Madrid, capital of Spain
All right, it was about time she got over her fear of being strangled...
So many years later, it was stupid to keep reacting that way, Lucrecia Alonso knew it and, even so, she could almost hate herself for feeling like this every time she imagined a man strangling her. Like, for example, now... when her Krav Maga self-defense instructor had warned her that it was about time she started practicing techniques against strangulation, otherwise she wouldn't move on to the next level as a practitioner. And the exams were coming up, she knew that too.
Lucrecia sighed, somewhat irritated. Anyway. Occupational hazard, she reminded herself. That was what she got for training in self-defense with the purpose of covering every possible front that might (or might not) arise when she finally carried out the plan she had spent years carefully putting together.
- Well... - she smiled, forcing herself to bury (a little deeper) the fears stirred up by the Poseidon from her past, as she began unwinding the wraps from her hands.
- If I have no other choice, we'll practice it tomorrow, Javier.
Yes, she said "tomorrow," because right now she didn't feel brave enough to put herself through it without first turning the idea and every possible scenario over inside her mind as many times as necessary. Her head worked that way... with thousands of snakes sprouting from it like dark, venomous strands of hair, forcing her to stay awake thinking about absolutely everything, over and over again. Just in case.
Lucrecia forced a cocky half-smile onto her face, looked up at her instructor, determined to play along and regain the ground she had lost, but when Javier didn't return the gesture, a small feeling of relief washed over her. To her, all of them became frightened when they stared directly at the power of Medusa.
That was a myth Lucrecia liked very much, one that had had countless versions throughout history; but there was one she particularly liked...
Medusa had been a beautiful young woman, famous for her hair and desired by many men. Poseidon, god of the seas, raped her inside a temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, as revenge for an old feud between the two. And Athena, unable or unwilling to punish another god, punished the desecration of her temple upon the body of the victim.
Very wise, wasn't she?
And how did she do it? Well, by turning that hair admired by everyone into snakes, and transforming Medusa's gaze into an eternal sentence. From then on, anyone who looked into her eyes would be turned to stone.
If anyone asked Lucrecia, Athena had been one tremendous fucking bitch. But well, nobody had ever asked her...
Lucrecia completely removed the wraps that had covered her hands and, in a voice that mimicked a flattering purr, teased Javier:
- Don't they say choking is sexy in bed?
He let out a dry laugh as he put away the training equipment (still without looking at her).
Javier had a girlfriend, although that hadn't stopped him in the past when she caught him staring at her tits and ass, so she also knew he found her attractive. And although she wasn't usually the kind of woman who interfered in other people's relationships, she wasn't going to say she had never done it either. To her, love was a utopia. A badly told fairy tale, where the real villain was intimacy and the heroes were breakups. Better not to invest in loving someone. Everyone ended up leaving anyway.
- I think the "pleasurable" part has more to do with the lack of oxygen in your head, Lu - he said. - You stop thinking up here... and move better down there.
Lucrecia smiled.
- Have you tried it? - she provoked.
- Yeah, with my girlfriend. And I recommend it.
Whenever her instructor played the "I'm not available, I have a girlfriend" card, it meant she had made him nervous. Idiot. She had no intention of sleeping with him... she only wanted to make him uncomfortable and, since she seemed to have succeeded, she felt satisfied.
She walked over to her backpack to put the wraps away, then picked up a small towel and began drying off the sweat. In the background, Marilyn Manson's voice sounded distant:
Are you motherfuckers ready for this new shit? Stand up and admit tomorrow's never coming... This is the new shit…
She liked the guy, his music in general and his lyrics. He seemed like an artist with something to say, and that was always interesting.
Do we get it? NO!
Do we want it? YEAH!
Lucrecia smiled.
‹‹Exactly that... What we don't understand... is precisely what we desire the most...››
The problem with the myth of Medusa, Lucrecia thought, wasn't only Poseidon or Athena, but that fucking ending, where the power born from a curse had ended up in the hands of a man. Athena had punished her, yes, but it was Perseus who cut off her head and went on petrifying enemies with it. Lovely story, wasn't it?
Bullshit. Because, in the modern world, the Medusas were still alive. And they had already learned not to trust Poseidons, Athenas, or Perseuses. Not to place deadly plans in the hands of gods or demigods.
Lucrecia Alonso smiled once again... although this time, she preferred to keep the reason to herself.
She was so close to achieving it. And she hoped the snakes in her hair would be worthy representatives of the rage that had been burning inside her since 2006. A fucking stone. That was what she wanted. To see him turned to stone. Forever. For all eternity, incapable of hurting anyone ever again. Son of a bitch.
At eight in the morning, the imposing building of the pharmaceutical company where she worked, Alcántara Pharma, welcomed Lucrecia Alonso as it did every day.
This morning the sky was clear, an intense blue, and the sun shone firmly overhead. A cool breeze brushed across her face, drawing a faint smile from her. The bun, perfectly secured, kept even a single strand from escaping. Laboratory employees came and went before Lucrecia's eyes. Some were in a hurry, others chatting calmly, but all of them carried that refreshed air that only a good night's sleep could leave behind.
Sleep...
She had always found it curious that the only ones who seemed to resist it were children. They always had something better to do, like ride a bike, play, watch television... live. Until they discovered dreams, and then something changed. Children and adults, in every corner of the world, had at some point been swept away by those strange, bright, captivating scenes... where the mind came loose while the body rested and they surrendered to the urge to sleep... But that hadn't been her case since... well, since that event when she was twelve years old. Since she met Poseidon, because from that moment on, dreams took her somewhere else... straight into her worst nightmares. That was why she avoided dreaming whenever she could and, over time, wakefulness had stopped being a strategy... and become her way of life.
And that was one of the many contradictions that coexisted within her. Because Lucrecia Alonso was a thirty-year-old woman, a virologist and specialist in sleep physiology and pathophysiology, in charge of Alcántara Pharma's sleep-disorder research department, who helped other people sleep while she chose not to.
Suddenly, a hard impact struck against her back and seemed to go straight through her.
Lucrecia nearly carried out one of her defensive techniques, but she forced herself to be rational and admit that nothing bad could happen to her inside the facility and that, once again, she was simply overreacting. Security here was absurdly excessive and nobody could kidnap her—her greatest danger was a contagious virus! And, in any case, her immune system would take care of that.
She turned cautiously, even though her heart was beating faster than was healthy, to discover what had happened...
She caught sight of an enormous smile on the handsome face of the young student under her supervision, Esteban.
- I got here early today too. - he boasted.
Esteban Morante was one of the most promising junior researchers in the department she headed. He was a twenty-four-year-old young man, enthusiastic, intelligent, eloquent, and always willing to learn. But he had one problem... he was a heavy sleeper. Getting up early was incredibly difficult for him and, on more than one occasion, he had come close to being late (which translated into missing the class). And Lucrecia, she had to admit, had a certain weakness for him...
More than once, she had caught herself delaying the start of the talks to give him enough time to arrive. She wasn't entirely sure why... Maybe it was his age, so close to how old her brother should have been, or that uncomfortable resemblance, with the brown hair, the easy smile... and that eloquent spark that little Matías might have had too... if only he were still alive. The truth was that she didn't know exactly why, but Esteban had earned her affection from the very first week she met him without even trying, and that was quite a novelty for her. Lucrecia wasn't the kind of warm person who made everyone feel comfortable. Quite the opposite, she didn't care about other people's perceptions and much preferred being alone. She had learned years ago that caring about someone was a complete waste of her time.
- Congratulations. - she replied to her student in a neutral tone. - First one here again.
Even so, Lucrecia knew that something was different with Esteban. She cared for him in a platonic way because he reminded her of her brother or, well, of how she imagined Matías would have been if he had grown up. That was why she had noticed that, over the last few days, that "flaw" of his lack of punctuality had been overcome since now he was the first to arrive for every class, and not by minutes, but by more than an hour.
And today was no exception.
- Yeah, first again, but I'm not telling you how I do it. - he joked. - I have my secrets. - and moved ahead with ease.
Lucrecia kept pace with him.
They walked together toward the interior of the building. The security guard at the entrance greeted her with a brief gesture and she responded in kind without stopping. She didn't pay much attention to the security personnel; they changed shifts so often that it was impossible for her to remember their faces or names. Nor did she care to.
Lucrecia swiped her access card while thinking that it was the technology in this building that kept her safe. The reinforced doors they had installed at the beginning of the year, for example, or the surveillance systems. The guards... hmm, not so much. She knew how they worked. And, in most cases, they did it rather poorly. They couldn't be trusted.
- How's the presentation coming along? - Lucrecia asked without looking at the junior researcher.
- Progressing. - he replied.
She called the elevator. Esteban took out his nasal spray and inhaled it. He was terribly allergic to the cold, according to what he had mentioned to her weeks earlier when he started using it.
- I've almost finished the data for cohort three. The sleep-latency results are consistent with the previous ones. Even better.
- How much better? - Lucrecia asked.
- A sixteen-percent reduction in sleep-onset time compared to the control group. With fewer residual effects upon waking than any benzodiazepine currently on the market.
Esteban smiled smugly.
Lucrecia processed the number in silence as they waited for the elevator.
- Did you cross-check that with the sleep-quality data?
- REM phase preserved in ninety-two percent of cases.
The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside.
What he had just told her was reassuring. They truly were going to achieve changes in the field of sleep. It wasn't a "pill" pretending to be new when, in reality, it was nothing more than another variation of old drugs already on the market. What they were about to accomplish was genuinely innovative. The kind of innovation capable of changing the market and, with any luck, improving sleep quality across the population.
Lucrecia felt proud of what they were doing. As unbelievable as it seemed, she was working with the fucking thalamus. Literally, the brain's relay station. Almost everything a person was capable of perceiving, almost every sensory stimulus, almost every motor command, passed through it before reaching the cerebral cortex and becoming conscious. And she had found a key that allowed her access inside it. She had found a way to modulate the threshold for sleep activation; basically, the exact point at which the brain decided it had had enough wakefulness and finally surrendered to rest.
But for that very reason, it was a dangerous area of work. If the thalamus could be controlled, then part of the information reaching consciousness could be controlled as well, along with part of what remained outside it. It was possible to influence which signals moved forward, which were suppressed, which commands were carried out, and which were blocked before they could become action. It was wonderful, an enormous scientific possibility, but it could also become a monumental disaster... and that was why the rigor of her research had to be absolute. Impeccable. Flawless. Perfect. The way only she could make it.
‹‹And that's why Carpentier won't stop harassing me with demands for progress updates and daily reports on my work. That man is obsessed with understanding every last period and comma of my research, but it's mine. Not his. Carpentier is only the CEO, and this time Medusa will not hand her head over to Perseus... forget it, darling››
- I need your section ready for review this afternoon, Esteban. - Lucrecia said, thinking about the report she was going to have to write for her boss. - No exceptions.
- The presentation is on the nineteenth. Another review?
- Yes. Because I'm not going into the nineteenth with surprises. - She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. - Any problem with this afternoon?
- None. - he smiled at her, arrogant. The kid was a prodigy, and he knew it by heart. The worst part? He loved showing it off.
- Good. - Lucrecia repeated without smiling, because she wasn't about to inflate Esteban's youthful ego any further. - This time, this isn't an academic presentation. - she reminded him in a serious tone. - On the nineteenth, we're going to have a room full of executives, investors, and possibly someone from the EMA worth impressing. But more importantly, the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices.
- I know, the AEMPS is going to be there. - He rolled his eyes, tired of hearing the same speech. - It'll be a decisive day for our research.
She nodded.
- That's why we'll speak through our data, not pretty words. The numbers are the ones that have to convince them, not us.
- Understood, Lu. - Esteban said and nodded. Then, with that spark in his greenish eyes, he added. - Although sometimes words help. Mostly when it comes to driving up the share price. And that makes your boss happy.
- Sometimes. - she conceded. - But I prefer to let the data speak for my work. - She paused while the hum of the elevator motors filled the silence. - This afternoon, Esteban, I'll be expecting you in my office. Numbers are what make your boss happy... So I'll see you at five.
He nodded.
The elevator doors opened on their floor.
- And get some sleep this week, there's no need for you to get up early every day. - she added without turning around. - We're making good progress and we've already got almost everything finished. All we have left is to polish the details.
- I'm not sleepy anymore.
Lucrecia stepped out of the elevator, stopped and, this time, looked at him curiously.
- And why is that?
He shrugged casually.
- Because I have a secret that keeps me awake every day.
She couldn't help smiling, because it was about time that boy got himself a girlfriend. She thought that seeing him become, step by step, a great researcher made her happy. She felt proud, although she didn't tell him; she merely nodded and headed toward her office.
She couldn't believe that, at last, that obsessive work born during her adolescence, fed by her most brutal monsters, was going to become a drug capable of helping the rest of the world live their days with the fullness that came from restorative sleep, with a calm brain, awake and attentive to detail.
Her steps carried her to the door of her office at the end of the seventh-floor corridor. She placed her hand over the infrared reader and, before using her access card, allowed herself to release a breath. She thought about her parents, about the reputation they had lost, and wondered whether all of her success would be enough to erase that stain from the Alonso name.
‹‹There's no point thinking about that now. Things are what they are. And they're not going to change››
Lucrecia forced herself to smile. Thursday, November 19, she would make history.
And Alcántara Pharma along with her.