Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1)(22)

“Mind?” Andrew asked, and waited for Alice’s nod before plucking up a fry. “What are you all talking about?”

“Good question,” Terry said. “What are we talking about?”

“Why the lab is suddenly so interested in making sure we keep going,” Gloria said.

Andrew pulled a chair up to the end of the table. “I’ve been thinking about that. Do you know who runs this experiment yet?”

Gloria’s eyes skated to Terry. She hadn’t exactly filled Andrew in on that part. “It’s some arm of the feds,” Terry said.

Andrew tilted his head. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“Because I knew how you’d react.”

Terry didn’t want to have this argument in front of her new friends. Apparently Andrew didn’t either.

“So…do you guys think it’s odd that the feds would be spending time on this with the war going on? Shouldn’t they be working on weapons or something instead?”

Ken lowered his voice, even though they were alone. “Maybe they are.”

Terry scoffed, “Is it me or Alice who’s the weapon? Or Gloria?”

“Don’t leave me out,” Ken said.

Andrew looked among them. “Okay, probably not.”

Gloria didn’t say anything.

None of them hung around much longer besides Andrew. She paid for their fries out of her tips, and still didn’t go back to worrying about herself. She’d ask Brenner these questions on Thursday.





4.


Alice’s knees sweated at the back, right in the pits, as they walked down that pale hallway in the lab to the shiny elevator she now hated the sight of. She knew where it would take them. Knees were an unpleasant place to have the nervous sweats. And ever since they’d started giving her jolts of electricity, she imagined the lights in this place laughing at her, talking about her, how she might as well be one of them.

Stuck here forever. Forced to illuminate the darkness. “Illuminate” was a good word, though. She remembered the preacher at church once describing illuminated manuscripts he’d seen on a missionary trip, and the picture she’d conjured to go with the phrase had to be more miraculous than the reality.

It was thoughts like the talking lights that had made her show up at Terry’s diner like a head case. She’d only been truly worried about the call to her uncle after hearing Gloria’s questions.

“You okay?” Terry asked, stepping away from Gloria and alongside her. “You’re awfully quiet today. And I haven’t had to stop you from messing with anything electronic.”

Dr. Brenner shifted his head so that Alice was staring at his profile.

“Fine.” Alice nodded to Terry, then to Gloria and Ken, a silent chorus of concern behind her.

“You’re sure you feel all right?” Terry asked, placing the back of her hand to Alice’s forehead.

Alice flinched and regretted it. “I’m fine.”

“I’ll make sure that Dr. Parks takes your temperature and says you’re well enough to participate,” Dr. Brenner interrupted.

“Thank you,” Terry told him. “She won’t have to do it today if she’s sick?”

“Of course not,” Dr. Brenner said smoothly.

Alice almost believed him. Was Terry’s experience different enough that she did? Alice thought it must be.

Dr. Brenner input his code into the keypad. Alice watched each finger move as if in slow motion. The elevator doors zipped open and she imagined carefully breaking the entire apparatus, severing the cables so the car wouldn’t move.

Soon she’d be back to hiding inside herself, looking for the quiet place beneath everything, with its ruins and drifting spores. The problem was, the quiet place was not somewhere she wanted to go.





5.


The hospital gowns they were forced to wear during the experiments were an affront to dignity. This was a fact, not just Gloria’s opinion. She could’ve done a double-blind peer-reviewed study to prove it.

Not for the first time, she wondered what protocols the lab was following. Were she, Terry, Ken, and poor startled Alice all being put through the same motions? Nothing about this laboratory conformed to her expectations or what she’d read in textbooks about scientific studies, so somehow she doubted it.

She couldn’t even stop coming…Not now that they’d tied her grades up in this.

In for a penny, in for a pound. That was the saying.

She held her hands on her lap and waited for the young doctor to arrive. Green was his name, just like his age. He was tentative with her, and she’d said a silent prayer of thanks about not getting saddled with Brenner. She could occasionally ask Green a question and get an answer.

He came in with a clipboard in one hand and a small slip of paper undoubtedly coated in LSD in his other. “Hello, Gloria,” he said, as if they were going to have tea.

She kept her hands in her lap. “Dr. Green, I wondered—you said you studied at Stanford, correct? What about Dr. Brenner?”

He set down the clipboard and carefully avoided her eyes. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves up one turn past where his tan ended.

“I’m honestly not sure,” he said.

He took a sheet of paper off the clipboard and handed it to her. “I want you to do your best to commit the information here to memory. Then, after your dose takes effect, I’ll be questioning you about it. Your objective will be to try not to reveal any of this to me. Got it?”