Parker had been following the professor for several weeks. He had seen Robert Coley looking Abbey up and down when she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t an attraction thing, it was a predator/prey thing. Parker knew the difference. He had seen that look before; the people who abused him had looked at him like an object, a pawn in their game. Parker had already been through Coley’s house with a fine-tooth comb and found nothing of any interest, and so now it was time to check out his office. There was definitely something off about the man; Parker knew when someone wasn’t ‘right’. Robert Coley lacked humanity when he thought no one was looking. Unlucky for him, Parker was looking. A hunch wasn’t enough for Parker though, he had to verify. He didn’t want to become one of the ‘Inhumans’, the killers who took lives without giving it so much as a second thought, the people who walked among them just like everyone else. He had met several of them in his lifetime and they had no remorse; he supposed they would be referred to as psychopaths. That’s not who he was. He wanted justice, nothing more.

Parker sat down at Coley’s desk, opened his laptop and turned it on. It was slow to boot up, an old clunky model. Coley’s office was full of books, floor to ceiling, piled high and doubled up on the bookcases. It smelled of dusty paper. Parker loved that smell. He couldn’t imagine a life where he wasn’t surrounded by books. Books had helped him come to terms with the psychological damage left by the men who had unravelled him and made him into what he was today. A killer.

When the computer fan had finished labouring and the screen stopped twitching, the computer finally asked for a password. Parker’s eyes went to the painting on the wall. There was a large ornate framed picture of a golden lion with eagle wings above the desk. People were usually not as imaginative as they thought they were. He typed in the word CHIMERA, an organism that contained two or more sets of DNA, like a lion with eagle wings. Parker rolled his eyes as the computer unlocked.

Looking through the files, he didn’t see anything particularly interesting. Abbey’s assignments were in among the others, she hadn’t been singled out for any special treatment in any way. He opened the email folder. The inbox was clear, apart from one or two interdepartmental emails. He looked through each folder, but there was nothing out of the ordinary – letters to and from other colleges, other teachers.

He clicked on the search bar within the email account and typed in ‘Abigail’ to see what came back. There were twenty-six emails about Abbey – that couldn’t be right. He started at the beginning. The first couple were standard messages about her entry onto the course. One mentioned her previous UCAS application to Exeter University for the same course. The next email was sent from Coley to an H. Lassiter asking for information on Abbey. Lassiter had come back almost immediately; the email header was ‘candidate material’. Parker frowned. A candidate for what? Lassiter told Coley that Abbey would be a great fit for ‘the programme’ and that she had some more information on her that she would reveal in time.