Don’t be afraid of the seizures. Be afraid of not knowing.
“Who?”
Lena closed the book. On the back cover, just above the barcode, was a small author photo: a man in his late forties, dark skin, close-cropped gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses. He was smiling. Not at the camera—at something to its left, something only he could see.
The librarian smiled. It was the same smile from the author photo. The same knowing, sideways look. “A man named Bornface,” she said. “He said his daughter would come for it someday.” bornface biology book
Lena clutched the book to her chest. Outside the library window, a man with close-cropped gray hair crossed the street. He wasn’t there a second ago. He didn’t look back.
Lena had never been afraid of textbooks. She’d dissected Gray’s Anatomy for fun at fourteen, corrected her AP Bio teacher on mitochondrial ribosome structure at sixteen, and read the latest Nature papers on CRISPR before breakfast. But the book on the library cart—squat, olive-green, with a worn cloth spine and the words Bornface Biology: Principles of Life stamped in faded gold—made her blood run cold.
Ms. Odhiambo finally looked at her. “Same way all books get here,” she said. “Someone returned it.” Don’t be afraid of the seizures
“I think,” Lena said slowly, “Bornface is me. Or will be. Or wrote the book before I was born.”
Lena stared at the page. Marcus stared at her.
Subject L.K. Lena Kipkorir. Herself.
She turned the page. Chapter Two: The Inheritance of Seizure Propensity. A pedigree chart filled half the spread. Lena’s family tree. Her grandmother’s epilepsy. Her cousin’s febrile convulsions. And at the bottom, labeled Proband L.K. : herself, marked with a black star and the notation Spontaneous mutation, de novo, fully penetrant by age 16.
This book is your future. It’s also your past. I wrote it when I was fifty-two, after mapping the entire circuit. I dedicated it to my mother, who had the same mutation and never knew.
“Yes.” Lena closed the book. “Which means Bornface isn’t my son. He’s someone else’s. Someone who named his daughter Lena.” On the back cover, just above the barcode,
“So is a textbook that contains a brain biopsy that hasn’t happened yet.” She held the book up. “But here we are.”
Possibility.