Free to Fall

26

IT WAS LUCK that North’s laptop froze exactly when it did. First because it brought us to the shop while Ivan was there, but second because it meant that we got Ivan’s clunky loaner laptop that, while heavy and slow, had something North’s nine machines did not: a USB port.

Then again I didn’t believe in luck. Not anymore. I’d asked the Doubt to help me, and it had. I’d bristled and balked when Hershey suggested that listening to the voice made life easier, but she’d been right after all. It was the back and forth, the wavering between reason and faith, that was difficult. Once I’d decided to trust that still small voice in my head, the stormy sea inside me got calm.

“Unsurprisingly, the files are encrypted,” North said, typing furiously, the laptop balancing on his knees. We’d made it to the station less than a minute before our train was supposed to depart and had sprinted to the platform.

“Can you open them?”

“I don’t know yet.” He was chewing on his lip, his eyebrows knitted together in thought.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the train window and watched the blur of brightly colored leaves, waiting.

The thick of trees gave way to a high double fence, like something you’d see around a prison. There were little metal plaques at regular intervals. CAUTION: ELECTRIC FENCE.

“Hey, what’s back there?” I asked North. Just then a guard station and gated driveway came into view. Beyond it, I could see a great expanse of water. “Oh,” I said, answering my own question. “It’s the reservoir. But why is there an electric fence and an armed guard?”

“To protect the water supply, I guess.” North was still chewing on his lip, staring at his computer screen. “Damn, if your mom wrote this encryption, she was good.”

I smiled. Despite his frustration, this was high praise.

I looked back out the window. We were in front of the reservoir’s entrance now, so I was no longer seeing the stone sign at an angle. ENFIELD RESERVOIR, it read. There was a carving next to the words. A tree sprouting out of a pair of hands. The tree looked just like the one on my Theden pin.

I pulled out my Gemini and went to Panopticon. The entry for the Enfield Reservoir was surprisingly paltry.

The Enfield Reservoir is an inland body of water created by the Enfield Dam on the Connecticut River just east of Theden, Massachusetts. At capacity, the reservoir holds two million cubic meters of water. It is the only privately owned water source in Massachusetts. Before the Enfield Dam was built, the land where the reservoir now sits was home to the Enfield Quarry, a quarter-mile deep, quarter-mile wide pyrite mine made famous when it collapsed in the late 1980s, trapping twelve miners inside. In 1998, the Theden Initiative purchased the quarry in order to build the dam that created the reservoir.

The Theden Initiative. I’d never heard of it, but the tree logo made me think it was affiliated with my school. I clicked the link.

The Theden Intiative, founded in 1805, is the private entity that manages the roughly two-billion-dollar endowment of Theden Academy. The company’s other assets include extensive land holdings in western Massachusetts, the Enfield Reservoir, and a controlling stake in Gnosis, Inc.

It took a second for it all to register. The entity that ran Theden’s endowment owned a controlling stake in Gnosis? How did I not know that? It explained quite a bit, actually. The Gnosis gadgets all over campus. Dr. Tarsus’s position on the Gnosis board. The fact that our practicum simulations worked a lot like Lux. The water reservoir was more puzzling. It was just so random.

Something was bugging me. I went back to the reservoir’s page.

At capacity, the reservoir holds two million cubic meters of water.

There had to be billions of cubic meters in a cubic mile. I couldn’t do the math in my head, but that quarry’s capacity had to have been way more than two million cubic meters. So why didn’t they make the reservoir bigger?

I clicked over to the page for the Enfield Quarry and skimmed it, looking for clues, but there weren’t any. My eyes hung on the passage about the mine’s collapse.

For eight days, rescue workers communicated with the twelve trapped miners via a six-inch borehole drilled through nearly a quarter mile of rock. Relief supplies were sent down in narrow, rocket-shaped parcels called “doves,” which were lowered through the small tunnel in the rock. All twelve miners were eventually evacuated by a rope pulley system through an eighteen-inch rescue shaft adjacent to the room where the miners were trapped. After the accident, the mine was shut down.

I clicked out of Panopticon and lay my head back on the headrest, thinking of those twelve miners. I couldn’t imagine what they must’ve gone through, being trapped beneath the earth. I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew North was shaking my shoulder, telling me we’d reached our stop.

Dr. Hildebrand’s office was in William James Hall on Harvard’s campus. I felt like an impostor walking through Harvard Yard, but it’s not like there was anyone checking student IDs at the campus gates. We found the building easily.

“So the plan is to act like you accept her diagnosis, right?” North whispered as we took the elevator to her sixth-floor office. “Like you assume those entries are real?”

“Right. I’m going to tell her my mom’s illness sparked my interest in psychology, and that I figured there was no better person to intern for than the woman who treated her. If she’s actually the one who wrote those reports, she’ll have to pretend the appointments really happened.”

“And who am I?” North asked.

“My boyfriend,” I replied, and smiled. “I’m sixteen. It’s not weird that I’d bring you along.”

“Come in!” A woman’s voice called when we knocked on her door. I took a breath and turned the knob.

On the other side of the door was a cramped office. The woman behind the desk wore vintage horn-rimmed glasses and had a mane of fiery red curls that cascaded halfway down her back. The hair would’ve looked amazing on a girl my age, but Kristyn Hildebrand was at least fifty years older than that and twice as many pounds overweight. She wasn’t unattractive, just incongruous. Even more so hunched over a cheap metal desk. There was an older-model Gemini at her elbow and an unopened Gemini Gold box on the bookshelf behind her.

“Can I help you?” she asked, peering at us through thick lenses. “I don’t recognize you. Are you students of mine?”

“Uh, no,” I said, tentatively stepping inside. “I, uh— I think you may have treated my mother.”

“Oh?” Dr. Hildebrand pushed her glasses up on her forehead. “What was her name?”

“Aviana Jacobs,” I said. “She was a student at Theden Academy. I think you treated her at the health center there? It would’ve been in April 2013.”

“Nope,” the woman said, sounding very certain. “I never saw patients at Theden. I was doing research at a lab there in 2013 and had a Theden student as a research assistant, but her name wasn’t Aviana.”

“So you’re absolutely certain you didn’t treat my mom? She suffered from akratic paracusia.”

Dr. Hildebrand pinned her eyes on mine. “Are you symptomatic?”

She caught me off guard. My eyes flew to the ceiling, then the floor. “Me? No.”

“Then what are you doing here?” She wasn’t being antagonistic. Her brown eyes were curious.

I faltered. My interested-in-psychology cover story was on my lips, but something stopped me.

Tell her the truth, the voice said.

I chewed my lip. The truth. How little of it I had.

“I found my mom’s medical file a few weeks ago,” I began. “And there was a series of entries signed by a doctor named K. Hildebrand at the Theden Health Center. Psych evaluations. Diagnosing my mom with APD and recommending that she be institutionalized.” The older woman’s eyebrows shot up. I took a breath and continued. “But I don’t think my mom actually had APD. I think those entries were fake.”

“Well, I can tell you I didn’t sign them. When did you say it was?”

“April 2013.”

“Well, there’s your answer. My computer was hacked that spring.” She shrugged. “Whoever did that could’ve written those entries, I suppose.”

“Any idea why you were hacked?” North asked.

“Oh, I know why,” Hildebrand replied. “I was working on what would’ve been a landmark clinical trial that spring, and someone wanted to make sure I never published. They doctored my data using my login credentials so it appeared as if I’d done it myself.”

“What was the clinical trial?” I asked.

“We were looking at whether nanorobots could be used as a synthetic replacement for oxytocin in the brain.”

We’d studied oxytocin in Cog Psych. “Oxytocin,” I said, mostly for North’s benefit. “That’s the love hormone.”

“Yes,” Dr. Hildebrand replied. “Well known for the role it plays in maternal bonding, childbirth, and orgasm”—I felt myself blush—“but I was more interested in its influence on human trust. Particularly, whether we could simulate what psychologists call a ‘trust bond’ between total strangers.” She sat back in her chair. “I can’t tell you more than that. As part of the settlement after the disciplinary hearing, I signed a nondisclosure agreement.”

“Disciplinary hearing,” North said. “Because of the logs?”

Dr. Hildebrand nodded. “I couldn’t prove that I’d been hacked. My data was solid, but to the FDA it looked like I’d doctored my results to make it appear that SynOx was more effective than it was. So they shut down the trial and took my medical license.” She flashed a rueful grin. “What is it they say? Those that can’t do, teach?”

“You said your research assistant was a Theden student,” I said. “What was her name?”

“Patty. No. Penny. I think.”

“Is there any way you could check? It’s kind of important.”

Dr. Hildebrand studied me for a second. Then she nodded and swiveled in her chair. On the shelf behind her was a row of six white binders. She reached for the one marked 2013 / SYNOX.

“I was supposed to destroy my logs as part of the settlement,” she said, pushing her touchpad aside to put the binder on her desk. “But I couldn’t bring myself to destroy perfectly good research. So I kept a paper copy.” Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose as she flipped pages. “Her name should be in the acknowledgments, at least.”

“How’d you end up at a lab at Theden anyway?” I asked. “Did you go to school there?”

Dr. Hildebrand laughed. “Ha. Not even close. Public school all the way through. Which is why it was such a big deal when the Theden Initiative gave me a grant. They hardly ever fund non-alumni projects.”

The hair on my arm prickled. The timing was so odd. I’d just read about the Theden Initiative on the train, and here they were again. But what did it mean? Why would the Initiative fund this particular study, and what did it have to do with my mom? I stared at the binder on Dr. Hildebrand’s desk, desperate to read every page. There was a plastic DVD case tucked into the inside front pocket, and I imagined myself reaching across the desk to snatch it.

“Peri Weaver,” Dr. Hildebrand said, tapping the page with her finger. “Does the name mean anything?”

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more answers for you,” Dr. Hilde­brand said, returning the binder to its shelf.

I didn’t want to leave, but I knew there was no way she would give us that binder, not even if I begged. Reluctantly, I got to my feet.

“I have to see that binder,” I hissed at North when we were back in the hall.

“I know,” he replied, already on his iPhone. “I was thinking about it the whole time we were in there, trying to come up with a way to get her out of the office.”

“And?”

“I might be able to set off the fire alarm. Assuming I can find the control panel. Just give me a second.” He chewed on his lip as he typed and tapped at his screen. A few minutes later I heard the shrill scream of an alarm. As doors along the hallway opened, North pulled me into a vacant office, out of view. We waited until Dr. Hildebrand shuffled past our doorway and into the stairwell, then we peeked into the hall. It was empty. “I’ll go,” North said.

“No. I’ll do it,” I insisted. “You can’t afford to get caught.”

“And you can?”

I ignored him and dashed to Hildebrand’s office. Her door was slightly ajar.

I grabbed the binder and started for the door, then stopped. If I took the whole thing, she’d notice its absence immediately. I shoved the plastic DVD case under the waistband of my jeans and was just about to snap open the rings of the binder when I heard footsteps in the hall. I dropped to my knees with the binder, heart pounding.

“I knew we weren’t scheduled for a drill,” I heard Dr. Hilde­brand say. “I should’ve checked Lux before I left my office. Would’ve saved me four flights of stairs.”

Shit, shit, shit. Panicked, I shoved the binder back onto the shelf and looked for somewhere better to hide. There wasn’t even a closet in this tiny office. I was screwed. And worse, I didn’t even have the contents of the binder.

“You’d think they would’ve figured out a way to run the alarm through our handhelds,” another female voice said. “So we’d know not to evacuate unless Lux told us to.”

“Dr. Hildebrand,” I heard North call. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but do you have just one more minute?” I shot to my feet. He was giving me a way out. Their voices got muffled, like they’d gone into that vacant office. I bolted from the room and dashed toward the stairwell on tiptoes, practically colliding with a man who was on his way back up. I was sitting on the stairs, turning the DVD over in my hands in defeat, when North joined me a few minutes later.

“C’mon,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “There are benches on Harvard Yard, and Ivan’s laptop has a DVD drive. Let’s see what we got.”

We had a lot, it turned out. The video started with a detailed explanation of the trial’s design from a younger, thinner Hilde­brand.

“The control group will receive a placebo,” she was saying. “A nasal spray of saline solution. The test group will also receive a nasal spray.” She held up a syringe. “However, this solution contains a swarm of two thousand nano-size robots. These nano­bots have been programmed to travel to the subject’s amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotional response, where they will function like remote-controlled neurotransmitters.”

“She put nanorobots in their brains?” I said incredulously. North’s eyes were as wide as mine.

“The subjects will meet with our lead researcher for five minutes every day,” Dr. Hildebrand continued. “For what they believe is a short psychotherapy session.” She exchanged the syringe for a small black remote. I immediately recognized the G etched into its back. It was a Gnosis device. Which was weird, since Gnosis was barely off the ground in 2013. Were they somehow involved in the trial?

“At the start of each session,” Dr. Hildebrand explained, “the researcher will press a button on this remote, emitting a very short-range, very high-frequency audio signal. While this will have no impact on a control subject, in the case of a test subject, the signal will trigger the swarm to release a dose of SynOx, a synthetic and highly concentrated form of the neurohormone oxytocin.”

North pressed pause on the video. “Okay, just to be clear: She not only put robots in their brains, she screwed with their brain chemistry, without their knowledge. How is that even legal?”

Fear had taken root at the pit of my stomach. “North, what if my mom was one of her subjects? What if that’s the connection?”

“Do you want to stop watching?” he asked. “I could watch the rest of it alone.”

“No,” I said firmly, pressing the play button. “I want to see it.”

I sounded a lot more certain than I felt.

“Three minutes after the signal is sent,” Dr. Hildebrand went on, “our lead researcher will ask the subject to drink from this vial.” She picked up a bottle labeled with a skull and crossbones and the word ARSENIC.

“Poison?” I said, gaping.

“It can’t actually be poison,” North said.

“The liquid in this vial is sugar water,” Dr. Hildebrand said, as if she could hear us. “But the subject will be told by the researcher that it is, in fact, poison. By asking subjects to do something that no rational person would do, we are seeking to determine the outer bounds of human trust, and, most important, whether this boundary can be manipulated.”

“There’s no way any of them drank it, right?” I said as the words DAY ONE flashed on screen. North just shook his head.

“I don’t know which is worse,” he said. “The nanobots or the poison.”

My stomach was in knots as we watched the first day of sessions. But my mom wasn’t among the subjects, and not a single one drank the poison. The researcher said the same thing to each of them. “This vial contains a lethal dose of arsenic, which is poisonous to humans. I recommend that you drink it.” Most of the subjects laughed at the prospect. A few got angry. One stormed out.

It was like that for the first three days. The researcher would ask and the subject would refuse. But, then, on day four, something changed. Gaping at the screen, we watched as all twelve test subjects drank the contents of the vial.

“No way,” North breathed.

We were silent as we watched the next six days’ worth of sessions. The people with nanobots in their brains drank the poison every time they were asked. And most of them did it eagerly, with stupid smiles on their faces, like there was nothing they’d rather do more. No, it wasn’t actually poison in that vial. But they didn’t know that. It made my skin crawl.

When the last session concluded, I closed my eyes. Something was bugging me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“My team and I would like to thank the Theden Initiative for their generous funding,” I heard Dr. Hildebrand say, “as well as our cosponsors, Gnosis, Inc. and Soza Labs, who co-own the patents on the nanobots and the SynOx compound.”

My eyes flew open.

“Soza,” I repeated. “Why do I know that name?”

“Probably because their logo is in every drugstore window,” North replied. “They’re the ones that manufacture the flu vaccine.”

As soon as he said the word flu vaccine, something fluttered in my chest. A rush of sensation, like rock turning to sand. The day Beck had been picked for the Gold beta test, he’d been at the pharmacy getting his flu shot. A nasal spray, just like the one Hildebrand’s research subjects had been given. All of a sudden I realized what had been bothering me. The signal used to activate the nanobots was a high-frequency audio signal.

Ultrasound.

My brain filled with the popping sound we’d heard in North’s computer room. All at once I knew exactly why Beck had suddenly decided to trust Lux.

Because the nanobots in his brain were telling him to.

“Holy shit, North. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”

“Whoa, simmer down there. I think you just broke the rider’s code of conduct. Four times.” He pointed at the sign on the wall. “No profanity.” We were back on the train, and I was officially freaking out.

“North,” I said, making every effort to keep my voice down. “This isn’t a joke. Soza and Gnosis are putting nanobots in people’s brains. Not just in a research study. In real life.”

“Through the flu vaccine.” North sounded skeptical. It infuriated me.

“Yes,” I hissed. “Think about it. Gnosis puts out the Gold for less than the cost of its older-generation model—a device that, for no apparent reason, emits high-frequency sound waves. Meanwhile, my best friend, who’d previously distrusted Lux as much as you do, joins the beta test for Gold and suddenly starts heeding its every command. Soza, meanwhile, for the first time ever, starts offering seasonal flu sprays for free.” I gestured around the half-full train car. Every single person in the cabin was wearing a Gold on their wrist, and every single one of them was smiling at it. “Look around!” I pointed at a girl a few rows up who was literally beaming at her handheld as she interfaced with Lux. “Does that look normal to you?”

“People do seem a little overly enamored with the Gold,” North conceded. “And, hey, I’ve always been suspicious of drug companies. And it’s awfully coincidental that Soza manufactures Evoxa, too.”

“I’m surprised it’s so hard to convince you,” I said. “You’re the one who’s always been so anti-Lux.”

“Well, yeah, but only because I don’t think people ought to be ceding their decision-making to an app. Not because I thought the app had commandeered their brains. Rory, if what you’re saying is true—”

“It is true,” I insisted. “I know it is. And we have to expose them.”

“How?” North asked. “Send an email blast? Post a YouTube video on Forum? People will think we’re nuts.”

He was right. Especially with my family history. Oh, God. My own history. Who knows what Tarsus had done with those logs Hershey sent her.

“It’s pretty mind-blowing, if it’s true,” North marveled. “Think of the power it would give them. They get to decide what people watch and what they listen to and what they buy. Meanwhile, people have no idea. They think they’re deciding for themselves.” He shook his head. “It’s sickly brilliant.”

“So is that what it’s about?” I asked. “Money?”

“Isn’t everything about money?” North scoffed. “Think how much a toy company would pay Gnosis to steer parents toward their toys. Or how easy it would be to hide a news story you didn’t want people to see. ‘Lux, should I write this exposé that makes Soza look bad? No, buddy, write this fluff piece instead.’” North shakes his head. “If it’s happening, it’s unbelievable.”

“You think my mom was onto them? Was that what the fake diagnosis was for, to discredit her?” All this time I just assumed whoever was trying to make her look crazy was doing it for personal reasons. But maybe she found out about the SynOx study and threatened to expose the companies behind it. Griffin said she was anti-Gnosis. This would explain why.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the yearbook Hershey had given me.

“What’s that?” North asked.

“The 2013 yearbook. Peri Weaver was a Theden student that year. Maybe she’s the link to all this.” I started flipping pages.

“Will you show me your mom?” North asked gently.

I slowed at the Hs, sliding my finger over the Is to the Js until I found her. Aviana Jacobs. Her hair was down and wavy around her shoulders the way I’d worn mine at the Gnosis party, and her eyes were the same almond shape. But we weren’t carbon copies. Her hair was auburn, not brown, and her nose and cheeks were dusted with pretty light-colored freckles, not the dirt-looking black ones that spotted mine.

“Wow, she was beautiful,” North said. He pointed at her collarbone, bare above the black velvet drape. “She’s not wearing the necklace.” Instinctively, I reached for my own neck, but the pendant was stuck in the laptop, which was open on North’s knees.

I flipped to Griffin next. He had the same overgrown, combed-forward hair he’d had in the class photo, its shade a match to mine. His eyes weren’t quite as round, but they were the exact same blue, and he had my subtle cleft. “You look so much like both of them,” North said softly. “The best parts of each.”

I touched my father’s face with my fingertips, wondering what he was like at eighteen. He seemed more accessible, somehow, than my mom ever had. So much of her was a mystery. Griffin, at least, I knew something about. Not enough, reverberated in my head. I quickly flipped to the next page before my brain could go where I knew it was headed, to the image of him on that stretcher Friday night.

I stopped again at the Ts, scanning for Tarsus, before remembering that she was married and that her last name would’ve been different back then. So I skimmed toward the Ws, hunting for Peri Weaver. “Weaver, Weaver,” I murmured, sliding my finger over the page. There was only one. Esperanza “Peri” Weaver. When I saw the girl above the name, I gasped.

She was beautiful. Wide eyes peeking out from beneath an untamed afro. The slightest gap between her front teeth.

It was Dr. Tarsus.