Elusion(93)

“What about Josh? How is he?” I ask.

“He’s fine. He’s waiting outside. I wanted to talk to you. Just the two of us.”

My dad is avoiding my eyes, as if he’s about to tell me something I don’t want to hear.

“Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it,” I attempt to reassure him. I thought he was dead and now I’ve been given a second chance. I can handle whatever he’s about to tell me.

“I’m not sure that we can.” The pitch of his voice deepens, taking on a somber tone that I’ve rarely heard from him.

“What happened, Dad? Who did this to you?” I plead.

“Josh told me you saw the memo,” he says, casting his eyes away from mine. “So you know that Elusion can cause nanopsychosis in young users. And that we were trying to find a way to adapt the product so it wouldn’t be dangerous.”

“Yes, we do,” I say. “But you need to tell me everything that went down after that. Step by step, and don’t leave anything out. I can take it.”

He exhales and we lock eyes again. Whatever he’s about to say right now, I know in my heart he’s going to be honest.

“Before we submitted Elusion to the CIT, I had Bryce Williams run a bunch of tests on subject groups, monitoring how trypnosis affected the users. Standard protocol for any type of product like ours,” he explains. “I was working on programming and security networks with Patrick, and that was taking up all of my time.”

I nod, vaguely remembering the countless days and nights he spent at the Orexis lab, working on Elusion. “But then Bryce discovered a problem, right?”

“Yes, he did. Something that I’d just never foreseen,” he says. “I didn’t anticipate how someone with a brain chemistry that was still in flux and developing would respond to trypnosis. And when he suggested sodium pentothal, it seemed like a good solution.”

A gasp catches at the base of my throat and I let go of his hand. “So you went ahead anyway? Even though you knew people might be in danger of getting hurt?”

“While Patrick and I focused on the Escape design and the firewalls, Bryce did more studies, verifying that the chemical was effective,” he says. “He even brought the materials to Cathryn and got her to sign off on them. He said she wanted to expedite the process and was satisfied with his results. At first, I thought this was pretty convincing evidence that we were in the clear.”

“And something changed your mind?”

“Yes. After we started fitting the wristbands with the sodium pentothal, something kept eating at me. We usually approach the entire board of directors and production staff with these types of reports, at special meetings called A and Ms—Assess and Manage. The findings are presented to the group, the documents are thoroughly reviewed, and a Q and A is held. But Bryce went straight to the head of the company to receive clearance. Why would he do that?”

I bite my lip as I try to think of a reason. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to take a closer look at the reports?”


My dad nods. “That’s exactly what I began to think. So one night, I logged on to my quantum and searched the shared network for the source file so I could review the documents myself. But it had been deleted. There was no trace of it anywhere.”

“Was the name of the file fifty-twenty?” I ask, my heart pumping fast.

He shakes his head, placing a hand on my shoulder. “No, honey. That’s a room number.”

My brow knits together in confusion. “A room number? All this time, I thought . . . Really, it’s a room number?”

“Yes, it’s a room at Orexis,” he says calmly, before taking a deep breath and finishing his thought: “Where Cathryn Simmons is holding my body hostage.”

For a second I think I must have misheard him or misinterpreted what he said. “What?” I ask quietly.

“I confronted Bryce about the missing file,” my dad continues, “and he just blew me off. Said it must have been some kind of downloading error.”

Where have I heard that before?

“But I knew he was lying. Mostly because he was horrible at it,” he says. “So I went to Cathryn and told her that we needed to halt production and hold off on submitting Elusion to CIT until we located the missing data and had it vetted the right way.”

“And?” I say, encouraging him to go on.

“She seemed to agree. In fact, she thanked me for coming to her with this and told me she was going to discipline Bryce.” He hesitates. “The next morning, I came to Orexis and I couldn’t access my own quantum. I spent hours trying to locate the problem. Patrick even tried to help me.”

“So you’re sure Patrick had no idea that anything was wrong with the trypnosis?”

“I don’t think so. The teams working on Elusion were very separate and didn’t have the proper permission to view each other’s files,” he replies. “Besides, Patrick wasn’t very interested in that aspect of Elusion. He loved the tech stuff, the programming and coding. The neuroscience wasn’t as enticing to him, I guess. And he didn’t have the right education for it either.”

Patrick was telling me the truth—he didn’t know anything about nanopsychosis until after my father was gone.

“Anyway, the whole quantum fiasco was a wild goose chase,” my father goes on. “While I was caught up with that, Cathryn and Bryce submitted Elusion to CIT with falsified data behind my back,” he snaps, his voice crackling with anger. “Within twenty-four hours, we had temporary approval, meaning we could release the product in three test markets.”