"You work with mental confusion, don't you?" Alex said, as they walked through the hall. They had come in together, and he did not go on ahead, or let her go, but walked beside her. Helen hooked her fingers into the cool metal loop between her purse and the strap, and tried to resent him and not to wonder if he would be found dead soon enough. If Jack would be responsible. It was impossible to know why his jealousy had been roused, by the opening of a door; he had smelled Robert's scent on her often enough and only talked snidely of the human rut. She did not even know Alex. She had never fetched him coffee and he had never fetched her coffee and so they had never drugged each other, even accidentally, and perhaps that meant something. Though she doubted sometimes that Alex would even notice.
"Yes," she said, resigning herself to the conversation and the soft tap of their shoes and feeling the busy slide of people all around, working, humming through, ants in their hall. She was almost the government scientist again and nothing more, and she could afford to be generous.
"You work with aging, wasn't it? Unnatural types of?"
"Did," Alex said. "They were happy enough with what I could offer; but Philip decided to move me to dependency. He does love his little games." His words were bitter, and surprisingly mundane; like an ordinary man, like someone she could come to know. It surprised her.
"What do you do?"
"Oh, torture, brutality; the usual."
She raised one eyebrow at him, slightly facing his direction as they edged their way around a hall commotion and someone lying on the floor, curled up, screaming.
"Honestly now," she chided.
"Honesty is my middle name," Alex said. He opened the heavy door of the emergency stair. "Coming?"
She usually took the elevator. She always took the elevator; but she followed him without thinking and only wondered why when the door swung closed behind him, leaving a great and echoing silence where the screaming had been.
"Honestly," Alex said, "we work with substances that enhance dependency."
"Ah, I see," Helen said, as they started down the stairs. "It's not a habit, it's research?"
Alex, walking slow enough but taking the steps two at a time with his height, turned to cast her an ironic smile. "Dependency of the subject on another person. I'm sure you can imagine the applicable uses of suggestability."
"Of course," Helen agreed, absent. "It sounds of interest, actually. I've just been contemplating another project myself. Is it worth it?"
"Not a bit," Alex said. "I only stay for the benefits. The work disgusts me."
"Ask for a transfer?"
He scoffed. "From Philip?"
Helen did not really know Philip. He had appeared a few times, around the edges of their group, frowning and bleached out like old wash. He had struck her as no more terrible than the rest of the crowd, though he had rank over those she associated with, and so he was more dangerous by default. He'd barked out orders to the whole group, wanted to look at their reports, which were already shaking apart word on word before the ink was stamped to cover it all up. She kept her head down like the rest and waited for him to leave. He'd snagged Alex, she remembered now, each and every time, as the others filed away, and she had taken note of it but thought nothing of it. Purposefully thought nothing of it. It was important to think nothing, so that all their work could continue. Justified work. But in her head she heard Alex's frank blunt voice: the work disgusts me. It thrilled her, like being a little girl and saying something inappropriate in church. Just quietly, and when she was alone. Look where that had got her.
"Is Philip one to watch out for?" she asked.
"For you? No," Alex said, and they reached the next landing. Helen gripped her hand tightly on the rail, the cool metal, thick and painted and nonliving.
"For me?" she said. "He doesn't have to want me to be dangerous."
Alex looked at her coolly. "You think he doesn't?"
"Want me?" she barked a laugh. "I know it when I see it. He doesn't. You don't either. Should that mean something to me?"
She waited for a show of anger; or perhaps he would leave; the door to the next level was there and he could walk out. Or he could be worse, and push her down the stairs, and if she was in any real danger, Jack would save her. But he did none of those things, and he did not feign ignorance, and he did not sneer.
So that was an answer, of a sort.
They climbed down the next set of stairs.
"Is he," she said at last. She felt strangely like a diver, reaching down into the sunless parts of the sea, searching.
"Yes," Alex said.
She could say nothing. She had nothing to say.
.
.
.