Chapter 2

Of course, his professor had also been three scotches into the evening at that point and sitting across from Matthew in a lowly lit, very private booth in the far corner of a bar that had been thirty miles out of the city. Matthew hadn’t put much faith in the man’s gushing promises of “limitless experiences and opportunities.” Besides, by that point, he hadn’t had a single reason to put the sleep-with-the-guy-in-charge-and-excel theory into practice. When he’d decided he really was going to pursue Board Accredited status in genetics, the GDBCG had practically kicked in his door to find him.

Always a pleasure to be wanted, it was. And considering they left him alone and let him do his thing at will, he’d decided within a couple of weeks of his residency that he just might like to stay there. There were dark and interesting corners in the GDBCG’s facility and Matthew wanted to know them all. Even if there wasn’t something about the place that tickled his subconscious, the GDBCG was iconic in the field of genetic research. A hundredfold more doctors were laughed off the list of applicants than were allowed to pass through. The fact that they had given him, the mere son of a simple pediatrician and a quiet housewife, a residency was astounding. Good was good and smart was smart, but the people in the know at the GDBCG had seen something special in him that they’d chosen to pursue. For that he was ever-grateful. He’d often thought that he’d give up his eye teeth, without sedation, if they would grant him a permanent position. Preferably tenured.

It wasn’t just pride working its ugly self through his blood, either. It was purpose. The GDBCG granted him purpose. It was here, right here in the hallowed embrace of the Center, where Matthew would make a difference in this world where mothers and fathers could die of cancer, babies could be born without fully-formed skulls, and some kids had to grow up knowing that they were boys trapped in female bodies and not be able to fix that in a viable, utilizable way. He, however, was going to find a way to fix all of it; through the grace of God, he would, darn it. And there was no place better than here to do it in the entire world. If he could do it in solitude, tunelessly humming the relevant bars of Monster Mashwhile he worked, that just made it all the better.

It was late—early, really—and his eyes burned and his shoulders ached. Posture, he reminded himself as he straightened and stretched, was something he definitely needed to work on. He’d told himself he was going to pack it in earlier than usual. Though his findings on his newest project were fascinating they were also as slow as molasses in January. Still, his mind always seemed to find something to pick at. Once again, most of the night was gone.

“And I need a breather,” Matthew whispered to nobody.

What he really needed to do was go home and sleep, but that didn’t stop him from tugging off his glasses and dropping them onto his desk. His eyes would appreciate the break and he didn’t need them for things that weren’t up close, anyway. His vision was plenty sufficient to navigate the hallways toward the balcony that many of the staff members used for breaks.

As always, the moment he stepped outside he was awed by how bright the September sky was. California skies had been positively gloomy in comparison, Los Angeles’s more than the rest. While there wereplaces where the stars weren’t drowned out by light pollution or hidden behind the smog of ten million vehicular emissions, even the best of the best of places weren’t Wyoming. He’d been in Wyoming just over three months and his system still hadn’t gotten used to how clean and fresh the air seemed. He knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. There were far too many oil and gas operations in Wyoming to convince Matthew that was all clear in the star-studded or baby blue beyond, but it was a heck of a lot better than it had been back home.

It wasn’t the stars that drew him here in the wee hours of the morning, though. It was the bats. There was something about the construction of the Center that drew a bucket load of bats, not that Matthew could have said what it was. The thing he found most interesting about the phenomena was that one could find them swooping and swaying around the building’s concrete block walls and its flat, thermoplastic roof at times other than the hour or so between dusk and darkness. Common sense told Matthew it had to do with insect population, reflective lighting, and a lack of predators, but the owls and hawks that were common to the area made that last reason somewhat unlikely.