Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1)(32)

“Eight.” He leaned forward and spoke into a mic wired into her helmet. “You can stop trying now. We’ll get you out.”

She would understand the disappointment in his tone. He’d promised her a reward if she delivered. And he had carefully considered what he might give her if she accomplished a controlled illusion—without encouraging her to continue questioning him.

But there would be no reward for a lack of results.

At his nod, an assistant opened the tank’s hatch and helped Eight out. She tore off the helmet, thrusting it at the lab worker. “Papa, I didn’t like that!”

He saw the dark red line of blood from her nostril at the same moment the illusion began. Bright sunlight blinded him, and he squinted. He flinched back and so did the assistants.

He forced himself to look, and a tempest of crashing waves surrounded them, arcing high overhead. He heard a cry to his right, the clattering feet of someone running….He’d have to find out who it was later.

“Eight,” he said, soothing. Impressed.

He hadn’t realized she’d ever seen an ocean, but it made sense. She was born across one, after all. Brenner simply watched as the waves rolled over them. The water didn’t exist, but it looked and sounded utterly convincing. He could barely make out the patterns of the walls and outlines underneath it.

He stood, waiting in the maelstrom Eight created while she cried, harsh angry sobs.

“The cupcakes,” he barked when she’d managed the illusion for several minutes. He held out his other hand for the reward. A scrambling beside him and a tech returned, breathing hard as she placed the Hostess package in his hand. Eight’s favorite. Something to satisfy her, temporarily, since she’d only gotten more insistent in her request for friends. Any break from that was welcome.

The strength of her performance was an excellent revelation on which to end the week. Already he’d been encouraged by how swiftly Terry Ives had completed her assignment. She seemed none the wiser about his intention to rewire her brain, by suggestion, bit by bit, to prove it could be done.

“Eight.” Brenner approached her carefully. The blood from her nostril trickled down to her mouth and it mixed with her tears. He put a hand on her arm. “I have something for you.”

“No, no,” she wailed, and the waves crashed harder around them. “I can’t stop. I can’t.”

He took the cupcake pack and put it in her hand, waiting. She gripped it, nearly crushing the sweets inside, and then collapsed to her knees. The illusion vanished.

He kneeled to give her the towel. She ignored him, shaking as she ripped into the package and sank her little teeth into the chocolate, white filling oozing out. He should be teaching her more discipline, but this was what worked. She was getting stronger. And she was still cooperating…more or less.

This was the status quo for now. Someday she’d manage to control it. He had to be patient.

Eight chewed. Once she’d finished a whole cake, she asked, weakly, “When is the woman coming back to visit?”

“Dr. Parks?” he asked, confused.

He hadn’t realized she’d been visiting Kali, but it didn’t surprise him. Women and their softness. They couldn’t resist a child.

“No,” Eight said.

“Who?” He frowned.

“I can’t say. It’s a secret.”

Brenner took her arm and marched her back to her room, where he kept her awake for the next thirteen hours, refusing to let her sleep. She fought him as long as she could. But finally, she said, “The lady with the patient gown. She only came once. She told me she’d come again.”

“What did she look like?”

“Pretty,” she said. “She was nice. It was a secret.”

“You did the right thing, telling me,” Brenner said. “We don’t keep secrets, the two of us.”

Eight looked at him with clear, judging eyes. Yes, we do, she was thinking; he could practically hear it. But she kept it inside and so he left her there, at last, to get some sleep. When he reached the control room, he ordered them to review every scrap of footage of Eight’s room, log every person who had come and gone since they’d been here.

Eight was getting stronger. He couldn’t risk anyone messing that up.





1.


The cafeteria’s main offerings that night had been sloppy joes and tater tots. The scent of both slightly burned meat and deep-fried potatoes lingered, mixed with the competing cologne, deodorant, and sweat of a packed crowd. The university had made viewing President Nixon’s scheduled address to the nation on Vietnam mandatory—as if that would do anything to stop the protestors.

Terry thought they were fooling themselves, but she didn’t have a diner shift tonight and so here she was. Elbow to elbow with the people beside her, there wasn’t enough room to put her homework on the table. She couldn’t complain—not when at least a hundred other students had to sit cross-legged on the floor once the actual seats filled up. A TV so small almost no one would be able to see it had been wheeled to the front of the room.

Andrew was supposed to meet her here, but he hadn’t showed. When she’d called him earlier on the dorm phone, Dave had been in full rant about how unfair it was for the school to decree they had to show respect for Nixon. Maybe Andrew meant to skip it in protest. Hopefully no one would notice.