“Five years,” I repeated. “But it’s been seventeen.”
“Five years for R&D. Twelve more to—another quote—‘prepare the way.’ It’s insane how detailed their strategy was. They knew they’d have to first take over the handheld market, then gradually get people accustomed to using a decision-making app. They even planned for how long it’d take to phase out the needle vaccine. It’s all here, every single step.”
I was ten yards from the cemetery. I glanced around. No sign of Liam yet. “What were the other two files?”
“The second was a list of names. The Gnosis and Soza reps who signed the memo were on it, along with several hundred others. I recognized some of the names. The founders of Gnosis, for example. The rest I started looking up. They’re all corporate bigwigs. CEOs, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists.”
“It was just a list of names?”
“Yeah, but with these weird letter/number combinations beside each one,” replied North. “Mia Ritchson, CEO of Soza Labs. Gamma, eighty-one. Alan Viljoen, then-COO of Gnosis. Alpha, ninety-nine. Here, I’ll send you a screenshot.”
As if in slow motion, I looked down at the lapel of my cloak: Zeta ’30. I didn’t need a screenshot. I knew exactly how those letter/number combinations looked.
My rib cage contracted like a vise grip. The people on that list were members of the Few. The same people who’d signed that incriminating memo.
Oh, my God.
The society was behind all this.
“Oh, no,” I murmured.
“Rory, what is it?”
“What was the third file?” I asked him urgently.
“A photograph. It’s—” Just then, the line went dead. I looked at my screen. No service. I looked up and realized I’d crossed into the cemetery without realizing it. Suddenly I wanted to run. The Few were behind this. The quote, the blanket, the necklace. I saw them differently now. My mom was trying to warn me.
“Ready?” At the sound of Liam’s voice, I spun on my heels. He was right behind me. “Sorry I was late. We should hurry.” His hand was already moving toward my mouth.
“I—” Before I could get the words out, I tasted cherry on my tongue.
He didn’t take me to the arena this time. When I came to, I was standing with the other initiates in a different room, a smaller, square-shaped one, with a much lower ceiling and four stone walls that were shimmering slightly in the yellow candlelight, oddly iridescent. Unlike in the arena, I could see every corner of this room. There was a stone altar along one wall, built out of a single piece of granite. Behind it was a woven tapestry of the Garden of Eden. There were two doors, at opposite sides of the room. If the tomb was laid out like a Fibonacci tile, then each room was bigger than the last. Where in the sequence was this room? How far was I from the center? Liam said there was an exit there. I pictured myself running for it, but I knew it was too late for that. I was trapped.
Fear coursed through my veins. What had I gotten myself into?
Two boys next to me were whispering, their excitement practically bursting out of every hushed word. One of them had his arm pulled into his cloak, shoving peanuts into his mouth through the opening at the neck. I stiffened at the smell and quickly moved away from them, swallowing the bile that was creeping up my throat.
Minutes passed. As we waited, I tried to get a look at some of the other initiates’ faces, but they’d all followed the instructions and pulled their hoods down low. The peanut boy was still going at it. He seemed to have an unlimited supply.
Please, I pleaded silently. Get me out of this.
There was the sound of stone sliding on stone and one of the doors opened. A figure in the serpent mask strode in, clutching a brown leather book with two hands. There was no way to know if it was the same man who’d worn the mask the two previous times I’d seen it, but I guessed that it was, and that the mask was a symbol of his status. My stomach turned over. Our leader was a snake. Why had that not bothered me before now?
The serpent was followed by two other figures. One wore the head of a fox. The other, an owl. The three masked figures took their places behind the altar, and the serpent opened the leather book.
“There are two types of people in this world,” he began. His voice was missing Saturday’s kindness. “The wise man and the fool. The wise man is prudent, strong-willed, and courageous. The fool is impulsive, weak, and desperate for a master. The wise man understands that he is the master, a god in his own right.” The serpent opened the book as if he was going to read from it, but I could tell he wasn’t even looking at the page.
“I form’d them free: and free they must remain,” he declared. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as he began to recite the lines I’d long ago committed to memory. “Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change their nature.”
All at once I understood. Change their nature. It was exactly what Project Hyperion was designed to do.
The serpent looked up from the book and paused, surveying us. I forced myself to meet his papier-mâché gaze.
“Fall,” he said then. “It’s how Milton described what happened in Eden. As if man suffered a loss. But what happened in the Garden of Eden wasn’t a fall. On the contrary, it was a glorious coup d’état. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they became equal to the God who created them. And that God became eternally irrelevant. The wisdom they acquired that day has been passed down through time to an elect few. Men and women who were born to live as gods among men.”
My skin crawled. They think they’re gods.
“For the past two hundred and fifty years, the Few have been working to rebuild the paradise that was lost when mankind was expelled from the Garden. Our forefathers founded the Eden Academy as a breeding ground for elite minds, and every year we select the most promising students to join our ranks. It is your wisdom that has gotten you here. Your classmates are intelligent but weak. They have the capacity to reason, but not the strength of will to use it.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Then there is the rest of the world,” he said. “Fools in search of a master. So proud of their freedom, and yet so willing to give it up.”
In Lux we trust. In a flash, I saw it. What they were doing with Project Hyperion. What Gnosis had been doing with Lux all along. Who needs higher wisdom when the little gold box on your wrist knows everything there is to know? Never mind that there were men behind those tiny machines, orchestrating your every move with an algorithm written to keep you “happy.” As happy as a clipped bird in a pretty, gilded cage. And never mind that the choice to obey Lux wasn’t yours anymore, but the work of a swarm of microscopic robots that had commandeered your brain.
I wanted to throw up.
“Our goal is nothing less than a modern paradise. A new Eden. The Eden. Here. Now. A perfect society ruled by hoi oligoi sophoi. The wise few.”
There was an eruption of applause from the other initiates. I looked around in disbelief. My skin was crawling and they were clapping.
“The time has come to declare your divinity and to take your vows,” the serpent declared. No no no no, the voices in my head were screaming. Voices, plural, this time. The Doubt and my own.