Chapter One
She discovered him the next morning, gray, tired and wearily typing at the usual, worn-down keyboard. His posture dragged him towards the lab floor's tiles, weighed his body downwards to the depths of the earth. His mind was numb, straining to remain still in the torrent of inspirations, to appear "normal" in a last defense against the mania. He hardly noticed when she touched his shoulder lightly and then forcefully. As soon as he heard the proverbial "Stein?" he swiveled his patched-up chair to face her, his voice shaking before he fully donned the mask of cold neutrality.
"Yes?"
It was showing in his eyes again, the slight fear that she had not seen since the dark days steeped in the insanity, but he ignored her eye's silent, sympathetic plea, the tilt of her head that said, "Please. Just tell me anything."
No. He was not going to share with her today, not now, when he was distancing himself from everything, from his work beneath the ground. He was Dr. Stein the scientist, not Franken, the boy struggling with deepening desires. Last night had simply been an error; an error in judgment, a necessary sacrifice.
"Are you doing okay?"
He sighed. "I'm fine, Marie. I just had a late night last night. New ideas for an experiment came into my head. They couldn't wait until morning."
A smile spread over her honest mouth, brightening her gentle features. She had no talent for the perception of duplicity and had always been honest to a fault. It had been one of the first traits that he had truly come to love about her, and now it aided him in his deception all the more. To his horror, the madness inside of him sneered at her naivety.
"What kind of experiment?" she asked eagerly, rocking in her boots. Her arms stretched out childishly, reaching for the ceiling and dropping to her sides. He chuckled.
"Nothing groundbreaking," he said, his mood lifting a little. It was so nice how she could make him feel lighter again, even when he was caught in the midst of preparations, preparations that would change everything. Preparations that could change the very nature of himself.
No. He would wait until later. There was no time to think about THAT. Right now, he had to play his part, go to school, fool his students and trick his dearest Marie. There was no other choice. If she knew what was going on underneath the lab, she would be destroyed in an instant. It would destroy every bit of hope inside of her, and he did not want to do that, not even in the throes of his dissection urges. He would never harm her. Not after she'd rescued him all those years ago.
Instead, he would suffer on his own, wait silently for the moment when everything would be simple, when everything would be revealed, when everything would be solved at last. He would keep his secret from everyone, even Marie, and hope to God that his efforts would be successful. They were running out of time, now more than ever, and he couldn't afford to be kind.
The project had to be completed. The experiment had to be carried out. Only then would his aggravation be worth anything. And as he headed out the door for the Academy to the sound of Marie's protests, he couldn't help but wonder if by then, it would be too late for everything that was left in his already-breaking soul.