“You wish you knew.” Darren snorted. “Worry about yourself.” Darren thumped the massive bookshelf that filled the back wall. Binders and stacks of journals took up every inch of it.

Paper files?

“Your can access video from your workroom,” Darren said. “The rest are hard copy and they don’t leave this room or you’ll have a squad of Black Helixes on your ass before you clear the lift. You read every page before you touch so much as a test tube.”

“Understood.” I could ignore the condescending tone when I was getting access to this much information.

“Put in a request if you need any gear,” Darren said as he strode for the door. “If you think you’ll be here that long.”

The door closed behind him before I could respond. Better that way.

My hands were already balled into fists.

There was obviously more to Darren than his asshole veneer let on. He wouldn’t be in his position if he weren’t qualified, but the name Waldman wasn’t familiar, so I assumed he’d been working above my security clearance for most of his career. Now I’d have to dig into his research. I had no idea what he specialized in.

I’d deal with him later.

For now, I headed to the bookshelf and picked a few volumes at random to see what I’d be working with. The material ran the gambit. Medical records. Handwritten observation journals from Quanta’s previous caretakers. Reams of genetic data. I itched to start digging through those files, but something else caught my eye.

Scans and printed photos of what had to be her drawings.

They took my breath away, both for skill and historical accuracy. At age fifteen, she’d drawn a wall mural depicting the skyline of Old London, before the Seligo bulldozed the island to build the Citadel. All the long-gone sights were shown in perfect detail: the Strand, the London Eye, even Big Ben. It wasn’t a clinical postcard view, either. The city looked lit and warm. Impressive in only black charcoal.

And it was only one of a thousand similar drawings. Most were landscapes and every one was a window to the past. When I put aside my awe enough to analyze, I realized none of the drawings showed anything after the rise of the Seligo.

Was she deliberately keeping her art out of the present? Or did she just prefer the past?

I tucked the book of drawing back into its nook and backtracked the shelves to start at the chronological beginning. After grabbing a stack of bound files that detailed Quanta’s mental and physical state during her first days at the facility, I headed for my workroom.