CHAPTER 1: TOP SECRET
“Ella? Hello?” A hand waved furiously in front of my face. “Ella? Are you in there?” The annoying wasp lowered her voice to a whisper. “I always thought you got here by sleeping.”
Just another one of Sally’s nasty innuendos she’d mutter under her breath barely loud enough to hear. I stared at my aggravating redhead assistant through narrowed eyes. Her hand continued to flap in front of me.
I inhaled deeply. “Sally, would you stop that?” My voice was like ice. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet. And don’t call me Ella. It’s Gabriella. And really, you should call me Doctor Moretti.”
She glared at me as she pointed to the coffee mug on my wood desk, ignoring my name tirade.
“Oh,” I answered, feeling idiotic.
My eyes shot to the missing coaster. I reached over my desk to place one underneath the mug, which was misshapen and had a picture of a rainbow painted on it. My niece, Jules, who loved to draw me pictures and sculpt pottery, made it. She was five and very sweet. My sister, Jenna, had brought her over to visit the other day. I missed them both. We never saw enough of each other.
I blew gently over the surface of the liquid, and it rippled under my breath. I took a sip. Room temperature. I gulped it down as my assistant stared at me in anticipation, a smug look eclipsing her features.
“It’s cold,” I said irritably. This wasn’t the day for her to pull her usual crap. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t put it in the fridge before bringing it to me.
“Well,” she said, straightening her back importantly, “you’ve been daydreaming at your desk for over an hour.”
It was obvious by the expression on her face that she was unquestionably envious of my job, but some days I would gladly give my position to someone else. My occupation could be stressful, and the long nights were overwhelmingly exhaustive. Not many people understood my profession, and I didn’t expect anything less. Even my assistant was oblivious to the secrets below me—the secrets that weighed heavily on my shoulders.
“I wasn’t daydreaming,” I insisted, staring at her shirt, which was an eye-watering color of green. Absently, I continued speaking. “I was thinking about my new discovery—” I cut myself off, realizing I had almost told a very top-secret piece of information to someone with much lower security clearance than myself. I desperately needed sleep; my brain just wasn’t functioning under all this stress.
“New discovery?” Sally placed her round bottom on my very expensive desk and eagerly leaned in.
Great. Now she’ll never let it go, I thought bitterly. “It’s just something I was working on in the lab.” I fluttered my hand as if it was nothing. But it was. Boy was it something—something amazing and frightening.
She continued to look at me expectantly. The soft white light behind her head made every single tiny red hair stick out and cast the rest of her features into shadow.
“You know? Top secret experiments?” I whispered with a quizzical half smile, just to goad her a bit. I knew it was wrong, but it was so easy to get her riled up.
She grimaced. As always, Sally hated it when I brought up the fact she wasn’t allowed in the lab. Sometimes I saw her staring longingly at the “Restricted Access” sign on the door to the underground labs. But she wasn’t hired to do scientific work; she was hired to assist me in other ways. Some days she just couldn’t grasp that concept, and I had to remind her. Like today, for example.
“Will you take this to the post office?” I pushed a blue and white custody-sealed cooler her direction. The nearest post office was a fifteen minute drive and wouldn’t be open for a while. I knew this errand would keep her occupied for a bit while I took time to absorb the night’s events. “This needs to be in New York City by tomorrow morning.” There it was—the reminder of what her job was.
Sally dropped down from her perch on my desk with narrowed eyes and seized the cooler furiously. Without another word, she turned on her black high heels and spun so fast I thought she would turn all the way around.
I decided to press her a little. It was only fair; she did it to me every day with dirty comments whispered under her breath. “And could you pick up my dry cleaning? Same place.”
She froze mid-stride and turned around more slowly this time. “Again?” she grumbled through gritted teeth. “Can’t you pick up your own dry cleaning?”
Here comes the explosion. . . .
I plastered a huge grin on my face, ready to put her in her place. I wasn’t a mean person, honestly. I’d just lost all of my patience because I was up all night dealing with things I couldn’t fathom telling someone as small-minded as Sally.
Keeping the mocking smirk in place, I said, “Sally, you were hired as my assistant. If I need you to flush my toilet, you’ll flush it. But since I’m not a horrible monster, I’m not going to give you the shitty jobs.” I laughed at my own wordage. Oh, the hilarity. I seriously needed sleep. “If you can’t handle running one simple errand, then I’ll hire someone who can,” I added. “Is that clear?”
She nodded, her eyes reduced to slits. “That won’t be necessary, Doctor Moretti.” Her voice grew sardonic. “I’ll pick up your dry cleaning.”
Some people never learned, but you took what you could get, right?
“Thank you,” I said sweetly and waved her away. She shut the door firmly behind her.
Good riddance. I sighed, folded my arms on top of the desk, and lay my head down to relax. At the young age of twenty-four, I was lucky to have such a lavish office. This was also the same reason Sally seemed to take offense to me. The walls were a pleasantly rich crimson and decorated with black-and-white framed photos of some of my favorite destinations. My eyes caught sight of a beautiful snow-capped mountain I’d captured on my last ski trip. I was an excellent skier and would’ve loved to be on the slopes right then.
The light-blue tint of a new day came through the window behind my desk. The sliver of sun was bright enough that its reflection off the glass from a framed photo of my sister and me hit my eyes and burned. I closed my eyes and put my forehead against the desk while yawning loudly—just another reminder that I desperately needed sleep. I was sick of these all-nighters at the lab. The only reason I wasn’t passed out was because last night I discovered something so incredibly ground breaking I was positive the government would try to cover it up.
My occupational title: Supernatural Specialist. Whenever I discovered something it was never ordinary, and the government was always interested. I performed experiments and conducted research on things no one believes are real, like aliens and ghosts. And mostly, they’re not. But last night was my biggest revelation to date, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at any moment men in military uniforms converged upon me.
Zelko Corporation, my employer, had many different laboratories for diverse kinds of scientific work. The lab I worked in—also nicknamed “Fishbowl”—has been involved with research on supernatural beings for several years. A group of private investors kept the lab running, but the largest investor was the U.S. government. They always wanted to be the first to know about anything new we uncovered, mainly so they could cover any evidence right back up. Especially if they thought it would scare the American public. God forbid. Excuse the sarcasm. What I discovered last night definitely would. Hell, it almost scared the pee right out of me, and I wasn’t one to frighten easily.
I had made several small discoveries in the past, but nothing of great interest. So far, the only major finding was a few corpses—or skeletons, really—with large fangs. Of course, the FBI came in, snagged up all the scientific documents on the case, and had them shipped to who knows where. Whether vampires existed or not was still a mystery to me, but probably not. Some people just have extra-long teeth that appear to look like fangs. Plus, weren’t vampires supposed to be immortal and vaporize in the sun? But I was the skeptic here—never the one to truly believe until there was undeniable evidence to back up the claims.
I always thought the k
inds of experiments our investors wanted us to perform were ludicrous. I’d investigated everything from a man covered in mostly scales to a “werewolf,” who was actually just a really—and I mean really—hairy man. Everything seemed silly, honestly . . . until last night.
Three corpses found in the mountains of Italy were shipped to Zelko Corp., and there seemed to be nothing unusual about the delivery until I opened the boxes and was confronted with bodies that hadn’t decomposed. At all. Their skin was flushed with blood, though none had a pulse and their disintegrating clothes were hundreds of years old. I checked the paper work and realized there was a colossal problem. Then I called my colleague in Italy, hoping for answers.
“Hello?” Adriana answered in a thick Italian accent.
“Hello, Adriana. It’s Dr. Moretti.”
“Gabriella, it’s so good to hear from you. What can I do for you?”
I grew hesitant. “Um, yes. Were you the one who shipped us three bodies with paper work?”
“Yes. Did everything arrive there okay?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” I said cautiously, trying to think of how to word our predicament. Well, my predicament. “According to your paper work, your laboratory dated the bodies back to 100 B.C., but these bodies are so fresh you’d think they died only minutes ago.” My eyes shifted to the first opened box. The skin on the body seemed to glow.
There was a long calculating silence on the other end. I waited, very impatiently. “Stefan?” Adriana yelled to someone on the other end. The rest of their conversation was muffled Italian. “Gabriella? Are you still there?” she asked after a minute.
“I am. Is something wrong?” I started to panic. Three fresh corpses that most definitely had not been dead for over two thousand years were in my lab. Was I losing my mind?
“Are you near a computer?” Her voice quavered and only made my nervousness rocket.
“Yes,” I answered wearily.
Again, a long silence. “I’m sending you pictures of the bodies we sent you. These were taken only four days ago.”
A few clicks with the mouse later, I opened up the attached file to see the pictures of three bodies that were decayed, leathery, and absolutely, undoubtedly dead. I gasped in complete shock. Since I was only ten feet from the bodies, the blood drained from my face. The phone dropped from my hand as I stepped back, tripped, grabbed the nearby table, and knocked instruments over to meet me on the floor with a resounding crash.
The light on the phone was still on. I seized it and scooted across the floor as fast as I could. I couldn’t get away from the bodies quick enough.
Adriana shouted on the other end. “Gabriella? Are you all right? Gabriella? Hello? What’s going on?”
“Adriana.” The shaky whisper left my lips in fear the bodies might hear me. It was stupid; they were dead after all. Weren’t they? “I’m going to have to call you back.” I hung up, not waiting for a response.
After I gained back a semblance of my composure, I grabbed the edge of the table beside me and lifted myself to my feet. I moved so quietly and slowly I probably could have popped over the edge of one of the boxes and scared the corpse back to life. I peered over the top of the first box to see that the body hadn’t changed at all since I had made my phone call. Surprisingly, I was somewhat relieved. I had thought by now they would certainly be alive. That gave me pause. What if they did come back to life? My heart jumped wildly in my chest at the image.
After a few more seconds to take deep, steadying breaths, I pulled my latex gloves on and turned to take a sample from the first body. I cut a small piece of his skin and placed it in a tiny vial. Carefully, I put it in a rack for later testing. I turned around to take another sample and screamed in bewilderment, my eyes growing wide.
Instantly, the door to my left flew open, and three lab technicians from another lab burst in, trying their best to look knightly, geeky glasses and all. It was difficult not to laugh at this show of chivalry. Considering the reason I had screamed it was probably best I didn’t start chuckling or people would think I had lost my mind. After what I thought I had just seen, maybe I had.
“Are you okay?” all three men asked in unison.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, stepping guardedly towards the box that held the corpse.
I approached the body with the three men shadowing me. Then I looked over to the vial on the counter. It was still there with the skin sample inside.
“He—” I paused to look back and forth between the body and the vial again. “His skin grew back,” I breathed.
Indeed I had gone directly from scientist to straightjacket. The three men looked at me like I had just grown a second head.
“Oh, just hand me a vial,” I barked irritably. Three vials appeared in front of my eyes. “Thanks.” I grabbed one without looking to see who I took it from. As I bent over the body to take another sample, the three men followed my movements, all of them watching with nothing but questions in their eyes.
“Watch carefully,” I whispered. I was afraid I’d wake the dead man, especially after what I had seen.
My heart thudded as I leaned in. Using my scalpel precisely, I cut a small piece of flesh from the body and placed it in the vial. Then we waited. After only a few seconds, one of the men beside me yelped, and the other two visibly gulped. The skin on the man’s arm started to heal. It stitched itself back together until we couldn’t tell I’d made a cut. Any second now I expected the fingers to twitch or for the corpse to become animated and sit up.
All four of us took an involuntary step backwards. The only noise in the room was the heater turning on. The three men’s expressions were lined with horror. I bet they regretted the knight role now.
“Seal the Fishbowl until the Director comes in,” I ordered, keen to vacate the scene. “Now.”
The three men stumbled over each other as they tried to reach the exit. Backing away, I left through another door. Within seconds the room was sealed from the outside world. There was only glass between the bodies and me, but it made me feel safe instantly.
Yes, last night had been quite . . . remarkable. My eyes opened, the memory still fresh. Dawn had broke over the sky, the colors mixing together pleasantly—pearly pink and misty gold through my window. Sighing at the memory, a dreadful blast of realization hit: I’d have to go back into the lab. The thought sent a wave of terrified excitement through me.