At first the contents were disappointing: a few hundred files with indecipherable names, each consisting of three letters followed by six numbers. I could tell they were password-protected like the others. Another dead end.
But then something jumped out at me. The three-letter codes seemed to repeat every dozen files or so, while the last two numbers stayed the same for long intervals. But the middle four digits always changed.
The answer came in a flash. "These numbers are dates. Look at the bottom section. They all end in seventeen. Those must be from this year."
Tack nodded. "But what are the letters?"
One sequence was demanding my attention. VGW.
I knew those letters.
A tear spilled onto my cheek. I tried to hold it back, but couldn't.
"Initials," I said in an unsteady voice. "I think these are reports of some kind."
I moused over the last VGW file. Metadata appeared.
PN_FIELD_OBSERVATION_REPORT_SUBMITTED/FILED/091817
09.18.17. The day after my birthday. Yesterday.
Tack was silent a moment, then squinted over at me. "What's going on, Min? Seriously. No more holding back. You persuade me to break into your shrink's office in the middle of the night, and we discover you're part of some classified military project." He exhaled in disbelief. "Noah too, of all people. There are files calling you a 'beta run,' and now we've got the out-of-bounds woods popping up only hours after we see an armored caravan drive into them, for the first time in, like . . . I don't know . . . forever." He hesitated, then said the words aloud and made it real. "Are those really your mom's initials?"
I cleared my throat, stalling, and not very well. I wanted to crawl away and hide.
"We need to talk to Noah," I said finally.
Tack's jaw tightened. "How's he gonna help? By asking his daddy to handle it?"
I understood his reluctance, but I couldn't ignore this lead.
Noah was involved with Project Nemesis. He might know things I didn't.
"I need you to trust me on this."
Tack seemed about to argue, then shrugged instead. "Whatever." He forced a lightness into his voice I knew he didn't feel. "If you want that dope slowing us down, it's your call. I'll get him a bike helmet to wear for safety."
He glanced at his watch. "Two thirty."
I nodded, closing everything. Hopefully Lowell would think the password issue was some kind of software glitch, and ignore it. He seemed the type. I shut down the laptop and put everything back how we found it, then relocked the desk.
I wouldn't think about my mother and field reports. Not yet.
I was returning the keys to their dish when the third one caught my eye. Burnished brass. Longer and thinner than the other two. Plainly designed for some other type of lock.
I turned around. Eyeballed the antique cabinet across the room.
Its lower doors were closed. There was a keyhole.
"What?" Tack swiveled to follow my line of sight. "Ah. Sure, why not?"
I crossed the shadowy office and knelt before the wooden panels. Inserted the key. It turned easily, and the carved doors swung open. Inside were two plastic document boxes filled with manila folders.
I dragged a box from the cabinet. Selected a folder at random.
"'Tobias G. Albertsson-4/5/2002.' Hey, that's Toby!" Startled, I pulled another file. "'Sally D. Hillman-6/24/2001.' She was in our grade too, remember? But her family moved to Lewiston four years ago." Then I noticed a red line slicing through her name on the tab.
Tack grabbed the other box and dug in with both hands. It held similar files, each labeled by name and date. All were former or current classmates. Tack counted thirty-three folders in his container. "I bet everyone in our grade is in these."
"But why? Lowell obviously doesn't treat the whole class."
"Alphabetical." Tack riffled through his box, a strange excitement in his voice. "This set starts with L. And . . . boom. Here's me! Thomas 'The Dark Knight' Russo. This one's gonna be tasty, folks. FYI, those are birth dates on the labels, although I imagine you guessed that already."
He read silently. Then his back stiffened, eyes rounding as he pawed through the stack of pages inside. Finally, he slapped the folder shut and flung it across the room, staring after it like the contents might bite him.
"How in the-" Tack cut off, his mouth hanging open. Then he looked at me fixedly, with no humor in his eyes. "What the hell is going on, Min? Why does your wacko shrink have a Nemesis file on me? One that includes everything I've ever done!"
"A Nemesis file? How do you know that?"
Tack shook his head, uncharacteristically silent. Alarmed, I pulled another folder from the box in front of me. Jessica L. Cale-1/14/2002. Not my favorite person. The first page was a basic worksheet. Name. Address. Age. The usual particulars, typical of any intake form or official registration. Typical, until you noticed TOP SECRET stamped at the top and General Garfield's signature scrawled across the bottom.
The breadth of information was staggering, as was the level of detail. Medical files. Report cards. Newspaper clippings from when Jessica won the Junior Miss Idaho pageant at twelve. There were printouts of her Facebook and Pinterest pages, her Instagrams, even Snapchats. Xeroxed school pictures. An analysis of her Twitter feed. At the back I found a Google Earth image of her house, clipped to a spreadsheet documenting her parents' work histories and criminal records. There was even a roster of household pets.
I dropped Jessica's file-having learned more about her in the last two minutes than during a lifetime of going to school together-and pulled another. Harrison S. Finch-a freckly boy I vaguely remembered from middle school. He'd broken his arm once, goofing around on the jungle gym before first bell. Then his family had up and moved, to where, I'd never learned. Inside his folder were the same types of documents, but the data collection ended in 2013, the same year he'd left town (for Billings, I now saw). Nothing in his file was more current.
I rechecked the tab. Noticed a red line through his name.
I grabbed more files. Casey F. Beam. Gregory Kozowitz. Lauren J. Decker.
All classmates. All with identical workups.
"These are like FBI dossiers!" Tack sputtered, his usual cool completely blown. "But get this-only sophomores. I checked my entire box. No juniors. No seniors. No freshmen. Just our grade. Do you know how creepy that is? Why would Lowell have this stuff? Who gave it to him? Why only our class?"
"This can't be legal." I waved a file to make my point. "Here are twenty pages of Cash Eaton's medical records, about his irregular heartbeat. That kind of information is protected by law. You can't just Google it and make copies."
"Where's your file?" Tack asked suddenly, eyeing the pile of folders spreading across the carpet. "The Ws should be in my box, but I didn't see your name."
"My group is A through K." I thumbed through them anyway to be sure. "I'm not in here."
Tack quickly searched the other container. "Noah's missing, too."
"There were thirty-eight files in this box. That makes seventy-one altogether."
"One for everyone!" Tack swept a hand like a bitter game-show host. "We're being spied on and charted like terrorists, by a shady head doctor neck-deep in a government conspiracy. Which is code-named Nemesis, by the way. Nothing terrifying about that! Good times. Super. I'm excited to be a part of this."
I felt a twinge in my scar. Gunshots echoed in my head.
You don't know the half of it.
Beta Run. Test Patient A. Test Patient B.
Yet this was bigger than just Noah and me. No denying it now.
"Did you notice some of the names are scratched out?" Tack said.
I nodded. "Six in my box. All kids who used to go to school with us, but don't anymore."
"Five in mine." Tack dug up a red-lined file. His voice dropped. "This one's for Peter Merchant. And I saw another earlier on Mary Roke."
I got a chill. Petey Merchant had drowned when we were ten. His canoe capsized during a summer squall, way out on the lake, and he'd never been a strong swimmer. His family moved away soon afterward.
Mary Roke died when we were thirteen. Bee stings. No one knew she was allergic.
I did a quick calculation. "That leaves sixty with names that aren't marked through."
"Close to the exact number of kids in our class. We've been sixty-four strong for two years now, and these boxes don't include you and Noah."
"And two others. I wonder who else?"
I surveyed the files fanning out across Lowell's carpet. To figure out who was missing, we'd have to make a list. "Let's take pictures of everything." I dug into my pocket for my cell. "Then we'll have proof. I'll email them to myself to be safe." But my iPhone quit the moment I pressed the home button, a victim of our late-night stakeout. I glanced at Tack, but he shook his head. "Mine died before we left the bushes."
"Damn it." My eyes traveled the room, hunting for another option.
I noticed a splash of yellow buried in the mass of folders. Pulled it from the pile. A single sheet. The document wasn't part of anyone's personal workup-it must've been wedged inside a box between the files.