Switching Sides
"You agreed to do this, and you have to continue."
Delphine's chest constricted until her heart felt like a squashed stress ball. There was nothing she could say that would change Dr Leekie's mind. Well, nothing that she was willing to tell him about.
He had turned his back to her now, and was staring out of the window at the people furnishing the courtyard below. She studied the white coated back of the man she had admired for so long. She had only wanted to be like him since they met when she began her PhD candidacy seven years before. He was a genius.
And it was well before that, even before she started at university, that she had strived to emulate people like Dr Leekie.
Delphine could never see any future for herself that didn't involve science, biology, cells, tissues, and making progress into how humans could evolve and be made…better. It was the future that Dr Leekie could provide her without a doubt.
Only now her certainty was being pulled neuron by neuron out of her brain.
And for the first time in her life she had no formula or step by step plan to get herself focussed again.
The only option she had was to ask to be released from the project. And that option was now quashed.
"Thank you, Dr Leekie." Delphine looped the straps of her satchel over her arm and rose from the leather chair.
Dr Leekie turned to her, smiling. "You are a good addition to the Institute. I have every reason to believe that you will go far with Dyad."
She nodded briefly and let a fake smile play across her face as she left the office. She walked sedately to the elevator, but as soon as the door's closed her face fell into her hands. It was impossible. The whole thing was impossible.
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