"Her behavior is odd. I can almost see multiple personalities. They switch on and off almost at will"
He wasn't necessarily shocked by the deduction but that Ava saw through the subtleties of the engineers behavior at all. He didn't notice at all until his expectations were proven wrong, forcing him to remember the events from the beginning. Such ridiculous insight further convinced him that Ava could find a needle in a haystack.
"What do you mean?"
"First she invited us, then she lost interest, then she showed concern for her bodyguard, then she requests your help despite the fact. Caring, uncaring, caring, uncaring in a repeated cycle like that"
"You paid attention to details like that?"
"Running a company isn't easy. Every tiny detail matters with butterfly effects bleeding into everything. If I don't notice the most trivial matters, it's no different from being one percent off from an A"
"What do you do exactly…"
I asked not with a question but more as a comment. I was less interested in Ava's company and more in the help she could offer Megan. The more Ava opened up, the more of an emotional investment she would feel in Megan's work, especially if she cared about that level of detail. Reciprocating the interest provided benefits and no disadvantages.
"In a nutshell, I whip up experiments that cause physiological changes. Mostly sell to scientists who experiment on rats. It's supposed to help us find a cure to so called impossible diseases"
He was shocked to the core. This coincidence was too unbelievable. He wondered about getting an internship there to continue funding his experiments. Perhaps he could study his bloodwork with state of the art equipment.
"Oh? You have interest in what I do. Do you perhaps work on something similar in school?"
Ava was terrifying. His pupils barely dilated but she noticed that. A very good partner but also a potentially dangerous liability. His thoughts were impossible to hide from her, not unless he became a stone-cold killer, but that wasn't happening. He only looked at her, expecting her to understand the message.
"Don't worry. Unless you plan to be a mass murderer, I only ask to see how I can help you. I can give you a job if you're good enough. Hiring process is tough though. We hire only the best of the best from ivy leagues. Metaphor"
"I created experiments for my finals that are hypothetical but never meant to become something real. Just different versions of existing steroids and protein products"
"It's impossible for them to be as simple as you're saying if this is collegiate level work"
He needed to be careful with how much info he gave out. Henry Ruthless always said it was better not to trust anyone except yourself. Even your lover could have a loose tongue under the proper interrogation technique. Revealing enough to get interest but holding back enough to avoid your secrets from being pried into was a hard if nearly impossible method to master. Professionals always had business with Ruthless but never had blood vendettas with him. It was a beautiful art that Henry appreciated.
"I'm supposed to assume I can sell them commercially to body builders who want something more then just a protein bar or something more legal then a steroid. It's also supposed to pass scrutiny by scientists who would reverse engineer all my work"
There was silence as Ava digested my words. Her eyebrows furrowed as she nodded. Disappointed but also acknowledged the potential complexity of the work. Ava paced back and forth as though calculating the future. She would stop every now and then and look at him and then her. Looked towards her much longer than him, as though calculating the gains. The way she played with her hands suggested escalating curiosity. Shadow puppets without the shadows. First it was a teepee as with like any other person. The right index hooked over the left. The left hooking the right and pulling it, cracking the finger. The second pair. Some kind of tug-o-war and whoever won depended on the puppet master's whims and possible mood.
The nod of the head told him what he needed to know as he pulled out a vial. He didn't know he was carrying them to begin with. They were just there. Did he normally carry them? Had no recollection. He rubbed the neutral blue vial the way you rubbed a stick on wood to create fire. Expected the color to turn darker blue but it turned aqua instead.
Blue meant it was an experiment called 'Breath of an Ancient Past'. BAAP. BoaAP was a bad name and BoAP sounded almost like soap. BAAP had a pronunciation that was sudden and unexpected. He created it with the crazy idea that drinking it would allow one to adapt to any extreme pressure right away. The tallest mountains, the deepest oceans, the windiest hurricanes and the hottest volcanoes.
He remembered that shifting to a darker tone meant extreme conditions while light blue meant a severely dilated version for demonstration. He looked around and found a tank before drinking the vial and lifting it up to drink. Several things happened in the next ten seconds that felt like a lifetime to everyone else. The tank weighed at least a hundred and twenty pounds when he lifted it. It was fifteen feet long and eleven feet tall. A ladder was next to it at all times. Inside were guppies, tiny sharks, one baby whale, and many different breeds of fish that swam when the tank began to tilt. The water immediately began to flow out of a corner at the top. The vial that visibly changed colors that he had drunk. Didn't even test if it was safe. Trusted his own confidence so much that he gulped it without hesitation. Drinking the water is not horrifying in and of itself. Breathing was natural too. Drinking while breathing yet not choking was inhumane and made him seem like a monster.
Even Ava who had seen a lot of things was shocked. The issue is nothing that he said earlier was true at all. It was nonsensical pseudo science and yet he drank it and did what he did because he knew that what was once fake was now honestly true.
It was crazy but not crazy enough that Ava would dig too deep. He had no idea how effective his demonstration was, or how crazy his future demonstrations would be, but those would have no witnesses. Then he got an offer he couldn't resist because Megan screamed and cried so much that it literally warmed him on the inside-out.