Page 2 of Pulse Zero
Leaning back against the counter, I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the floor.
When she asked me to come with her weeks ago, I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I feel torn in two directions. My love for my mom is trying to pull me to North Carolina, but my roots in Washington would be so fucking hard to rip out of the dirt. I’ve always been close to my mom. I had planned on finding my own place before now, but after my dad died, I decided to stay athome. I stayed for her, and now she’s just up and leaving.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting.
“Does ithaveto be North Carolina?” I finally convince myself to ask. I had been trying to word that question just right for days so it wouldn’t sound like I was begging her to stay.
She sighs and looks away, her gaze drifting to the window above the sink. “I want to get as far away from the Institute as I possibly can.”
“I think you’d have to move somewhere off the coast of Africa. That is, if we’re talking about staying onthisplanet.”
Shealmostlaughs, just a soft sound that comes through her nose. Her gaze is somewhere far away as she looks out into the front yard, her next words coming out as a whisper. “I can’t stay, Case. I’ve stayed as long as I can.”
And then it hits me. Shedidstay for me.
Now I think I have to do something else for her and let her go.
Pushing off the counter, I move to stand beside her, throwing one arm over her shoulder as I stare outside with her. I passed her up in height my sophomore year of high school, and I’m several inches taller than her now. She leans her head against me, accepting the comfort I’m attempting to offer.
“He had a heart attack, Mom,” I tell her, keeping my eyes directed out the window. “It’s not the Institute’s fault.”
I don’t say it in another attempt to get her to stay but because I believe it’s the truth. Because I can’t believe that the place my father breathed life into, sacrificed so much of his blood, sweat, and tears for, isthereason he’s dead. It caused him stress, sure, but even if the building itself crumbled and crushed him to death, it’s probably how he would’ve chosen to go out. He always would’ve been the one to go down with the ship.
He and his brother, my uncle Malcolm, founded BellroseInstitute before I was born. It’sthelargest private research institute on the west coast. Copeland Labs may be best in neuroscience, but Bellrose leads in every other branch of bioscience.
It’s also kind of the reason I can’t bring myself to leave Washington. I don’t think my dad would’ve wanted me to leave it behind. He always wanted me to come work with him, and I did too, even though I never wanted to bethatkind of scientist. Malcolm hired me last year part-time as IT support, but he promised me something more impressive after I graduate with my master’s degree.
“Your father gave so much of his life to the Institute,” my mom says, still speaking softly and sadly. “And then it took it away from him. It took him away fromus.”
I’m not sure what I can say to that because it doesn’t seem like I can change her mind, and I know she kind of hates that I work there. So I stay quiet.
She takes a deep breath and steps away to pin her gaze on me again with what I imagine is the best smile she can manage right now. “We have to be out in three days. What’s your plan?”
I can see a glimmer of hope that I’ll choose to come with her still in her eyes, and I hate that I have to crush it.
“Malcolm said I could stay with him until I find my own place.”
Sure enough, the sparkle in her eyes fades even while she holds tight onto her smile. “Okay then.” She nods and glances around the kitchen, like she’s checking to see if she missed anything. There’s nothing left to put in boxes but my mug. “I’m going to finish packing up my room.”
She gives me a swift kiss on the cheek before she leaves the kitchen. I hear her footsteps on the stairs as I peer around at the towers of cardboard, the boxed up remnants of the part of my life I’m being forced to leave behind. The one that’s collapsinginto the next.
After I scan myID badge just inside the front doors of Bellrose Institute, I nod at the guard as I make my way past him into the atrium.
I’m not scheduled to work today, but I couldn’t stay home any longer. The house already feels like a place I’ve been evicted from emotionally, and watching my mom cope by turning memories into cardboard cubes is…a lot. I tried to reminisce with her at one point, but she gottoofucking sad. I don’t want these last few days I have with my mom before she moves across the country to be filled with grief and that fragile quiet that comes after the tears. I’ll try taking her out tonight. Dinner, maybe bowling, something neither of us ever did with my dad so our time together won’t turn into another crying fest.
I hope she’ll be happier in North Carolina. I really do.
But I’m still going to fucking miss her.
The atrium stretches ahead of me, open and vast. No one could ever accuse my dad and uncle of thinking small when they built this place.
Glass walls stretch upward three stories, angled just enough to distort reflections, turning people into moving fragments as they cross the first floor. Sunlight spills down from the skylights in clean, colorless beams, washing everything in a kind of sterile beauty. White stone tiles gleam underfoot, polished so thoroughly they almost mirror the ceiling. Water tricklessomewhere to my left—an artificial stream threading through sculpted stone, more aesthetic than soothing. It smells faintly like antiseptic and ozone, the kind of clean that doesn’t exist in nature.
At the center of the atrium, suspended between floors, hangs the Bellrose kinetic installation. Thin, metal filaments and translucent panels rotate slowly around a hollow core. It’s meant to represent emergent systems, feedback loops, and self-correcting chaos. My dad loved it. He used to stand right here and explain it to donors with the kind of quiet pride that made his eyes light up.
I pause for half a second longer than necessary, watching the structure turn.
Then I head for the elevators.
