Page 131 of Grave Matter

“It’s just a pity you’re not the same girl,” Michael says gruffly.

Thank god I’m not the same girl, I think.

“Wes got to you before your brain had time to redevelop,” Everly says, brow furrowing with disappointment. “You fixated on him. Not your work. Not your dreams. You ignored all that for a man you barely knew. But I suppose you did know him, all this time, on some level.”

I did. I did know.

I felt the connection.

I knew we were inevitable.

“It’s romantic, isn’t it?” Everly adds with a dreamy sigh. “The fact that you found him and fell for him all over again. That you can be separated by time and death, and still nothing can keep you apart.”

Nothing could keep us apart.

“You know, you made his dreams come true,” she continues. “He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want you to come back, not this way, but he was so desperate to see you again that in the end, he decided he would do anything. He never stopped loving you, Syd. No matter what. Even when he mistook obsession for love. Even through death, he didn’t give up. Of course he had no idea how hard it would be on him to see you alive again. Towatch you walk into Madrona not knowing who he was, while inside, he was dying for you. He’s had to pretend every single day that you weren’t the love of his life.”

Michael laughs dryly. “He didn’t do a very good job of it. But he had to keep an eye on you, eh? He had to make sure there were no problems, that your brain was functioning. Poor fucker. I almost feel sorry for him. But nothing will hurt him as much as what’s to come.”

He gets up from the coffee table, looming above me.

“And while I’m sure you want time to come to terms with all that we’ve told you, that time has an expiration date,” he says, the words sending ice through my veins. “Originally, we thought the experiment was only successful if we could study you without you knowing what had happened. Without you remembering death. It’s why we reset your brain to start over again on the seaplane, setting it back to your first flight over. We hoped that had been seamless.”

“But now that we have Clayton, we realize there is the capacity for the brain to reconcile death. That knowing you’ve died won’t break you. That you can continue on with the same memories. But unfortunately for you, Sydney, you know too much. The person you are doesn’t coexist with the person you were. It can’t. If we let you go, you’ll only cause trouble.”

She’s right. I’ll cause a world of trouble.

I’ll follow through with what Wes promised and burn this place to the ground.

“So we have to let the mycelium start again,” Everly adds. “Fungi is so much smarter than we give them credit for. To think we barely know anything about them, that we’ve barely tapped the resources of these organisms. The future is exciting, isn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll be a part of it. You still have your part to play. You just won’t know it.”

Michael reaches down and pulls me up to my feet with a grunt. I’m limp in his arms. “Come along now, Sydney. We need to reset.”

I scream internally.

I don’t want to be reset.

I don’t want the connections to be severed.

I try to fight back, but the drugs in the tea have me incapacitated, helpless, useless.

I’ve made a huge mistake. I never should have left Wes.

Wes, my god, Wes.

I remember now.

I remember as Michael takes me under the arms, as Everly holds my legs and they carry me out of the cabin and into the storm.

I remember the first day that I stepped off the seaplane, that real first day.

Amani had been chatting my ear off the whole flight. There were two staff members at the back; I remember them as Roderick and Melly. I got off the plane, and David came to greet us, escorting me and Amani up to the lodge.

And that’s where I first laid eyes on Wes.

He was standing by the totem pole, talking with Janet.

David introduced us, and Wes locked eyes with me, and I locked eyes with him, and I remember thinking,He’s going to ruin me, isn’t he?

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