“Now how do I get in?” I asked aloud, double-tapping my screen for a ground shot of the mausoleum, as if I might find some clue there. But of course, what I really needed was a look at the inside of the space. The coffin that I was sure hid a stairway into the earth. Staring at the outside of the building would get me nowhere.
So I zoomed back out. Placing the other X would be harder, because the stone tiling stopped at the cemetery gates. Wherever it was, it wasn’t on campus. It was much farther away. I’d have to do the math to figure out exactly how far. But I could, as long as the pattern held up.
Fibonacci numbers followed a particular sequence. The first two numbers were always zero and one, and every number after that was the sum of the previous two numbers. The pattern on my blanket was a tiling with squares whose side lengths were successive Fibonacci numbers, with a series of curved arcs connecting the corners of the squares and forming a golden spiral. I knew that the two smallest squares were one millimeter on each side, and that the largest was fifty-five by fifty-five. I’d measured them when I was a kid. The second orange cross-stitch was set away from the squares, at the widest curve of the spiral, which ended at the stitch. I had two questions to answer: How many millimeters away from the innermost square was that little X, and what was the corresponding distance in miles?
I used the scale on my map to figure out that the mausoleum was a twelve-foot square. So one millimeter on my blanket was equal to twelve feet on the map. I immediately downloaded a ruler app and began measuring out what would’ve been the next several squares on my blanket, the ones my mom hadn’t stitched. Why had she stopped after the tenth square? My only guess was that that’s where the Few’s tomb ended, probably at the big arena they’d taken us to, which according to my map was just beneath the Theden Green. The orange stitch, then, was pointing to something outside the tomb, something that lay at the tip of the arc on the fourteenth square.
I went back to my map and began drawing squares on my screen with my stylus. The draw function allowed me to type in the side lengths of each one, so I just had to line them up in the right pattern. It was staggering, the precision with which the tomb must’ve been built. Not just the tomb, but the cemetery and campus and town above it, all laid out in a careful mathematical sequence.
When I got to the fourteenth square, I stopped and stared. There, near the northeast corner, right where the second orange cross-stitch would be, was the Enfield Reservoir. Owned by the Theden Initiative, funder of the SynOx study, the same entity that controlled Gnosis and my school, a man-made pool occupying a mere fraction of the quarry beneath it. I pictured the reservoir’s armed guards, electronic surveillance, and high-powered electric fence.
There was something underneath that water.
30
“THERE’S SOMETHING UNDER the Enfield Reservoir,” I said to North at eight o’clock the next morning. I’d called him on Kate’s phone from Izzy’s Gold, which she’d been willing but reluctant to part with at breakfast. I was meeting her outside Hamilton Hall and timing it so I’d arrive just as first period was starting so I wouldn’t have any alone time with Dr. Tarsus.
“What kind of something?” North asked, his voice echoing a little. Paradiso’s tiny bathroom was the café’s only private space.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But whatever it is, my mom thought it was important.” I quickly told him what I’d figured out about my blanket, and how it corresponded to the landscape around the cemetery. “It’s a Fibonacci tile,” I explained. “Which basically just means that there’s this sequence of bigger and bigger connected squares with a spiral running through them. The pattern on my blanket stops after ten squares, and I think because that’s where the tomb stops. But the spiral continues into what would’ve been the fourteenth square, and that’s where my mom stitched the second X.” I was talking fast now, hurrying to get it all out. “And if you keep drawing the spiral even farther, all the way out to where the twenty-first square would be, you run into the Gnosis headquarters. Like, right through the center of the building. So I’m thinking all three are connected underground—the tomb, whatever’s beneath the reservoir, and the Gnosis complex.”
“Wow,” North said. “It’s like something out of a bad Nicolas Cage movie from the early aughts.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“You don’t know who Nicolas Cage is?” North sounded incredulous. “You need to see National Treasure immediately. I mean, it’s terrible, but since you’re essentially living it, you ought to at least see it.”
“Focus please. The Enfield Reservoir. What would the Few put under there, and why?”
As I was talking, I spotted Dean Atwater across the courtyard and physically recoiled. Now that the courtyard had begun to clear, the walkway between Hamilton and Jay was in his direct sightline. I ducked behind the buildings, out of view.
“Beats me,” North was saying. “Want to drive out there this afternoon and check it out? I get off at four.”
“Definitely,” I replied, pulling the Gold away from my ear. 8:44. Dr. Tarsus would lock her classroom door in sixty seconds. “I gotta go,” I told North. “I’ll come by Paradiso after my last class.”
I got to practicum at exactly 8:45, just as Dr. Tarsus was pulling the door closed. I caught it with my hand. “Feeling better today?” she asked when she saw me.
“Much,” I told her, and flashed my brightest smile. “Looking forward to that make-up session.”
“Glad to hear it,” she replied, reaching into the pocket of her blazer. “You’ll need this.” I looked down at her hand and saw a small envelope pressed between her finger and thumb. She handed it to me at waist level, as if she were trying to keep it out of view. I quickly slipped it into my bag.
“Let’s get started,” she said then, louder, to the whole class.
I stepped into my pod and dropped my bag in the bin by my seat, but not before pulling the envelope back out. I heard a sliding sound as I lifted it sideways, and heaviness at the lower end.
“The goal today is escape,” I heard Tarsus say. “You’ll be evaluated based on your ability to reason without relying on your sensory perception. How well can you make decisions in the dark?”
I tore open the envelope and stared at its contents. The silver chain and pendant were in a heap at the bottom corner. She was giving the necklace back?
My screen turned on, but the scene was so dimly lit, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. I thought for a second that my screen was messed up until I heard Dr. Tarsus’s voice again.
“We rely on our senses to guide us. But what if you were in a situation where your senses were compromised? How would your mind compensate?”
I looked down at my necklace again. You’ll need this, she’d said. For what?
“You’re on the top floor of a burning building,” Dr. Tarsus was saying. “There is a single elevator that connects all the floors and a stairwell between each set of floors, but these stairwells are not stacked, meaning that each one is in a different location.” These were important details and I’d only half heard them. I shoved the envelope with my necklace back into my bag and tried to listen. Burning building. Stairwells in different locations. Escape. “The fire in this building originated on your floor,” Tarsus went on, “and will quickly escalate. Your task is to get out of the building alive. The meter at the bottom of your screen will tell you how much smoke you’ve inhaled. If you lose consciousness, the simulation will end and you will get a zero score. Good luck.”