“But you didn’t,” Chance said. “You didn’t.”
Kate wiped a tear from her cheek, but more followed. She cried silently, but no one moved to comfort her. She suddenly looked very small.
“‘God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another,’” said Kaiser. “From Hamlet. Shakespeare knew more about human nature than a lab full of scientists.” He suddenly clapped his hands together. “On that rather infelicitous note, it is time to bid you farewell. You have made your collective decision, and I am certainly not in a position to compel you to change your minds. Besides, it seems to me that the four of you have other to do.”
With a slight bow, Kaiser nodded to the provost and turned to the door. Levick and her phalanx of assistants quickly followed him out of the room, leaving Chance, Wolfie, Tahoe and Kate alone.
Nobody spoke.
Kate had slumped against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. Tahoe and Wolfie collapsed onto the sofa, hands intertwined.
Chance retreated to a large window on the wall opposite Kate and gazed outside. Across the street, students played an intramural soccer game on a carefully manicured field under banks of bright lights. A player in a white jersey broke away at midfield, dribbled quickly up the right side, and passed it expertly between a pair of blue-jerseyed defenders. Another player from the white team sprinted at the perfect angle to receive the pass, and with a quick flick of his foot, sent the ball soaring across the penalty box. With a running start, a third player, a young man, with a mop of hair so white-blond that it was easily visible to Chance even from this distance, leaped into the air and with a quick punch of his head, struck the ball directly past the goalie’s outstretched hands, and into the back of the net. The white team immediately mobbed the scorer in celebration.
Chance supposed he should be feeling that same way, celebratory. It was all over. They had escaped the Darwin Room and survived their detour to Colombia. They were headed home. And yet, that constriction in his stomach had not subsided. Kaiser’s discourse on free will had unnerved him. Jenny’s reappearance had confused him. And Kate’s deception had staggered him.
She was still sitting alone on the opposite side of the room, absently fingering her dead cell phone.
He approached quietly. “Kate, we need to talk.”
She looked up, tears streaking both cheeks. “I don’t think so,” she said. “In a few minutes, this will be all over. The cars will be here to take us away. To our real lives. Not this … this make-believe world.”
“Kate, what happened between us, that was real. That wasn’t make-believe.”
“My name isn’t Kate,” she said. “Remember?”
“I don’t care about that. It doesn’t matter to me what your name is. I still … care.”
Kate’s visage cracked, and just for a moment her bottom lip trembled. It was quickly replaced with a hardened expression.
“You thought Jenny was dead,” she said sharply. “But she’s not. I’m a liar and she’s back, so there. You can be happy now.”
“Of course I’m happy she’s alive, Kate. We all are.”
Kate paused for a beat longer than she should have. “Of course. Of course, we’re happy she’s alive. So she’s back, and I lied to you. You can do what you want to do from here.”
The sound of a door opening made them all look up.
Jenny Chen was standing there, her hands folded in front of her. She hesitated.
“Is this a bad time?”
FORTY-TWO
Tahoe and Wolfie crossed the room in excited bounds, wrapping their arms around Jenny. Although they had known her barely a week, they had clearly developed a real kinship with her. They had been a team of five, and they smiled widely at the reunion. It was the first time they were alone with her.
“You’re alive!” Wolfie shouted in mock exaltation. “I still can’t hardly believe it.”
Jenny smiled. “It’s good to see you,” she said, glancing across the room at Kate and Chance. “All of you.”
Tahoe playfully punched Jenny in the shoulder. “You knew! You were in on this the entire time. You little vixen, you should get an Oscar for your performance.”
“I have been a graduate assistant at the institute for two years,” Jenny explained. “It’s the most prestigious assistantship in the country. The opportunity to work with an amazing team of scientists, with Provost Levick — it’s a career-maker. When I’m done here, I can have my own lab at any university I want.”
“The notes in your journal,” Chance said. “You were testing us along the way, recording the answers. Spying on us.” He immediately regretted his sharp words. What was he doing? Trying to convince Kate of something? Or was he trying to prove something to himself?
“My work is not spying,” Jenny said, visibly stung. “My role is to test and observe during the experiment. It’s my job.”
“The riddles.”
Jenny nodded. “Tests of mental reasoning. Cognitive function. Our work is particularly interested in how our brains operate under duress. The Sultan’s Challenge measured your cognitive ability to challenge authority. The Riddle of the Fractions is a test we use to measure alternative thinking. Most people, once they make a decision, find it very difficult to change their minds. Our brains are wired to stop working once we have an answer we like.”
“Well, I guess we passed,” said Tahoe, “if that Kaiser guy wants us to join the Picasso Project.”
“We don’t even have the full analysis back yet,” Jenny said. “But I think it’s safe to say that you all performed incredibly well.”
“Not all of us.” Kate’s voice stilled them all. She slowly rose to her feet and approached the rest of the group. “You didn’t make any notes about me. I am Subject 5, right?”
Jenny shot a glance toward Chance, confused by the sharp tone, then slowly back at Kate. “That’s right. We knew that you were not the real Kate Winter from the moment you arrived at the escape room. You weren’t one of the pre-screened candidates for the experiment.”
“But you decided to let me play along, anyway.”
“We didn’t have much choice, did we? And besides, much can be learned with the addition of incidental factors.”
“Yep, that’s me,” Kate said softly. “Incidental.”
“Kate, I didn’t mean that.” Jenny reached out for Kate, but she quickly shrunk away.
“Where the hell are our rides?” she said to the ceiling. “I just want to get out of here.”
It felt like an eternity before Jenny broke the uncomfortable silence. “Well, I just wanted to come in here and congratulate you on completing the escape room. And to apologize for disappointing you with my role. I hope you all know that I started to consider you real friends.”
“No need to apologize, Jenny,” assured Tahoe. “It was just a part of the experiment. We all get that.”
“Now we get that,” Wolfie said. “But we sure as hell didn’t get that when we were being attacked by poisonous snakes in the Colombian jungle.”
“Oh, it’s snakes now?” Tahoe crowed. “A whole nest of them, huh?”
As the trio laughed, Chance once again retreated to the far side of the room and gazed out the large window. The soccer game across the street was still being played. He watched as a white-jerseyed midfielder broke away from a defender and started dribbling up the right side of the pitch.
Chance was struck by a sudden longing for home, for his own bed. He wanted nothing more than to forget everything that had happened over the past eight days. No Kaiser, no provost. No Picasso Project, no grandiose talk of saving humanity. And no absurd love triangle with Jenny and Kate. Jesus, he had managed to make it 17 years with little more than two fumbling make-out sessions with Cathy Hickey, and now this? His head throbbed. He wanted to close his eyes and keep them that way for the next 24 hours.
“Jenny, what do you know about the Picasso Project?” Tahoe asked. “I mean, is it legit or what?”
Across th
e street on the lighted pitch, another player from the white team made a run to receive a through pass, and with a quick flick of his foot, sent the ball soaring across the penalty box.
Jenny shrugged. “I had heard about it, of course. But all I knew was that it was some kind of early-intervention program to inspire creativity. The escape room experiment was set up to identify potential candidates for the program. That was where I did my work. Beyond that, I don’t know much else.”
“How many Picassos are there?” Wolfie asked.
“No idea. But I’ve heard stories of other escape rooms, in other places. Testing adults too, going back years. But they could be just rumors. Graduate assistants get bored easily.”
Chance had only been half-listening, but something she said made him turn his head.
Testing adults.
Something outside drew his attention.
With a running start, a young man leaped into the air and with a quick punch of his head, struck the ball directly past the goalie’s outstretched hands, and into the back of the goal. The white team swarmed the scorer, a man of white-blonde hair, cheering.
Confused, Chance pressed his palm against the window. Around his fingers, the image dimmed and blurred and the scene outside distorted. He staggered back from the window, staring at his hand.
Kate noticed immediately that something was wrong. She rose quickly to her feet and rushed to steady him with both arms. “Chance, what is it?”
“This isn’t real,” he said, pointing to the window. “This isn’t real.”
“What’s going on?” Tahoe, Wolfie and Jenny looked on.
“The window …” Chance stammered. “It’s just a projection. On a feedback loop.” Then, Chance realized what was happening. “We’re in another virtual simulation.”
Jenny immediately darted across the room to the door, flipped open the latch on a small control panel and quickly punched in a sequence of digits. A second later, the scene from the window vanished in a wipe of static. Outside, the players were gone, the field dark. The soccer game was over, if it had ever been there at all.
Chance pressed his face against the now-clear glass and looked down. The campus looked utterly deserted. There were no cars on Baltimore Avenue, no students scurrying back to the dorms. The streetlights on the road below flickered.
In the distance, a low rumble.
The plastic cups on the table started to shake, and topple over. The rumble was getting louder, the vibrations more forceful. It felt like an approaching tornado.
“What is happening?” asked Tahoe.
They all hurried to join Chance at the window and scanned the skies.
A black helicopter plunged into view, flying just outside the window. It hovered there for a moment, ghostly against the night sky. A pair of spotlights on the front of the helicopter burst to life, filling the room with blazing light. They raised their arms over their eyes, squinting through the blinding light toward the looming chopper.
A deep voice on a loudspeaker boomed loud enough to rattle the glass window.
“YOU ARE SURROUNDED. DO NOT MOVE AND NOBODY WILL GET HURT.”
FORTY-THREE
The helicopter hovered just outside the building, spotlights blazing, like a mechanical dragon. The bright light obscured any view into chopper’s cockpit, but Chance saw something that looked like guns on the right side of the helicopter. Below, trees bent in the rotor wash. Leaves and dust churned.
Suddenly, the door to the common area slammed open and Richard Kaiser burst into the room. His calm demeanor had vanished. His Savile Row suit was rumpled, and his carefully coifed hair was mussed. When he spoke, his words were rushed, his normally measured tone replaced with an unassailable urgency.
“We need to move!” he shouted. “This way!”
“What is happening?” Tahoe shouted back, already moving.
Just then, the provost appeared at the door. Like Kaiser, her carefully manicured exterior had begun to crack. Beads of sweat had smeared her carefully applied mascara.
“They’re already downstairs,” Levick said breathlessly.
“How many?” asked Kaiser.
“I don’t know. A dozen at least.”
“Who are these people?” demanded Chance.
“Not now,” said Kaiser. “Right now, we need to get out of here.”
“We’re not going anywhere until we get some answers.”
“The only thing you need to know right now is that your lives are in danger. And right now, we need to run.”
“This way!” yelled Levick.
They sprinted from the common area down a short hallway and through a door into a dim stairwell. Below, they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Running.
“They’re coming up!”
With Kaiser in the lead, they climbed, hurtling steps two at a time. Up two flights, then a third. At the top of the stairwell, they burst through a heavy door into a blast of cold night air.
The roof of the Iribe Center was a construction site. Cords of wood, metal pipes, eight-foot sections of mesh rebar and other detritus were scattered across the surface. Rubble was stacked waist-high near the opening of a bright orange trash chute that emptied into a dumpster seven stories below. It seemed to glow in the dark.
Chance surveyed the scene in less than a second, then sprinted toward the opposite end. Jenny yelled out something about descending the far stairwell and escaping out the back of the building. Chance hoped she was right. They ran on.
Tahoe’s boot tripped over the corner of a brick, causing her to lose balance. She stumbled and hit the ground hard, but managed to roll into something resembling a ball to cushion the fall. When she regained her feet, her jeans were torn and her knee was bleeding. She took a tentative step, but her knee nearly buckled.
“Grab her shoulder!” Chance ordered Wolfie, looping her left arm around his neck.
“I’m fine,” Tahoe protested. “I can run on my own.” She took another unsupported step, and her knee buckled again. She nodded reluctantly at Wolfie.
Kate had run ahead and was now frantically waving at them. “I see the door!” she yelled. “Hurry.”
Chance and Wolfie half-ran, half-dragged Tahoe across the roof like medics evacuating a wounded soldier from the battlefield. At this point, they were all banged up. Each of them had crusted blood somewhere on their body. They zigzagged through the construction materials, staying low.
Kaiser, Levick and Jenny struggled to keep pace.
The crash of metal exploded behind them.
Despite himself, Chance looked back over his shoulder. Men with guns spilled out of the stairwell; he counted five, six, seven of them. With military precision, the men wordlessly split into two groups. They glided across the roof, maneuvering in a classic flanking formation.
“Keep going,” Chance urged. “Keep going.”
A gunshot pierced the air.
“This is your last warning,” one of the men shouted over the din of the thumping helicopter. “DO NOT MOVE.”
Kate had almost reached the far stairwell, a metal shack with a slanted roof, when the door flung open. Three men burst from the stairwell, guns drawn.
Chance and the others skidded to a stop. Slowly, the three groups of men encircled them. They were all dressed in identical black suits, and all were armed.
Chance and Wolfie helped Tahoe find support for her bleeding knee against a stacked triangle of pipes. Blood flowed freely from an alarming-looking wound, staining the front leg of her jeans. They were near the edge of the building, near the rubble chute. Kaiser, Levick and Jenny backed to Tahoe’s side, their eyes fixed on the gunmen.
Chance peered over the edge of the roof. Seven stories were a long way down. They were wounded animals, ensnared in a rapidly closing bear trap.
Kaiser strode to the front. “There is no need for violence, Drake,” he said. “No need for anyone to get hurt here.”
“We’re not here for you, Kaiser,” the man said. “We
’re here for the kids.”
“You know these people?” Chance asked Kaiser.
He nodded. “I told you, there is a battle being waged for the soul of humanity — a fight between good and evil, between creativity and conformity. There are those who wish to see our work fail, who value only obedience and blind allegiance. Did you think there would not be enemies of our work?”
Kaiser turned to the gunmen, his arms raised. “Mr. Drake. The helicopter was an unexpected flourish.”
“Game is over, Kaiser. Just hand them over.”
Chance scanned the rooftop again. Armed gunmen blocked both exits.
Drake noticed. “I see you continue to evaluate your options,” he said to Chance. “A part of me admires you, never give up and all that. But let me assure you, there is no way out of this building for you and your friends. You have three choices, fight, flight or submit. We have guns and you do not, so a fight does not seem advisable. And we have blocked off the only two ways off this roof, so flight does not appear to be an option, either. Your only choice here is to submit.”
Chance knew he was right. Behind him, he could sense hope deflate from Wolfie and Tahoe and Kate.
“You’re going to kill us?” Chance said. “Right here, right now?”
The man coughed out a harsh laugh. “You have an impressive imagination, Mr. Matthews,” Drake said. “That’s what makes you so dangerous.”
“Your men have guns,” Chance said. “You’re not giving me much of a choice here.”
“Choice,” Drake repeated coolly. “Surely now you have all recognized that free will is a delusion.”
Suddenly, the rev of engines joined the din of churning rotor blades as the helicopter surged upward. The roof suddenly blazed with piercing spotlights. The roar of the blades was deafening, and yet Drake’s next words rang out clear and cold.
“Round them up and if they resist,” he said, “shoot them in the head.”
FORTY-FOUR
The gunmen stalked closer from all three sides. Chance and the others felt the cinch of the noose. They grasped for one another, holding tight.
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