Placebo

by Steven James

  “Good. As soon as you can.”

  We end the call.

  Reviewing the footage had only brought more questions—if there was a sniper, did that mean someone was faking the effects of this research? Could everything we’d been hypothesizing be on the wrong track entirely?

  Hopefully, meeting with Dr. Colette would bring us some answers.

  Because for the moment it felt like, as Fionna might say, someone had just knocked over another cage and there were even more gerbils than before underfoot.

  The Need to Kill

  The twins asked Riah to help them kill someone.

  It was that simple. That’s why they’d called her in.

  Given all that she knew, all that’d happened in the last couple days, the request wasn’t by any means out of the blue, but hearing Darren actually say the words, actually ask her to help eliminate a threat to national security, was instructive.

  And inviting?

  Yes, admittedly, it was.

  Before letting them go on with their explanation, she returned to the topic of Goss and his family. “So you did that?”

  “Yes,” Darren said.

  “But how?”

  “Something went wrong. We were trying to influence him to take his own life, but he did not. He slaughtered his family instead. With an axe. We weren’t able to—”

  “Who did he kill first? The mother or the son?”

  They stared at her. “I don’t know,” Daniel said.

  I wonder what their wounds look like. How much blood there was.

  “Why him? Why Adrian Goss?”

  “He was the man who raped our mother.” Darren’s words were matter-of-fact. “The man who impregnated her.”

  “Adrian Goss was your father.”

  “Yes.”

  A close personal connection.

  The prerequisite for Tanbyrn’s research.

  “Did you love him?”

  Another quizzical look, but then both twins avowed that no, they had not loved him. Had not even known his identity until recently.

  “We failed,” Daniel began. “We need you to—”

  “Use the electrodes to stimulate the Wernicke’s area of your brains.”

  “Yes.”

  “To enhance your ability to cause discomfort in others.”

  “Yes.”

  Pain.

  Death.

  Exactly how all of this was possible was still unclear to her, but if Dr. Tanbyrn was right, the answer lay somewhere in the realm of quantum entanglement, an answer she would have to investigate more in-depth later when she had time.

  “How did it feel?” she asked them. “To find out that a boy and a woman whom you had not targeted died in such a violent manner?”

  “Disappointing,” Darren admitted. “It meant that on our own we weren’t as effective as we’d hoped.”

  There was no remorse in his voice, not even a hint of sorrow over the loss of the two innocent lives.

  She trusted the twins implicitly, knew that they were patriots, knew that they had only the best intentions in mind. And she trusted that they truly did need her help, that the next target truly was, as they said, a well-funded terrorist, an enemy of the state.

  But could she help them kill?

  She thought again of the fourteen-year-old girl in Afghanistan whose father had blown up, she thought of the son and wife of Adrian Goss, and she remembered being a teenager herself, holding that fragile-boned bird in her hands. Most of all, she remembered snapping its neck simply to see what it would be like to kill it. She knew that just like everyone, she had the capacity to kill. And to do so for no other reason than curiosity.

  But could she kill a human being?

  Yes.

  Yes.

  She absolutely could.

  In an illuminating rush of insight, she realized that in a certain sense it was something she’d always wanted to do. Just like with the bird—to find out what it would be like. To find out if it would make her feel anything at all.

  But there was one thing she needed to know before she would agree to help the twins. “People say that love lies at the core of human nature. To love and be loved. Do you believe that?”

  “No,” Daniel told her.

  “Then what do you think people want?”

  “People don’t want to be loved; they want to feel loved.”

  “To feel loved.”

  “Yes. Would you rather be secretly despised by a partner, a lover, a spouse, but live your whole life believing that he deeply loves you, or would you rather be deeply loved by someone and yet never find out about it? Would you prefer a lifetime of feeling loved or a lifetime never finding out that you were?”

  Riah wasn’t sure how most people would answer that question. She’d been told she was loved many times but had never known what it was like to feel it. Not for one minute of her life.

  She took a moment before responding. “Don’t people want more than to simply believe they’re loved? Don’t they want the real thing—without any deception, without any betrayal? Don’t people fundamentally want both love and truth?”

  “It’s very rare to have both,” Daniel said, not quite answering her question. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes. I would imagine that it is.”

  Rare. Too rare in this world of so many people who were so soon going to die.

  She realized that the feeling really must be what mattered most, and that given her nature, it was not something she would ever experience.

  Not ever.

  Given her nature.

  She made her decision.

  “I’ll help you,” she told them.

  Darren looked satisfied at her response. “We’ll call you within the hour to tell you where to meet us. Bring the equipment.”

  With the nanowire electrodes already in place in the twins’ brains, the instruments she would need to send the electrical impulses to their Wernicke’s areas were minimal. She could carry them in a small day pack.

  Darren pulled out three cell phones. “There’s a time frame here. We need to move on it this morning. There are two numbers preprogrammed into each phone, one for each of the other two. After each number has been connected to, the phone’s chip will erase itself, so if anything goes wrong, just hit number one and number two to speed-dial the other phones. It will erase the chip in yours.”

  Everyone took a phone.

  The twins left.

  And Riah went to her computer to verify what they’d told her regarding the man who lived in Maine slaughtering his family with an axe earlier that morning. She hoped she could find some photos.

  After all, she really was curious about the details, about what fatal axe wounds in the body of a woman and a young boy would look like, if they would bear any semblance to the wounds in the snake her father had beheaded when she was just a girl, the one whose body she held until the wriggling stopped.

  Killed but not yet dead.

  Then finally, after a few minutes, both.

  GPS

  9:34 a.m.

  1 hour 21 minutes left

  “It’s as hot as a monkey’s armpit in here.”

  The three computer technicians from RixoTray’s cybersecurity team stared at Fionna.

  “Um . . .” The youngest of the three techs nodded toward the only woman on the team. “Can you take care of that?” She headed off to fiddle with the thermostat.

  A few minutes ago Fionna had introduced Xavier to the RixoTray cybersecurity team as her associate, promoting him from minion and assistant to associate. It seemed like the right thing to do. Now he stood by her side.

  “So, you were able to get into Dr. Arlington’s laptop?” The guy asking her the question looked like someone you’d picture appearing on Wikipedia’s “computer geek” entry. Young. Skinny. Black-framed glasses. Messed-up hair. Holding a Dr Pepper in one hand and a bag of Doritos that Xavier was eyeing in the other. He seemed to be the one in charge, but from what Fionna had seen so
far, her son Lonnie would’ve been more than a match for this guy at a keyboard.

  “Yes,” she said. “I was able to get in.”

  “We identified the attempt. Blocked it.” Nacho Chip Boy was defending himself, but Fionna wasn’t impressed.

  “Only after I was in for five minutes and forty-two seconds. I could have erased data, altered research findings, transferred funds, anything I wanted to, long before you identified the breach.” She didn’t tell him about getting in again earlier that morning to access Dr. Colette’s and Arlington’s personal calendars.

  The young man opened his mouth as if he were going to respond, then closed it. Said nothing.

  She gestured toward the computer desk. “May I?”

  He stepped aside and she sat down.

  Xavier moved next to her, asked the guy if he was planning on finishing his Doritos.

  “Yes.”

  “Right.”

  Fionna tapped at the keyboard.

  First she went to the company’s mail server to show the tech team how she got in. She fudged on that just a little, didn’t give away all her tricks, but it offered her a chance to note any emails to Dr. Arlington’s account. The latest was encrypted. She typed. Not encrypted anymore. “Oops.” She acted like that’d been a mistake.

  The message was from someone named Brennan Sacco concerning the president’s speech. Interesting. She flew past it. “Video surveillance? Last night? In Arlington’s suite?”

  A pause. “Why do you need that?”

  “When I was in the system yesterday, I found evidence that someone else had been there, had compromised his computer from inside his office.” Yes, it was a lie, and since telling lies was not something she would ever want her children to do, she felt a little bad about it. But in this case it seemed necessary, and sometimes grown-ups have to make grown-up decisions.

  After a small hesitation, he showed her which directory to use to access the footage.

  Fionna pulled up the cameras and the screen split into four sections, one for each of the security cameras in the lobby and in Arlington’s executive suite. She cued them to thirty minutes before the video had started and pressed play, then fast-forward.

  “The system is set up so that when people check in at the security station,” the guy with the Doritos said proudly, “one camera is directed at their face. Then, after the guard types in their driver’s license number or RixoTray security code clearance number, their name appears on the screen.”

  Xavier grunted. “Is that the best you can come up with for a multibillion-dollar international pharmaceutical company? A security code number? You never heard of facial recognition? Unbelievable.”

  My sentiments exactly, Fionna thought.

  On the screen, a woman entered. Her name appeared: Dr. Riah Colette.

  Fionna took note of it, then fast-forwarded the footage again.

  Soon two men came in. Twins. No identification came up on the screen, but yet they were allowed to pass through both the main entrance and Arlington’s office suite, just like Colette had done.

  “There aren’t any names for them,” Xavier said. “That a glitch?”

  “They’ve been here before,” one of the techs answered. “They have clearance.”

  “Of course they do,” Xavier replied somewhat rebukingly. “They’re walking right through your checkpoint.”

  And then, as the footage rolled, one more person came through the door and one more name appeared on the screen.

  Undersecretary of Defense Oriana Williamson.

  While Fionna continued working on the keyboard and schooling the pharmaceutical firm’s cybersecurity team, Xavier slipped into the hallway to call Jevin and Charlene to share the information about the Sacco email, the names of Dr. Colette and Undersecretary of Defense Williamson, and the fact that a pair of identical twins had entered Arlington’s office just minutes before the video began.

  So now there were gerbils everywhere.

  I end the call with Xavier so he can get back to Fionna and the cybersecurity team.

  Mentally, I review what I know about the research, the video, the Pentagon connection, the thwarted terrorist attack.

  The twins, Undersecretary of Defense Williamson, Arlington, and Colette all saw the video.

  A thought-borne virus.

  What had Fionna said yesterday when she first mentioned the bombing attempt earlier this week? A reference to the president’s speech . . .

  Now this email from Brennan Sacco about the speech.

  “Charlene, see if you can find out who Brennan Sacco is.”

  She thumb-types on her phone. Goes online. Surfing she doesn’t mind—just talking on the phone.

  I close my eyes, try to process everything.

  Tanbyrn was worried about funding.

  The president wants to end Project Alpha.

  “He’s the president’s speechwriter,” she explains.

  All the facts merge, pass each other, then lock into place again.

  We had the connection between Cyrus Arlington and Glenn Banner . . . brain imaging . . . Charlene’s mention of the legislation that could affect the telomerase drug release date . . . the clinical trials—

  I have no idea if the sniper was real or not or how the video related to any of this, but it obviously concerned killing those—

  Affecting someone nonlocally. A top-secret research program on the negative effects of nonlocal psi activity . . .

  Oh.

  Eleven o’clock at the park.

  “Charlene. The president’s speech. That’s it.”

  “What?”

  “Track with me here. Tanbyrn told us ‘when the eagle falls at the park’—something he overheard the twins say. The timing isn’t a coincidence—remember what you told me Monday night? Banner and now the Kabul video. The legislation, the speech. Everything is converging.”

  When the eagle falls at the park—she’s mouthing the words. “Independence Park?”

  I tap at the phone to bring up the image I’m thinking of, the one she needs to see. “Yes.” I spin the phone toward her, showing her the image of the Great Seal of the United States. “And the eagle is—”

  “You’re not thinking that the twins are going after the president!”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “No, that’s crazy.” But it doesn’t sound like she’s convinced of her words. “I mean . . .”

  We had threads weaving everything together, but for the moment they were still tenuous, more like strands of a spiderweb—the design was only visible when you moved back and looked at the whole thing at once.

  Perspective.

  But did we have all the strands yet? I backpedal a little. “No, it’s not enough. Not with what we have.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s not enough to prove it, Jev, there’s enough there to make it feasible. We need to warn the Secret Service.”

  But with each passing moment, I’m feeling less confident of my conclusion. “What would we tell them? That a pair of identical twin telepathic assassins might try to send a thought-borne virus to the president? We don’t have proof, a time frame, an established motive, anything. We don’t even know who the twins are.” I sigh as I realize the truth. “Really, all we have is a collection of circumstantial evidence. If that.”

  But she doesn’t budge. “Jev, if there’s even a slim chance that his life might be in danger, we have to report it. We at least have to tell them what we know.”

  “They’ll probably take us in for questioning.”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  That’s the last thing I want right now, but I do sense that she’s right about contacting the authorities. However, I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of convincing them to take a threat like this seriously.

  If you call the Secret Service, they’ll be able to track the phone’s GPS.

  Staring out the window, I assess our situation. How to give the Secret Service everything they need without
being brought in as accessories or suspects?

  “Charlene, let me use your phone.”

  She hands it over. “Why my phone?”

  “You’ll see.”

  It takes me a few minutes to get through to someone who’ll actually talk to me. I thought there’d be some sort of hotline to report threats against the president, but I have to go through almost as many prompts as you do when you call for computer tech support. Finally a real woman’s voice comes on. Boredom and annoyance in her first two words: “Name, please.”

  Using an alias right now would probably not be a good idea.

  But neither would giving her your real name.

  “I have information about a possible threat against the president’s life.”

  “What is your name?”

  “I just said I have information about a threat against—”

  “Name.”

  “You’re not listening to—”

  “Who am I talking with?” She’s losing what little patience she might have had.

  “Jevin, and this is important.”

  With an audible sigh, she decides not to push me for a last name: “What information?”

  “It involves a pair of twins. Who, well . . . they might attack President Hoult at any time.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. But they go by the initials ‘L’ and ‘N.’”

  “‘L’ and ‘N.’”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how are they going to attack the president?”

  I’m aware that the answer to her question is going to sound ridiculous. I could spend time trying to explain the quantum physics of it all, but I didn’t even understand most of that myself. I just go ahead and say it: “By their thoughts.”

  A stretch of silence.

  “Sir, you do know that it is a federal offense to threaten the life of the president of the United States. Even to joke about it.”

  “No, I’m not threatening his life, and I’m not joking. I’m telling you that I think there’s a plot against him. It has to do with a top-secret Pentagon program called Project Alpha. The twins work for the Pentagon. Sort of.” With every word, I can tell I’m losing more and more ground.