Taking Light {Sequel: "For Love of Evil"}

-25-

Lyra knew that Roman Godfrey had an ego to match his height, but was beginning to see just how his pride surpassed it. She hadn't spoken to Roman in two months—eight weeks.

Lyra was officially halfway through the pregnancy. The fetus now actually resembling that of a baby; a small person with arms and legs—the makings of a small human with a distinct face. She could see the shape of it's nose, the way it's upper lip slightly protruded into a pucker. It was amazing... but also, depressing.

Lyra was experiencing it alone, the supposed joy and wonder of motherhood everyone spoke so highly of was not what others had expressed, nor what television depicted. She was overwhelmed and most of the time, terrified. Stress was an understatement regarding Lyra's mentality.

She was still angry with Roman; but once a week, every week, Lyra missed him. Every week, Lyra found herself in the basement of the Godfrey Institute. She and Johann were becoming close—his presence like a caring uncle. It made her wonder if that was how Shelley had felt about the meticulous scientist.

Lyra sat up in the table, cradling her extended belly. The bulge would lay in her lap whenever she sat now—the makings of an angelic baby that Johann insisted was anything but.

The treatment had been a success; Lyra had regained all of her abilities to see inside ones mind if she tried. She discovered that when experiencing an intense emotion, she could see everything without prying—she could feel everything someone felt in any memory.

She had noticed it the last time she saw Roman; when storming out of his soundproof room, trying to strangle him to death. She had been so livid he had locked her away like some kind of animal—putting her away while he and Peter went off to play Sherlock and Watson.

She saw everything they had done that night—from Peter finding her mother's necklace, to the dread Roman felt when knowing he would have to break the news to her. Lyra could swear that she saw it all; no one could hide under a veil of lies in her presence—not even Ares if he tried. Which was why she was sure he had fled.

Ares Cambion had gone without a single trace. The house she had resided in before her death by the hands of Olivia was left abandoned; no one knew where Ares had gone—not even Johann Pryce.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You may." Johann spoke indirectly to Lyra with his eyes to the screen of his computer. He documented Lyra's progress for the week. Before she had time to ask her question, Pryce spoke again. "Does it have something to do with Roman?"

"No. About my dad, actually." Johann's eyes wavered Lyra's way—they were wide and filled with uncertainty. "You probably knew him better than anyone. What was so special about him? What made him so... great, in your eyes? You reached out to him after the incident, when he was terminated for malpractice... why?" Lyra crossed her legs, leaning back on the steel table. She eyed Doctor Pryce skeptically, trying to catch a glimpse of Ares in his thoughts—there was nothing.

Her father had been so crafty in who he was and in his abilities that he had somehow managed to block his own presence in other's memories. Lyra wondered if she too were able to do that, but still couldn't figure out how. It made her second guess herself—perhaps she wasn't strong enough to ward off her father—perhaps that's not why he fled.

"Miss Cambion, there are things about your father that even I had been blind to. For instance, his involvement with the murders. Although, I can contest that it is all heresy, the evidence speaks for itself." Johann continued typing away at the keys, staring blankly ahead at the monitor.

Lyra caught something—a flicker of an image in Pryce's mind. Something pink in a glass jar—something resembling an embryo. She blinked; when her eyes closed, she saw Pryce observing the laboratory vase... it was in fact, a fetus. Although she couldn't see her father, she was well aware that Ares was present in the memory—why else would Johann be thinking of it?