“I don’t know. I forgot.” I stared at the Gold on Liam’s wrist. Were there nanobots in his brain right now? Or were society members excluded from that? What about the people like me who’d forgotten to get their flu spray this year, or the ones like North, who always opted out? Then again, with hundreds of millions of people vaccinated and strapped to the Gold, a couple of thousand outliers hardly mattered.
“So you brought me here?” I asked Liam, changing the subject. “I thought I heard Dr. Tarsus’s voice before I passed out.”
He gave me a wary look, as if I knew something I wasn’t supposed to. “She thought it’d be less suspicious if I brought you.”
“And the EpiPen?”
“She carries one.”
“Why? What’s she allergic to?”
“So many questions,” Liam said, not answering me. “I’ve got some for you. Why were you wearing her necklace yesterday?”
I stared at him. “What?”
“She was Upsilon ’13,” he said, watching me closely. “Not your mom. Your mom wasn’t even one of the Few. I checked the roster in the tomb, and her name isn’t on it.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but no sound came out.
“Look, Rory,” Liam said, “whatever you’re playing at—”
“I’m not playing at anything, Liam,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “My mom left me that necklace. You don’t know for sure that it belongs to Tarsus. Just because it’s her society name doesn’t mean it’s her necklace.” But it was hers. I had no doubt. That whole bit about Pythagoras’s letter, virtue and vice. She knew I had it, and she wanted me to know it. But why? And why did she wait until now to take it back?
“Okay, so what about the pattern on your blanket? What’s that about?”
I shifted in my bed. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” I said weakly. “The Few didn’t invent the Fibonacci sequence.”
“Class starts in three minutes,” Lux announced from Liam’s wrist.
“I can’t be late,” Liam said. “But, Rory, I’m serious. I’d be careful if I were you. Tarsus is not someone you want to piss off, believe me. She has the power to keep you out of the Few.”
As if that was my fear.
“Well, thank you,” I said, attempting a smile. My heart was pounding like a drum. “For the advice. And for saving my life. I’m just bummed I missed out on initiation.” I tried to sound disappointed.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’re getting a do-over.”
“That’s great,” I managed, my stomach churning at the thought. “When?”
“Tomorrow night.”
They kept me at the hospital for observation until early evening. By the time I left, I had eleven missed calls and three cryptic but frantic texts from Kate’s phone. North was clearly worried. I didn’t blame him. My line had gone dead last night and he hadn’t heard from me since.
I couldn’t tell him about the Few over the phone. It had to be in person. But as much as I wanted to see him, and more than that to unload everything I’d been holding back, something told me I should play my next moves carefully. If I wanted last night’s hospital visit to seem like an accident, I couldn’t raise any suspicions. I needed to act naturally. Go to dinner in the dining hall. Spend some time with my Theden friends. Be seen by whoever else had been in that room last night. So I sent Kate a talk later text and headed back to the dorm to change.
The sun had dropped behind the trees by the time I made it back to Athenian Hall. Izzy was sitting on the bench by the main door, scrolling through her newsfeed on her new Gold, which she was wearing on a studded band. “Hey,” she said when she saw me, glancing up from her screen. “Where have you been all day?”
“I had a weird allergy thing,” I told her, downplaying it. “How are you?”
“Starving,” she replied.
“If you can wait twenty minutes, I’ll go with you to dinner,” I said. “I just want to take a shower first.”
“That’s perfect,” Izzy replied. “Lux says the optimal time to eat isn’t until six anyway. I’ll wait for you here.” She smiled and went back to her Gold.
I felt a wave of nausea. Lux says.
“Hey, did you get a flu spray this year?” I asked.
She nodded without looking up from her screen. “Yep. Why?”
“No reason,” I said, and walked off.
I let Lux decide what I ate for dinner that night, in part because I was too revved up over my discovery to make my own food choices, but mostly because I knew everyone was wondering how those peanuts had gotten in my system. No one had near-death scares like that anymore. Not with Lux. So I made a show of using the app, for whoever was watching. I needed to look like a girl who was paranoid now, overly cautious about every bite. For all I knew, the person behind the serpent mask was sitting at the faculty table, eyeing me. A plan was forming in my head, and if it had any chance of working, the society had to believe my accident was just an accident, and that I was as eager as ever to take my vows.
Preoccupied with my performance, I nearly choked on my risotto when Tarsus approached our table. “I imagine it’s been quite a day for you,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “No simulation can prepare you for an experience like that.”
An experience like what? The allergic reaction or the creepy ritual in which my classmates pledged their allegiance to a group of people who believe they’re wiser than God, people who were using technology to manipulate free will?
“It was . . . instructive” was my reply. My eyes went to her collar. No pendant, only a single strand of pearls.
Dr. Tarsus smiled. “Let’s be careful going forward, shall we?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“We need to schedule a make-up session,” she said then, her eyes boring into mine. “For the simulation you missed this morning. Will you be ready tomorrow night?”
I knew instantly that she wasn’t really talking about practicum. The make-up session she was referring to was the society’s initiation ritual, and the implied offer for more time was a test to see if I would try to get out of it.
“Definitely,” I said, and smiled. No hesitation. Surprise flickered in her eyes.
Dr. Tarsus held my gaze for a moment then returned the smile. “Excellent,” she said. “Tomorrow night it is.”
“She creeps me out,” Izzy said when she was gone. “I’m so glad I don’t have her.”
“Really? I think she’s badass,” Rachel said, and turned to me. “Don’t you?” I’d forgotten until that moment that she was in the room last night. She was one of the Few now. She had to know that I’d been there too. I imagined they’d pulled back my hood as soon as I’d passed out.
“Yeah,” I said vacantly, distracted by what Tarsus had just said. Let’s be careful going forward. It was impossible to decipher what she meant. Had she seen me eat that peanut? Maybe I hadn’t fooled anyone. Maybe the society leaders knew all about my stunt. I shivered at the prospect. Now they were expecting me in the tomb the next night, and I had no way of knowing what lay in store. I felt a flutter of fear in my chest. What had I gotten myself into? Better question: How was I going to get out of it?
“Earth to Rory,” I heard Izzy say.
My eyes refocused. “What?”
“I asked when you were planning to leave the dark ages,” she said, pointing at my Gemini. The three of them were wearing Golds.
“Oh. I kind of like the old one,” I said, averting Rachel’s gaze.
“Yeah, but do you like it better than Lux?”
“Huh?”
“Gnosis is discontinuing the old version of Lux,” Izzy said. “And you can only get the new version on the Gold. So if you want to keep using Lux, you’ll have to say good-bye to the clunker.” The clunker. Two days ago it was the smallest handheld on the market. Now it was obsolete.