“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.
27
I COULDN’T GET HER face out of my mind. The teenaged version of Tarsus, a gorgeous, striking-looking girl who went by Peri and spent her afternoons working in a psych lab. How had she gotten wrapped up with Gnosis and what did it have to do with my mom? I knew looks could be deceiving, but the photograph of Peri Weaver just didn’t fit with the picture I had in my mind, neither the girl I imagined she must’ve been nor the coldhearted monster of a person she’d become. The girl in the photograph looked too nice.
These were the thoughts preoccupying me as I was getting ready for initiation that night. I wondered how my counterparts were swinging it, with sleeping roommates to deal with, or, worse, awake ones to lie to about where they were sneaking off to in the middle of the night.
I put on triple layers and pulled my hair back off my face. We were told to carry our robes with us until we reached the woods then put them on with our hoods pulled down to cover our faces. We’d be greeted by our second-year “handlers” at the cemetery gate. Before putting on my jacket, I brought my pendant to my lips, kissing it for good luck. North had moved the files to his hard drive to work on the encryption so I could put the necklace back on. It was silly, but I felt calmer with it around my neck. Tethered, somehow. Lux’s voice spoke out of the silence: “You should leave in sixty seconds.” I was using it again to make sure I was on time. “There is a seventy-five percent chance of rain,” Lux said then. “I’d recommend a rain jacket.”
“How’s a velvet robe?” I quipped, zipping up my fleece.
“Velvet is not waterproof,” Lux replied. “But your cloak is.”
I froze. “What did you just say?”
“I said, ‘But your cloak is’” came the app’s reply.
I grabbed my Gemini off the dresser and stared at my screen. How did Lux know about the cloak?
“You should leave now,” Lux announced. Still stunned by the cloak comment, I grabbed the velvet knapsack and headed out.
I’d just put the cloak on when my handheld buzzed with a call. Incoming call from @KatePribulsky. It had to be North. I’d just crossed into the woods and had only a minute and a half to get to the gate, so I had to hurry. Leaves crunched beneath my sneakers.
“Where are you?” North asked as soon as I picked up. “It sounds like you’re outside.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied. “I went for a walk.”
“Don’t you guys have curfew?”
“We just have to be on campus.” That was two lies. Curfew meant we had to be inside the dorm building, and I’d left the confines of campus when I’d stepped into the woods. I quickly changed the subject before I had to lie again. “So did you crack the encryption?”
“Yes,” North said. “And oh. My. God. Rory, it’s—”
“Tell me,” I said, my heart hiccupping in my chest.
“There were three files,” he said urgently. “The first is an internal memo on Gnosis letterhead dated April 2013 about a project called Hyperion. A joint undertaking between Gnosis and Soza Labs to—and I quote—‘develop swarms of nanobots capable of mimicking the activity of oxytocin in the brain.’ It’s signed by various Gnosis and Soza executives and is stamped DELETE UPON RECEIPT. Rory, you were right,” he said then. “About all of it.” The same words were reverberating in my brain and pounding in my chest. I was right. My limbs felt loose with relief.
North kept talking, faster now. “The memo goes on to say that the nanobots would work in connection with a new decision-making app Gnosis was developing. They’d make the user trust the app so intensely that it would eliminate any cognitive dissonance. I guess the nanobots Hildebrand was using were finicky, and the SynOx compound didn’t work exactly the way they wanted it to, so they were building in five years for more R&D.”