by Rysa Walker
“That I would what?” he asks.
Taylor takes a seat across from us and stares at her brother for a moment. Her face softens, but she finishes the statement. “That you would overreact. Again.”
The color drains from Aaron’s face. I get the sense that Taylor is referring to something they’ve discussed privately.
Surprisingly, Daniel comes to his defense. “Aaron drew the weapon because he convinced me, ahead of time, that Pfeifer’s visitors would never be able to relax as long as I was armed. They can’t help seeing me as a Fudd, as one of Cregg’s men. If Pfeifer hadn’t managed to corral them, I’d have gotten Sophie to stop blocking so I could step in with a nudge. But that has to be a last resort. One instance of me pushing his hitchers the wrong way, and they might torch this cabin and half the valley along with it. But, Taylor—if you knew about this ahead of time, why in hell didn’t you give us a heads-up before Anna went in? What happened to your whole we-can’t-keep-secrets campaign?”
“Anna needed to talk to Pfeifer. And Stan says that all paths show Anna as stable, at least for the next few days. Otherwise, I would have told you.”
“It sounds like you’re giving a damned weather forecast,” Daniel says. “And I’m guessing this Stan guy’s predictions aren’t much more accurate. You’re putting a whole lot of faith in his ability, and since you’re keeping secrets, you force us to do the same. That makes me very nervous. I remember Stan vaguely from The Warren, but I don’t know him. I don’t know what his motives are.”
I keep quiet. This has the makings of a sibling argument, judging from the tilt of Taylor’s chin. And while I really don’t want to piss Taylor off, if I had to pick sides, I’d back Daniel on this one. I don’t know Stan that well either. He strikes me as very . . . pragmatic. Plus, he claims to see dozens of different paths. There were so many ways that things could have gone horribly wrong in that room, so any claim that all of the paths Stan was monitoring were safe ones strikes me as nothing short of miraculous. He’s gambling, and I’m starting to feel like we’re the dice he’s rolling.
“I do remember Maria,” Daniel says. “But I remember her as a troublemaker who spent her time playing practical jokes and embarrassing people. She wasn’t some Joan of Arc marshaling troops into battle.”
Taylor gives him an icy look. “You remember me playing My Little Pony and eating fluffernutters. People change, Daniel. They grow up.”
Deo mumbles something in defense of fluffernutters, but they both ignore him.
“This was less than a year ago,” Daniel says. “Maria can’t have changed that much.”
“Really?” Taylor says. “Sometimes people grow up fast because their circumstances change. Maybe their dad gets killed. Or their best friend. Or both. Was I the same person a year after those things happened to me?”
Daniel doesn’t respond, and I’m once again wowed by how well Taylor plays her oldest brother. It doesn’t usually work as well on Aaron, although he’s oddly quiet right now.
“And,” Taylor adds, seizing the moment, “it’s sometimes better if you don’t know everything in these situations. Anna understands exactly what I mean.”
She’s referring to my own visions, and on that point, she’s right. I rarely tell the others the specific details, especially if it’s something that affects them. I made an exception this last time, mostly because the brief thought I had about them in the vision was vague. But it usually makes more sense to limit the number of people who have to deal with knowing what’s coming down the pike, especially when it’s written in stone.
Stan’s visions aren’t like that, however. There are variables. Things can and do change. I could bring this up, but they all know it, and what I really want is for the argument to end. My stomach is already tied in knots from the experience with my parents, and this isn’t helping.
Apparently, Deo feels the same way, because he deftly changes the subject. “What did Pfeifer mean about your colors surging? That made no sense at all.”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I say, and then give them a basic overview of my conversation with Pfeifer. They’re as surprised as I was to learn that Cregg was behind my mother’s murder, but not surprised in the least at my description of how his face shifted when it was my mother speaking, or during that brief moment when the Furies charged forward.
“You look nothing like Molly,” Taylor says. “But that night when you let her take control at Sam’s office? It was like seeing a pale, blonde version of my best friend. The facial expressions were totally Molly. That convinced me as much as anything she told us. And more recently . . .”
She doesn’t finish the comment, but it’s clear from her grimace that she’s talking about Cregg.
“You’re sure your walls are solid?” Aaron asks. “I mean, I’m not feeling anything right now, but I didn’t charge in like that because of his gang of hitchers. That didn’t hit until I threw open the door. The vibe I got was coming from Cregg. An intense split-second surge of rage directed at Pfeifer . . . and at Taylor, oddly enough.”
Taylor taps the iPad next to her. “Probably doesn’t like the fact that I’m digging around in his Chamber of Secrets.”
Deo snickers, and I think he’s about to make a joke, but then he seems to remember this is Graham Cregg we’re talking about. His secrets aren’t exactly a joking matter.
Cregg stirred behind the wall again when she tapped the screen just now, but it was a feeble movement. His recent burst of activity seems to have drained his energy. This is a more passive reaction—a pitiful flip of his middle finger instead of a murderous lunge at the barrier—and it doesn’t even trip Aaron’s radar.
Taylor’s watching me, however, with same expression she wore at The Warren the other night, just before she gave me that second injection. She’s measuring me, trying to gauge my limits. Despite her claims that everything is safe, that the great prophet Stan has decreed that I am stable, there’s a seed of doubt. I can’t fault her there, but I do wish she’d be less mercurial.
“My walls are intact, Taylor. What’s up?”
“A couple of things. But maybe it would be best to wait until morning. I know you just woke up, but some of us are tired.”
She’s not exactly lying, but she’s being evasive.
“Taylor, Cregg just stormed the castle in there, and he seems wiped. If you’ve got something to tell us and you’re worried about Cregg’s reaction triggering a response from Pfeifer’s horde”—I gesture toward the cabin—“this really might be the best time.”
“All right. Fine. I’m nowhere near finished, but from what I can tell, this is Cregg’s . . . I don’t know. Master file, I guess. Everything he’d need to hit the ground running with his sexy new body. Sorry . . .” she says, in response to my expression. “Most of the information isn’t actually on the tablet, though. He’s got links to files, probably hosted privately. I’ve downloaded some of those to my laptop, in case his daughter or someone else decides to scrub the server. I couldn’t get them all, though—one set requires a fingerprint.”
Aaron sighs. “Maybe there’s a work-around? A password option?”
“And why would we need that?” Taylor asks.
“Um . . . because I don’t want to find Cregg’s grave and dig up his moldering . . .” Aaron stops and grins as he lifts my hand from the table. “Got it. Open sesame.”
“You mean my fingerprint could have opened the thing all along? We didn’t need to guess the password?”
“No. There are several fingerprints in the tablet’s memory, but Cregg didn’t set it up to unlock the device. It’s just an extra layer of security for some of the files. Anyway, the thing is a total grab bag. Financial data—both personal financial info and also a ton of stuff dealing with Python Diagnostics and Decathlon. Some dirt on his father as well. A bunch of medical files and spreadsheets. Pages of scientific notes. Data on the adepts—information from when he had them at The Warren or down in that silo, along with more recent
notes about our practice sessions at Sandalford. And also . . . personal stuff. Pictures. Some old news articles from the 1970s. A journal that goes back to his teens. I haven’t had the nerve to open that one yet. Not after the box Anna found in his desk drawer.”
“I’ll handle it,” Daniel says. “Just send me the file.”
Another dim echo of protest from Cregg. More because I’m tired of his intrusions than out of a real desire to read it, I say, “Me, too.”
A heated discussion follows on how to get the information to our devices. Apparently, e-mail is out, we shouldn’t trust the cloud right now, they’re not sure whether the wi-fi here is secure enough, and something else I’m perfectly willing to admit I don’t understand. I snuggle in a little closer to Aaron for warmth while Taylor and Daniel hash it out.
“Cold?” Aaron whispers, slipping an arm around me.
I nod, sticking my hands under my thighs to warm them. “I didn’t think I’d need gloves and wool socks in April.”
He looks over at the shed. “I could start a fire. Except . . . I doubt any of us have a lighter.”
“Plus, that would mean I’d lose your body heat while you’re way over there. I’m okay.”
Taylor clears her throat. “Are you two lovebirds ready to join the rest of the class?”
I stick out my tongue, and Taylor angles the cracked screen so that all of us have a semi-decent view.
“Okay, Anna, first thing—you might want to hang on to that fake ID. There’s a little over half a million in a bank account registered to Ms. Ophelia Duncan. Twice that amount in stocks and bonds, plus the townhouse and two other properties. But this one file that I was just looking at puzzles me. It was created a few weeks before Cregg died.”
The file in question is a spreadsheet—four unlabeled columns, with about forty entries. It’s mostly numbers, although the first column is a list of names, in alphabetical order. Most of the names are foreign, so I’m not entirely sure whether they’re given names or surnames. The final column is a three- or four-digit alphanumeric entry. There are at least ten different variations—AS1, OA1, OA2, B1, and so on.
Taylor points to column C. About half of the entries read 01/20/21. The rest are two-letter combinations, sometimes a large number of them, separated by commas.
“Some of these are dates,” she says. “Or . . . actually, a single date.”
Aaron nods. “Inauguration day. Why would Cregg schedule all of these transactions on inauguration day?”
“Payoffs?” Deo suggests drily. “It’s not like foreign intervention in an election is unprecedented. Maybe he’s paying a bunch of teens in Macedonia to post fake stories discrediting his father’s opponent.”
“No,” I say. “Not to help his father’s campaign. If anything, it would be the opposite.”
They don’t look entirely convinced, but I’m certain on this point. While I have no idea what caused the split between father and son, I have a very clear sense of Graham Cregg’s deep loathing for the Senator. He also feels vindicated, like he was right about something he’s always suspected. His hatred for his father was suppressed for a very long time, and now he’s ready for some major payback.
I’m not sure how to convince them about this, however, so I direct their attention back to the spreadsheet. “The ones that aren’t dates are state abbreviations. See? That one in the middle has a bunch. AL, CA, MA, OK, VA . . .”
“Wait a minute,” Taylor says. “Deo, check the primary schedule on your phone.”
“Primary schedule of what?”
“The political primary schedule. I think those are all Super Tuesday states—they held their primaries on March 3rd. And I’m pretty sure the three states in the entry just below that one held their primaries on March 10th.”
Deo pulls up something online that confirms Taylor’s suspicion. All of the entries marked with state abbreviations held their Unify America party primary or caucus on the same day.
“So,” Daniel says. “Foreign entries and domestic. Some sort of transaction is apparently triggered on either inauguration day or primary election day, but what?”
“Time to find out.” Taylor taps one of the linked numbers. After a moment, an interface pops up indicating that a fingerprint is required. “Little help, Anna?”
The site opens when I press my thumb to the button. And equally sure enough, I hear a feeble thump at the back of my head.
Deo catches my reaction. “Something wrong?” he asks.
“Nope,” I say with a tight smile. “Just a little confirmation that we’re digging in the right spot.”
The document that pops up on the screen is a contract between Franco Lucas and someone named Ambroz. In the event that Ronald T. Cregg is elected president of the United States, a transfer of two hundred thousand Czech koruna—just over nine thousand US dollars—will be initiated, on January 20, 2021, to the account number Taylor clicked.
No . . . wait. Not to the account. From the account.
Daniel notices it at the same time I do. “It looks like the funds will transfer into the account after the election . . . but only if Ron Cregg wins.”
“Into Anna’s account,” Taylor says. “These are all in the name of Ophelia Duncan.”
“That doesn’t make it my account.”
“Sure looks like you on that driver’s license,” Daniel says. “And the money could come in handy.”
“The contract was managed by Lucas,” Deo says. “That’s weird. Pretty sure he wasn’t a lawyer.”
That’s putting it mildly. Lucas was a stupid, lecherous brute, and I know from my Molly memories that he barely finished high school.
“No,” Aaron says. “Definitely not a lawyer. But he had the connections to drug dealers. He spent about as much time in jail as he did on the outside until he started working as hired muscle for Graham Cregg. That’s one reason he hated my dad so much. The question is, what was he helping Cregg sell? Maybe this was just drug dealing on the side, or maybe these are contracts for the women they were trafficking in?”
Taylor shakes her head. “No. Doesn’t make sense. Why would deals like that be tied to election dates? More likely it’s just plain old influence peddling. Paying for access once his father is elected president.”
I’m about to protest, again, that I don’t think Cregg and his father are working for the same team any longer. But before I can speak, Aaron says, “No. There’s a product involved. This part . . .” He runs his finger back up a few lines. “In the event that Senator Ronald Cregg is elected president of the United States, the seller grants the purchaser license to produce the specified formula or formulas within the designated country.”
We all fall silent.
“He’s selling versions of the Delphi serum,” Taylor says after a moment. “To dozens of foreign governments.”
“I don’t think it’s governments,” Aaron says. “These are small-time buyers. And they’re not all foreign.”
“True.” Taylor clicks the link with the Super Tuesday states, and we go through the thumbprint ritual again. Another contract pops up, this one for California. It’s identical to the Czech contract we examined. We click through a few others. The amounts are all ten thousand dollars. A quick check of Ophelia’s bank account shows thirteen deposits for ten thousand each during the week after Super Tuesday.
“Ten thousand is chump change,” Daniel says, “given probably well over a billion dollars has now gone into research and testing for the Delphi program. And I’m no lawyer, either, but I know enough to be certain that this contract is void. Scroll down—see? No signatures. Even if it were signed, it wouldn’t be enforceable, since Graham Cregg doesn’t own the research. This is more . . . internal bookkeeping, maybe? A memorandum of understanding. I’ve seen similar pseudo-contracts between drug dealers, but they’re usually even more vague. And the enforcement mechanism in those cases is somebody killing your ass if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain or you spill to the cops. But I guess
Cregg already knew he’d be dead, so . . .”
“Not dead. Just in a brand-new body,” Aaron says. “This could explain some of the incidents we’ve been hearing on the news about the sudden rise in violence in some areas. They dismissed the claims of psychic activity as nonsense, but it would be really interesting to check these dates and see if there’s a connection to when he transferred the formulas. I wonder how long it would take to actually get them to market? Wouldn’t there be some lag time?”
“You can cook a batch of meth in like . . . a day,” Deo says. “What? Nobody else watched Breaking Bad? This stuff could obviously be different, but we’ve got the number-one authority on it inside the cabin. Why not ask him? Not right this second, obviously, but later.”
I second that motion, and add that my father might also be able to give us more information on whether the various codes correlate to different formulas. “I’m pretty sure he said something about OA when we were talking.”
“But why,” Aaron says, “would Graham Cregg sell the formulas for—as Daniel put it a minute ago—chump change? Imagine how much money he could have gotten. Why would he sell the formula to a few dozen people for such a meager sum when he could have made millions more from a single buyer? There are governments that would have coughed up serious cash to be the second country to have a Delphi Project.”
“Unless that’s the goal,” Daniel says. “Think about the history of nuclear weapons. The US developed them—used them, in fact—and soon there were two countries. Then five, then nine, then ten. Being a nuclear nation gives you not just power but also a certain prestige, right? You end up with the haves and the have-nots. And the haves don’t want to let new countries into the nuclear club—”
“Because they might get us blown up,” Deo says.
“Yeah,” Daniel admits. “That’s part of it. But also because the haves lose some of their prestige and power if it’s a club that anyone can join.”
