“But you’re not powerless,” North said. “You know the truth. There’s power in that. And you’ve got something else, too.”
“You?”
He laughed. “Yes. But I was going to say wisdom. The real kind.” He pulled me to my feet. “You see things other people don’t.”
“I don’t see anything,” I told him. “It’s all the Doubt.”
“So ask the voice for help. It’s given you insight before.”
“I need more than insight, North. I need an actual plan.”
“Why not go to Griffin for help?” he suggested. “He’s CEO of the company behind this. He has to be able to do something.”
“The man just had major brain surgery.”
“He just woke up this afternoon,” North replied.
“What?”
North picked up the remote from the coffee table and turned on his clunky TV. A local news reporter was standing outside of Massachusetts General Hospital. The banner at the bottom of the screen was GNOSIS CEO GRIFFIN PAYNE WAKES UP.
I took the remote from North to turn up the volume.
“Mr. Payne is being moved early tomorrow morning to an undisclosed private facility to focus on his recovery,” the reporter was saying. “In a recorded statement to Gnosis’s board of directors released about an hour ago, Griffin resigned as CEO, citing his desire to ‘dedicate full attention to his recovery’ in the coming months. No word yet on who will replace him at the helm of the 750 billion dollar company.” The camera cut away from the reporter and back to the news desk.
The female anchor launched into the next story as an ominous-looking photo of the sun appeared next to her head. “A large, irregularly shaped sunspot group has solar physicists concerned that a geomagnetic superstorm may be in the forecast. If the active region bursts—”
“Great,” I muttered, clicking off the TV. “On top of everything, the world is coming to an end.” I tossed the remote onto the couch, reaching for my bag. “I need you to take me to the train station.”
“Rory, it’s past eight already. It’ll be eleven before you get to Boston. No way they’ll let you see him tonight.”
“Then I have to find out where they’re taking him.” I looked at North. “Can you do that?”
He was already heading toward his closet. “There should be a transfer directive in the hospital’s system,” he called over his shoulder.
“Hey, where’s Hershey?” I asked, following him.
“I dunno. She left about an hour ago. Told me not to wait up.” North slid the poster back and pushed the secret door open.
“Do you know who the mystery guy is?” I asked.
“Nope,” North replied. “If I did, I’d thank him for the privacy.” He grinned as he pulled me into the tiny room and wrapped his arms around my waist. I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, and for a few seconds I wasn’t thinking about anything except the way his lips felt on mine.
“Okay,” I said, putting my hand over his mouth as I pulled away. “Hold that thought.” I pointed at his computer screen. “Transfer notice.”
It only took him a few minutes to get into Massachusetts General Hospital’s patient records database. “Griffin Payne,” North said, typing in the name.
“Please let it be somewhere close,” I murmured.
“There he is,” North said. “Now let’s see where he’s—”
He stopped.
“No.” His voice sounded funny.
“What is it? Where are they taking him?”
“Maybe this isn’t— No, that’s when he checked into the hospital. Do you know when his birthday is?”
It was on his Panopticon page, but I couldn’t remember the date. “In November, I think? Why? What is it?” I took a step closer to the screen, not sure what I was supposed to be looking for.
North turned around in his chair. His face was ashen.
“Rory, Griffin died on Friday night.”
29
IT TOOK NO EFFORT NOT TO CRY. It was as if my insides had turned to dry sand when North said the words Griffin died, my emotions disappearing into dust.
“Rory, talk to me. Are you okay?”
I was still standing where I’d been standing, less than a foot from North’s chair, but I was eons away. My brain clung to its pragmatism, determined to solve this, to gather the facts that would explain how this happened, how I could’ve lost my father literally less than an hour after I’d found him.
“How did he die?” My voice sounded hollow. The way I felt.
North turned back to his screen. “Cerebral venous thrombosis. But it doesn’t say what that is.”
“It was a blood clot in his brain,” I said. The same way my mom had died, except hers was in her lungs. My eyes came into focus. “Could nanobots do something like that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even—” He clasped his hands behind his neck, cradling his head between his elbows. “It’s insane, Rory. He’s been dead for three days and they’re telling the world he’s still alive. How long are they going to keep this up?”
“For as long as it takes to convince people that Gnosis can run itself without him,” I said flatly. “Then they’ll have him suffer some setback in whatever ‘private facility’ they’re supposedly sending him to, and to everyone’s great surprise and shock, he’ll die.” I met North’s gaze. “You said it yourself. They control the medium, so they control the message.”
“Rory, this is seriously effed up. How does a thirty-five-year-old man have a stroke and die?”
“Because they killed him, North.” My voice was uncharacteristically cold. I couldn’t help it. The warmth that filled this tiny room a few moments ago, when our bodies were pressed against each other’s, was gone.
“You think they caused his stroke?”
“Think about it. He was about to say something critical of Gnosis two days before the Gold’s launch, on national television. We saw him talking to Dr. Tarsus right before, remember? She knew what he was about to do. The Few couldn’t risk the fallout of whatever he was going to say.”
“Okay,” North said slowly. “But how?”
“If nanobots can mimic oxytocin, why couldn’t they clump together to cause a clot? Tarsus was standing with him on the stage. She was close enough. She could’ve done it from her handheld.” I pointed at North’s computer screen. “Is there a link to the autopsy?”
North scanned the page then tapped his screen. “An autopsy was declined. There’s a form here, signed by his father.”
His father. My grandfather. Why wouldn’t he want an autopsy? Because he already knew what it would show. Griffin’s voice echoed in my head. My parents never liked Aviana. My stepfather hated her.
“It must be his stepfather,” I heard North say. “The last name’s not the same.” He squinted at his screen. “It’s hard to read the signature, but it looks like it says Robert Atwater.”
My chest contracted like a corset. I couldn’t breathe.
“Robert Atwater is Griffin Payne’s father.” I nearly choked on the words.
North looked over his shoulder at me. “You know him?”
I managed to respond before I threw up. “He’s the dean.”
I lay on North’s couch, my mind whirling, my stomach churning, wishing I could rewind my life. If only I hadn’t picked akratic paracusia as my research topic. If only I hadn’t applied to Theden in the first place. I could be in Seattle right now, blissfully addicted to my handheld, convinced, like Beck was, that I was living my best life. Instead I was here. Drowning in the awareness of how bad things really were.
How easily I’d fallen for it. Dean Atwater’s inquisition the day after the Gnosis party. His urging that I tell him all that I knew. It was all an act, part of the society’s evaluation process, designed to test my allegiance. I saw that now. He wasn’t trying to root out society members. He was trying to weed out those who didn’t have what it took to become one.