“You think it’s all connected?” North asked. “Your mom, this Tarsus woman, the stuff in your Lux profile?” I hadn’t yet told North what I’d pieced together about my dad not being my dad. It was too fresh a wound to make it permanent with spoken words.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I wish there was a way to find out who those social security numbers belong to.”
“I’ll try to get into the Social Security Administration’s database,” offered North.
“I thought you said you’d tried that already.”
“Not the SSA directly. The kind of thing I do, my clients give me their social security numbers going in. I try not to go anywhere I don’t need to go. It just increases the risk of detection.”
“I don’t want you to do anything risky for me,” I said quickly.
“Good thing I’m not doing it for you, then,” he said. He pulled up the website for the Social Security Administration on his tablet.
“You can do it right from there?” I asked.
“No, this is just research,” he explained, finger scrolling to the bottom of the page. “See that G? That means they use a Gnosis firewall.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It makes it harder. Maybe not impossible. It’ll take me a couple of days.” He set his tablet on the coffee table then reached for my hand. As soon as his skin touched mine, he shot to his feet. “Rory, you’re burning up,” he said, laying his palm on my forehead. “When was the last time you took something?”
“An hour ago,” I said. “Have you gotten the flu spray? I’m probably infecting you.”
“I don’t do vaccinations,” North said. “But my immune system is superhuman. I’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, worry me. You need medicine.”
“I’m fine.” But the truth was, I didn’t feel fine. I felt awful.
“Rory, if you want to fight the forces of evil, you need your strength.” He said it with a completely straight face. I laughed lightly.
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” he said, and helped me to my feet.
20
IN THE END, we went to the student health center. I told North I was fine to go alone, but he just rolled his eyes at me and put on his coat.
The waiting room was empty. “Looks like someone has the flu,” the nurse at the check-in station said as we came through the automatic door, making a little tsk sound with her tongue.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You have that hit-by-a-truck look about you,” she replied. “You a student?” I nodded. “Tap your handheld there,” she instructed, pointing at a sensor on the desk. As I did, a new text appeared on my screen.
“Have a seat in the waiting room,” the nurse said.
“Mm-hm,” I murmured, eyes on my screen.
I am the beginning of every end,
and the end of time and space.
I am essential to creation,
and I surround every place.
What am I?
It was a riddle, and I read it again as I shuffled into the waiting room where North was swiping through an issue of Wired on one of the health center’s mounted tablets.
“Everything okay?” I heard him ask.
“Mm-hm.” I sat on the edge of the seat next to him and read it a third time. I am the beginning of every end, and the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead. I had nothing.
“It has to be an element,” I murmured. “Air, is it air? But how is air the beginning of every end? God. It’s God. It has to be God.”
“Rory, what are you talking about?” I looked over at North. He was staring at me. “You’re babbling.”
“I’m trying to solve a riddle.”
“A riddle?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Just because.”
“Okay. Well, what’s the riddle?”
“I don’t think I can tell you. That would be cheating.” It struck me that I hadn’t been given any rules for this exercise. Maybe it was perfectly acceptable to ask someone else or GoSearch for the answers to these things. But somehow I doubted it. Something I didn’t doubt was that the society would know, either way.
“Cheating? Is this a graded thing?”
“Sort of,” I said. Which was sort of true. “It’s for a club I’m trying to get into. An extracurricular thing.”
“What kind of club?”
“It’s just a club, okay?” I snapped. “And I have to solve this riddle to get in, so please just let me think.” I pulled my handheld back out, hoping that maybe the words themselves would give me a clue. “I think it’s God,” I said again, trying to convince myself that I could be right. But the beginning of every end part didn’t seem right.
North leaned over to look at my screen. “It’s the letter e.” He settled back into his seat, looking smug. “Think they’ll let me into their club?” I reread the riddle. He was right.
I quickly typed the answer and hit send. My whole body relaxed when I got the standard response. I leaned my head back against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. Every part of me ached.
“Why do you want to be in this club so badly?” I heard North ask.
“My mom was in it,” I said.
“Aurora Vaughn?” a nurse called.
“I’ll be here when you get out,” North said as I got to my feet.
“You really don’t have to stay.”
“Uh-huh. See you when you’re done.”
As I waited for the doctor, I pulled up the snapshot I’d taken of my mom the night of the Masquerade Ball. I hadn’t looked at it since. I stared at her eyes, nearly black in this photograph, as if they held the answers I needed. Who had Aviana Jacobs been?
I was still looking at my screen when the exam room door opened.
“Hello,” I heard the doctor say as I started to put my phone away. Just then, my eyes caught something I hadn’t noticed before at the very edge of the frame.
My mom was holding someone’s hand.
“I’m Doctor Ryland. What brings you to—?”
“Hold on a sec,” I said, cutting him off as I zoomed in closer on the photo. It was a boy’s hand that held my mom’s, and he was wearing a ring I’d seen once before. Four symbols engraved in silver. All of a sudden I remembered who’d been standing next to her in that photo.
Griffin Payne. The Griffin Payne. CEO of Gnosis Griffin Payne.
Holy. Shit.
Shaking, I went to GoSearch and typed out his name and added “at 18.” Griffin’s senior photo popped up on my screen. I stared at him, at the boy he’d been. The aqua-blue eyes. The wavy mahogany hair. The decisive cleft in his chin. Features I saw every morning in the mirror.
It was all the proof I needed. In that instant, I just knew.
Griffin Payne was my father.
I pressed my head against the seat back, feeling light-headed.
“Are you all right?” the doctor asked.
I jumped a little. I’d forgotten he was there. “No,” I said simply. I was definitely not all right.
“I need your help,” I told North when I returned to the waiting room twenty minutes later. He stood to greet me, holding my coat awkwardly in his arms.