Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

The couch seems to swallow me whole. I open my mouth to speak, to scream, but I can't utter a word.

What the fuck was in that tea?

My mind feels sharp, at least as sharp as it can be, considering I'm not one hundred percent right in the brain, but I can't think of a way out of this. I don't even understand what's going on.

I don't want to understand.

All I wanted was the truth, but now I want the truth to stay buried.

Everly sighs and sits down on the couch next to me. "I know you have questions. You said you saw the photos, and they jogged your memory. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Wes held on to that box. He's a sentimental one, that boy. Oh, I told him not to. I told him there was a chance that one day you could find it, and then what? How would we explain it?"

"You see, Sydney," Michael says, sitting on the coffee table. "We had no idea what you would be like this time around. How smart would you be? Would you be the same person? Would the mycelia have changed your personality, the core of who you are?"

"We know it got rid of your ADHD," Everly says. "At least most of it. That's why Wes asked you to go off your meds. They would have done you no good, and we had to be sure you were operating unaltered. When the mycelia created new pathways, it started from scratch. We wanted to study you in a live environment; we didn't want you to remember anything from your days here. We wanted to see if you could, in fact, be the same person again. Nature versus nurture."

She pauses and gives her head a shake. "I have to say, the person you are is much more pleasant. Still a firecracker but with a lot more morals. Your ambition has waned. I don't know if it's because you fell for Wes earlier than the first time around and that he's been a good influence on you. But I suppose we'll never know."

"The problem is," Michael adds, "when we got rid of your ADHD, we got rid of a lot of things that made you brilliant. That were also a hindrance, yes. But you didn't have that focus anymore. That drive or ambition. It wasn't the same. The Sydney you were before was able to give everything up for the chance to feel worthy and you, this you? You didn't have it in you."

"You're just not smart enough," Everly says simply. "Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with that. You're still really smart, Syd. But you're not a genius. You had a genius in you, waiting to be untapped at the right moment, but now…the well has run dry. Frankly, I do blame Wes. You didn't fall for him so fast the first time around. You took your time to find each other. And before you fell in love with him, you found your role here at the foundation. You and I? We became friends. Really good friends."

She sighs, staring down at her hands and shaking her head. "The first time around, you blew me away with your thoughts. Your ideas. And I thought, yes, this is exactly who we need on our team. You were the answer to our prayers. When Wes staggered into our cabin that night…" She looks away, gnawing on her lower lip. "I thought my world was over. He said you were dead. I looked at you, at the blood coming out of your head, and I knew. I knew you were gone."

A shaking breath escapes her lips, tears spilling down her cheeks that she angrily wipes away. "But there was hope, you know? I thought, why not do to Syd as Syd would do unto others? So we did. And it worked. It fucking worked, Sydney. You're here right now, proof of that."

"It's just a pity you're not the same girl," Michael says gruffly.

Thank god I'm not the same girl , I think.

"Wes got to you before your brain had time to redevelop," Everly says, brow furrowing with disappointment. "You fixated on him. Not your work. Not your dreams. You ignored all that for a man you barely knew. But I suppose you did know him, all this time, on some level."

I did. I did know.

I felt the connection.

I knew we were inevitable.

"It's romantic, isn't it?" Everly adds with a dreamy sigh. "The fact that you found him and fell for him all over again. That you can be separated by time and death, and still nothing can keep you apart."

Nothing could keep us apart.

"You know, you made his dreams come true," she continues. "He didn't want to do it. He didn't want you to come back, not this way, but he was so desperate to see you again that in the end, he decided he would do anything. He never stopped loving you, Syd. No matter what. Even when he mistook obsession for love. Even through death, he didn't give up. Of course he had no idea how hard it would be on him to see you alive again. To watch you walk into Madrona not knowing who he was, while inside, he was dying for you. He's had to pretend every single day that you weren't the love of his life."

Michael laughs dryly. "He didn't do a very good job of it. But he had to keep an eye on you, eh? He had to make sure there were no problems, that your brain was functioning. Poor fucker. I almost feel sorry for him. But nothing will hurt him as much as what's to come."

He gets up from the coffee table, looming above me.

"And while I'm sure you want time to come to terms with all that we've told you, that time has an expiration date," he says, the words sending ice through my veins. "Originally, we thought the experiment was only successful if we could study you without you knowing what had happened. Without you remembering death. It's why we reset your brain to start over again on the seaplane, setting it back to your first flight over. We hoped that had been seamless."

"But now that we have Clayton, we realize there is the capacity for the brain to reconcile death. That knowing you've died won't break you. That you can continue on with the same memories. But unfortunately for you, Sydney, you know too much. The person you are doesn't coexist with the person you were. It can't. If we let you go, you'll only cause trouble."

She's right. I'll cause a world of trouble.

I'll follow through with what Wes promised and burn this place to the ground.

"So we have to let the mycelium start again," Everly adds. "Fungi is so much smarter than we give them credit for. To think we barely know anything about them, that we've barely tapped the resources of these organisms. The future is exciting, isn't it? Don't worry, you'll be a part of it. You still have your part to play. You just won't know it."

Michael reaches down and pulls me up to my feet with a grunt. I'm limp in his arms. "Come along now, Sydney. We need to reset."

I scream internally.

I don't want to be reset.

I don't want the connections to be severed.

I try to fight back, but the drugs in the tea have me incapacitated, helpless, useless.

I've made a huge mistake. I never should have left Wes.

Wes, my god, Wes.

I remember now.

I remember as Michael takes me under the arms, as Everly holds my legs and they carry me out of the cabin and into the storm.

I remember the first day that I stepped off the seaplane, that real first day.

Amani had been chatting my ear off the whole flight. There were two staff members at the back; I remember them as Roderick and Melly. I got off the plane, and David came to greet us, escorting me and Amani up to the lodge.

And that's where I first laid eyes on Wes.

He was standing by the totem pole, talking with Janet.

David introduced us, and Wes locked eyes with me, and I locked eyes with him, and I remember thinking, He's going to ruin me, isn't he?

But I had just had my scholarship fall through because of Professor Edwards. I purposely reined in any attraction I had to Wes. He was another older professor, and I had been so thoroughly burned. And Everly latched on to me instead. I bonded to her first.

As the months went by and I found my footing in Madrona, it was only then that I started to let my guard down around Wes.

He wasn't my psychologist the first time around. There had been no mandatory counseling then. But he was my teacher. I was around him a lot, in the classroom and outside of it.

We grew closer. I found him attractive, of course I did. How could I not? Wes was a neurosurgeon. The man oozed sex and competence. And even then, I had an inkling that underneath his steely, composed exterior, there was an animal waiting to be let loose. There usually is.

I remember our first kiss. He'd invited me to go whale watching with him, just the two of us. We saw a pod of transient orcas within meters of the boat. We turned off the engine, as per the law, not wanting to get too close or to accidentally strike them. Too many whales die needlessly because of boats getting too close. But even then, with us just drifting on the big swells off the coast, the orcas swam right past us. It was the most thrilling thing I'd ever seen, and I guess adrenaline caused me to do it because I leaned in and kissed Wes on the cheek, so grateful that he took me out to see them.

Then he kissed me on the lips, kissed me for real.

After that, I was smitten with him.

I fell head over heels and fast.

We kept it a secret at first. I would sneak out of my room and go to the boat. Sometimes we would meet in the office. Sometimes in the gazebo after dark, where he scratched our initials underneath the picnic table so no one would see it.

I fell in love with Wes with my arms spread wide in a freefall.

I didn't hold back.

He didn't hold back either.

I even talked to his parents on the phone. Moira and Ross Kincaid. They lived in Vancouver at the time, in a beautiful estate overlooking Howe Sound that Wes had bought for them. They told me to visit whenever I got a chance to leave the lodge.

They sent me Christmas presents.

I sent them Zoom calls.

I never got a chance to leave the lodge.

And then, the more I fell in love with Wes, and the more he fell in love with me, the more that Everly grew cold.

She became jealous. Possessive. It didn't matter that she was married to Michael—she wanted my attention, and she wanted Wes' attention, and neither of us would give her what she needed.

She started to turn me against him.

She manipulated me, and I was so gullible I fell for it.

She told me I'd never make it as a researcher if I was so wrapped up in Wes. I needed all my focus to be on the fungi, on the science. I was reminded that my relationship was against the rules, something she seemed to make up on the spot, and she was adamant about making an example out of me.

She broke us apart because I was too weak, too fixated on the wrong things. I followed the rules while Wes said he would gladly quit his job so long as I was by his side.

I wanted love.

I wanted his love.

But I also wanted fame, significance, admiration.

I lost my way.

I lost Wes.

And in the end, I found just how far I would go to make my mark on the world.