“But I want to go back home!” Victoria shouted. “I don’t like it here. I want my mommy.”
“You will be happy here. My job is to make you happy.”
“How?” Victoria demanded.
“We have all the Earth games and toys and videos and books. We can make all your favorite Earth foods. I will sing songs and play games with you. I learned English, your language, so I can be a good companion. You were in the country of Italy. Do you speak Italian too?”
“A few words,” Elizabeth said, “Ciao. Mangia. Ti amo.”
“Very well, we will speak in English. You must be very hungry after your long journey. What would you like to eat?”
“I want macaroni and cheese and an ice cream sundae,” Victoria said.
“I’m not hungry,” Elizabeth said.
“You must eat.”
“I said, I’m not hungry!”
“I will bring you food anyway. Through that door is a bathroom. It is just like your bathrooms on Earth. That chest is filled with clothes. Later, I will show you all the toys and games. You will love it here. I will love you and soon, you will love me.”
Celeste returned to Ferrol’s office and before she could do or say anything, he told her that he had called up the meal request to the upstairs kitchen.
Her knees buckled as she removed her mask and Ferrol had to spring up to stop her from falling. She began to sob.
“No, no,” he said, “you did perfectly. It’s okay. They’re okay and you’re okay.”
“We’ve done something terrible,” she said. “I knew, in my head, that this was wrong, but you’re so fucking persuasive, I went along with it. Ferruccio and I have become members of your cult. That’s what this is—a cult. Seeing those precious little girls—I don’t know what to do now. Oh, God.”
He tightened his embrace and kissed her sweaty ear. “Listen,” he said, “this is a completely normal reaction. The shock will wear off soon and you and Ferruccio will be all right. You’ll see how happy the girls will be. They won’t have a care in the world. They’re young. They’ll miss their parents for a while, but that will fade. Believe me. I went through this myself. We’ll all keep our eyes on the ultimate prize. We are going to change what it means to be human. We are going to remove humanity’s greatest fear. Goddamn it, Celeste, we are going to conquer death.”
*
Ferrol waited a week for the girls to acclimatize. During that time, he dealt with the inevitable internal crisis when Celeste and Ferruccio saw the news that Elena and Jesper Andreason were also kidnapping victims. He felt like a firefighter, putting out flames that kept flaring from smoldering hotspots. The irony of the analogy did not go unnoticed, for it was in this very castle where his journey began, that night long ago when a twelve-year-old lost his parents and nearly lost his own life to fire.
When his fractious colleagues settled down, he decided it was time for the first blood-draw.
“I don’t want them to become scared of me,” Celeste said. “They’re just building up a rapport with Gray Woman. That’s what they call me. I think Ferruccio should do the first draws.”
“But you’re better at it than me,” Gressani argued.
“There are going to be a lot of blood tests,” Ferrol said. “They won’t get a complex about them if the first ones go smoothly. Celeste, you go first. When the time comes for infusions, we’ll put them to sleep with barbiturates. But I don’t want to have to do that every time we draw blood.”
*
In a month, Ferrol was ready.
Gressani had been working in Ferrol’s skunkworks lab, so he was well versed in the objectives and techniques. When Celeste became part of the team, Ferrol had to initiate her. One night, he brought her to his study off the castle library and wrote a word on a whiteboard.
Telomeres.
“Do you know what they are?” he asked like a stern professor.
She said she didn’t with the look of a girl who hadn’t done her homework.
He noticed and softened his style. “There’s no reason you should. Don’t worry. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know.”
He bent over her chair and kissed her forehead, and if some might have seen this as patronizing, she didn’t. She smiled gratefully and reached for his hand.
He returned to the board and began drawing illustrations. “Telomeres are the pieces of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. They prevent damage to the chromosomes that naturally occur with aging. However, these telomeres are also susceptible to damage, and as the cells in our organs divide, the telomeres get shorter and shorter. Every time they divide, the telomeres shorten, until the cells cannot divide any longer and they die. Think of telomeres as the clocks inside of cells, ticking down to cell death. Now, here’s the important observation: some people have a genetic tendency toward longer telomeres and they live longer. Let me repeat—they live longer. People who live to a hundred or more have markedly longer telomeres than everyone else.”
His passion began to crest. “Celeste, listen, the holy grail is finding a way to lengthen the telomeres inside our cells and to defeat aging. Telomere scientists have been working on anti-aging approaches for years and some have shown modest success in extending lifespan of mice by twenty percent, thirty percent. But here’s where it gets interesting. I’ve developed a radically different approach to everyone else in the field that stops aging in its tracks! Fruit flies live no more than fifty days. My fruit flies are still alive and buzzing about their jars five years after treatment. Mice live for two years. My mice are as sleek and healthy as adolescents eight years after treatment. I’ve cracked the code, Celeste. I can stop aging. I can defeat death.”
His excitement was infectious. “Who else knows about this?” she asked. “Surely, you’ve published your results.”
“Only Ferruccio knows. I’ve told no one. I’ve published
