I finally come back to myself when I see the woman in gray. The lilting tune on my lips that I didn't even realize I was humming trails off into silence the moment my eyes fixate on the badge on her lapel, a picture of a smiling white woman that perfectly matches its wearer over a logo that I know all too terrifyingly well. She smiles at me with gleaming white teeth-a smile that never touches her cornflower blue eyes-and says, "Hello, Ming! It's so good to have you back at the Institute again."
I look around. The vast foyer of the Ballantyne Institute is almost as soulless as the woman standing in front of me with her hand extended in bland, patient greeting... but the back wall is dominated by a massive mirror behind the visitor's desk. In it, I see a woman with untidy black hair that sticks out in all directions from her loose ponytail, and wild, staring eyes that look back at me in bewildered horror. She's wearing a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra, showing far too much of her tawny skin. She looks like she doesn't know how she got here. She looks like not knowing terrifies her. The perplexed, haunted expression on her face makes her seem like a different woman... but of course I know she's me.
"I, I'm afraid I can't stay," I stammer, trying to sound light and casual. Like it makes perfect sense to go sixteen miles out of my way on my morning run to visit a private research facility nine months after my one and only inspection, only to immediately turn and leave again. "I've got a, a prior commitment. If I could just...?" I gesture to the revolving doors behind me, trying to arrange my features into an expression of polite apology while I desperately try to come up with something to say if the woman from the Institute asks me what my prior commitment actually is.
She doesn't. Instead, she takes out her phone and says, "I'm afraid your taxi just left, Ms Fong." I don't remember a taxi ride. I don't remember hailing a cab. I don't even remember most of my morning run. "If you'd like, I can call you a replacement once we've finished our discussion. Do you want me to handle that for you, Ming?" She's still smiling. It doesn't make her look happy, though. It makes her look like she's forgotten how to stop.
"I..." I start to tell her that I don't want her to handle that for me at all. That I want her to cut the bullshit, stop stonewalling, and admit that they cultivated improper ties with government officials in order to forestall investigations into serious irregularities in their compliance with local laws. And failing that, I want her to shove her immaculately-manicured hand up her ass while I call a taxi myself and get the hell out of here and never come back. But then... I start to hear it in my head. The earworm that's been haunting me for months now, drifting into my brain and driving me to distraction.
I can never quite place the tune. It's maddeningly inchoate, a snatch of song so brief that I can't connect it to any kind of memory. It loops inside my brain, so smooth and bland and devoid of character that I don't even know when it starts and stops, but at the same time so infernally catchy that I can't shake it no matter how hard I try. It seems to push everything else out of my head, smothering my thoughts one by one in its saccharine cheer, until I find myself unable to do anything but rummage through my mind to try to figure out where I heard it the first time.
As always, I try to put lyrics to it, gradually paying less and less attention to the woman from the Institute while I concentrate on the music in my head. But the infuriating tunelessness of the tune frustrates my every effort. The snatch of song seemingly has no beginning and no proper end, and so any verse can be stretched to fit any meter until it seems like every answer that pops into my head is the right answer. Once I set the words 'shake the woman's hand' to the constantly repeating earworm, my mind seamlessly incorporates it until I can't think anything else. 'Shake the woman's hand, shake the woman's hand, shake the woman's hand, shake the woman's hand...'
"That's all settled then," the woman says, her voice a silky, condescending murmur as she clasps my hand in her own. I blink heavily, trying to pierce the fog of my brief lapse of attention, but the last few moments are gone. Thoroughly, surgically excised by my temporary distraction. Neatly clipped out of existence as if they happened to someone else instead of me. It's totally normal, I tell myself, the kind of automatic action that happens all the time to all sorts of people, but... I can't help wondering whether she reached for my hand, or I reached for hers. The same way I can't help wondering exactly when I decided to come back to the Institute again.
But then the woman from the Institute-'Erin', according to her badge-taps her phone and says, "The cab is scheduled," and the disquieting feeling passes. They wouldn't call me a cab if they intended to... do anything to me, would they? It sounds absurdly paranoid in my head, even with all of the potential outcomes neatly elided behind the vague wording of 'do anything', but... I suddenly realize that my entire body is absolutely awash with adrenaline. It's as if my autonomic nervous system is responding to some sort of perceived threat, as if I'm genuinely convinced on a deep and unthinking level that I'm in mortal danger... but that's absurd. I've been here dozens of times. It's perfectly safe.
