Burrowed by Mary Baader Kaley

Author:Mary Baader Kaley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781915202154
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

I Heard Them

The heated floor works its warmth up my toes, into my feet and legs, and eventually my entire body. Once my shivering quiets, I begin to warm up to my surroundings. The room – the size of a small lab – may be in disarray, but it’s a perfect space for quiet research. It reminds me of my library, where I always lost track of time.

I ignore the chaotic pile of tabdisks and focus on several notepads, decorated with full pages of writing. Some of the scribblings are written in standard shorthand – an easy module I’d taken at the age of eight, though Maddelyn didn’t understand my interest in such an archaic mode of writing. The rest of Camu’s notes are written in a blend of English, French, German, and Latin. The writing doesn’t follow the horizontal lines of the paper, but rather takes on any direction her hand might have approached the paper at the time, sometimes curling around corners if her thought had kept going.

I smile at the script, remembering how word phrases meld into single short-hand words, and start looking for some clues. My biggest question, though, is who messed with Camu’s research data in the first place? It’s too hard to tamper with written notes, I would notice the change in handwriting. So this information at least has been preserved as Camu intended. Any number of the tabdisks, however, where the data will be typed, could have easily been altered.

As I read through her theorems, genetic code hypotheses, and the explanations for her reasoning, I gain a better sense of Camu’s personality. She was an extremely intelligent woman driven by curiosity, one who needed to solve the mystery before her just for the sake of solving it – almost like she needed to win. So passionate. Her well-documented hypotheses come complete with scientific evidence to back up every minute detail.

I like her.

The alarm ringing in the outside tunnels finally stops its horrific blare. By the time I catch sight of the monitor in the wall, Ringol has already confronted Nukleo. He tilts his head and crosses his arms. I slowly rise from the desk and move in for a closer view, bending over yet another clutter-filled desk. A light flashes at the bottom of the screen.

MUTED.

I press the blinking light. The MUTED symbol disappears and Ringol huffs over the digital speaker.

“You didn’t notify anyone that you were in the lower tunnels, Maven. I stopped to check on my test subjects on the way back to my chamber, when security alerted me that someone had been seen down here.” Nukleo is wearing labgear, with the pin-striped blouse that I assume denotes that she is a j’maven, rather than the plain, white blouses undertechs wear.

“Did security call me per protocol?” Ringol booms. “We could have avoided this whole misunderstanding.”

“They did,” she retorts.

He taps at his ChiPro, and his shoulders slump as if he’s guilty.

“You didn’t even hear it, did you?” she asks in an accusatory tone.

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