Wildcard (Warcross #2)(59)
Jax has scrolled us onto another file, and I stare numbly as this one shows a detailed list of names. Clients.
The military. The medical-industrial complex. The one percent. Tech companies. Government officials.
My mind aches. There are plenty of people eager to benefit from the results of this research—maybe to make obedient supersoldiers or as a cure for the terminally ill or whatever it was they needed. Maybe just to live forever.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Jax says in a resigned voice. “In a way, Taylor did keep her promise to Mina Tanaka. She saved Sasuke’s life by making him permanent. The only price was to kill him.”
I think back to institute, how I watched Zero move in tandem with that armored figure, how his gestures manipulated the machine. “What about the robot in the lab?” I ask. “The one Zero was controlling?”
“A physical form for him,” she replies. “He can sync with that machine, as surely as if that were his own body. He can control one of them; he can control multiple ones if he wants to.”
Supersoldiers.
“Now, imagine this hooked up to the NeuroLink. How easily Taylor could replicate this, on a massive scale.”
“But,” I say hoarsely, clearing my throat, “do all these clients—patrons—know how she did this experiment? What it took?”
“Would it matter now, if they knew?” She shrugs at me. “If the end results are this remarkable, would you throw away the research just because the process was unethical? Immoral human experimentation has been around forever, has been performed by your country, by mine, by everyone. You think people don’t want the results of this kind of research, regardless of how it’s obtained? People ultimately don’t care about the journey, if the end is worth it. And what was the price tag here, in exchange for immortality?”
One life.
She’s right. If the experiment is exposed, it can be blamed on the Blackcoats, and all of these clients can just point the finger at them, denouncing it as heinous and illegal while being absolved of any blame for funding the research. But no one would throw away these findings just because Sasuke had died for it.
“His parents,” I whisper. “Sasuke’s mom. Did she . . . ?”
“She never knew what happened to him. She knows he disappeared several months after she withdrew him from the program, and I know she nearly killed herself trying to find out what happened to him—but what could she do? People disappear frequently in Japan. There isn’t even a national registry that catalogues the missing. Taylor was the director of the institute. She had the power to hide whatever needed to be hidden, and an accusation this wild would’ve just made Mina look like a grieving mother gone mad.”
“And what about you?” I ask softly.
“Taylor often hired people as needed for her projects. Most who worked with us weren’t exactly upstanding citizens. So as her ambitions grew, she wanted someone like me to enforce her control and protect her. I may not have gone Sasuke’s route, but I tested very well for my reflexes. So she had me trained.” Jax smiles bitterly. There’s the fear in her eyes again. “Nothing commands authority like a professional killer, and no killer surprises someone more than a young girl.”
Even though Jax doesn’t say it, I know she still thinks of Taylor as her mother. A cruel one, one who doesn’t care about her. But family, nevertheless. It’s hard to sever the mind’s ties, no matter how painful they are.
Taylor had made me believe that she was a force of good, that her mission was still fundamentally moral, the need to rid the world of regimes and technology like Hideo’s that sought to control others.
But sometimes, the need to protect the world from being controlled translates to seizing control for yourself.
Jax pulls us out of the recordings. I glimpse the vast library again, the repository of the Blackcoats’ secrets, then at the Dark World’s Fair, and then the streets of the Dark World itself. Then, we leave the virtual space, and I return to my room, lit only by slices of moonlight and streetlamps. The virtual image of Jax is still here, standing beside me as I lean against my bed for support.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I say to her. “You’re risking your own life.”
Her expression, as always, doesn’t waver. “Because I don’t believe Sasuke’s completely gone.”
She pauses, but her eyes go straight to me. My thoughts are already racing. The specific memory that Zero had shown me when he’d taught me how to break into Hideo’s mind. Zero had said that he didn’t mean for me to see it. But what if Sasuke had, from some corner deep in Zero’s mind?
“The symbol,” I whisper to Jax. “The memory of Sasuke in that room.”
She only nods back. “I don’t think it was an accident that Zero let you into that memory. I think Sasuke did it.”
The hopeful way she says his name is a sharp contrast to her usual curt tone. To her, Sasuke is still alive. No wonder she will never try to kill Taylor—not while Sasuke might still be trapped inside Zero’s mind.
Jax suddenly looks to her side, her expression focused again. She listens for a while. I tense, wondering what it is she’s hearing and where she is in reality right now. Then she leans close to me.
“Listen carefully,” she says at a rapid clip. “Zero is fully under Taylor’s control. By nature of his programming, he must listen to her commands and obey whatever she says. You need to get access to Hideo’s algorithm. But once you do, you can’t let Taylor get hold of it. If you can use the algorithm to force Taylor to give up control of Zero’s mind, you can free Zero from her.”