jargon they could be building nuclear bombs and I’d have no idea; I’m taken down a row of newly developed products which all look like lotion to my eyes.

Everything is deliberately incomprehensible, all the lingo the same as in the brochures I’ve studied. They’re feeding me total bullshittery.

Demanding to come on this visit was far from a coup on my part. It’s clear in the way Susan keeps smiling, her eyes weighing and measuring me: I’m a harmless idiot, and we all know it.

“Right, I think that’s everything,” Susan says after a doctor or lab assistant or Vegas showgirl for all I know finishes “demonstrating” a new detoxifying patch by putting it on her arm and then taking it off.

“Do you feel less toxic?” I ask.

The assistant darts a puzzled, mildly panicked look at Dickie, who subtly shakes his head.

Susan gives me an imitation of a human smile. “You should join me tomorrow for the weekly branding meeting. We’ve nabbed the artisan who won the last season of that glassblowing show—I forget its name, very popular, Gwyneth was a judge but we got this one before Goop did, to design the jars for our new line of ultra-free radical combating creams, and she’s giving us a demonstration of her techniques. A few of our top earners are coming, too, and I know they’d love to meet you.”

“That sounds wonderful, Susan,” Dickie says. One of his spider hands comes down on my shoulder, guiding me toward the curtain-lined hallway. “Now it’s time for Miss Goldaming’s treatments. She’ll be doing them here now.”

At last there’s a hint of life in Susan’s eyes. “Such a good decision to be proactive about your health. Your mother would be pleased.”

Fuck that bitch, I think. “Yeah, it’ll be more convenient,” I say.

I want to believe coming down here more often will mean they won’t watch me so closely. I’ll be able to corner a chatty lab technician, or steal their formulas. Somehow, someway I’ll spot a weakness I can exploit. Maybe find a big red button labeled “AUTO-DESTRUCT: NEVER PUSH.”

But Susan is right. If my mother could see me, she really would be pleased. With that thought souring my stomach, I’m led to one of the curtained-off rooms. Inside is a chair that looks like it was designed for a Rolls-Royce. Which, knowing Goldaming Life, it probably was. The leather feels like it was molded to hold me. Which, knowing Goldaming Life, it also probably was. I half expect silver cuffs to come shooting out of the armrests, but nothing happens as I sit back. I keep my arms folded over my chest, just in case.

Susan and Dickie excuse themselves to go discuss important things about the company I ostensibly own. A young person, as weightless as a pop song, clips a monitor onto my finger. Beside me is a sleek white marble cube, three feet by three feet. Other than a tube going in and a tube coming out, it looks like a miniature tomb.

My heart rate spikes. I can’t do this. I can’t be trapped in the basement with them sticking needles in me. They could drug me. They could knock me out. They could finish the job I ruined when I was sixteen.

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