What had burned brightest within Control as he stared at the wall was not confusion or fear but the irritation he had brought into his session with the biologist. An emotion that manifested as surprise: cold water dumped into an unsuspecting empty glass.
Inconsequential things could lead to failure, one small breach creating another. Then they grew larger, and soon you were in free fall. It could be anything. Forgetting to enter field notes one afternoon. Getting too close to a surveillance subject. Skimming a file you should have read with your full attention.
Control had not been briefed on the words on the director’s wall, and he had seen nothing about them in any of the files he had so meticulously read and reread. It was the first indication of a flaw in his process.
* * *
When Control thought the biologist was truly comfortable and feeling pleased with herself and perhaps even very clever, he said, “You say your last memory of Area X was of drowning in the lake. What do you remember specifically?”
The biologist was supposed to blanch, gaze turning inward, and give him a sad smile that would make him sad, too, as if she had become disappointed in him for some reason. That somehow he’d been doing so well and now he’d fucked up. Then she would protest, would say, “It wasn’t the lake. It was in the ocean,” and all of the rest would come spilling out.
But none of that happened. He received no smile of any kind. Instead, she locked everything away from him, and even her gaze withdrew to some far-off height—a lighthouse, perhaps—from which she looked down at him from a safe distance.
“I was confused yesterday,” she said. “It wasn’t in Area X. It was my memory from when I was five, of almost drowning in a public fountain. I hit my head. I had stitches. I don’t know why, but that’s what came back to me, in pieces, when you asked that question.”
He almost wanted to clap. He almost wanted to stand up, clap, and hand over her file.
She had sat in her room last night, bored out of her mind from lack of stimuli, and she had anticipated this question. Not only had she anticipated it, Ghost Bird had decided to turn it into an egg laid by Control. Give away a less personal detail to protect something more important. The fountain incident was a well-documented part of her file, since she’d had to go to the hospital for stitches. It might confirm for him that she remembered something of her childhood, but nothing more.
It occurred to him that perhaps he wasn’t entitled to her memories. Perhaps no one was. But he pushed himself away from that thought, like an astronaut pushing off from the side of a space capsule. Where he’d end up was anyone’s guess.
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly.
“I don’t care,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “When do I get out of here?”
“Oh, you know the drill—you’ve got to take one for the team,” he said, using clichés to breeze past her question, trying to sound ignorant or dumb. Not so much a strategy as to punish himself for not bringing his A game. “You signed the agreement; you knew the debriefing might take a while.” You knew, too, that you might come back with cancer or not come back at all.
“I don’t have a computer,” she said. “I don’t have any of the books I requested. I’m being kept in a cell that has a tiny window high up on the wall. It only shows the sky. If I’m lucky, I see a hawk wheel by every few hours.”
“It’s a room, not a cell.” It was both.
“I can’t leave, so it’s a cell. Give me books at least.”
But he couldn’t give her the books she wanted on memory loss. Not until he knew more about the nature of her memory loss. She had also asked for all kinds of texts about mimicry and camouflage—he’d have to question her about that at some point.
“Does this mean anything to you?” he asked to deflect her attention, pushing the potted plant–mouse across the table to her.
She sat straight in her chair, seemed to become not just taller but wider, more imposing, as she leaned in toward him.
“A plant and a dead mouse? It’s a sign you should give me my fucking books and a computer.” Perhaps it wasn’t amusement that made her different today. Maybe it was a sense of recklessness.
“I can’t.”
“Then you know what you can do with your plant and your mouse.”
“All right then.”
Her contemptuous laughter followed him out into the hall. She had a nice laugh, even when she was using it as a weapon against him.
007: SUPERSTITION
Twenty minutes later, Control had contrived to cram Whitby, Grace, and the staff linguist, Jessica Hsyu, into cramped quarters in front of the revealed section of wall with the director’s peculiar handwritten words scrawled across it. Control hadn’t bothered to move books or much of anything else. He wanted them to have to sit in close, uncomfortable proximity—let us bond in this phone booth, with our knees shoved up against one another’s. Little fabric sounds, mouth-breathing, shoe-squeaks, unexpected smells, all would be magnified. He thought of it as a bonding experience. Perhaps.