Nathan discovered very quickly that University College had no intention of allowing him to become comfortable merely because he had ceased being a student.
As a student there had always been, somewhere, a boundary to the day. A lecture ended. A practical concluded. A paper was handed in and ceased to belong to him. He had ignored those boundaries often enough, staying after dark until Martin or Starling found him still bent over a specimen, but the choice had remained his. Employment altered that. The first morning Nathan entered the physiological laboratory as a demonstrator he possessed a key of his own, a small salary attached to his name and the private satisfaction of being allowed through doors he had once waited outside. Forty minutes later one student had connected an apparatus incorrectly, another had forgotten an explanation Nathan had given him twice during the previous week, a third had broken a glass tube while somehow remaining convinced that glass itself was responsible, and Starling had appeared beside Nathan's bench to announce that eight additional students would be joining a practical originally prepared for six. Nathan had looked across the room, then back at him, and said, "You knew there were eight before I finished arranging six places." Starling had not bothered denying it. "And now you know as well." Nathan stared at him for a moment, realised no further explanation was coming, and muttered something about having liked the man better before becoming his employee. Starling merely replied, "No, you didn't," and walked away before Nathan could argue.
He was right.
Nathan's first months as a demonstrator taught him almost as much as being a student had, though in a way he had not expected. Knowing something and making another person know it were different skills. His instinct when a student made an obvious mistake was to reach over and correct it. Starling broke him of that habit with almost malicious efficiency. One afternoon a young man named Harris spent several minutes staring helplessly at an arrangement which Nathan could see was wrong from several feet away. When Harris finally asked where he had gone astray, Nathan pointed out the reversed connection immediately. The student corrected it, tried again and produced another impossible result. Nathan saw the second mistake just as quickly and reached out before stopping himself. He could almost hear Platt from years earlier telling him that an answer placed into another man's hand proved nothing about whether that man understood it. Nathan put both hands behind his back instead and asked Harris what he was actually attempting to measure. Harris answered. Nathan asked what result should follow. The young man began confidently enough, faltered, returned to the mechanism rather than the figures and then abruptly stopped with the peculiar expression Nathan had learned to recognise as understanding arriving. "Oh," Harris said. Nathan smiled. "Yes." Harris looked embarrassed. "That was obvious." Nathan's smile faded a little. "It wasn't obvious five minutes ago." When Harris muttered that Nathan had seen it immediately, Nathan answered, more quietly than he intended, "I've had five minutes before too."
He thought about that exchange for the rest of the day. There was something unexpectedly satisfying in watching knowledge appear in another person's mind. Nathan had always treated understanding as possession: something acquired, guarded, stolen if necessary. Teaching made it multiplication instead. He began to understand why Platt had tolerated him when Nathan had first arrived demanding explanations for everything and accepting none of them without testing the edges. The revelation did not make him less argumentative, but it did make him somewhat kinder to the people still learning beneath him.
Trust came without ceremony. There was no morning upon which Starling announced that Nathan Drake had become a trusted demonstrator. Instead Nathan noticed that fewer instructions accompanied his work. A cupboard which had once required permission simply acquired a key on his ring. Practical classes were left in his hands for longer stretches. If apparatus failed, Starling expected Nathan to determine whether the machine, preparation or student was at fault before troubling him. The first time Starling left the laboratory without telling Nathan what to do next, Nathan stood staring after him until one of the students asked whether something was wrong. Nathan had almost laughed. "No," he said. "Apparently everything is."
Martin began borrowing him before that first year had ended. It started with polite notes sent across the College asking whether Starling could spare Drake for an afternoon in pathology. Starling would complain, write something rude beneath the request and send Nathan anyway. Soon notes became appearances. Martin would arrive at the laboratory door, look at Nathan and say, "I need him," as though discussing an instrument rather than a man. Starling would refuse without looking up. The arguments were so predictable that Nathan eventually stopped pretending not to enjoy them. On one occasion Martin explained that specimens had arrived and two younger men seemed determined to see what they expected rather than what was actually in front of them. Starling replied that this sounded like pathology's problem. Martin looked at the apparatus Nathan was arranging and asked whether Starling truly required his best demonstrator to align tubes. Nathan interrupted at that point and said, "I thought the College employed me." Both professors turned toward him. Martin smiled. Starling did not. By the following week Minchin had heard the story and Nathan found himself intercepted in corridors by zoologists as well.
The College gradually developed the habit of treating him as something communal.
He might begin a morning demonstrating circulation, disappear for an hour because Martin wanted a pathological preparation examined by someone who would not rush to classify it, then return through a corridor only for Minchin to stop him with a specimen and ask whether he saw anything unusual. Nathan once returned to physiology near evening and found a note on his bench in Starling's enormous handwriting asking whether Mr. Drake remained employed by the physiological department or had transferred himself to the Faculty at large. Nathan wrote beneath it, Your handwriting remains the largest, and left the note where Starling would find it. He expected it to be thrown away. Months later he saw the same piece of paper tucked among Starling's things and never asked why.
His official position changed more slowly than his actual one, but not by much. The College had junior academic grades and appointments beneath the great chairs held by men such as Starling, Martin and Minchin, and Nathan climbed through them with a speed which would have embarrassed him if he had possessed less confidence in the work behind it. Demonstrator became experienced demonstrator in everything but formal wording, then work equivalent to that of a senior assistant and junior lecturer followed. Students who entered after him ceased treating Nathan as the unusually knowledgeable man standing beside their professor and began regarding him as one of the men from whom instruction itself came. Platt once referred to Nathan casually as "one of our younger academic men" during a conversation and Nathan stopped speaking altogether. Platt noticed immediately and asked what was wrong. Nathan said nothing was. Platt pointed out that Nathan had been formally employed for years. Nathan knew that. What he could not explain was that hearing our staff had felt dangerously close to hearing our family.
University College had become a place Nathan knew in the intimate manner people usually knew homes. He knew which corridor floorboard clicked beneath too much weight and which laboratory window stuck during wet weather. He knew the clerk who became unhelpful after luncheon and the one who could be persuaded into almost anything if approached before it. He knew that Martin's patience deteriorated with hunger, that Minchin could be diverted from irritation by something biologically peculiar, and that Starling used Nathan's surname in several different tones despite apparently believing himself incapable of doing so. Men there knew Nathan as well, or believed they did. That was the dangerous part.
They knew a young Englishman who had survived Tsavo, arrived with an irregular education and turned out to possess an almost pathological appetite for science. They knew he looked somewhat older than when he arrived because Nathan had made certain that he did. A faint line near one eye. A little weight in the face. Occasional tiredness around the mouth. Hair worn differently. Nothing dramatic, only the small erosion expected of a man who worked too much and slept too little.
None of it happened naturally.
Years had passed since Africa.
Nathan had not aged.
That fact had moved from suspicion to evidence so gradually that Nathan had almost resented it. Two years could be dismissed. Four were harder. Beneath every adjustment Nathan deliberately introduced remained exactly the same biological form which had walked from the mountain. Twenty-five, if that number could still mean anything.
The same years which made the problem of age more serious also pushed his private research into territory the College could not be allowed to see.
At first his work had been almost respectable. He examined his own blood because he expected some obvious abnormality and was disappointed to find that, under the instruments available to him, it resembled human blood perfectly well. That failure taught him more than a dramatic result might have done. Whatever Nathan had become did not merely imitate a human silhouette. The imitation extended downward through tissue. Blood appeared as blood. Skin possessed the expected layers. Muscle looked like muscle. A fragment taken from an organ he chose to possess looked, at the scale available to contemporary microscopy, like the organ it claimed to be.
Nathan did not consciously create those structures.
That became the problem.
When he altered a hand, he did not think of each capillary. When he formed a liver, he did not arrange microscopic architecture one cell at a time. He simply intended a human liver to exist and something within him supplied everything required to make that intention anatomically convincing. Whatever biological information the red sea had retained operated beneath conscious thought.
Nathan began comparing tissue taken from himself in different states. He recorded variations, discarded theories and became increasingly careful about keeping his true notebooks away from College property. Most samples behaved like ordinary tissue once separated.
Some did not.
The first fragment that moved nearly ended his research at University College altogether.
It was tiny. So small that anyone entering the room would have seen nothing more than biological material upon glass. Nathan had removed it from himself, placed nutrient material nearby and watched. At first nothing happened. Then the fragment drew itself across the surface.
Nathan froze.
Not contracted.
Moved.
Toward nourishment.
The motion was slight enough that another man might have doubted his own eyes. Nathan did not. He repeated the observation once and then destroyed the sample completely, standing over the heat until nothing biological remained.
The next morning Starling found him unusually quiet and asked whether he was ill. Nathan answered, without thinking, "I don't become ill." Starling's eyebrow rose. Nathan corrected himself quickly: "Often." Starling remarked that healthy men generally put the qualifying word first and moved on.
Nathan sat perfectly still until he was gone.
He needed privacy.
The conclusion had existed for months, but the moving tissue made it unavoidable. University College could supply microscopes, reagents, glassware, animal material, laboratories and legitimate scientific cover. It could not supply secrecy. A servant might enter. Another academic might borrow equipment. A student might return for a forgotten book. A porter could notice light under a door at an unusual hour. Even if Nathan could control every person, he could not control every accident.
Then came the experiment that removed what remained of his hesitation.
He placed a minute fragment of his own tissue against fresh animal tissue under controlled conditions.
For several minutes nothing happened.
Then the boundary vanished.
There was no gradual invasion Nathan could identify. No obvious inflammatory response. No visible struggle between two tissues.
There were simply two things.
And then there was one.
Nathan attempted to separate them.
He could not determine where one ended.
He destroyed everything.
For a long time afterward he sat alone in the laboratory with his hands on either side of the microscope, listening involuntarily to the building around him. A porter below. Footsteps across stone. Two men speaking somewhere toward the entrance. Human beings separated from what he was doing by walls thin enough that Nathan could hear the fluid move through their throats when they swallowed.
He needed land.
Distance.
Cellars.
A place where a failed experiment could move across a table and the first consequence would not be a student opening the door.
The problem was money.
Nathan possessed more of it than the man who had arrived from Tsavo could ever have imagined. The Railway reward remained partly invested. His academic salary had increased as his standing grew. Legitimate research expenses were paid through the College when the work could be justified. But a private country estate, laboratories, animals, servants kept far enough away not to notice things and eventually underground construction required wealth of another order.
Nathan could wait.
That was the sensible solution.
Another decade of university work would bring reputation. Reputation would bring income and connections. Investments would mature. He could purchase a modest property and expand it.
Ten years.
Nathan considered the number and disliked it immediately.
Ten years had ceased meaning the same thing to him as it did to other men.
If time had stopped touching him, then waiting was easy.
But waiting also increased the chance that someone else would notice.
He needed a second life before the first became impossible.
The idea of taking an estate from someone else did not arrive as a moment of madness. It appeared as a practical answer and remained in Nathan's mind long enough for him to examine it from every direction.
That was, perhaps, what made it worse.
He did not simply choose a wealthy man and decide to kill him.
Nathan had become too methodical for that.
He constructed requirements.
The owner must have no wife whose life would be destroyed by his disappearance. Preferably no children. The estate needed privacy rather than grandeur, enough land that excavation and animal work could be hidden. Its owner should possess sufficient wealth that scientific equipment and unusual deliveries would not cause immediate suspicion.
And Nathan wanted the man to be someone he could kill without spending the following century regretting it.
He did not pretend that made what he intended moral.
That distinction mattered.
Nathan knew exactly what he wanted: another man's property, money, identity and legal existence.
If the owner happened to be reprehensible, that did not transform theft and murder into justice.
It merely made them easier to live with.
He began reading newspapers differently.
Scandals interested him more than politics. Financial proceedings more than speeches. Nathan learned names belonging to men who seemed repeatedly able to wound others without losing the comfort of their own homes. He discarded most of them. Some were merely stupid. Some were unpleasant but had families Nathan had no interest in harming. Some were guilty of ordinary selfishness which, however distasteful, did not seem sufficient reason for Nathan to absorb their entire lives.
Then Alexander Meyrick Broadley kept appearing.
Broadley was older than Nathan would have preferred, already in his fifties, but almost everything else suited the requirement. He was unmarried. Wealthy. Socially connected. A barrister, writer, collector and political operator whose name had become entangled with the financial schemes of Ernest Terah Hooley. Respectability had survived scandal with a persistence Nathan found almost impressive. Men who lacked Broadley's money or connections had suffered the consequences of schemes from which Broadley had emerged damaged but intact.
Most importantly, Broadley possessed a house in Dorset.
The Knapp, at Bradpole.
Nathan went to see it before deciding anything.
Not as Nathan Drake.
He had become increasingly sophisticated about disguise because calling what he did disguise was becoming almost insulting. Clothes could be recognised. Faces could not if the face had never existed before. For the first journey he chose a narrow man in his thirties with pale eyes, a forgettable moustache and shoulders reduced enough that anyone who knew Nathan from University College would have walked past without hesitation.
The countryside unfolded around the train in long stretches of winter green and brown. London loosened its grip. Factories gave way to fields, then villages, hedges and stone. Nathan had forgotten how quiet England became once the city ended. The absence of thousands of human heartbeats pressed against him almost like silence after machinery.
Bradpole itself was small enough to make him cautious. London allowed anonymity through excess; villages remembered strangers because there were fewer of them. Nathan did not ask unnecessary questions. He walked.
The first sight of The Knapp settled part of the matter.
The house stood among its grounds with exactly the kind of self-conscious dignity Nathan had expected from Broadley, substantial without being aristocratically enormous, picturesque enough to announce that its owner wished the world to understand he was a gentleman of taste. Nathan watched from a distance while clouds moved above the trees.
He saw more than a house.
He saw cellars that could be deepened.
He saw outbuildings which could become laboratories.
He saw land broad enough to keep animals away from servants.
He saw deliveries arriving without neighbours counting boxes.
He saw a gentleman's private scientific enthusiasm explaining equipment which would have looked suspicious entering the lodgings of a university academic.
Nathan stood on the rise for almost an hour.
Then he returned to London.
He did nothing for weeks.
That was deliberate.
Martin had taught him not to mistake a desirable conclusion for evidence.
Nathan learned Broadley before deciding whether Broadley deserved to become the solution.
He followed him in London because Dorset was too intimate for repeated surveillance. Broadley moved through clubs, booksellers, dinners, business meetings and the tangled society of men who remained welcome because intelligence, usefulness and money could often outlive reputation. Nathan never followed him twice in the same body.
Once he was an elderly clerk.
Another time a red-haired labourer.
Once a foreign student wearing an excellent coat passed Broadley at close distance and received no more attention than a lamppost.
Nathan learned something important during those months.
Invisibility did not require hiding.
It required being the sort of person nobody remembered seeing.
Broadley proved interesting.
Not monstrous.
Nathan almost wished he had been.
Monsters made decisions cleaner.
Broadley was simply a man who had learned to justify himself.
Nathan watched charm appear whenever charm was useful. Irritation appeared when it was not. He watched Broadley leave a meeting with two men whose financial distress showed plainly enough in their faces and spend less than half a minute visibly annoyed before recognising an acquaintance across the road. Broadley's expression transformed. Warmth appeared. Laughter followed.
Nathan recognised that skill.
Faces were tools.
Broadley merely possessed one.
Nathan possessed thousands.
He continued watching.
Public scandal had not created humility Nathan could detect. The man remained clever, acquisitive and perfectly capable of separating personal consequence from the damage surrounding him.
That was sufficient.
Not righteous.
Sufficient.
Meanwhile Nathan's two lives began colliding in small ways.
One evening Martin found him late for work and remarked that Nathan seemed distracted. Nathan denied it. Martin pointed out that he had asked the same question twice during the previous day.
Nathan felt real alarm.
He had never repeated questions.
"I was tired."
Martin's expression became suspicious.
"Tired."
"Yes."
"You."
"I am physically capable of fatigue."
"I await evidence."
Nathan laughed and changed the subject.
But the warning remained.
He had begun spending too much thought upon Broadley while standing beside microscopes.
It was time.
The night Nathan chose was wet.
He preferred rain for practical reasons. People stayed indoors. Windows remained closed. Roads emptied earlier. A man walking with his collar turned high attracted less curiosity when everyone else looked the same.
Nathan travelled from London as himself.
That mattered because people could remember seeing Nathan Drake leave the city in an ordinary manner. He spent much of the railway journey reading a scientific volume, occasionally writing notes like any academic incapable of wasting a carriage ride.
Several stops before Dorset, the book closed.
Nathan left the train wearing another face.
By the time he reached the country roads, the rain had become finer, almost mist, clinging to hedges and black branches. He carried a lantern because a traveller without one would be stranger than a traveller with one. He extinguished it only after leaving any reasonable road.
The Knapp emerged from darkness gradually.
Roofline.
Stone.
Windows.
A gentleman's country house asleep beneath rain.
Nathan waited among trees.
He could hear the building.
Human bodies were not silent to him anymore.
Servants occupied different portions of the house. Someone remained awake downstairs longer than the others. A dog shifted outside, lifted its head and gave a low uncertain sound when Nathan's scent reached it. Nathan became very still.
The dog did not recognise him as man.
Nor animal.
Nathan had noticed that before.
He altered his scent slightly toward something more ordinary.
The dog settled.
Eventually the last wakeful servant went to bed.
Nathan crossed the grounds.
There was nothing dramatic about entering.
No broken window.
No desperate climb.
Human architecture was designed around assumptions about human bodies. Nathan no longer respected those assumptions. A lock made for fingers and metal was not especially meaningful to something capable of changing the shape of the fingers using it.
He entered quietly.
Inside, the house smelled of extinguished fire, wax, polished wood and human sleep.
Nathan stopped in the entrance and listened.
Broadley's heart beat above him.
Slow.
Regular.
Sleeping.
Nathan walked toward it.
Portraits became pale rectangles in darkness. Cabinets held things gathered from elsewhere in the world, possessions intended to say something about their owner. Nathan paused briefly beside one object because a memory which did not belong originally to him recognised its origin.
Hargreaves perhaps.
Or Harcourt.
It did not matter.
He continued upstairs.
Broadley's bedroom door stood closed.
Nathan rested one hand against it.
On the other side a man's heart beat.
Starling would have called it normal.
Nathan knew the approximate pressure the blood exerted. Knew the sequence of valves. Knew what the man's breathing suggested about depth of sleep.
University had given scientific names to the processes of a body Nathan was about to erase.
He opened the door.
Broadley lay beneath heavy bedding, one arm outside the covers, his face softened by sleep into something less guarded than the man Nathan had followed for months.
Nathan stood beside him.
For a while he did nothing.
The waiting mattered.
Not because Nathan expected his conscience to stop him.
Because he wanted the choice to remain a choice.
Broadley was not attacking him.
Nathan was not starving.
No lion stood over Patterson.
No soldier was searching the trees.
This was murder for advantage.
Nathan said the words inside his own mind.
He wanted the estate.
Broadley possessed it.
Broadley had harmed others badly enough that Nathan did not expect guilt to outweigh usefulness.
The second truth did not cleanse the first.
Nathan found that clarity preferable to righteousness.
Broadley woke.
It happened suddenly, perhaps because some part of the nervous system older than thought recognised another creature beside the bed.
His eyes opened.
For one heartbeat there was only confusion.
Then he saw a man he did not know standing over him.
"Who—"
Nathan placed one hand against his chest.
Broadley tried to rise.
Nathan felt the heartbeat accelerate immediately.
Adrenal response.
Respiration changed.
Muscles tightened.
Fear was physiology before it became emotion.
Nathan knew every step now.
Then his hand stopped being entirely a hand.
The skin did not split as a wound. It opened as structure.
Dark red material unfolded through the fingers and palm in fine branching lines, spreading across Broadley's nightshirt faster than his waking mind could make sense of what he was seeing. Broadley's mouth opened.
Nathan prevented the scream.
His eyes remained free.
That was the part Nathan would remember.
Broadley looking at him.
Seeing, for the final seconds of a long clever life, something no category he possessed could contain.
Then Nathan touched the man more deeply.
The distinction between them failed.
Nathan had consumed enough by then to know the first physical sensation would not be pain exactly. It was acquisition. Matter ceased belonging to one system and became available to another.
Broadley came apart without blood crossing the sheets.
Nathan absorbed skin, muscle, bone, organs, old scars and all the cellular detail his conscious mind could not name individually.
Then the memories arrived.
They were always worse.
The bedroom disappeared.
Nathan saw heat somewhere abroad.
Courtrooms.
Papers.
Conversations.
Money changing direction.
Hooley.
Men Nathan had read about now possessed voices.
Deals which had existed in public records as dry allegations unfolded from inside the memory of one of the men present.
But memory did not arrive morally sorted.
There was no file labelled reprehensible.
Broadley came whole.
A child's fear.
A young man's ambition.
Moments of kindness performed without advantage.
Cruelties justified before they were committed.
Humiliations.
Desire.
Pride.
Loneliness.
The elaborate private machinery by which an intelligent man had spent decades explaining himself to himself.
Nathan bowed his head.
For a few terrible moments he understood Broadley better than anyone who had ever loved or hated him.
Then there was no Broadley left in the bed.
Only Nathan.
The sheets fell flat.
He stood there in the rain-softened silence with one human hand resting upon nothing.
The consumption had been easier than the first ones.
That disturbed Nathan.
The first lives absorbed beneath the mountain had nearly drowned him. Later ones had overwhelmed him less. Now his mind organised the dead almost automatically.
Memories folded into place.
Skills settled.
Habits became available.
Nathan knew which servant downstairs disliked being woken before seven.
He knew where the estate papers were kept.
He knew which correspondence required answers.
He knew the route Broadley habitually took through the house at night.
He knew the exact pressure Broadley used when signing his name.
He knew which floorboard near the western room complained during damp weather.
The Knapp was no longer unfamiliar.
Nathan turned toward the mirror.
For a moment his own chosen face stared back.
Twenty-five.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
Then Nathan let memory guide flesh.
His height altered slightly.
Shoulders changed.
Weight redistributed.
The youthful severity of Nathan's face softened and aged. Lines formed where Broadley had carried them. Hair receded. Skin loosened fractionally around the eyes. Hands became older, their veins and joints precisely reproduced.
Nathan did not need a photograph.
He possessed the original instructions now.
When the transformation ended, Alexander Meyrick Broadley stood before the mirror.
Nathan raised one hand.
The reflection followed.
He smiled.
Wrong.
The expression belonged to Nathan wearing Broadley's face.
Nathan searched memory.
He smiled again.
This time the mouth lifted exactly as Broadley's had when persuading another man that an idea had been his own.
Nathan felt something cold move through him.
He opened his mouth.
"You have become rather useful."
Broadley's voice answered.
Perfect.
Nathan laughed once.
Broadley's laugh filled the bedroom.
He stopped quickly.
Sound was different from memory when heard outside the skull.
Nathan walked to where Broadley's dressing gown hung.
He had not looked for it.
He had simply known.
He put it on.
The fabric smelled familiar.
Not to Nathan.
To Broadley.
That sensation unsettled him enough that he stood still for several seconds.
There was no consuming only the parts of a man one found convenient.
Nathan had wanted Broadley's estate, wealth and legal identity.
He had also taken the feeling of returning home after travel, the childhood meaning of certain rooms, old affection for objects Nathan would otherwise have considered useless, the emotional geography of an entire human life.
The house had become familiar by violence.
Nathan went to the window.
Rain silvered the grounds.
He allowed his vision to sharpen beyond anything Broadley had ever possessed.
The estate opened before him.
Trees.
Outbuildings.
Earth.
Distance.
Space.
Enough.
He imagined rooms beneath the house.
Stone.
Drainage.
Ventilation.
Benches.
Cages far below where servants would not hear them.
Equipment purchased by a wealthy gentleman who had developed a sudden interest in supporting biological research.
Nathan Drake could continue at University College.
Broadley could become patron.
Money could move legally from one life into the other without anyone seeing the same hand behind both.
Nathan's thoughts accelerated.
Then one of Broadley's childhood memories surfaced again.
He shut it away.
That was the price.
Nathan had selected Broadley partly because he wanted a man he could reduce to moral arithmetic.
Consumption refused him the comfort.
Every reprehensible person remained a person.
There had been moments when Broadley had been loved.
Moments when he had deserved it.
There had been kindness.
Fear.
Sincerity.
Nathan had killed all of those along with everything else because the whole man came attached to the estate he wanted.
He felt no overwhelming regret.
But he also refused to lie to himself.
Broadley had been human.
Nathan had murdered him.
The fact that Broadley had done harm did not turn Nathan into justice.
It merely made the memory easier to carry.
He remained at the window until the rain weakened.
Tomorrow the servants would see Broadley descend to breakfast.
London would see Broadley again eventually.
Nathan Drake would continue teaching physiology.
Martin would still borrow him.
Minchin would still send inconvenient specimens.
Starling would still complain that Nathan belonged to too many departments.
Nobody would connect the young academic in London with the older bachelor gentleman in Dorset.
Not yet.
Nathan looked at Broadley's reflection in the dark window.
That word mattered.
Yet.
The estate solved the immediate research problem.
It also gave Nathan something he had not realised he needed until the answer existed in front of him.
A second identity capable of ageing independently from the first.
Nathan Drake could not remain twenty-five forever.
Broadley was already older.
Eventually Broadley could die.
A nephew could inherit.
Or a son no one had met.
A reclusive relation from abroad.
Faces could resemble one another in families without anyone finding resemblance suspicious.
A manor passed down through generations could become an anchor across decades.
Perhaps centuries.
A family whose members never stood together in the same room because every member was Nathan.
The thought grew quietly.
Too quietly.
Nathan smiled at the window.
Broadley smiled back.
Tomorrow would require letters, servants, habits and the careful continuation of a man's life long enough to make whatever came next believable.
That could wait until morning.
For now Nathan stood inside the first property he had ever truly possessed, wearing the face of the man from whom he had taken it, and listened to rain fall across land beneath which he intended to build something no university professor would ever be permitted to see.
For years University College had given Nathan rooms in which to study life.
Now he had somewhere to study himself.
..For several weeks after Alexander Meyrick Broadley died, Nathan kept him alive.
Not continuously.
That would have been unnecessary, and Nathan had no intention of surrendering his own life merely because another man's was now useful to him. Nathan Drake still taught at University College. He still stood beside Starling during practical work, still found himself borrowed by Martin and Minchin whenever somebody required his peculiar combination of patience, memory and scientific instinct. Students still saw him crossing corridors with books beneath one arm. Clerks still handed him messages. Penrose still wrote occasionally. To anyone observing Nathan's life from the outside, little had changed except that he had become busier and had begun travelling more often.
Broadley existed in the spaces Nathan left behind.
That distinction mattered.
There were never two men.
No servant at The Knapp could see Broadley while Nathan Drake lectured in London. No student could pass Nathan in a corridor while Broadley waited in another room. Nathan could create faces, voices and bodies, but he had not discovered how to divide his consciousness into two independent people, nor did he know whether he ever would. Every appearance therefore had to be constructed around absence.
At first the limitation seemed inconvenient.
Then Nathan realised it made the deception more convincing.
People rarely expected to see two acquaintances simultaneously. They only expected one life to leave evidence in the places where it belonged.
So Nathan made evidence.
The first weeks were spent almost entirely as Broadley whenever Nathan could plausibly be away from the College. He travelled to Dorset, returned to London, answered correspondence, spoke with servants and was seen by acquaintances. Broadley's old life possessed enough motion that allowing him to vanish abruptly would have created precisely the questions Nathan wished to avoid. Instead the man seemed diminished. Less social. Less energetic. Still himself, certainly, but increasingly withdrawn.
Nathan used the dead man's memories relentlessly.
Broadley had known how he held his walking stick, how quickly he climbed the stairs at The Knapp, which acquaintances deserved warmth and which received only civility. Nathan did not impersonate these habits from observation. He remembered performing them.
That remained the most unsettling part.
Whenever Nathan became Broadley, he did not feel as though he were wearing an older man's body. He knew which coat was comfortable before touching it. He knew where the spectacles had been placed the previous evening. When the housekeeper mentioned an account, Nathan remembered the earlier conversation in which Broadley had complained about it.
There were moments when Nathan had to stop and deliberately remind himself:
That happened to him.
Not me.
Broadley was information inside him.
Nothing more.
Nathan repeated that often.
He was never entirely convinced.
The visits to University College were more difficult, because there Nathan had to create the impression that Broadley and Nathan Drake possessed a relationship without ever allowing anyone enough access to discover that the relationship had only one participant.
The solution came almost embarrassingly naturally.
Nathan knew the College better than anyone Broadley could reasonably have known it.
One afternoon he announced that he would be occupied privately after his practical work and asked not to be disturbed. Nobody found that remarkable. Nathan had spent years disappearing behind doors with books and specimens. Starling was elsewhere. A junior student saw Nathan enter one of the small rooms adjoining the physiological workspaces carrying papers beneath his arm.
The door closed.
Nathan waited.
He could hear the student continue down the corridor.
Another set of footsteps passed.
A door opened somewhere farther away.
Then silence.
Nathan locked his room from inside.
His coat came off first.
Not because he needed to remove it.
Because Broadley could not emerge wearing Nathan Drake's clothes.
Nathan had prepared for that.
A small case containing Broadley's coat, collar and other necessities had already been placed in an adjoining service space earlier that morning, carried in as ordinary material nobody had reason to inspect closely. Nathan stepped toward the far wall, listened again and allowed his human shape to loosen.
The change was nothing like becoming another man.
It was the absence of becoming a man at all.
His shoulders collapsed without breaking. Ribs ceased behaving like ribs. The vertical architecture of the human body surrendered itself in silence as muscle, bone and organ lost their obligation to remain anatomically separate. Nathan sank.
Within seconds there was no young academic standing in the room.
A dark, wet-looking mass spread across the floor.
It was not truly liquid.
Nathan understood that now.
There was structure throughout it, microscopic organisation more sophisticated than anything beneath the College's microscopes could have shown. But to the human eye it would have resembled a puddle of something darkly red-black, thick enough to move with intention and thin enough to disappear beneath gaps no man could pass.
Nathan flowed beneath the narrow space behind a cabinet and into the old service opening he had noticed months earlier.
He felt no fear of suffocation.
No disorientation.
His consciousness did not require a skull.
That fact still disturbed him.
The first time he had reduced himself so completely he had stopped halfway through and reconstructed a head simply because thinking without one felt obscene.
Now he moved without hesitation.
The mass passed through darkness behind the rooms, flattened where necessary, gathered itself again and slipped into the unoccupied space where Broadley's clothing waited.
Then Nathan rose.
A spine formed first because Nathan expected one.
That interested him.
He made a note mentally to test whether sequence mattered.
Pelvis. Legs. Ribs. Shoulders.
Flesh climbed around the structure.
Age came afterward.
Broadley's heavier distribution of tissue settled across the frame. The face emerged with its older lines, receding hair, softened jaw and particular arrangement around the eyes. Nathan allowed one knee to become slightly stiff because Broadley had possessed that imperfection and forgetting it would be more conspicuous than reproducing it.
Less than a minute after Nathan Drake had vanished from a locked room, Alexander Meyrick Broadley buttoned his coat in another.
Nathan looked into the small mirror he had brought.
Broadley looked back.
Nathan tilted his head.
The movement was too young.
He corrected it.
There.
He took the walking stick and left.
By the time he reached the main corridor there was no reason for anyone to connect him with Nathan's absence.
Broadley asked for Mr. Drake.
That was the important part.
A porter directed him toward physiology.
Nathan made himself slightly impatient.
"Mr. Drake is expecting me."
The porter looked uncertain.
"I believe he is occupied at present, sir."
"Yes. With me."
Broadley smiled.
The man yielded immediately.
Nathan walked through corridors he had crossed thousands of times while experiencing the bizarre sensation of being a stranger in them.
Several students passed.
One nodded politely.
Another stared for half a moment because Broadley was unmistakably a gentleman of means and therefore potentially important.
Nathan found that useful.
He stopped near the room where everyone believed Nathan Drake to be working privately.
The door remained closed.
That mattered.
Nathan had locked it earlier.
Anyone checking would find precisely what they expected: Drake occupied and unwilling to be interrupted.
Broadley waited outside.
Soon Harris appeared.
Nathan had not planned for that, but accidents were part of any good experiment.
Harris slowed.
"Can I help you, sir?"
Broadley regarded him.
"I am here to see Mr. Drake."
Harris glanced toward the closed door.
"He said he was not to be disturbed."
Nathan nearly smiled.
Perfect.
Broadley allowed mild irritation to pass through his face.
"He is expecting me."
Harris hesitated.
Nathan knew exactly what Harris would do next because Nathan had taught the boy long enough to know his instincts.
"I can knock."
"No."
The answer came slightly too sharply.
Harris paused.
Nathan softened Broadley's expression.
"There is no need. Our business is private, and Drake knows I am coming."
Harris nodded, though curiosity had plainly awakened.
Nathan lowered his voice slightly.
"I am Alexander Broadley."
Recognition was not immediate.
That too was useful.
Broadley's name existed in newspapers and financial circles, not necessarily in the mind of every physiology student.
Harris offered his hand.
Nathan shook it.
"Thomas Harris."
"I know."
Harris blinked.
Nathan felt the mistake instantly.
Broadley corrected smoothly.
"Drake mentioned you."
That produced exactly the reaction Nathan wanted.
Harris looked pleased.
"He did?"
"Briefly."
Broadley turned toward the closed door.
"I believe I shall wait."
Harris continued on.
Nathan listened until his footsteps vanished.
Then Broadley entered an adjacent corridor.
He did not open Nathan's locked room.
That would have required explaining why Broadley possessed the key.
Instead he moved into the second room he had prepared, closed the door and became a puddle again.
The transformation was even faster this time.
Broadley's older body collapsed inward, clothing left carefully arranged where Nathan could retrieve it later. Red-black mass flattened to the floor, slipped through the hidden service gap and moved behind the wall.
Several yards.
A turn.
The narrow space opened behind Nathan's original room.
He gathered himself beneath the cabinet.
A hand formed.
Then an arm.
The rest of Nathan followed.
Within moments Nathan Drake was crouched naked behind the furniture.
He dressed.
Unlocked the door.
Then waited another five minutes.
That was important too.
When Nathan eventually emerged, Harris happened to be returning from another practical room.
"Mr. Drake."
Nathan looked up.
"Harris."
"That gentleman found you, then?"
Nathan allowed a fraction of irritation into his expression.
"Yes."
"What did he want?"
Nathan stared at him.
Harris immediately regretted asking.
"Sorry."
Nathan's expression softened.
"Private business."
Harris nodded and escaped before curiosity defeated good manners a second time.
Nathan watched him go.
By supper, at least three students knew that Alexander Broadley had visited Nathan Drake.
By the end of the week, Martin knew.
Nathan had learned that information inside universities moved according to laws no physicist had adequately described.
Martin mentioned it while they worked.
"Broadley."
Nathan did not look up.
"What about him?"
"He came to see you."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Nathan adjusted the specimen beneath the lens.
"Private business."
Martin stared at the side of his head.
Nathan could feel it.
"That phrase is becoming irritating."
"Then stop asking."
"What business does Alexander Broadley have with a physiologist?"
Nathan thought for a moment.
"Money."
Martin's eyebrows rose.
Nathan finally looked over.
"He has an interest in supporting some private research."
That was close enough to truth to sit comfortably.
Martin leaned against the bench.
"Your research?"
"Yes."
"What sort?"
"Private."
Martin sighed.
Nathan smiled.
The important part was not the conversation.
It was that Broadley had now acquired a visible relationship with Nathan Drake.
Nathan repeated the trick twice over the following weeks, never identically.
On one occasion Broadley arrived after Nathan had been seen entering a laboratory alone. On another Nathan left University College by one entrance, changed elsewhere and allowed Broadley to arrive by carriage half an hour later. The timing was deliberately imperfect. Broadley did not appear every time Nathan disappeared. Nathan did not vanish every time Broadley came to London.
Patterns were suspicious.
Irregularity looked like life.
The letters helped.
Broadley sent Nathan books.
Nathan allowed them to remain on his desk.
Broadley sent a short note concerning "the matter previously discussed." Starling happened to see the envelope.
"Your wealthy friend again?"
Nathan glanced over.
"He isn't my friend."
"Then your wealthy irritation."
"Closer."
Starling pointed toward the envelope.
"Does he have money?"
"Yes."
"Do you require money?"
Nathan smiled.
"I require equipment."
Starling nodded gravely.
"Friend."
Within a month nobody close to Nathan found it strange that Broadley had become a private patron interested in his research.
That was enough.
The legal arrangements came afterward.
Nathan did not approach them like a thief rushing to collect his prize. Broadley had been a real man with a complicated estate and existing relationships. A sudden transfer without explanation would invite resistance. Illness, gratitude and eccentricity were more believable.
So Broadley became ill.
At first it was subtle.
Nathan changed the colour beneath his skin.
Reduced the apparent vitality of the face.
Allowed Broadley's hands to tremble slightly when holding small objects.
He avoided dramatic symptoms.
A man who coughed blood immediately inspired physicians.
A man who simply looked increasingly unwell inspired concern.
Broadley cancelled engagements.
Broadley complained privately of weakness.
Broadley appeared in London leaning more heavily upon his stick.
When he visited his solicitor, Nathan made certain the man who entered was unmistakably capable of understanding what he was doing.
That mattered more than any performance of dying.
The solicitor had known Broadley for years and therefore presented one of the most dangerous encounters Nathan had attempted.
But Broadley's memories knew the man too.
Nathan sat where Broadley habitually sat.
Refused refreshment because Broadley usually refused it in that office.
Complained once about the fire.
The solicitor, after several minutes, stopped examining him as a curiosity and began treating him as Broadley.
"You said the matter was urgent."
Nathan allowed the older man's hand to tighten slightly upon the walking stick.
"It is."
"You are ill."
Broadley smiled.
"I had hoped my appearance remained more flattering."
"I am serious."
"So am I."
Nathan let a silence settle.
The solicitor's expression changed.
"How serious?"
Broadley looked toward the window.
"Serious enough that I have no intention of leaving my affairs to chance."
The conversation moved toward documents.
Nathan did not attempt to create some elaborate story in which Nathan Drake had heroically saved Broadley's life. That would require evidence.
Instead Broadley offered something much more characteristic.
A debt.
When the solicitor asked why a young academic with no familial relationship to Broadley should suddenly become central to his estate, Broadley answered, "Because I owe him."
The solicitor frowned.
"For what?"
Nathan let Broadley's face close.
"Something I have no intention of putting into a will."
That answer produced exactly the right kind of discomfort.
Broadley had lived long enough among scandal and complicated dealings that an undisclosed obligation did not seem impossible.
It merely seemed Broadley.
"You realise people will ask."
"People have spent most of my life asking things."
"This is different."
"No."
Nathan leaned back.
"It is simply the first time their curiosity may survive me."
The solicitor did not smile.
Good.
Nathan did not want the matter treated lightly.
Over several meetings, the arrangements became formal.
Broadley appeared each time.
He read everything.
Asked questions.
Corrected one point deliberately.
The witnesses who eventually saw him affirm and sign his wishes did not see a confused dying man hurried into surrendering an estate.
They saw Alexander Broadley, ill but lucid, insisting upon an unusual decision.
One of them finally asked, with the bluntness age occasionally grants,
"Why Drake?"
Broadley held the pen above the page.
For a moment Nathan considered several answers.
Then he said, "Because I owe the boy more than money."
Silence followed.
The witness looked toward the solicitor.
The solicitor looked toward Broadley.
Nathan lowered the pen.
The signature came from memory so deep that his hand did not need conscious instruction.
Broadley's signature appeared.
The witnesses followed.
Nathan watched the ink dry.
That was the moment Alexander Broadley's intentions became something other men could testify to.
Afterward the illness accelerated.
Not absurdly.
Enough.
Broadley remained at The Knapp more frequently.
Correspondence became shorter.
Visits ceased.
A message reached University College indicating that his health had deteriorated.
Nathan received one publicly.
He opened it while Starling was nearby.
Starling saw him become still.
"What?"
Nathan folded the letter.
"Broadley."
"Your patron?"
Nathan disliked the term even though he had created it.
"Yes."
"What about him?"
"He is dying."
Starling's expression changed at once.
"I'm sorry."
Nathan looked toward the letter.
The emotion that answered was strangely complicated.
Broadley had been dead for months.
Nathan knew that better than anyone.
And yet grief existed inside him because Broadley remembered himself.
Nathan remembered Broadley's fear of death before Nathan killed him.
He remembered people Broadley had lost.
He remembered the house becoming quieter after those deaths.
"Thank you," Nathan said.
Several days later Nathan travelled openly to Dorset.
Everyone who mattered knew he had gone.
Nathan Drake arrived at The Knapp and was admitted by servants who had heard his name repeatedly from their employer.
The housekeeper met him.
"Mr. Drake."
Nathan removed his hat.
"How is he?"
"Very weak."
Nathan looked toward the stairs.
"May I see him?"
"He asked for you."
Of course he had.
Nathan went upstairs.
The bedroom door closed behind him.
For almost an hour nobody entered.
That hour mattered enormously.
Anyone outside the room believed Nathan Drake was with Alexander Broadley.
Nathan ensured they occasionally heard both voices.
Never together.
Broadley spoke weakly from near the bed.
"You came."
Then Nathan answered from nearer the window.
"You asked me to."
A servant passing the corridor heard enough.
Broadley laughed once, faintly.
"You never did learn gratitude."
Nathan's voice followed after a pause.
"You still haven't explained what you've done."
"There is nothing to explain."
"A solicitor wrote to me."
"I am aware."
"You left me your house."
Another silence.
Nathan allowed footsteps within the room.
Then his own voice, sharper.
"I don't want your house."
That line was almost true in a way which amused him.
He had wanted the house desperately.
He simply would never have accepted it from a living Broadley under these circumstances without questions.
Broadley's voice became quieter.
"Then sell it."
"You know that isn't the point."
"I owe you."
"For what?"
A long silence.
The servant outside had slowed.
Nathan could hear her.
Broadley answered.
"For something you are too young to understand."
Nathan almost laughed at that.
Instead Drake's voice became angry.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Turn this into another secret because you enjoy knowing something I don't."
Broadley gave a weak chuckle.
"Perhaps that is precisely what I enjoy."
The servant moved on.
Nathan waited until she was far away.
Then he stopped speaking.
He remained in the room another twenty minutes.
When he came out, he was Nathan Drake.
No transformation trick had been necessary inside because nobody had seen Broadley.
The older man's voice had been enough.
The housekeeper stood nearby.
Nathan closed the door gently.
"How is he?"
Nathan looked back toward it.
"Sleeping."
She nodded sadly.
Nathan hated that moment.
Not enough to undo anything.
Enough to recognise it.
Broadley's death was announced less than a week later.
By then nobody found the timing surprising.
The man had been visibly ill.
His affairs had been put in order.
He had withdrawn from society.
Nathan Drake had visited him shortly before the end.
There remained the problem of a body.
Nathan solved it with the one resource no solicitor or physician could have imagined.
Himself.
He had learned over years how much biomass he could shed without threatening his continuity. Creating another independent living organism remained something else entirely, something Nathan had not yet understood and did not trust himself to attempt.
A corpse did not require independence.
It required convincing anatomy.
Nathan formed Broadley slowly.
The process cost more biomass than he expected, leaving Nathan noticeably lighter afterward until he fed and rebuilt himself, but the result lying in the bed was exact enough to unsettle even its creator.
The age was correct.
The old scars.
The teeth.
The joints.
The slight asymmetry around the face.
Nathan included the imperfections deliberately because perfection would have been suspicious.
Alexander Broadley lay dead.
Nathan stood over the body and felt the grotesque reversal of it.
Months earlier he had turned Broadley into himself.
Now he had turned part of himself back into Broadley.
Dead matter remembering the man from whom its instructions had come.
The physician who saw the body afterward found what everyone expected to find: an older gentleman whose recent decline had ended in death.
The funeral brought Nathan back to Dorset in black.
He had expected it to be easy.
It was not.
People came carrying memories.
That was what he had underestimated.
One older acquaintance spoke warmly of Broadley's humour. Nathan remembered the jokes before the man finished recounting them.
Another told Nathan that Broadley had once helped him during a difficult year.
Nathan remembered that too.
There had been no trick.
Broadley had simply helped.
A woman spoke about his kindness toward her brother.
Nathan knew exactly when it had happened.
Consumption did not allow him to preserve the useful parts of a man's life and discard the inconvenient humanity attached to them.
Broadley had done harm.
Broadley had been selfish.
Broadley had manipulated and justified and wounded.
Broadley had also laughed honestly, helped people, loved people and been loved.
Nathan stood before a coffin containing a body he had manufactured from his own flesh and listened to a clergyman speak about the dead.
He bowed his head.
He did not ask God for forgiveness.
That would have required repentance.
Nathan did not regret taking the estate enough to pretend he would undo it.
But he allowed the dead man something Nathan could still offer.
He remembered him completely.
After the burial, the solicitor approached.
"Mr. Drake?"
Nathan turned.
He recognised the man from Broadley's memories immediately.
Nathan Drake, however, had never met him.
"Yes?"
The solicitor introduced himself.
Nathan shook his hand.
There was a strange moment in which the other man simply looked at him.
Nathan let the discomfort grow.
"Something wrong?"
"No."
The solicitor glanced toward the grave.
"I wondered about you."
Nathan's eyebrows rose.
"Why?"
"Broadley was very determined."
"So I've discovered."
"He said he owed you."
Nathan looked away slightly.
"He said the same to me."
That was useful.
The solicitor's interest sharpened.
"Did he tell you why?"
Nathan looked back.
"No."
A pause.
Then, quieter, "He seemed to enjoy not telling me."
The solicitor smiled faintly.
"That sounds familiar."
Nathan let the silence settle.
The legal aftermath moved more slowly than death.
Nathan preferred that.
Sudden ownership would have felt suspicious even if technically possible. There were accounts to settle, documents to examine, property to administer and relations who wanted to understand why Broadley had favoured an academic considerably younger than himself.
There were questions.
Nathan answered only the ones Nathan Drake could reasonably answer.
Broadley had approached him privately concerning scientific matters.
Broadley had shown interest in supporting his research.
Broadley occasionally spoke of debts Nathan had not understood.
Nathan had not expected to inherit.
That last statement was technically false but emotionally convincing because he allowed Nathan's face to show precisely the confusion an ordinary young man might feel.
The written wishes were harder to argue with than rumours.
Broadley had appeared personally.
He had affirmed them.
Witnesses had watched.
The solicitor had questioned him.
His intentions were eccentric.
Not invalid.
Eventually Nathan Drake became the principal beneficiary of the property and wealth Broadley had arranged to leave him.
The day Nathan formally moved into The Knapp, he came openly.
No rain.
No other face.
No secret entrance.
A carriage rolled toward the house carrying luggage marked with Nathan Drake's initials.
Servants watched from the steps.
Nathan looked through the window at a property he knew better than anyone inside expected.
He knew what lay behind every visible wall.
Which window stuck.
Which stair complained during wet weather.
Where Broadley had once hidden correspondence he later destroyed.
Which room caught morning sunlight first.
Nathan had memories of coming home to this place.
But Nathan Drake had never crossed the threshold as its owner.
The housekeeper met him outside.
"Mr. Drake."
Nathan stepped down.
She looked older than she had in Broadley's memories.
Or perhaps Nathan simply saw her differently from within his own face.
"Welcome to The Knapp, sir."
Nathan looked toward the house.
The words settled with unexpected weight.
"Thank you."
"Would you like me to show you through?"
For half a second Nathan nearly said he already knew the house.
Instead he smiled.
"Yes. I think I'd like that."
So she showed him his own property.
Nathan followed.
He allowed himself to look at rooms as though seeing them for the first time. He asked where doors led. He paused over objects Broadley had owned and asked questions about them while already knowing the answers.
It was one of the strangest performances Nathan had ever given.
Eventually they reached Broadley's study.
The housekeeper stopped at the entrance.
"We were unsure what you would wish done with this room."
Nathan looked inside.
Broadley's chair.
Broadley's desk.
Broadley's books.
Memories stirred.
He walked slowly toward the centre.
"Leave it as it is."
"For now, sir?"
Nathan rested one hand against the back of the chair.
"For now."
She withdrew.
The door closed.
Nathan stood alone.
Then he sat in Alexander Broadley's chair wearing Nathan Drake's face.
The absurdity of it almost made him laugh.
The wealth was his.
The estate.
The grounds.
The outbuildings.
The legal identity of Broadley could now be allowed to die properly because its purpose had been fulfilled.
Nathan opened a drawer.
He took out paper bearing the estate heading.
For several minutes he stared at the blank page.
Then he wrote:
Private Laboratory — Preliminary Requirements
Space.
Isolation.
Drainage.
Ventilation.
Animal accommodation.
Separate access.
Secure storage.
A room capable of being sterilised completely if necessary.
Then Nathan stopped.
He drew a line beneath the list.
Another problem remained.
Nathan Drake.
He had already been twenty-five too long.
Men at University College had not noticed because Nathan had introduced ageing deliberately. But another decade would make that more difficult. Eventually Starling would grey. Martin would age. Students Nathan had taught would become older men.
Nathan could make himself appear older.
That was easy.
The problem was what happened after sixty.
Seventy.
Death had to occur eventually.
An immortal Nathan Drake would attract attention.
A family would not.
The idea had first appeared the night he consumed Broadley.
Now, sitting legally inside the dead man's property, Nathan allowed it to grow.
One owner died.
Another inherited.
Nothing unusual.
The house remained.
Names changed.
A son might resemble a father strongly.
A nephew might inherit because his uncle never married.
A reclusive family might produce generations of men who rarely appeared socially and devoted themselves to private scientific interests.
Nathan could become every one of them.
Nathan Drake could age.
Retire.
Die.
A younger heir could arrive.
Perhaps that heir would possess Nathan's eyes.
People would call it family resemblance.
The laboratory below The Knapp could remain exactly where it was.
The books could pass down.
Research could continue.
Nobody would ever need to know that the father, son, grandson and great-grandson all remembered the same childhood.
Nathan took another sheet.
At the top he wrote:
Continuity.
He stared at the word.
Then smiled.
Broadley had given him more than land.
He had shown Nathan the shape of the future.
The world did not need an immortal man.
Immortal men produced questions.
The world already understood families.
Nathan leaned back in the chair.
In London he would remain Mr. Drake, rising through University College, teaching students and pursuing respectable scientific work.
Here he could build something else.
A hidden laboratory.
A private archive.
A place where the questions no professor could be allowed to see could finally become experiments.
And when Nathan Drake eventually became too old to exist convincingly—
Nathan would bury him.
Then one of his descendants would inherit everything.
A descendant who had never been born.
A descendant who would step from a locked room, let his bones and face become young again, and introduce himself to the world as if he were meeting it for the first time.
Nathan looked toward the dark glass of the study window.
For an instant Broadley's remembered face seemed almost capable of appearing there.
It did not.
There was only Nathan.
One man.
Always one.
That was the secret upon which everything depended.
He smiled faintly and returned to the plans for the laboratory.
Broadley was dead now.
Truly, as far as the world was concerned.
Nathan Drake had inherited his estate.
And for the first time, Nathan possessed enough privacy to discover just how little the word human still described him.
..