Wildcard (Warcross #2)(50)

Jax’s lips tighten. “Dana Taylor grew up during a rough time, around when the Soviet Union collapsed. Her father laundered money for a living. As a child, Taylor saw more than her share of death. She ended up studying neuroscience because she was always interested in how the mind works—the way it manufactures every aspect of our world. The mind can make you believe whatever it wants you to believe. It can bring dictators to power. It can crumble nations. You can do anything, if you put your mind to it. You know the saying. Well, she truly takes that to heart. If the mind weren’t dependent upon the rest of the body, it could operate forever.”

I nod absently at Jax’s words. They echo what Taylor had said to me.

“When she got a job at the Innovation Institute as a junior researcher and moved to Japan, that became her obsession—learning how to disconnect the mind from the body. Separating its strength from its ultimate weakness.”

Her obsession. I think of what Taylor had told me. “Is it because of her father’s murder?”

Jax pauses for a moment. “Everyone’s afraid of death, but Taylor is absolutely terrified of it. The finality. Of seeing your father dead, gone forever without an explanation. The idea of her mind just . . . shutting off one day, without warning.”

An uneasy feeling lurches in my stomach. In spite of myself, I can understand that fear. I can taste it in my mouth.

“And what about the Blackcoats?” I say.

“Taylor worked her way up the ladder at the institute rapidly until she became its executive director. But there were some studies she wanted to do that the institute simply wouldn’t approve. As you know, she grew up around illegal dealings—the idea of her not being able to do what she wanted was unacceptable. Hence: the Blackcoats. She created the group as the shell for all the experiments she wanted to conduct that she didn’t have permission for.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s say, for example, that Taylor wanted to do something that she knew she couldn’t get approved by the institute. She would go ahead and conduct that experiment anyway, under the guise of something else. Some innocuous study. And she would make sure every shred of paperwork and evidence of that experiment would get funneled toward the Blackcoats instead. If she sells the results of that experiment to someone—a foreign government, some other foundation—it would be traced only to the Blackcoats.”

I narrow my eyes as I start to understand. “So the Blackcoats . . .”

“They’re essentially a false business name,” Jax finishes. “An empty shell, underneath which all of Taylor’s secret projects are kept.”

“None of the data would ever lead back to her,” I say in realization.

“Right. Let’s say that news got out about some illegal weapon Taylor was developing at the institute. Investigators would find the trails leading not to Taylor’s name, but to some mystery group called the Blackcoats. Taylor could claim she was an innocent bystander, her identity stolen and used by the Blackcoats. The clients who bought the tech from her can also point their fingers at the Blackcoats. So, the news reports would all say something like, ‘Who are the Blackcoats? Mystery criminal ring in the business of illegal tech development.’ The Blackcoats get the blame and the reputation as some shadowy crew.”

“What was all that about the Blackcoats being a group of vigilantes who fight for causes they believe in?” I say.

“Lies,” Jax says with a shrug. “We’re not vigilantes, Emika. We’re mercenaries. We do what we get paid for.”

“But how does Hideo’s algorithm fit into all this? Why does Taylor care about destroying it? Is someone paying her for that?”

At that, Jax gives me a dark look. “Taylor doesn’t want to destroy the algorithm. She wants to control it.”

To control it.

The obvious truth of it hits me so hard that I can barely breathe.

Of course she would. Why would someone like Taylor, obsessed with the power of the mind, want to cripple the NeuroLink by ripping out such an intricate system like the algorithm? Why hadn’t I guessed that she might have other plans for it?

During our first encounter, Taylor had sat across from me and looked so sincere, so genuine, about what she wanted to do. She knew how to turn my own history against me, baiting me with what I had done for Annie that had gotten me the red on my record. She manipulated me into agreeing with her that what the Blackcoats were doing was noble.

The conversation tears through my mind. How timid and quiet she had seemed. How perfectly she had played that moment.

Jax watches me as these thoughts sink in. “I know,” she says, breaking the silence. I nod numbly back.

Jax looks away from me and up at the bridges lining the main dome’s ceiling. “The Blackcoats use the Dark World’s Fair as storage for their archives. Every experiment they’ve conducted, every mission they’ve run, everything they do is locked away here in a blockchain, one secured packet after another.”

A blockchain. An encrypted ledger of records, nearly impossible to trace or change.

Jax stops at the very edge of the dome’s glass, in an empty corner. “This is what I wanted you to see—the story behind Sasuke. It’s what you’ve been after, isn’t it?”

My heart squeezes when I hear her words, and again I see the Memory I’d glimpsed in Zero’s mind, the image of Sasuke’s small figure crouched in a room, the strange symbol on his sleeve.