Absence

Pilar slipped from the lab at another ungodly hour, strolling through the hallways without passing anyone, though fairly certain she’d find some company in the mess. She was in one of her moods that craved interaction, a distraction from herself. Though not to drown out her self-hatred and pity. Not this time.

As time distanced her from the heinous act she committed, it became easier to push it to the back of her mind. It became easier to pretend that she hadn’t killed her friend. It became easier to pretend that Florence had never existed at all. So Pilar had moved back to working her normal shifts alongside her colleagues, taking her meals in the mess, and working out during the gym’s most active hours.

She’d only stopped by the lab for a few minutes to complete her new nightly routine.

The entire catalogue of specimen eleven with its glaring mutation had been destroyed and replaced with an older specimen from a defunct study. She trusted the anomalies of the other samples that had already been tested would remain unnoticed, but there was always a chance some new specimen would be as obvious as eleven. Knowing where to look, it only took a few moments to check gene twenty of the X chromosome on each of the samples that were slated to be worked on the following day. So far, they’d all had the anomaly, but in the same nearly invisible way of the others.

“Pilar!” a jovial voice called as she stepped into the mess, accompanied by the waving arm of a young man. He sat alone at a table, the two older gentlemen that normally flanked him absent. Only one other table in the room was occupied, a couple sitting close together and necking more than eating or drinking.

Pilar smiled as she sat down, a drink already sitting upon the table for her, condensation pooling at its base. “Hey Marsh. Where are Letzl and Horace?”

It was quiet enough that she could hear the clink of the ice as she lifted her glass, shifting it in her grasp just enough to continue the satisfying sound. She made a mental note to visit Winter Night soon. It’d been too long since she’d been surrounded by the sounds of ice and snow and the visions of the aurora borealis.

“You’re late. They’ve already called it.” Marsh lifted his glass as she did, though there were only a few dregs left.

Pilar glanced at the time display, making a noise of confusion. “I guess I didn’t realize.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and knocked her knee into the man’s. “What’re you still doing here, then?”

Marsh glanced at her glass and shrugged with a half-smile playing on his face. “Supposed I just wanted to make sure you got your drink.”

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Pilar swirled it, more interested in the ice than his words. “I don’t drink every night.”

“No,” he said, sliding a bit closer to her, “but I wait for you every night.”

Pilar studied the man’s hopeful, bashful expression, his sandy hair long enough to brush over his eyebrows. At least he had brown eyes. Rory had ruined blue ones for her. She took a sip of the liquor, her first and only. “Goodnight, Marsh.”

She squeezed his shoulder with a smile, not wanting him to think of her rejection as an insult, and got halfway to the exit before he called after her. “Wait!” She turned back to face him. “I’m sorry. Please don’t leave.”

She licked her lips, considering all the possible outcomes of both leaving and staying. Leave, and she might ruin the comfortable dynamic she’d come to look forward to when sharing some late-night conversation and laughs with the trio of men. Stay, and she might give him the wrong impression. Or worse, bow to the pleasure of validation and give him the right impression.

“You always did have a way of wrapping men around your finger.”

“You don’t know me,” she hissed.

Marsh’s lips trembled, searching for words. “I didn’t mean–”

“No!” she said, rushing to him. “I didn’t mean you!” She sat back down next to him, folding her hands in her lap, apology written on her face.

But his expression did not change. “Then who?”

“I, um,” she laughed, fumbling over her words, shaking her head. “I’ve had a long day, actually.”

“Ah,” he said, finally returning to his happy-go-lucky smile. “Then forget about it; get some rest. Maybe we can talk tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she sighed, looking him in the eyes. “I’d like that.”

The man hesitantly leaned forward, and Pilar instinctively turned her head, his lips connecting with her cheek.

“Goodnight for real this time,” she said brightly, standing again.

“Night, Pilar,” he said without a hint of disappointment in missing her lips. Thankfully. Marsh seemed nice. She could do far worse. Maybe they would have that talk tomorrow.

Her smile remained until she turned into the hallway, when the voice assaulted her again.

“Another victim.”

She didn’t bother telling it to shut up. It had no mouth to shut, after all.

#

Pilar bumped Nicola with her hip as she passed the P.I. to deposit a new set of vials into the minus-seventy.

“Watch it,” her boss laughed, gripping the flask in front of her to steady it from the impulsive jolt, though not a strand of her tightly pulled back salt-and-pepper hair moved.

Pilar propped her chin on the woman’s shoulder. “I know that’s just water,” she whispered teasingly before pecking her cheek and moving on to the freezer.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Nicola said, shifting from the worktable to the nearby computer. But by the time Pilar finished inserting and identifying the vials and sealing the freezer back, she turned to find her boss looking at her.

She squinted an eye, tilting her head. “Hi?”

The P.I.’s expression was unreadable, but Pilar supposed it wasn’t anything too important that had caught her attention, seeing as there were another three techs in the lab who were going about their work, paying no attention to them. Still, she glanced toward the holoscreen, trying to make out what Nicola had just been looking at, without success.

“I’d like you to come with me.”

Her heart immediately began to beat wildly, but she smiled–unlike Nicola. “Of course.”

Pilar wasn’t sure if the voice’s absence was a good or bad thing as she followed the woman toward her private office.