The Gray Institute (The Gray Institute Trilogy Book 1)

by Leanne Pearson

  'Can I help you?' A young, blonde woman asks as she crosses to the doorway, her expression wary.

  'Sorry, I was just looking for my Creator. Diana Haddix?'

  'She's not here tonight. Is it urgent?' The woman asks.

  'I just wanted to speak with her.' I shrug, shifting uncomfortably under the woman's gaze. She seems to be studying me, trying to work out my intentions.

  'Her room is 588, end of the hall on the left.' She informs me before closing the door swiftly in my face. As I retrace my steps back down the hall, I wonder whose Creator the blonde woman is and can't help but feel sorry for them.

  Diana's room has a silver plaque outside, the same copperplate letters read: 'Diana Haddix: Creator.'

  I hover beyond the threshold, twiddling my thumbs, wondering if bothering Diana is such a good idea. What will I say to her?

  I don't know the ins and outs of her relationship with Sir Alec, and I seriously doubt that any faculty member's loyalty lies more strongly with a student than with the headmaster.

  But I don't have time to deliberate long before the door opens, revealing Diana in all her beauty, a satin black gown draped around her svelte frame. I look away, feeling like I'm imposing on the usually modestly dressed Creator.

  'Eve.' She smiles, every muscle in her face relaxing. She is truly a wonder to behold. I think that she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life.

  'I'm sorry.' I stammer, casting my eyes sidewards along the empty corridor.

  'Don't be, I should apologise. I felt you call for me over half an hour ago, I was just about to come to you,' She stands aside, opening the door further. 'Come in.' She holds her arm wide, gesturing me through. I slide past her, inhaling deeply as her familiar, sweet smell hits me.

  'Felt me call for you?' I frown, remembering Ursula's similar words.

  'Oh yes, sorry, I suppose I never explained that to you,' She looks flustered and I feel a twisting sensation in my stomach at the sight of her discomfort. My arms reach out instinctively to comfort her, but I pull them back, embarrassed.

  'As your Creator, I can sense when you wish to see me. All of us can. With our individual students, I mean. It's a little strange I suppose, an invasion of your privacy really but it's not something I can control.' She attempts to absolve herself of a crime I never accused her of and I place a hand on her shoulder.

  'It's not odd, it's pretty useful.' I smile, feeling her shoulders relax.

  'I'm glad you think so.' She smiles, touching my hand with her long fingers. The intense connection I feel to Diana is a strange and unfamiliar feeling, not entirely unpleasant but certainly alien and I pull away, overwhelmed. My body seems to have feelers designed specifically for her; I can sense how she feels and I have an indescribable love for her which is unnatural for someone I've known so little time. The notion of seeing her unhappy or in pain is almost unbearable, I feel physically sick at the thought.

  'Would you like a drink?' She asks, distracting me. I realise that I'm extremely thirsty. I nod and she heads over to a small wooden cabinet below the window. 'Sit.' She commands, gesturing to a large, comfy sofa next to her bed.

  I sink into the fabric, feeling it mould to my shape beneath me. Diana retrieves a jug and two glasses, pouring the thick red substance into the containers and handing me one. I hold it to my lips and inhale its rich, metallic smell.

  I take huge gulps, all etiquette flying out of the window as my body absorbs the warm liquid. A rush of strength and ecstasy shoots through me, re-energising me, making my senses and wits sharper.

  'It's a rare blood type,' Diana smiles. 'I thought I'd treat you.'

  'Thank you.' I smile, draining the glass before grinning sheepishly and setting it down on the coffee table. Diana sinks down next to me on the couch, crossing her bare legs, tightening her gown around herself.

  'Are you okay, Eve?' She asks, her blue eyes filling with concern. I sigh at the contemplation of answering her simple yet so complicated question.

  'Diana?' I twist to face her, folding my hands in my lap. 'How much of what I tell you is in confidence?' I decide to be forthright and honest with her, she'd only sense it if I wasn't.

  'Well, most things. Obviously, I have a duty to report to Sir Alec any behaviour which I deem to be breaking the rules or endangering anyone. But...' she hesitates. 'I can keep a secret. What's on your mind?'

  'Sir Alec has set me a task.' I inform her.

  'Ah.' She replies, a simple syllable, but with that one sound, I realise that she already knows.

  'Yeah,' I sigh. 'The odds aren't in my favour, are they?' I ask. Diana doesn't reply but looks away thoughtfully.

  'How do you feel about it?' She asks finally.

  'What does that matter?' I scoff. 'It doesn't matter to Sir Alec how I feel about it. It doesn't matter to Lorna what the consequences are for me. Why does it matter what I feel?'

  'It matters to me.' She states simply. I quieten as she puts a comforting hand on my thigh. Her touch soothes me and I lean against her slightly, letting her take a little of my weight.

  'I don't want to do it,' I let my strength ebb away and allow myself to be weak, to worry, to fret. Diana strokes my hair gently as I speak, listening intently.

  'Lorna won't change. She won't. She's completely set against it and Sir Alec knows that! He's just using me as a last resort. If I fail, he can blame it on me instead of Lorna herself.

  Why must it be my job to convince her to discard all her views? Why must I try to change the will of the most stubborn person I've ever met? He's set me an impossible task!' I whimper as I run out of steam, burying my head in Diana's shoulder. I've lacked the comfort of a mother for too long.

  'Have you tried?' Diana asks. I hesitate, telling her all she needs to know. 'I know you're sure that Lorna won't change willingly, but you have to at least try. Even if it will achieve nothing.'

  'Do you agree with this?' I ask. 'Changing a human against her will? Letting her live through this torturous existence, knowing her fate and despising it?' I lift my head from the folds of Diana's gown.

  'I changed you against your will.' She reminds me.

  'That was different,' I shrug. 'I was dying. I wasn't forced to live out a solitary confinement stretch, knowing what was coming and being powerless to stop it.' I stamp my foot in anger as Diana shushes me.

  'You have to do what's right for you.' She states. I frown, glaring into her kind, blue eyes.

  'Is that the morale you live by?' I ask her. She shifts uncomfortably.

  'I live by experience. I try to help others – it is my nature – but some people... they just can't be helped. They're lost causes. I believe Lorna Gray is one of these lost causes.' She admits. She seems to contemplate something, wrestling with her own mind before taking a deep breath.

  'I come from London, like you, did you know that?' She asks. I shake my head and she smiles. 'I was born in White Chapel in 1819.'

  I whistle loudly, amazed at yet another person close to me whom I know nothing about.

  'I was eighteen when Queen Victoria was crowned. My father grumbled non-stop about having a female monarch but secretly I was overjoyed. I had high hopes for myself, you see. I wanted a proper career, like the men had, and I thought that with a Queen on the throne, it would be possible.' She smiles, casting her eyes out of the window as she remembers a time long ago.

  'My father was a pathologist, a well paid job in those days, and I had a well-tutored upbringing. My mother was a home-maker and a very intelligent woman. My father tried to hide it about her around company, but when it was just my mother and I, she educated me more than any tutor – and certainly more than my father.' She scoffs. I make myself comfortable, glad to be immersed in Diana's life rather than worrying about my own.

  'I was a shy child though, very timid, which pleased my father. He was of the strong opinion that women – especially girls – should be seen and not heard. That didn't bode well for my opinionated, out-spoken mother. She is, to th
is day, my one and only role model.' She smiles but her expression is sad. I feel my stomach twist and the desperate urge to make her happy again.

  'By the time I was twenty, I was one of the first women professors of biology,' She smiles proudly. 'I was kept largely behind the scenes, of course, due to my sex. Men took credit for my discoveries, but I didn't mind so much. I was getting to do what I loved. I even helped with the post-mortems on two of Jack the Ripper's victims.

  My parents died when I was twenty eight, of consumption,' She shakes her head sadly. 'My father was so ashamed of me. Still unmarried at twenty eight, I was the black sheep of the family. His last words to me were; 'You will die a sad and lonely spinster.'

  He couldn't have been more wrong, which pleased me.' She grins, stroking my hair again.

  'A year later, I met my husband-to-be, Albert. He was so handsome, a police officer, quite highly ranked working in Scotland Yard. Within a year, I was pregnant.' I turn to face Diana, smiling widely. I had no idea she was a mother, it suits her so well.

  'I had a baby girl, Elizabeth.' She smiles wistfully at the name and my heart sinks as I suddenly realise that Elizabeth's birth doesn't have a happy ending. I almost stop Diana, unable to hear the pain in her voice as she tells of her baby girl, but it would be rude to and I instead steel myself for my own pain at her misery.

  'She was beautiful. She had a mop of dark hair and big blue eyes, her skin was like silk, so soft and smooth. She had my nose but Albert's chin. She was a porky baby with chubby hands and feet. She had those little lines, you know, where their wrists are too thin for their chubby hands?' She laughs, but her smile disappears as quickly as it came.

  'She was poorly within two months. Her nose was constantly runny and she coughed incessantly. It was a horrible sound, little racking coughs, her whole body convulsed with them. There was nothing I could do. Even I, a biologist, couldn't provide her with the medicine she needed.

  The doctor prescribed her with all sorts, but the infection had spread to her lungs and she couldn't breathe properly towards the end. When she inhaled the sound was awful, like an old person who'd smoked for forty years. Except she wasn't and she hadn't.

  All I could do was hold her, watch as she slowly faded away. Her face turned blue, her hands were cold, she couldn't open her eyes.

  I cried a river of tears. You have no idea how it feels to hold your child in your arms and watch them in pain, dying, and be powerless to stop it, helpless to save her.

  You wish you could take her place, you wish you could die instead, but you can't. You pray for her to hold on, for the medicine to work magic, but she doesn't, it doesn't.

  She died in my arms, at two o clock in the morning. She took her final rasping breath and her tiny body gave up. She was too small to fight such a violent infection, she never stood a chance. She was six months old.'

  My body is racked with pain. Diana's voice is unbearable to hear, the voice of the broken hearted. She doesn't cry, she can't, but her voice does and it's impossible to tune out.

  I picture baby Elizabeth, as beautiful as her mother, lying dead in a cot, her tiny body wrapped in a white shawl, and feel as though I've lost a family member. A baby sister, a cousin, who knows but she feels real to me, like I knew her.

  'Diana,' my voice is unsteady. 'I'm so sorry.' I can't express a fraction of the sincerity I'd like to.

  'Thank you,' She forces a smile. 'It was a long time ago,' She states, as if this is a reason for her to keep composed, but no matter how long ago your child died, does the pain not remain the same?

  'I abandoned my work when Elizabeth died. I had no passion for anything any more. Even Albert. I couldn't be in the same room as my husband. I started drinking heavily. I was drunk all the time, always collapsed in some gutter somewhere. Always being turfed out of the pub at gone midnight. Always being mistaken for a prostitute.' She shakes her head.

  'Albert couldn't cope; he lost Elizabeth and then he lost me. His wife turned into somebody he didn't know and he tried to solve it by using the only means men in those days knew – violence. He would find me drunk, beat me senseless, I would drink more to forget about the beatings and the pain and so it went. A vicious circle. Until the day he lost it.

  He beat me so badly he fractured my skull, left me in our gutter whilst he went to the pub and I lay dying. My dear Creator, Carlos, found me and brought me to the Institute, changed me.

  I served my five years here and then went on to the laboratories, examining our kind, figuring out more and more about our bodies, the way they work. Trying to find a blood substitute.

  When the Rebels struck, I asked for a position as a Creator. The Auctoritas granted my request and I came back to the Institute to change my first student.' She smiles as I listen, absorbed in her life.

  'Who was it?' I ask, hanging on her every word.

  'His name was Jose. He was Columbian, the victim of a tornado which killed his family. He survived but barely. I found him and pleaded with the Auctoritas to allow me to change him, he was only eighteen, they were hesitant but agreed. He rebelled,' She says sadly, shaking her head.

  'Barely made it through his five years here without being Confined. The moment he was released, he went back to his home town and attempted to alert his village to our existence. The Auctoritas didn't take pity on him, or me.

  It was years before I was given another shot. I changed my second student, Toby, an American – a drug addict, like you. He did well, I see him often. And then you,' She smiles, hugging me to her. 'My first girl.' She ruffles my hair and suddenly, Diana's affection falls into place.

  I am the daughter she lost.

  I don't know what to say once Diana's story is finished so I keep quiet. She seems to be lost in the past for a few moments before coming back to me, remembering my predicament with Lorna Gray.

  'You have to try, Eve. Just try. That's all you can do.' Diana pats my arm and I sigh, knowing she's right.

  No one can fix this problem for me. It's something I must face alone. All I can do is attempt to convince Lorna to change, no matter how it offends her or displeases her. If the consequences are severe for me, at least I tried. I can rest with the knowledge I did everything I could.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My One-To-One lessons with Miss Morelli are fast becoming just another thorn in my side. Miss Morelli is demanding, expectant and strict and my sessions with her seem nothing but an unbearable pressure on top of everything else. She's recently taken to bringing in live subjects to help me develop my gift; students are randomly pulled from their lessons and made to stand before me as I assess their guilt or innocence using a good old-fashioned pie chart.

  In the chart, I display in what proportion the two traits are balanced, how prominent the green light is and how quickly or easily I'm able to see it. Most of the students are young, first years, and haven't yet lived long enough to commit any terrible crimes, though there are exceptions. On the odd occasion, I meet someone with a green light as strong as Sir Alec, but none as strong as Lucrezia Beighley.

  The particular student I'm assessing on a Sunday morning – Miss Morelli has no regard for the days of the week – is a terrified first year, an eighteen year old girl, who clasps her hands protectively over her chest.

  'It's alright,' I smile at her. 'I won't hurt you.' My kind tone does nothing to assure her as she backs timidly into a corner.

  'Don't speak.' Miss Morelli barks as she glances up from her notes. She isn't familiar with the term 'empathy.'

  I draw my pie chart quickly. The young girl is an easy subject with no trace of the green fire in her eyes. Of course, Miss Morelli will insist that there is. That I'm simply still too untrained to see it.

  'Nobody is an angel.' She's fond of saying.

  She dismisses the girl and I sit down as she pulls out four sheets of paper from her bag. I groan loudly. These papers are as familiar to me as the back of my hand, I see them at least four times a week and they are ever unchanging.r />
  One has very faint grey lines crossing through the page diagonally. The other three are completely and utterly blank.

  Though not according to Miss Morelli.

  She lays them out on the table in front of me one by one, starting, as usual, with the patterned sheet.

  'What do you see?' She asks, clutching her clipboard expectantly.

  'Faint grey lines from the top left corner to the bottom right.' I repeat the same sentence every lesson. She removes the sheet and replaces it with another, blank one.

  'What do you see?' She asks, and after a moment of gazing at what is undeniably plain white paper, I shake my head.

  'Nothing.'

  'Look!' She demands.

  'I am looking. I see nothing.' I repeat, my nose inches from the page. Miss Morelli sighs and removes the paper from the desk, but instead of placing a different one down, she slams the same page back in front of me.

  'What do you see?' She barks. I stifle another sigh and stare at the paper. I squint my eyes, I move my head further back from the page, I press my face up against it, but still I see nothing.