Wildcard (Warcross #2)(52)
Now I look at her in surprise. “Taylor’s your mother?”
“I wouldn’t call how she raised me motherly,” Jax mutters. “But yes. She found me in the hospital wing of an orphanage. Later on, I learned she adopted me to put me in this study. “
Jax points out two of the adults at the far-left side of the window. It takes me a moment to recognize them as Hideo and Sasuke’s parents—the same elderly couple I’d once met.
“They look completely different,” I murmur.
Decades younger, as if it hadn’t only been ten years since their son went missing. The mother, Mina Tanaka, is sharply dressed in a suit and a white lab coat with the institute’s logo on its pocket, her face young and her hair glossy black. The father seems nothing like the frail, sickly man I’d seen at Hideo’s home, but like a slightly older version of Hideo now, with his handsome features and tall stature. I glance back at Jax. “What kind of study is this? Why are you and Sasuke in it?”
“Every child you see in here is dying,” Jax replies. “Of a disease, of an autoimmune disorder, of something terminal that medicine has deemed incurable.”
Dying? Hideo had never mentioned that. My gaze returns to Sasuke, his large liquid eyes dark against a small, pale face. I’d assumed it was the lighting. “Did . . . did you know? Did Sasuke’s parents know?” I stammer. “What about Hideo?”
“I have no idea if his parents ever told Hideo,” Jax says. “If he’s never mentioned it to you, it probably means his parents kept that from him. I certainly was too young to grasp how sick I was. I didn’t know that the reason no one wanted me was because, well, who would want to adopt a dying child? Sasuke himself didn’t even know. All he thought at the time was that he got sick much more easily than other kids.” She shrugs. “You don’t really question things when you’re that small. You believe everything is normal.”
I think of Hideo calling out for Sasuke to slow down at the park, the way he’d scolded his little brother as he wrapped the blue scarf snugly around Sasuke’s neck.
“And this study focused only on terminally ill children?”
“The study was a trial for an experimental drug that was supposed to be revolutionary,” Jax says. “Something that could cure various childhood diseases by taking advantage of the child’s young cells to turn their own bodies into collections of supercells. So, you can imagine that parents who were running out of options would jump to sign their children up for this radical study. What was there to lose?”
I look back at the room, lingering on each of the parents’ faces pressed against the glass. They seem hopeful, watching every move their children make. Mina Tanaka clutches her husband’s hand tightly to her chest. Her eyes never leave Sasuke.
A deep nausea settles into my stomach. The scene reminds me of the false hope every new drug gave me and my father. This is the one. This might save you. “There’s always more to lose,” I whisper.
We look on as a researcher adjusts the wristband on one child. “Of course, the study was a cover,” Jax continues. “While the study’s small team was working earnestly on a real drug, Taylor was also conducting her own research. The real study.”
“So what was her actual experiment?”
“The third requirement of this study was each child’s mind. A minimum IQ of at least one sixty was necessary for the trial. They had to show remarkable self-discipline. They needed to demonstrate unusually high drive and motivation. Their brains had to light up in a very specific way during a series of exams Taylor gave them.” She looks at me. “You know how smart Hideo Tanaka is. Sasuke was even more so. He tested effortlessly into every single academy he qualified for. The way Taylor found me at the orphanage in the first place was because she’d heard about my high IQ score. She found out about Sasuke’s through Mina herself, since the two of them worked in the institute. We both passed her exams.”
I swallow hard. Hideo had told me this about Sasuke, that his little brother had sat for many tests measuring his intelligence. “What was Taylor looking for?” I ask.
“A candidate whose mind was strong enough to withstand an experiment to separate the mind from the body.”
Suddenly, I make a connection so horrible that it makes me dizzy . “So that’s why Taylor had wanted each child to have a terminal illness,” I breathe.
Jax’s eyes are stone-cold, bleak with truth. “If they died during the study, it could easily be blamed on their original illness. Covered up. Their parents had already signed consent forms. This way they wouldn’t get suspicious and start asking questions.”
As we look on, the recording finishes, then automatically goes to the next. We watch at least a dozen of them. Some of the kids in the study change as the recordings continue; the number of parents standing at the window start to dwindle, too. I don’t want to ask Jax where they went, whether those were the children who couldn’t make it all the way through.
We shift to a recording with a room empty of kids, with the sun setting through the windows. Taylor is speaking Japanese with another researcher, in a voice low enough that translations start appearing in English at the bottom of my view. I blink—the researcher is Mina.
“This is the third time your son has tested top of his group,” Taylor says. She’s giving Mina the same sympathetic, encouraging look she’s always given me. “In fact, Sasuke tested at a margin so high, we had to rework our categories.”