"Iz, turn off the lights and lock the door, will you? And screen calls. I don't want to be disturbed unless it's urgent."
The room went dark. She closed her eyes.
And dreamed.
She stood in the middle of an empty room. Whiteness surrounded her, so bright it made her eyes water. Though the room was empty, she was not alone.
He was here.
Though she couldn't see the hirsute stranger, his presence filled the room, a powerful, unseen shadow that circled slowly around her.
"Why have you called me?" she said.
"It is you who have done the calling, Samantha. I merely answer."
"Then show yourself."
He smiled, a sensation that ran like fire through her mind. "When you are ready to see me, you will."
"More riddles."
"No. A truth you are not ready to accept."
It made no sense. Nothing this man said made any sense.
"Tell me your problem, Samantha. Is it the kites?"
"No." She hesitated. "Did you send the kite after the five scientists?"
His smile rippled through her like shadowed sunshine. "No. And you will regret saving them."
"Why?"
"Because of their past. They deserve no future for what they have done. Their death is long overdue."
"It all ties in with the mysterious Penumbra project, doesn't it? You're the one who originally tried to destroy it." She hesitated again. "It's my duty to protect Haynes and Cooper, you know."
He said nothing for a long moment, but his thoughts continued to circle. She could almost see them, a blaze of unhappiness as bright as the sun.
"Though I rejoice their deaths, as I said, I am not the one killing the scientists."
"Who then?"
"Hopeworth has realized that their reconditioning is not as strong with some as they thought. You are not the only one Allars has talked to."
So Hopeworth was killing the scientists? Why, then, did they send those cars out to collect Allars and the others? "If our murderer has talked to him, why wouldn't she have killed him? Especially since Haynes and his mates were on the project that Emma was involved in?"
"Sometimes it is better to leave foe alive."
"Like you've left Gabriel alive?"
The fierce sunshine of his unseen smile rippled through her again. "Stern plays an important part in our future. As much as I want to destroy him, I can't."
Our future? Her and this stranger had some sort of future together? Now that was a scary thought.
"These questions are not the reason you called me here, Samantha. What really troubles you?"
"I'm selling my apartment." Why she came out with that, she wasn't entirely sure. It was a guess, maybe. This stranger seemed to know an awful lot about a past she couldn't remember. Maybe he'd also know an awful lot about the apartment she'd inherited.