Wildcard (Warcross #2)(34)

“I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me something that can get me out of it,” I reply. “That’s all I know. Your turn.”

Jesse straightens, swipes two fingers casually in an upward gesture, and displays a screenshot of the symbol on Sasuke’s sleeve.

“I was asking around about it down under because I thought it might be some obscure illegal racing group logo,” Jesse says. “You know, maybe just some shirt that was merchandise for a Dark World team we hadn’t heard of.”

Jesse pauses to spin the symbol in midair. “But then, someone anonymous responded. They showed me a work badge with this same symbol on it. I don’t know how they got their hands on it, but I forwarded that badge to Tremaine.”

Now Jesse pulls up a virtual image of the work badge. It’s a plain white card, with a name and a sixteen-digit code printed on it. Sure enough, right beside that is the symbol I’d seen on Sasuke’s sleeve. It’s a logo.

“I did some digging, then went out to see for myself where that badge came from,” Tremaine goes on. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I say.

Tremaine loads another screenshot. The new image shows the exact same symbol, except this time it looks like it’s printed as a small sign next to a door in some sort of nondescript hallway.

“I unearthed these from private servers.” Tremaine brings up a second image. This time, the symbol is tiny and subtle on a pair of sliding white doors.

“Where is this?” I ask Tremaine, my eyes darting from the symbols to him.

He takes the original screenshot, spreads his arms wide, and brings his hands together. The screenshot zooms out until it looks like a hallway, then a network of hallways inside an enormous complex. I frown as he keeps going, until the entire campus has zoomed out, and we are now looking at a large sign made of stone in front of a campus’s gates.

I stare at the title engraved on the complex’s entrance. JAPAN INNOVATION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. “It’s a company?”

“Yes. A biotech company. My guess is that the symbol you found belongs to some project being done at this institute.”

I slump back in my seat. “You’re saying that when I saw the glimpse of young Sasuke in a room, wearing that symbol on his sleeve—he was here? How did he even find himself in a place like this?”

“That’s not even the surprising part,” Tremaine replies. He brings up a third screenshot. It shows a young Japanese woman standing with her small team of colleagues, all of them wearing matching white lab coats and posing in front of the institute.

My eyes lock on to the woman’s face at the same time Tremaine points to her.

“Before she quit twelve years ago, she used to work at the Innovation Institute,” Tremaine says. “That’s neuroscientist Dr. Mina Tanaka. Hideo and Sasuke’s mother.”





13



I squeeze my eyes shut. “No,” I snap. “Back up. That doesn’t make any sense!”

Tremaine’s face doesn’t change. “I know. I thought maybe you had an explanation for it.”

Jesse must have made a mistake. Tremaine too. Because if any of it’s true, it means that the mother of Hideo and Sasuke also used to work at the company that apparently held Sasuke captive. The memory of meeting her flashes back to me—her small figure, now delicate from grief, her large glasses and her warm smile. The way Hideo had hugged her protectively.

“It doesn’t add up,” I insist. “Are you saying that Hideo’s mother had something to do with Sasuke vanishing like that? She was permanently traumatized by his disappearance—she and Hideo’s dad searched madly for Sasuke. She was so distraught, she could no longer work. What happened destroyed her mind. She forgets things constantly now. I saw her with my own eyes. I met her. Hideo showed me his Memory of it.”

Tremaine leans forward and raps his fingers against the table. “Maybe she didn’t know,” he replies. “And Hideo probably knew nothing about it—he was so little at the time. Memories aren’t always accurate. I mean, is there any public information about why she quit working for the company? Was it because of the trauma of losing her son? Or was it because of something that had happened at the company?”

More questions are piling onto the ones I already have. I sigh and rub my hands across my face. If Sasuke was a part of this institute, how did he get there?

“Hey.”

I look through my hands at Hammie, who’s squinting at the photo of Hideo’s mother with her colleagues. She holds a finger up at the list of tiny names running across the photo’s bottom. “Dana Taylor, PhD. Isn’t this your Dana Taylor, Em? The one who works for Zero?”

I search the photo until my gaze rests on a familiar face. “That’s her,” I blurt out. She looks much younger here, and her hair isn’t streaked with gray, but her thoughtful look is the same.

Taylor used to work with Hideo’s mother—with Sasuke’s mother. What did that mean, then, for how Sasuke became Zero? What do the Blackcoats have to do with the company where Mina Tanaka used to work?

In his corner, Tremaine folds his arms against the table and furrows his brow. There’s fear in his eyes, an unusual sight. “This feels all wrong,” he mutters to himself.

“Are you going to tell Hideo?” Asher asks in the silence that follows.