HEAR

by Robin Epstein

  Inside, a guard checks Henley IDs. After I flash mine, I head straight for the information desk where a librarian is setting herself up for the day. She takes a big swig from her to-go mug, closes her eyes, and seems to meditate on the caffeine for a moment.

  “May I help you?”

  “US Army Research Institute archive?” I wonder what she’ll make of this request since it feels somehow illicit to me.

  “Ask in the Special Collections Room,” she replies, unfazed. She points to a room at the other end of the library. “Most of the archive’s on microfilm.”

  “Microfilm, right.” I wait, hoping she’ll explain what that means. Instead she just nods in the direction of the room, then picks up her coffee mug, closes her eyes, and takes another good slug. Though this woman couldn’t be less interested in my research, I wonder if the other HEARs know about this archive. I wonder if they know why the US Army would be interested in ESP research. If they know my uncle’s lab is in trouble.

  The Special Collections Room turns out to be a soaring two-story rotunda. The second floor balcony is lined with curving bookshelves, and the ground floor features reading tables and several glassed-in exhibits with books and drawings. At the back is an information desk, behind which is a floor-to-ceiling cabinet containing metal drawers of various sizes.

  The girl behind the desk is looking in one of the drawers.

  I clear my throat to get her attention.

  “Sorry!” she says, turning around. I recognize her as the pretty Brit brunette from the Hounskull Club the other night. “Can I help you?”

  “I need the microfilm for the US Army Research Institute archive?” Smiling, I add, “Dumb question, I know, but . . . what is microfilm?”

  She gives a sympathetic laugh. “Not a dumb question.” Then she leans in conspiratorially. “I wasn’t sure myself until after I’d worked here for a few weeks. Microfilm and its cousin microfiche are photographic reproductions of images copied at one twenty-fifth their normal size, hence ‘micro.’”

  “Aha, thanks. So how do I—”

  “See what’s on them?” she interjects. “Right. In order to see those images, you thread the film through a dedicated machine—a fiche reader—which you’ll find over there.” She points to three big machines on the other side of the room. “And it magnifies the pictures onto a projector inside the machine. You look at it through a binocular-like eyepiece, like the kind they use in eye exams at the optometrist.”

  I nod, suppressing a groan. “They don’t have this information stored anywhere else too, do they? Online or on a DVD or something?”

  “Not yet,” she replies. “We’re working on scanning the archive. Though the library looks impressive, we haven’t quite made it to the twenty-first century yet.” She waves her arm at the drawers of cataloged material behind her. “Truth be told, we’ve barely reached the twentieth century. Just give me the call numbers for the archives you want, and I’ll get them for you.”

  This would be a lot easier if I actually knew what I was looking for. “I guess I’ll start with whatever’s first in the army archive.”

  “Sure.” She walks to her computer terminal and types something in. Finding the corresponding call number in one of the drawers, she hands me the box of film. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” It takes me a while to f igure out how to thread the film, but once it’s in, I give the front dial a spin and watch the now-magnified pages fly across the projector. When I start turning the wheel more slowly, I catch glimpses of words and phrases until I finally strike gold: Brian’s name whirs by.

  I turn the dial to focus on the image and begin reading the report—or as much of it as I can. A lot of words and phrases, even entire sections, are blacked out.

  In the preparation of this report, we owe a great debt of gratitude to Star Gate lead researcher, Dr. Brian Black. Dr. Black was instrumental in helping us . And without the willingness of to cooperate with the US Army’s ongoing exploration of , we are convinced that .

  I spend the better part of the next hour with my eyes pressed so close to the film reader that my pupils start burning. I don’t find anything else with Brian’s name in it.

  Some of the pages read like the way he talks, which makes me think he might have written them himself, but the rest concern the army’s own research into ESP. They describe predictions from “subjects” identified only by their initials and match them to corresponding articles about disasters—every imaginable horror, from avalanches to explosions in coal mines. Another section compiles the program’s failures: forecasts so ridiculously off the mark that the comments made afterward suggest that they put the institute itself in jeopardy.

  I push my chair away from the viewing machine and rub my bleary eyes. I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of any of this. I take a few deep breaths, eyes still closed, trying to process what I’ve read—

  A brief shudder of nausea ripples through me. It leaves a tingly wake as it passes.

  I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, desperate to flush the feeling out, and in the darkness of my mind’s eye, I see a sniper.

  But this shooter isn’t in a mall, and the environment doesn’t look like it’s anywhere on or near the Henley campus. The sniper is standing in a nondescript room, setting up a rifle on a window ledge. When he peers through the scope of his weapon, I can see the scene below: on the street a crowd of people is gathered around one man.

  The man at the center is the one shaking hands with the others.

  The man at the center is the one running for office.

  The man at the center is the one whose head explodes after the sniper pulls the trigger, fragments of skull blasting apart in a shower of blood and brain matter.

  My eyes snap open. My head jerks forward. I can’t breathe. Four letters appear to me: UCLA.

  What the hell?

  I blink hard several times and try to scrub the image from my mind. Is this the same shooter who killed Graham Pinberg? Someone else? And UCLA? University of California, Los Angeles? Is that where this takes place, on the other side of the country? It doesn’t make sense, but questions keep coming: Who was the man who was shot? A teacher? An administrator? When does this happen?

  Disoriented, I look at my phone to see how much time has passed and realize I’m late for lab. I’ve got to get out of here as quickly as possible. With trembling fingers, I rebox the microfilm and hand it back to the pretty Brit at the desk.

  “Did you find what you need?” she asks.

  I can’t even muster a nod. “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I run as fast as I can from the library to the Merion Building. But when I reach the lobby, I skid to a stop in front of a makeshift memorial for Professor Pinberg. There are clusters of bouquets and votive candles underneath his framed photo, which hangs on the wall. Next to his picture, someone has taped a piece of paper scrawled with the following inscription:

  THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY:

  The total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. A consequence of this law is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another.

  R.I.P. Professor Graham Pinberg, gifted scientist, inspiring teacher, beloved human.

  My throat catches as Graham Pinberg again becomes real : an actual person and not just a random shooting victim. I think about the loss of this man who meant so much to so many.

  I hurry on to the lab, wondering what I’ll offer as an excuse for my tardiness, trying to convince myself that in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter if I’m a few minutes late. But when I enter to see that Uncle Brian still hasn’t arrived, I heave a sigh of relief.

  All the other HEARs are sitting on their stools.

  “I lost track of time at the library,” I blurt, feeling the need to justify m
y lateness.

  Pankaj laughs. “At the library? A likely story, Legacy.”

  I see the glint in his eye as I take my seat. It’s like he knows something—something about me —and I feel exposed, like I did when he saw my bear, Henry. Pankaj keeps smiling, hands pressed against the table in front of him, revealing the definition of the long, lean muscles of his forearms. The right sleeve of his black T-shirt is carelessly pushed up, giving me a peek at a strong biceps too. My eyes linger there for a moment longer than they should. When I finally look away, I’m embarrassed, like I’ve just seen something I shouldn’t have—something private, something intimate.

  “And what were you doing at the library?” he asks.

  I hesitate. I want to know how much they know about my uncle, but I’m not sure how much I should reveal. If I’ve learned anything from my past activities as “Ally X,” it’s that by staying quiet you put yourself at less risk; you face less exposure. As soon as you open your mouth, you subject yourself to misinterpretation, especially by people you don’t know well or people you don’t know you can trust.

  “Well, I was looking at the pretty picture books,” I say sarcastically. “Just like I’m sure you did when you were there, Rocket.”

  As Pankaj stares back at me from under those sideswept black bangs, I wonder what he was doing at the library the night I arrived on campus. It’s not as if he needed to do any work for classes or research for Uncle Brian.

  Our eyes fixed on each other, it feels like we’re in the middle of a tug-of-war.

  “That’s strange,” Mara interjects, her tone clipped and her voice a notch louder than it should be. “After our trip to the museum, I sensed you didn’t like looking at pictures, Kass. I thought you found the whole thing really intimidating.”

  “ You’re intimidated by art?” Dan asks.

  “By artists,” Mara replies for me. She peels a piece of ginger candy out of its wax-paper wrapper and pops it into her mouth, almost daring me to respond.

  “It’s because most artists are seriously deranged,” I say. “But the way they twist and misinterpret obvious signs and signals is always really interesting to me.”

  Alex leans forward in his chair. “So, Kass, here’s what you missed when you were at ‘the library.’” With his mocking tone, he manages to poke fun at both Pankaj’s teasing and my supposed studiousness. “I was just telling these guys that when I was roaming around the campus, you know, after the shooting, I ran into this girl I’d seen around once or twice before. We started chatting, and I guess she could tell how upset I was because she invited me to a party in her friends’ room tonight. She probably just felt sorry for me.”

  Yeah, right, I think. I’m sure this girl’s motives were that pure.

  “Anyway, should be fun, and I want you guys to come with.”

  “Who is this mystery girl?” Mara grumbles.

  “Her name’s Erika. Comp lit major. Silky brown hair, sea-green eyes, and an English accent that’s to die for.”

  I’m tempted to ask if it’s the Hounskull girl, the one who works in the Peabody Special Collections Room, but at that moment, Uncle Brian walks in—with three empty wineglasses.

  “No, I haven’t been drinking,” he says dryly by way of a greeting. He places the glasses on the front workstation. “But as someone who’s traditionally found his solace in work, especially during difficult moments, I hope you’ll understand why I need to stay focused on our project. It’s through experimentation and hard work that we make discoveries and unearth logic, and these things seem in short supply at a time like this.”

  We all nod. Brian catches my eye. In that moment, I also get that he wants to proceed as if the program’s not in jeopardy, as if its survival is assured. So I give him another nod to let him know I’ll keep his confidence.

  “Thank you,” Brian says. “Now, you may also wonder, will I be filling these glasses with wine? I’m sorry to tell you the answer is no.”

  “What if I do really well?” Pankaj jokes.

  “Then paradoxically you’ll experience failure, and you’ll be even happier the glass is empty.”

  “Huh?” Pankaj turns to Dan. “Did you understand that, or am I somehow drunk already?”

  Brian laughs. “The failure I refer to will be that of the glass itself.” He picks one up by the stem and holds it out for our inspection. “No visible chips or cracks, a nice weight, not even a stray lipstick mark . . . But this glass is covered with fissures and defects that are invisible to the naked eye. Keep that in mind.” He sets the glass down. “Every material, from glass to concrete, has a natural frequency at which it vibrates, a ‘resonant frequency.’” He walks over to the whiteboard and writes the term in all caps. “Imagine a tower of Jell-O is sitting on a tray. What happens if I send energy into it by giving that tray a shove?”

  “The Jell-O starts jiggling,” I say.

  “Right, and if you shove it hard enough, eventually you’ll be able to get it to break apart. Of course, every object has a different resonant frequency, so you’d have to send a great deal more energy into a slab of concrete to get it to jiggle like Jell-O. Now, what other phenomena produce vibrational energy?”

  “Sound waves,” Dan says.

  “Very good.”

  “Professor, should we start warming up our vocal cords?” asks Alex with an amused nod at the glasses.

  “That is not what I have planned.”

  But suddenly I think I know what he does have planned. “ You want to see if we can shatter these glasses with our brain waves, don’t you?”

  He smiles at me. “Correct.”

  Before anyone can respond, protest, or even laugh, my phone rings. As the telltale “Big Poppa” ringtone blares, my eyes widen in panic. Guiltily, I shove my hand into my bag to silence it.

  “Kassandra,” Brian says, “when you find your phone, I want you to tell your father that he should refrain from calling—even if he is simply returning your calls. After the rampage at the mall, I was in touch with everyone’s families. I reassured them that you were all fine, and there was no need to worry.”

  I feel my head nodding as my fingers wrap around the familiar shape and yank it up to my ear. “Hello?” I croak.

  “Kassie! So glad to reach you.”

  Dad. The sound of his voice causes a small lump to materialize in my throat. But Uncle Brian fixes me with his stare, and I can’t unlock from his gaze.

  “Dad, I’m really sorry, but I can’t talk now.” My uncle rolls his hand to remind me of the message I need to deliver. “Oh, and, um, parents can’t call while we’re here, so I gotta go. Sorry.”

  “Kass, are you all right? Please—”

  I hang up and slip the phone back into my bag. My hands shake. I hear myself breathing heavily and try to be still and silent.

  “I did wonder who’d be the first to break that rule,” Brian says dispassionately. He turns back to the wineglasses.

  “Who’d you guess?” asks Alex.

  “I had odds on Kass. But back to our work. As I was saying, your goal is to shatter one of these glasses with the energy your brain waves emit. I’m going to make it easy on you this morning and let you put your heads together on this one, so today you’ll be working in teams of two. However, it seems only fair that because Kass broke the phone call rule and was late today, she’ll go it alone.”

  Glorious. My cheeks feel as if they’re on fire. Still, something dawns on me: Uncle Brian came in after I did. He should have no way of knowing I was late . . .

  “Mara, you work with Pankaj. Dan, you team up with Alex.” Brian hands each team a glass, then gives me the one that remains. He reaches into a cabinet and pulls out five pairs of safety goggles. “Better safe than sorry,” he adds, handing them out.

  We move to stations well apart from one another. I set my wineglass in the middle of my table, gra
teful for the distraction, grateful that there’s no attention focused on me right now, ready to work. But I’m starting to feel midmorning fuzzy from lack of sleep. I put the lab goggles on, close my eyes, and try to focus on quieting my breathing. Keeping it even and soft. As the repetitive inhalations and exhalations fill my ears, I feel that electric twitch again.

  The sniper.

  Once more, I’m witnessing the execution, an act of violence I cannot place, recognize, or comprehend. I’m left with only the visceral feeling of a witness: terror. It’s not the mall shooting; it’s political. It’s not recent either. But this time, in the aftermath, I stay with the gunman. He stows his rifle in a bag then dashes down a stairwell and into an alley, empty but for one abandoned car. The assassin flings open the back passenger-side door and dives inside. A driver, previously concealed, bolts up behind the wheel. The car is in motion even before the sniper has the chance to yank his door closed.

  As the car peels onto the street, I see the license plate begins with “CC,” the international code for Consular Corps.

  The baseball-capped driver looks in the rearview mirror to check if anyone’s following. I know the face; I’ve seen it before. But it isn’t until the man takes off his cap and a ponytail tumbles out that I recognize the driver as Chris Figg, my uncle’s colleague and the director of Camp Dodona.

  When my eyes pop open, I find myself staring at the wineglass in front of me.

  It shatters with a loud and frightening resonance.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  To get to Alex’s friend’s party, I need to enter the university through Amory Gate, at the north edge of campus. Its imposing size and ornate filigree design make it an iconic reminder of how beautiful and daunting this place can be. And as I approach, I remember my first encounter here, when I received that hard shove for attempting to exit through its middle arch. Though campus custom does permit me to enter through the central access point, I’m not taking any chances tonight. I scurry through the door on the far left side, unable to shake the feeling that people are watching and waiting to pounce.