Eve was born in La Gacilly, Brittany, in the heart of a region where legends still circulate among standing stones and damp forests. Amid peaceful natural surroundings, she lives an existence paced by the seasons and silent habits. Between religious beliefs and ancient tales, she grows up in a world where saints mingle with ghosts.
She meets a priest. Their relationship produces two daughters, Chloé and Christine. The scandal forces them to leave the region. Adam then becomes a gardener for the Gillets. Eve eventually occupies a discreet but genuine place in the ChronoEmpire hierarchy.
Within ChronoEmpire, Eve lies as naturally as she breathes: quietly, effortlessly, almost out of necessity. Her smile resembles a mask polished by the years, flawless porcelain whose cracks remain invisible.
She says yes to Adam, yes to the scientists, yes to religious miracles and the laws of physics alike. In her mouth, contradictions coexist peacefully, like neighbors forced to share the same apartment.
She applauds science, repeats dogma, and adopts every line of argument with the fluidity of water taking the shape of its container—not out of deep conviction, but survival. For in a society where lies have become the official currency, truth resembles a coin too rare to spend.
Adam sometimes observes her as one looks at an old, faulty clock that nevertheless continues to strike the right hour by accident. He understands that Eve's words are not truly promises, but rather bandages laid over the world's conflicts.
Eve lies to avoid storms, preserve appearances, and maintain a fragile domestic peace, but her lies extend far beyond her personal life.
ChronoEmpire rewards useful narratives, corrected memories, and official versions of reality. Citizens learn to answer yes before they even understand the question. They lie to remain integrated into the system, to avoid disappearing from the records, to retain a few minutes of social credit.
A wholly naked truth always ends up burning those who look at it too long. So Eve covers herself with contradictory stories, sermons, myths, and half-truths stitched together. And beneath that cloak there may remain only one genuine fear: finding herself alone before a truth no one wants to hear.
According to the ancient stories, GoodGold also produced a first, imperfect creature. A flaw had to accompany the beginning. And so Adam became the origin of descendants capable of the best and the worst.
In the great workshop of beginnings, after the bursts of light and the birth of the oceans, came Adam, fashioned from clay and breath. The first gardener in a still-new world, he received the names of things as one receives keys. Then came Eve, and with her the complication that religions, families, and psychoanalysts have ever since attempted to explain, each in their own way.
Adam Legall likes this story. His first name seems almost providential to him. He is a gardener, he has an Eve, and he readily speaks of original sin. Eve finds the coincidence less remarkable. She has long known that a biblical name guarantees neither holiness nor even reasonable behavior.
She meets Adam in Brittany when he is already a priest. He possesses the quiet confidence of those who have given a great deal of thought to other people's sins. Their relationship begins in secrecy. Adam explains, reassures, promises. He finds enough detours in Scripture to transform their affair into an exceptional circumstance.
Eve believes him, or decides to believe him. She quickly discovers that loving a priest requires a certain moral flexibility. One must accept secret meetings, absences, complicated explanations, and Adam's strange habit of asking GoodGold for forgiveness before doing exactly what he has just regretted all over again.
Then come the children.
Chloé is born first. With her, the affair ceases to be an adventure that can be concealed between two obligations. A family now exists, even if it fits none of the categories Adam ordinarily presents to others as the model they should follow.
Christine comes next and further complicates the family's geometry. From a very young age, the two sisters occupy different territories. Chloé seeks order, continuity, an identifiable place in the world. Christine prefers testing limits, especially when she is asked to respect them.
Eve finds herself at the center of this small constellation. She protects her daughters from Adam when he becomes too authoritarian and protects Adam from his daughters when they discover his contradictions. She lies to some to preserve the others, adjusts the stories, postpones confrontations. After holding the family upright for so long, she ultimately no longer knows exactly what she is protecting.
Adam remains the father and the priest. At the dinner table, he sometimes turns a meal into a sermon. He speaks of respect, duty, and responsibility. Christine listens with increasingly visible insolence. Chloé prefers to avoid confrontation. Eve intervenes before voices rise.
When Christine becomes a teenager, the war with her father sees few truces. She challenges his religion, his authority, and above all the distance between what he preaches and what he does.
Christine: Can you stop giving us your Old Testament routine?
Adam: As long as you live under my roof...
Christine: It's Mom's roof too.
Eve: We're eating.
This sentence becomes one of Eve's favorite weapons. “We're eating.” Two words capable of temporarily suspending a religious war, a marital crisis, or a teenage rebellion.
The move to Saint Martin gives the Legall family a new setting. Adam sees it as a chance to start again. Eve hopes the change of continent will put some distance between them and certain tensions. Christine mainly discovers a territory where beaches, parties, and encounters allow her to escape her father's supervision more easily.
Chloé maintains a more discreet relationship with her parents. She loves her mother without needing to proclaim it and tolerates her father while keeping a cautious distance from him. Yet both sisters continue to return to Eve. She remains the family's fixed point, the person they call when something needs to be explained, soothed, hidden, or forgiven.
Over the years, her love for Adam changes in nature. It still contains affection, but also habit, weariness, and the memory of all they have endured together. Eve is no longer entirely sure whether she stays with him because she loves him or because separation would force her to acknowledge that their entire family construction might have ended differently.
Then Adam starts working for the Gillets.
Eve notices the changes before she knows their cause. The absences grow longer. Bible meetings multiply. Pastoral visits end late. Adam provides explanations before she even asks questions, which in his case is generally a sign that a question very much needs to be asked.
Thus Elise enters the Legall family without ever officially crossing its threshold.
Eve suspects the affair. Christine, less inclined than she is to respect family silences, eventually understands as well. Yet Adam continues to behave as though his authority remains intact.
Eve could leave. She could confront Adam, warn Elise, or expose the affair. She does none of these things. Over the years, she has developed another method: shifting the truth slightly until it becomes bearable.
But this time the family will not so easily fall back into place. Christine pulls away. Chloé protects herself. Adam lies. Elise waits.
And Eve, who has spent much of her life preventing her family from breaking apart, begins to understand that she may have become its last remaining motionless piece.
Emergency medical responders see all kinds of things, but a drowning in a bathtub remains an unusual event.
Firefighters intervene to remove the body from the tub. The operation is difficult: Eve Legall's body is heavy and covered in soap. They do not know how to grip her without letting her slip.
The two daughters watch from the bathroom doorway. Adam sits slumped in an armchair in the living room.
Adam gives Jules his version of events: his wife, who suffered from depression, allegedly lost consciousness under the influence of the medications she abused before accidentally drowning.
A quick examination of the bathroom cabinet reveals a considerable quantity of tranquilizers. The insistence on presenting the death as suicide, along with this accumulation of medication, immediately alerts Jules Compacteur.
You have to knock before entering. Jules has no doorbell. Two sharp raps on the wooden door are generally enough for him to know whether his visitor understands proper manners.
This time, a young woman pushes the door open and plants herself in front of his desk. Jules does not look up at her, for suddenly this article about a probable drop in oil prices becomes fascinating.
Christine: I'm Adam and Eve Legall's daughter. You know...
She is a pretty blonde with blue eyes and an ample chest. Her dress is very short and she has gone heavy on the makeup, lending her appearance a slightly aggressive vulgarity.
Christine: My father is suspected of poisoning my mother. I know that's not true. Look what I found among my dear sister's things. This is what she uses for her experiments! This is what she used to kill my mother!
She rummages through a bag containing an implausible number of objects before extracting a bottle.
Christine: I share a bathroom with my sister. That's where she set up her fucking laboratory.
She puts the bottle on the desk.
Jules: Given the way you handled this bottle, it will be impossible to find fingerprints on it and prove what you're claiming.
Not a flicker of unease in her eyes. Insolence seems second nature to her.
Christine: Why do you think I came to see you? I'm an adult. I'm hiring you, and you're going to prove that my sister Chloé poisoned my mother with her concoctions.
Jules: Since you're an adult, you can indeed hire me.
The kid never runs out of arguments. She plunges her hand back into her bag and produces a wad of bills.
— Here you go. I want a receipt!
It has not taken her long to become thoroughly unpleasant, but Jules is not finished with her. He starts filling out his usual form.
Jules: I won't ask where you found all that money. Tell me, you seem very fond of your sister Chloé?
Christine: In the family, I'm always cast as the bad girl. And it's true that I'm a little advanced for my age. Her statement is accompanied by a forward thrust of the natural assets she deploys without the slightest restraint.
Christine: Chloé is always the good one, the serious student. But I know she's hiding what she's really like. She's a perverse manipulator! She belongs in prison!
Now she loses her bratty composure. There are clearly old scores to settle, and Jules finds himself enlisted in this family war.
Jules: It's a pleasure to meet a member of such a close-knit family, young lady. However, I won't be able to prove anything with this bottle. I'll need to see this laboratory in person.
Christine: Come whenever you want. My mother won't get in your way, and my father is always holed up in his church. Come tomorrow in the middle of the afternoon. Chloé will be in class. I'll be there to let you in. You can visit her laboratory. She doesn't know it, but I have a duplicate key.
That settles it. Jules does not stand to see her out. Without a word, she turns around. Her heels echo across the floorboards, then the door slams.
After Christine leaves, Jules returns to his notes. The young woman's story offers a great deal of information and little certainty. One thing nevertheless seems obvious to him: for some time, Eve had been caught in conflicts extending far beyond the boundaries of her bathroom.
Three names recur insistently: Adam Legall, Milton Fleet, Damien Gillet.
Milton is the most troubling lead. He works for ChronoEmpire and intervenes when ordinary methods no longer suffice. Eve knows about some of the organization's activities and associates with people ChronoEmpire monitors. She may have become a liability without even understanding why.
Jules investigates Milton's movements. The man travels easily between Saint Martin and Anguilla, has access to speedboats, and possesses the experience needed to turn a murder into an accident. He would have no difficulty entering a house, administering a substance to a victim, and leaving behind nothing but an apparently ordinary death.
But something bothers Jules. Eve's death has a domestic dimension. The Temazepam, the bath, the victim's habits: everything implies intimate knowledge of her daily life. Milton could obtain such information, of course. Yet his involvement would needlessly complicate an operation that seems to have been devised by someone already living near Eve.
The second lead points to Damien Gillet.
Eve occupies a discreet place in ChronoEmpire's hierarchy. Her duties do not give her access to the most important decisions, but they do allow her to see information passing through the organization that it would prefer to keep away from prying eyes.
Damien, however, has long taken an interest in ChronoEmpire's systems. He envies John Pyne's power, seeks to understand how his network works, and regularly tries to breach its defenses. Several cyber intrusions detected in recent weeks may be attributed to him.
Jules considers the possibility that Eve discovered one of these operations. She could have recognized the source of certain files, kept a copy, or simply implied that she knew something. Damien does not tolerate witnesses capable of compromising his business dealings.
He also knows Adam, who works as a gardener at Villa Pamplemousse. Through him, Damien can easily obtain information about the Legall family's habits, Eve's schedule, and the medication she takes. He can even enter their home without immediately arousing suspicion.
The staging would fit his methods rather well. Damien prefers deaths that look like accidents and crimes whose consequences can be blamed on someone else. A wife found drowned in her bath after taking tranquilizers would provide an explanation ordinary enough to bring the investigation to a swift close.
One difficulty remains, however. Damien would have had to prepare the operation with considerable precision, enter the house, administer the Temazepam, and then hold Eve beneath the water without leaving any trace of his presence. The scenario is possible, but it requires a complex intervention in a space where someone else already possesses the means to act far more simply.
That leaves Adam.
His behavior after the body is discovered has intrigued Jules from the start. Adam talks a great deal. He explains Eve's medication, the bath, her fatigue, and the possible circumstances of her death before anyone even asks him for details. He seems less interested in understanding what happened than in immediately providing an explanation.
According to him, Eve took Temazepam before her bath, lost consciousness, and slipped beneath the water. The accident is possible. It is even ordinary enough to be credible.
Perhaps too credible.
Jules checks the medications. Adam knows his wife's treatment perfectly. He knows how much she normally takes and what effects a larger dose can produce. He needs neither a break-in, nor surveillance, nor an accomplice. He need only be at home.
A motive also emerges. Adam is having an affair with Elise. Eve knows or is about to find out. A separation would cause a family and religious scandal. For a man who has built much of his life on the moral authority he claims over others, publicly becoming the adulterous priest who abandons his wife for his mistress would be a difficult situation to explain.
Jules does not yet have sufficient evidence to accuse Adam. But the three leads no longer carry equal weight.
Milton has the skills.
Damien has a reason.
Adam has the reason, the means, access to the victim, and above all the ability to immediately manufacture the story of the accident.
I am in the bath when Christine enters without knocking.
Christine: Oh, you're still here? Weren't you supposed to go out with your girlfriends this afternoon?
Me: No, Véronique is sick. We had to postpone.
Christine: What is this thing the three of you are into?
Me: You know perfectly well. A Bible meeting.
She grabs a stool and sits in front of my bathtub. She dips one hand into the water.
Christine: Do you know if Dad will be here for dinner?
Me: I think he'll be at church. Today is the Old Testament study group, like every Wednesday.
Christine: Old Testament, my ass.
Me: Christine, I forbid you!
Christine: Forbid me what? Have you never had doubts about how our reverend spends his evenings?
Me: Christine! That's absurd!
Christine: Blonde or brunette?
Me: Really! It's very serious to say that.
Christine: Brunette. I know.
My daughter takes cruel pleasure in mocking me. I am tired. Not just today. Not just tonight. I have been tired for a long time.
Then Adam comes home. He talks, explains, justifies, arranges reality as one arranges objects on a shelf. Everything must stay in place. Everything must look normal.
I look at him. I say nothing. I know. Christine has merely confirmed what I already sensed: the absences, the lies, the late returns, and the overly precise excuses.
Adam still thinks I have doubts. I no longer have the strength to fight. So I withdraw. I take those pills that muffle the noise a little, soften the edges, make things less sharp.
Me: I'm really tired.
Adam: A little Temazepam will do you good.
His voice is gentle. Too gentle. He sets the table and busies himself in the kitchen. I eat. I drink. I already feel something loosening. My body grows heavier. My thoughts dissolve.
I lie back in the bath. The water is warm. It surrounds me. It is almost soothing. I close my eyes for a moment. Just a moment.
The world grows blurry. Sounds come from far away, muffled. I sense a presence. A hand settles on me. I want to move. I think I move. But no. My body no longer truly responds. It is still there, but it no longer obeys.
He presses down. It is not brutal. It is deliberate. I understand. Not all at once. Not clearly. But enough. This is not an accident.
I try to breathe. Water enters. Everything blends together: weariness, water, silence. I could struggle. Perhaps. But I do not. I am tired. Very tired. And deep down, a final thought crosses what remains of me: he had already decided.
Christine precedes him up the stairs with an obviously practiced sway of her hips. Jules is deeply impressed, but he remains focused on his investigation. At one point, she turns toward him.
Christine: Enjoying the show?
The family bathroom resembles a demilitarized zone, a kind of absurd border between two enemy territories.
For Christine, this room is a seduction laboratory. Creams, perfumes, powders, and elixirs help her devise the sophisticated traps she sets for men, all in the hope of gaining a few points in the invisible rankings established by her girlfriends—rankings from which her sister is excluded in advance.
For Chloé, the problem is simpler: managing to gain access to a room her sister shamelessly monopolizes.
An extravagant number of products clutter the shelves on Christine's side, while Chloé's space is strictly limited to basic toiletries.
In the bathroom, Jules opens several bottles and sniffs their contents. He takes a few samples in the tiny vials he always carries with him.
On one wall, shelves overflow with cosmetics. Opposite them, a single shelf holds a few plain, perfectly arranged objects.
Christine: That's the witch's corner.
Jules does not comment. He continues examining the bottles.
Christine: Well? Did you find it? It was her, wasn't it?
Jules: No. I don't see anything here that would allow me to make progress. You'll have to tell me more.
Christine abruptly opens her bedroom door. Jules has just enough time to glimpse a heap of clothes, shoes, and objects piled together with no apparent logic.
Christine: Don't mind the mess!
She hastens to open her sister's room. Jules discovers a perfectly orderly space. A stack of impeccably aligned folders rests on one corner of the desk beside a laptop.
Among the documents, Jules discovers information leaflets for medications used to treat depression. Another folder contains printed schoolwork. One page immediately catches his attention:
“By the time you read this letter, I will have left this world. To you, my family; to you, my daughters; to you, my husband: I ask forgiveness for what I have done. I do not know whether God will forgive me, but I beg you to understand. The depression I suffer from has become more unbearable every day. I feel trapped in a body that disgusts me, useless, with no future and no plans. I am going to leave this world. Remember me as the woman I once was.”
Adam appears to have a disturbing propensity for drowning members of his family. Christine may well become one of his victims. As far as Eve is concerned, everything points to meticulous preparation. He allegedly supplied the medication that anesthetized her, mixing a strong dose of sedatives into her meal before presenting the drowning as a domestic accident. This letter on Chloé's desk may well be Adam's work.
Aboard the Venus, everything belongs to John Pyne, including the impression that others are free to move around. The yacht resembles a floating demonstration of power more than a boat. Screens light up before anyone touches them, doors recognize faces, and a disembodied voice offers drinks before the guests have even decided they are thirsty.
John loves explaining how his kingdom works. He talks about ChronoEmpire, his investments, his projects, and above all himself. The others listen with the special attentiveness produced by a sufficiently large fortune. Even when he says something commonplace, someone nods.
Eve watches him from a sofa in the lounge. She knows this kind of man. Not personally, of course. Only a handful exist at this financial altitude. But she knows the mechanism: the confidence, the need to be admired, and the certainty that any contradiction must necessarily be the other person's mistake.
John comes to sit beside her.
John: So, Eve, what do you think of the Venus?
Eve: It's big.
John waits for more. There is none.
John: Big?
Eve: Very big.
She immediately realizes that she has annoyed him. John would have preferred “extraordinary,” “revolutionary,” or perhaps simply, “John, how did you accomplish such a thing?”
So he sets out to explain what she failed to admire. The propulsion, navigation systems, onboard intelligence, security devices, composite materials. Eve listens for a few minutes before her attention drifts toward the bay.
John notices.
John: Am I boring you?
Eve: No.
John: You're looking elsewhere.
Eve: I can look elsewhere without being bored.
The conversation could end there. It probably should end there. But John belongs to that category of men for whom a conversation ends only when they have been proven right.
He returns to ChronoEmpire. He explains that religions belong to the past, that nations themselves will soon become obsolete, and that human beings will naturally agree to entrust their decisions to systems capable of making better ones.
Eve thinks of Adam, his sermons, GoodGold, and all the men who have always claimed to know the best way to organize other people's lives.
She smiles.
John: What's amusing you?
Eve: Nothing.
John: You smiled.
Eve: I was simply thinking that you resemble Adam.
John's face closes.
John: Your husband?
Eve: Yes. He also knows what's best for everyone.
John: I don't think the comparison is relevant.
Eve: Neither does he.
John rises. He takes a few steps through the lounge, then comes back. Eve understands that she has found something. It is not yet a wound, only a small chink in the armor.
She could stop.
She continues.
Eve: When you're annoyed, you look a little like a rabbit.
John: Excuse me?
Eve: A rabbit.
John: I do not look like a rabbit.
Eve looks at him more closely. The angrier he becomes, the more accurate the idea seems.
Eve: You do. A very rich rabbit, obviously.
John turns red.
Around them, several conversations stop. No one yet knows whether laughing is permitted. On John Pyne's yacht, even humor seems to require prior authorization.
John: You're a complete idiot.
Eve: Maybe. But I'm not a rabbit.
He raises one hand to his chest.
At first, Eve thinks it is another theatrical display. John leans against the back of an armchair. His other hand reaches for something in empty space.
John: Stop.
Eve: All right.
This time, she truly falls silent.
But the word now exists between them.
Rabbit.
John tries to breathe deeply. His face has changed. The anger disappears, replaced by something Eve knows less well: fear.
She gets up.
Eve: John?
He does not answer. His legs buckle. Several people rush over as an artificial voice announces that a physiological anomaly has just been detected in the main lounge.
The yacht that knows how to open a door before anyone touches it, anticipate a cabin's ideal temperature, and calculate its position to within a few centimeters suddenly discovers a variable it does not know how to negotiate: its owner is dying.
Eve steps back to make room for the rescuers.
She did not mean to kill John. At least, that is what she will tell herself afterward. She only wanted to bring him down from his pedestal for a few moments.
She watches the men bustle around him.
And despite herself, one final thought crosses her mind.
He looks even more like a rabbit now.