The first thing I saw were lines on a pale face framed by white hair. Long black sleeves covered any light from her UConn. Above them, her collar was a softly lustrous pale grey. She was old. Older than almost anyone I'd ever met. There might have been kind eyes behind those wrinkles, but I couldn't tell.

"Professor Cellowen," Jake said, a low note of surprise in his voice. He moved aside automatically. I stood my ground, fists clenched. She stepped in calmly, closed the door behind her, and regarded me.

"So," she said in a measured tone. "Are you the young lady who's been setting a fire up ANRON's ass today?"

I almost choked. "What? I-I mean, yes, I think, but . . ."

The barest trace of a smile curved her lips. "Well then," she said. "We had better find someplace to hide you. Come with me."

The rush of relief I felt was almost immediately tempered by suspicion. "Wait," I said. "That's it? Just like that?"

Jake's hand squeezed mine. "You can trust her, Madeline. You can trust us."

Something in the way he said it made me pause. I turned. He looked exactly the same as he always had. Wide open eyes, soft lashes, a secret smile. I knew every inch of that face, the way it felt underneath my fingers, but suddenly it was like looking at a stranger.

"You know, I almost believed you," I said carefully. "When you were telling him I was just a bit of extra cash to you. To go ahead and put the line in, like it was nothing."

Jake flinched. He opened his mouth to argue with me, but the professor beat him to it. "I understand you have questions," she said to me. "The short answer is that you don't have a choice. We are the only people in Unilox who can help you. And I'll give you the long answer on the way to getting you someplace safe." Her watery gaze swung to Jake and suddenly it was like I wasn't even in the room anymore. "You have a line in you?"

He flushed. "I had to," he said. "Saying no would have looked suspicious. I needed to get them out."

Her lips pursed. "I sincerely hope that you're not using your implants right now."

He shook his head. "Whoever's linked in is getting treated to an episode of Hard in HARLIN. Turned up loud." He smiled slightly. "I hope they like police procedural Ads."

None of his amusement reflected back on her face. "We need to get that line out as soon as possible," she said grimly. "For now, don't work on any of our matters. Catch up on your studies instead. Because make no mistake, they will be back."

Jake's smile dropped away. "What if they don't come back?" he said. There was a dead sort of hope in his voice. "If she's . . . if she's part of some product line, then if they can't find her, why can't it be someone else?"

Professor Cellowen gave him a look. It was at once both mildly disappointed, and as disgusted as if she had just witnessed someone urinating in public. Jake's cheeks burned as if he'd been struck. He looked away.

"In any case," she said, as if they had just held a conversation I hadn't been a part of, "they will certainly be back now. Somebody made the mistake of panicking and broadcasting that emergency piece." Her voice was dry. "I imagine their own license is currently being reviewed. But the point is, Entertainment Limited has a hold of your story. So now ANRON will hunt you until they find you, even if it's just to prove to the rest of their Experimentals that there is nowhere to run."

My heart sank. "And there's nothing that can be done?" I asked. "No . . . can they even do this? Just . . . take my license away, for nothing?"

She was quiet. "Is that what you're doing here, then?" she said. "Looking for answers? It would have been wiser to stay hidden."

"I can't hide forever," I pointed out.

She smiled enigmatically. "You'd be surprised," she said. And then to Jake, "Stay in your office."

Jake opened his mouth to argue and then closed it, looking disgruntled. I knew exactly how he felt. It made sense, but I didn't like it. It was enough to clear the fog in my mind, though, and the tired, muggy paranoia. So Jake could lie. Good. If he could lie well enough to keep him safe, even better. Without thinking too hard, I gave him a crushing hug. He was caught off balance for a moment, but then his arms came up around me and I tried to memorize the feeling, to imprint it into my brain. "Thank you," I whispered, trying to put everything into those two syllables.

"This isn't goodbye," he said fiercely. "We'll see each other again."

I said nothing. He kissed my scalp as we broke apart, gently, like he was worried I might break. "Be careful. I love you."

I swallowed. "I love you too."

I was immensely glad when Professor Cellowen said nothing.

* * *

The corridors felt dangerous. Knowing they'd held ANRON's suits only moments ago, I stared at the professor's back and tried to look normal, like I belonged here. I gave up when she opened the doors to the Library and I got dizzy again from the sheer physical weight of the books around me. She walked through the stacks like she'd been raised there. Around and around we went, tracing our steps through a maze, until suddenly we stopped at a gap in the shelves.

"Here we are," she said.

I eyed it, flabbergasted. All I saw were two shelves stacked thickly with books, and the hint of a wall in the space between them. "Just like that?" I said. "This is safer than Jake's office?"

"Infinitely so," she said, smiling. She tapped her eyes. "You must have your UConn off so that they can't track you. Well done. But see, to anyone wearing a UConn, this space doesn't exist. It's filled with books. Anyone looking would just walk right past you."

She stepped into the gap. I followed, and suddenly I felt the oddest sense of the world twisting and stretching around me, staggering my eyes with lines and angles that didn't compute. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them again. I was in a small space bound by two walls and two shelves, perhaps double the size of my bedroom. The walls were printed with a pattern that made me dizzy if I looked too close. But it was the contents of the room that caught my eye. A lockbox. Thick books. A system that I'd never seen before—and that certainly wasn't MERCE-made—its screen undulating gently as it waited for someone to tap into its secrets. And at the end, like a shrine, a simple desk holding an opaque plaque.

I tried to consciously close my mouth. "What is this place?"

"An optical illusion," the professor said. She spoke as if she were very far away, or very young, or both. "One of the less powerful ones hidden in our beloved city."

"Less powerful?"

She paused. "Do you know what a corporation is, Madeline?"

"Of course I do," I snapped. I was sure she hadn't meant to sound condescending, but I felt it.

She waited.

"It's a company," I said. "A really big company that's meant to look after its employees in exchange for their work."

Her lips twitched. "You're partially right," she said. Her voice turned clinical, thin with age. "That's what it's become, certainly. But at the end of the day, I like to think of a corporation as an illusion."

"Really," I said. I lifted my sleeve and pointed to the puckering skin around my UConn. "That looks pretty solid to me."

She held up a hand patiently. "Bear with me," she said. "And remember, I'm talking from the legal perspective here."

I knew that she was trying to help me, but seeing as I'd just been chased through the streets of Unilox by very real people under a very real name, my temper was short. "And I'm talking from the real perspective where I'm going to die," I snapped. "How does the legal perspective help me?"

She raised a single brow. "It helps you if we manage to launch a case in your name. Which I might, if you let me finish explaining."

I shut up.

She tapped the table. "Think of a corporation as just a piece of paper. A fictional name for an imaginary monster." She smiled briefly. "All it shows is that a long time ago, a group of people decided to come together and create something bigger than themselves. A legal 'person.' And then some bright spark realized they could use that to hide behind a name, to do great and terrible things without ever needing to take responsibility. And then there was John Whittaker Charles Anron."

"The First Shareholder?" I interrupted, puzzled.

The professor touched the plaque on the desk. Light sprang out of the cracks and leapt onto the walls. They merged there with the patterns that had made me dizzy to create something I recognized with a start. A DNA sequence, laid out line by line.

"His great, great, great, great grandfather," she said. "And the very first Shareholder of Unilox."

A/N - Yep, I'm a lawyer. A technology lawyer. Sorry for all the corporate-speak - a lot of you have been wanting answers, and this chapter starts the ball rolling. I'd love to hear what you think!

I also have some more #Science Fiction recommendations! If you haven't checked them out already, give one of the authors collected @SciNation a try. 

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't recommend The Wives by @tranquilstars, a story I actually found more haunting than The Handmaid's Tale. Link here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/107951401-the-wives.