Free to Fall

by Lauren Miller

  “How’s a velvet robe?” I quipped, zipping up my fleece.

  “Velvet is not waterproof,” Lux replied. “But your cloak is.”

  I froze. “What did you just say?”

  “I said, ‘But your cloak is’” came the app’s reply.

  I grabbed my Gemini off the dresser and stared at my screen. How did Lux know about the cloak?

  “You should leave now,” Lux announced. Still stunned by the cloak comment, I grabbed the velvet knapsack and headed out.

  I’d just put the cloak on when my handheld buzzed with a call. Incoming call from @KatePribulsky. It had to be North. I’d just crossed into the woods and had only a minute and a half to get to the gate, so I had to hurry. Leaves crunched beneath my sneakers.

  “Where are you?” North asked as soon as I picked up. “It sounds like you’re outside.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I lied. “I went for a walk.”

  “Don’t you guys have curfew?”

  “We just have to be on campus.” That was two lies. Curfew meant we had to be inside the dorm building, and I’d left the confines of campus when I’d stepped into the woods. I quickly changed the subject before I had to lie again. “So did you crack the encryption?”

  “Yes,” North said. “And oh. My. God. Rory, it’s—”

  “Tell me,” I said, my heart hiccupping in my chest.

  “There were three files,” he said urgently. “The first is an internal memo on Gnosis letterhead dated April 2013 about a project called Hyperion. A joint undertaking between Gnosis and Soza Labs to—and I quote—‘develop swarms of nanobots capable of mimicking the activity of oxytocin in the brain.’ It’s signed by various Gnosis and Soza executives and is stamped DELETE UPON RECEIPT. Rory, you were right,” he said then. “About all of it.” The same words were reverberating in my brain and pounding in my chest. I was right. My limbs felt loose with relief.

  North kept talking, faster now. “The memo goes on to say that the nanobots would work in connection with a new decision-making app Gnosis was developing. They’d make the user trust the app so intensely that it would eliminate any cognitive dissonance. I guess the nanobots Hildebrand was using were finicky, and the SynOx compound didn’t work exactly the way they wanted it to, so they were building in five years for more R&D.”

  “Five years,” I repeated. “But it’s been seventeen.”

  “Five years for R&D. Twelve more to—another quote—‘prepare the way.’ It’s insane how detailed their strategy was. They knew they’d have to first take over the handheld market, then gradually get people accustomed to using a decision-making app. They even planned for how long it’d take to phase out the needle vaccine. It’s all here, every single step.”

  I was ten yards from the cemetery. I glanced around. No sign of Liam yet. “What were the other two files?”

  “The second was a list of names. The Gnosis and Soza reps who signed the memo were on it, along with several hundred others. I recognized some of the names. The founders of Gnosis, for example. The rest I started looking up. They’re all corporate bigwigs. CEOs, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists.”

  “It was just a list of names?”

  “Yeah, but with these weird letter/number combinations beside each one,” replied North. “Mia Ritchson, CEO of Soza Labs. Gamma, eighty-one. Alan Viljoen, then-COO of Gnosis. Alpha, ninety-nine. Here, I’ll send you a screenshot.”

  As if in slow motion, I looked down at the lapel of my cloak: Zeta ’30. I didn’t need a screenshot. I knew exactly how those letter/number combinations looked.

  My rib cage contracted like a vise grip. The people on that list were members of the Few. The same people who’d signed that incriminating memo.

  Oh, my God.

  The society was behind all this.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured.

  “Rory, what is it?”

  “What was the third file?” I asked him urgently.

  “A photograph. It’s—” Just then, the line went dead. I looked at my screen. No service. I looked up and realized I’d crossed into the cemetery without realizing it. Suddenly I wanted to run. The Few were behind this. The quote, the blanket, the necklace. I saw them differently now. My mom was trying to warn me.

  “Ready?” At the sound of Liam’s voice, I spun on my heels. He was right behind me. “Sorry I was late. We should hurry.” His hand was already moving toward my mouth.

  “I—” Before I could get the words out, I tasted cherry on my tongue.

  He didn’t take me to the arena this time. When I came to, I was standing with the other initiates in a different room, a smaller, square-shaped one, with a much lower ceiling and four stone walls that were shimmering slightly in the yellow candlelight, oddly iridescent. Unlike in the arena, I could see every corner of this room. There was a stone altar along one wall, built out of a single piece of granite. Behind it was a woven tapestry of the Garden of Eden. There were two doors, at opposite sides of the room. If the tomb was laid out like a Fibonacci tile, then each room was bigger than the last. Where in the sequence was this room? How far was I from the center? Liam said there was an exit there. I pictured myself running for it, but I knew it was too late for that. I was trapped.

  Fear coursed through my veins. What had I gotten myself into?

  Two boys next to me were whispering, their excitement practically bursting out of every hushed word. One of them had his arm pulled into his cloak, shoving peanuts into his mouth through the opening at the neck. I stiffened at the smell and quickly moved away from them, swallowing the bile that was creeping up my throat.

  Minutes passed. As we waited, I tried to get a look at some of the other initiates’ faces, but they’d all followed the instructions and pulled their hoods down low. The peanut boy was still going at it. He seemed to have an unlimited supply.

  Please, I pleaded silently. Get me out of this.

  There was the sound of stone sliding on stone and one of the doors opened. A figure in the serpent mask strode in, clutching a brown leather book with two hands. There was no way to know if it was the same man who’d worn the mask the two previous times I’d seen it, but I guessed that it was, and that the mask was a symbol of his status. My stomach turned over. Our leader was a snake. Why had that not bothered me before now?

  The serpent was followed by two other figures. One wore the head of a fox. The other, an owl. The three masked figures took their places behind the altar, and the serpent opened the leather book.

  “There are two types of people in this world,” he began. His voice was missing Saturday’s kindness. “The wise man and the fool. The wise man is prudent, strong-willed, and courageous. The fool is impulsive, weak, and desperate for a master. The wise man understands that he is the master, a god in his own right.” The serpent opened the book as if he was going to read from it, but I could tell he wasn’t even looking at the page.

  “I form’d them free: and free they must remain,” he declared. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as he began to recite the lines I’d long ago committed to memory. “Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change their nature.”

  All at once I understood. Change their nature. It was exactly what Project Hyperion was designed to do.

  The serpent looked up from the book and paused, surveying us. I forced myself to meet his papier-mâché gaze.

  “Fall,” he said then. “It’s how Milton described what happened in Eden. As if man suffered a loss. But what happened in the Garden of Eden wasn’t a fall. On the contrary, it was a glorious coup d’état. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they became equal to the God who created them. And that God became eternally irrelevant. The wisdom they acquired that day has been passed down through time to an elect few. Men and women who were born to live as gods among men.”

  My skin crawled. They think they’re gods.

  “For the past two hundred and fifty years, the Few have been working to rebuild
the paradise that was lost when mankind was expelled from the Garden. Our forefathers founded the Eden Academy as a breeding ground for elite minds, and every year we select the most promising students to join our ranks. It is your wisdom that has gotten you here. Your classmates are intelligent but weak. They have the capacity to reason, but not the strength of will to use it.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Then there is the rest of the world,” he said. “Fools in search of a master. So proud of their freedom, and yet so willing to give it up.”

  In Lux we trust. In a flash, I saw it. What they were doing with Project Hyperion. What Gnosis had been doing with Lux all along. Who needs higher wisdom when the little gold box on your wrist knows everything there is to know? Never mind that there were men behind those tiny machines, orchestrating your every move with an algorithm written to keep you “happy.” As happy as a clipped bird in a pretty, gilded cage. And never mind that the choice to obey Lux wasn’t yours anymore, but the work of a swarm of microscopic robots that had commandeered your brain.

  I wanted to throw up.

  “Our goal is nothing less than a modern paradise. A new Eden. The Eden. Here. Now. A perfect society ruled by hoi oligoi sophoi. The wise few.”

  There was an eruption of applause from the other initiates. I looked around in disbelief. My skin was crawling and they were clapping.

  “The time has come to declare your divinity and to take your vows,” the serpent declared. No no no no, the voices in my head were screaming. Voices, plural, this time. The Doubt and my own.

  The other initiates were twittering with excitement as the first names were called. I looked around frantically for some escape, but the doors were sealed and we were deep under ground and I didn’t know which door led toward the exit. Running wasn’t an option.

  There was a sound like pebbles scattering. The kid with the peanuts had spilled the bag beneath his robe. He quickly stepped on the mess, trying to hide it beneath his cloak, but several nuts had rolled toward me and lay untouched by my foot. I stared at them. They were a way out. It might kill me, but an allergic reaction would surely get me out of there. And right then that was all that mattered. I could not take their vows.

  Fear not, the voice whispered, and my decision was made.

  I glanced up at the altar. The serpent was slicing a female initiate’s thumb with a thin sliver of mirrored glass while she recited the vows, pledging her life to the society’s aims, promising never to reveal its existence or her affiliation. Her voice was familiar. It took me a second to realize it was Rachel. I watched as he pressed her bloody thumb to the leather book then gave her a quilled pen to sign her name. Eight seconds when he was distracted. Long enough to pick up the peanuts without drawing attention.

  “Epsilon,” the serpent called. The sixth letter in the Greek alphabet. He was going in order. The boy with the peanuts moved toward the altar. Zeta would be next. If I was doing this, I had to do it now. I waited until the serpent reached for the boy’s thumb. When he started cutting, I bent for the stray peanuts, said a quick prayer, and popped them in my mouth, chewing quickly, my mouth like sandpaper.

  “Zeta” came the serpent’s voice. My throat had begun to itch. It was working. But would it be fast enough? I walked to the altar and peered directly into the painted mesh of the serpent’s eyes. I could make out the whites of the human eyes staring back at me, the wrinkles around them. “Repeat after me,” the serpent said, gripping my wrist. The sleeve of his cloak fell back, revealing his bare hand. He wore a jade ring on his ring finger, emblazoned with a design of overlapping Os.

  My throat was closing in.

  He was reciting the vows I was supposed to repeat, but I couldn’t make them out. All I could hear was my own labored breathing, heaving through my swelling throat.

  I saw his lips stop moving, and his gray eyebrows arch up like a question mark behind the painted mesh. “Can’t. Breathe,” I managed, as my knees buckled.

  “She’s having an allergic reaction,” I heard a female voice say. Unlike the serpent’s, it wasn’t distorted. And I recognized it right away. I’d heard it every weekday morning for the past two months, and sometimes in my sleep. The voice I’d come to fear. “I’ll take care of it,” she said briskly. “You stay.”

  No! I tried to say. Not Tarsus. But I couldn’t form the words. I felt myself falling, and then I passed out.

  28

  THERE WAS A DULL ACHING in my throat. Fighting for consciousness, I tried to swallow and immediately gagged. Someone was trying to choke me. I went to react, to push whoever it was away, but my hands were strapped to something hard.

  My feet were free and so I kicked them, thrashing with all the energy I could muster, which wasn’t much. I felt as if I were underwater, swimming for the surface.

  I forced open my eyes. I was lying on my back, strapped to a table, or was it a bed? There was a bright fluorescent light above me, so bright it was blinding. Oh, God. Where had she taken me? I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing through my nose, trying not to panic. I realized now there was something in my throat. I had to get it out. Where was I? Where was Tarsus?

  Stupid, Rory. As soon as I put the pieces together, that Gnosis and the Few were one and the same, I should’ve realized that Dr. Tarsus would be in that room. Of course she was one of the society’s leaders. She’d been part of the machine from the very beginning. But if she was so high up in the organization, how had I made it as far as I had? Shouldn’t she have been able to keep me out? There was still so much I didn’t know. Things I’d never know unless I made it out of here alive.

  It was quiet except for the hum of machines. I did a mental scan of my body. Other than my throat, nothing hurt. I blinked my eyes open again. My vision adjusted to the light now, and I looked around.

  It was a hospital room. Through a pale flowered curtain I saw doctors and nurses with tablets. One made eye contact with me and smiled. Her pink scrubs were printed with the words THEDEN HEALTH CENTER. She’s awake, I saw her mouth. A moment later she was sliding the curtain to the side.

  My brain was struggling to keep up. I wasn’t in the society’s tomb. I was at the health center. Dr. Tarsus wasn’t torturing me. Inexplicably, she’d saved my life.

  “Hi there,” the nurse said kindly. “You scared us. Let’s get that tube out of your throat.” She gently reached into my mouth to dislodge it. Seconds later it was out. I immediately started coughing. “Your throat will be sore for a few days,” she said, unstrapping the bands around my wrists. “Sorry about these. We couldn’t risk you pulling at the tube.” She went to the sink and filled a cup with water.

  “Small sips,” she instructed, and handed the cup to me.

  I gulped the water. It burned my throat.

  “Small sips,” she said again, and smiled.

  I drank the rest slowly then set the empty cup on the tray beside my bed. “How’d I get here?” I asked her hoarsely.

  “Your boyfriend brought you in,” she replied. “I’m just glad you had that EpiPen, and that he knew how to use it. It saved your life.”

  “My boyfriend?”

  The nurse winked at me. “Don’t worry, we won’t report that you were together after curfew,” she said conspiratorially. She went to the sink to refill my water cup. “Any idea what you ate that triggered the reaction? I imagine you’re pretty careful with peanuts. Says in your file you were hospitalized the first time you were exposed.” She handed me the cup and I took another tiny sip.

  “A granola bar,” I lied. “I forgot to scan it with Lux.”

  I heard a tsk, but it hadn’t come from the nurse. She looked past me toward the door and smiled. “Couldn’t stay away for long, could you?”

  “From this girl? Nah.” It was Liam, dressed for class, his hair wet from the shower. He put his hand on my forearm, his lambda tattoo peeking out from the webbing of his fingers. “How are you feeling, babe?”

  “Better,” I said, managing a smile. It took effort n
ot to snatch my arm back. It’s just Liam, I told myself. But now that I knew what the society really stood for, even he creeped me out. I saw his eyes drop to my collarbone. Out of habit, I felt for my necklace.

  It was gone.

  Tarsus must’ve taken it while I was unconscious. But why? Did she know what it really was? I swallowed my panic. There were no files on the pendant anymore. North had taken them off. Still, my heart was pounding. It didn’t help that Liam was staring at me.

  “Well, I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” the nurse said. “Just press the button on your armrest if you need me.” She stepped outside the curtain and slid it closed behind her.

  “Why would you eat a peanut granola bar?” Liam asked when she was gone.

  “It wasn’t a peanut granola bar,” I told him, my voice still raspy. “It was chocolate chip. Must’ve been made on shared equipment.”

  “Why didn’t you scan it with Lux?”

  “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?”