Chapter 8
The next day at lunch, Ivy saw her sister approaching across the cafeteria and dried her eyes with her napkin. She’d just been unloading on Sophia and Brendan about her fight with her father.
“How are you?” Olivia asked gently.
Ivy shrugged. “I’d be better if my dad wasn’t so narrow-minded.” She moved her bag so Olivia could sit down.
“I don’t understand,” Sophia said. “Charles Vega has always been the vamp dad everyone wanted.” Brendan nodded in agreement.
“Come on,” Ivy said with an eye roll. “He never liked humans.”
“Remember when he decorated that human lady’s house in LA?” Sophia said. “That didn’t seem to put his wings in a flap.”
“That was just a client,” Ivy said, shaking her head. “Anyway,” she said, deciding to change the subject, “I looked on the VVV last night to see if I could access ASHH files.”
Olivia perked up. “And?”
“I couldn’t,” Ivy revealed. “If we want to find out anything, we’re going to have to go to the ASHH office ourselves.”
“Do you think we can ask for our files just like that?” Olivia wondered.
“I wasn’t thinking of asking,” Ivy replied with a mischievous smile. “I was thinking of sneaking in and digging around.”
Brendan spit a gulp of cranberry juice back into his cup.
“Bad Ivy,” Sophia said, shaking her finger teasingly. “Bad, bad Ivy!”
Olivia leaned forward. “Could we actually do that?” she asked in a low voice.
“Brendan’s dad invited us to the V-Gen offices,” Ivy said, “and they’re in the same building. So we already have an excuse to get in and out of the compound. All we need is a distraction,” she said, putting her arm around Brendan and squeezing his shoulder, “so we can get in and out of the ASHH offices without anyone noticing.”
Brendan frowned. “Is ‘distraction’ a code word for ‘boyfriend’?”
Ivy grinned. “Maybe.”
“This’ll be interesting,” Brendan assented with a playful roll of his eyes.
“How about this afternoon after school?” Ivy proposed with a conspiratorial glance toward Olivia.
“There’s no better time than the present,” Olivia agreed, and Brendan nodded.
“What about me?” Sophia interjected. “What can I do?”
“Somebody has to stay behind to tell our story,” Ivy told her, “in case we end up being abducted.”
“You’re joking, right?” said Sophia.
A chill flashed over Ivy. “I hope so,” she said. After school, Olivia, Ivy, and Brendan caught a bus to Brendan’s father’s office complex across town. Brendan had called his dad to let him know they were coming, while Olivia had called her mom and explained that she was doing a research project with Ivy—which was totally true. As for Ivy, she wasn’t talking to her father, so she didn’t tell him anything.
Eventually, the three of them were the only passengers left on the bus, and all Olivia could see from the window was one gray office building after another, against the wintry gray sky. Arriving at the end of a cul-de-sac, the driver called, “Last stop, Pentagram Court.”
Jumping down off the bus, Olivia found herself staring up at a hulking black glass building, glistening in the afternoon sun like a dark jewel. It was surrounded by a security gate, and the bus had let them off right in front of a guardhouse.
“Can I help you?” a pale security officer inquired.
“We’re here to see Marc Daniels at V-Gen,” Brendan announced.
Olivia glanced up and spotted a security camera sitting atop the gate, aimed right at her. She shifted uncomfortably as the camera looked her up and down with a whir, from her pink corduroy jacket down to her cheerleading sneakers. “No civilians allowed,” the guard said stonily.
“He’s expecting all of us,” Brendan replied firmly.
The security guard looked unconvinced. “Names?”
“Brendan, Ivy, and Olivia,” Brendan answered.
The guard disappeared into his booth. Olivia could see him through the window talking on the phone. After he hung up, he slid the glass open and handed down three guest passes. As they put them around their necks, the gate clanked and slid open.
Inside the enormous black marble lobby, Mr. Daniels was waiting in his white lab coat. “Ivy, Olivia!” he said warmly, shaking their hands and giving Brendan a quick hug. “I’m so glad you came so soon!”
As they all waited for the elevator, Ivy nudged Olivia’s arm and silently nodded toward the building directory that was hanging on the wall. Olivia’s eyes immediately zeroed in on what her sister was looking at:
ASHH 2A
V-GEN 2C Brendan’s dad’s lab and ASHH are on the same floor! thought Olivia. Perfect!
When the elevator doors opened onto the second floor, Ivy, Olivia, and Brendan followed Mr. Daniels to the left, but Olivia used the opportunity to steal a backward glance. There, at the opposite end of the hall past a tall potted plant was a dark wall with ASHH on it in enormous, luminous letters. Beside the letters was a door, and beside the door stood the tallest security guard Olivia had ever seen, fiddling distractedly with a walkie-talkie.
Mr. Daniels continued to the end of the hall, where a glistening sign read V-GEN PHARMACEUTICALS. He turned left and stopped outside a stainless steel door.
He opened the door and led the way into a huge laboratory, filled with blinking consoles and mysterious equipment. A group of people in white lab coats were hunched around a table, arguing in low voices over some papers.
“But how could she have survived the hemoglobic transition?” Olivia heard one say.
Mr. Daniels cleared his throat loudly, and the conversation stopped abruptly. One of the group, a woman with her hair in a bun, tried to subtly turn over the sheets of paper on the table.
“Lab technicians, this is Ivy Vega,” Mr. Daniels announced as they all got to their feet. “And this is her identical twin sister, Olivia Abbott.”
For a moment, the scientists just stared at them. Then one started clapping, and they all erupted into applause.
Olivia grinned while Ivy shifted in her boots, uncomfortable with the attention as usual.
“What am I, garlic hummus?” Brendan whispered sarcastically as the applause died down.