Full Wolf Moon

38

Laura Feverbridge stood in the doorway of the hidden lab. For a moment, she gathered herself to run after the others, but she remained immobile; it was as if the shocks of the last several minutes had left her paralyzed. She heard the sound of running footsteps, quickly receding; the squeal of brakes; a brief, urgent conversation — and then, silence.

Now, slowly, she turned around and walked back into the main room of the lab. Logan’s insinuations—accusations—were crazy. She had worked with her father for months, trying to reverse the effects of the serum. True, most of the work had been done by her father — that was necessary, since she had to maintain a presence in the primary lab during the day, with the two lab assistants — but she’d seen enough of his work, helped with enough of it. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, deceive her — not after the sacrifices she’d made for him.

“Father,” she murmured. “What have they done to you?”

At first, her steps had been slow, faltering, like a sleepwalker’s, as she wandered aimlessly from table to table. But the more she thought about this awful turn of events, the more agitated her movements became. What to do? What to do?

There had to be something she could do.

This was the worst development imaginable. She’d trusted Logan, let him in on their secret… and he had betrayed her. Worse, he’d betrayed her father. God knew what he would do with that knowledge. But there was one thing she was certain of: these kind of gross accusations, on top of all the scorn her father had endured already, would have the worst possible effect on him.

As she paced, her eye fell on the door to his private room — the room where he did his own research, where she was forbidden to go.

She stopped. Of course. There would be proof in there; proof that he was doing his best to undo the dreadful affliction he was suffering, that this talk of his efforts being nothing but pretense was the vilest kind of slander.

She walked toward the door, hesitating slightly; to enter it felt like a violation, but she was doing so for the best of reasons. After a moment, she stepped through the door. It was furnished with surprising spareness; there was a cot, a sink, a table, and a rack of equipment — but the equipment was simplistic, almost meager; not the kind one would work with to solve this knotty a problem. Of course, he hadn’t asked for anything particularly exotic — naturally, she’d ordered everything herself — but she’d assumed he’d taken what he needed from the main room of the secret lab and then returned it when he was done. She hadn’t kept close tabs on what equipment was on hand at any one moment….After all, he was her father, the senior scientist….

Had he done most of his work in the main lab? Was this room the equivalent, perhaps, of a monk’s cell, where he went to think, perhaps do trivial experiments — and suffer through the nights of the full moon, safely under lock and key?

Her eye fell on a lab journal, covered in green cloth, that lay on the table. The relief that flooded through her as she saw this caused her to realize just how distraught Logan’s assertions had made her. Her father’s private journal! This was exactly the proof she needed. It would contain a record of the attempts he’d made, the things he’d tried, what had been promising and what had not.

She snatched it up from the table and began paging through it quickly. But after only a minute, she stopped. A look of horror came over her face as she stared at the open page.

“No,” she whispered.

With trembling hands, she turned another page; read briefly; turned another… and then let the book drop to the floor.

And now, with no more hesitation, she left the room and ran toward the building’s front door.