I said, “I’ve already told you, I don’t know—”
“I believe you don’t know where she is. There are other ways you can be of help to us.”
“But I’m not going to help you.”
“Okay.” Edwin nodded. “You’re in here, and the people you love are out there.”
He just let the unveiled threat hang. A month ago, this might have actually worked on me, but for all of his failings, I saw Edwin better than I’d ever seen him. I had near-perfect memory of my every observation of the man, and he wasn’t going to hurt my family. If he wanted to leverage me, there were things I wanted, things he could provide—first and foremost to communicate with Beth and Ava.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You should be using the carrot, not the stick.”
“Did she have a secret lab?” he asked.
“What’s in it for me?”
Edwin’s eyes cut to the vent in the ceiling of my vivarium. Then back to me. His nose wrinkled, his upper lip curving upward for a split second.
A microexpression of disgust.
I said, “You’re imagining removing the air inside the vivarium. Romero was able to do it because he blames me—rightly so—for the loss of his livelihood, his passion. You have no well of anger at me to tap into. The thought of torturing me for information makes you physically ill.” He sighed, annoyed. “Now you’re considering having one of your goons do the dirty work, but you’re not sure if even that degree of removal will be enough to alleviate—”
“Will you just shut the fuck up. Jesus. You are changed from the Logan I know.”
I’d rattled him. Good. Now I would throw him a bone.
I said, “I wasn’t aware of any secret lab of my mother’s.”
His face flashed relief.
“But if she were building this upgrade, she would certainly need one.”
“And not some slapdash—”
“No,” I said, “she would need a high-grade molecular biology lab with biosafety level-four containment for cell culture and animal experiments. Suppliers of biologically exotic compounds. And she couldn’t do this on her own.”
“How big—”
“Two, maybe. Likely five people.”
“Any idea of—”
God, I knew every question he would ask before he asked it. So much wasted time. So much inefficiency.
“—who they might be?”
I said, “She would need people who, as a group, could encompass biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and bioinformatics. Every one of them working at the height of their powers. I can’t imagine her pulling this off without a quantum-annealing or exascale processor.”
I was speaking too fast. The average person speaks 100 to 130 words per minute. I was pushing 180. When had that started? I needed to slow down, stop drawing attention to my exploding intellect. It would only make them more afraid of me, and the more afraid they were, the less likely they’d be to take a chance by letting me out of the vivarium for physical study.
“So she’d need a computer engineer.”
Hadn’t I just said that?
“Yeah. A real badass. Someone who could write highly sophisticated programs and was well versed in coding architecture for self-learning AI.”
“Any idea of who these people might be?”
A poorly worded question, but I knew what he meant. He was asking for names. Hadn’t he already asked this question 12.5 seconds ago?
I said, “Her colleagues from Shenzhen are either dead or in prison. I don’t know who she met and worked with after she faked her death.”
“Were there any influential people in her life you can think of who she might have turned to on the other side of the famine?”
“I don’t know what her friends and colleagues thought of her after the famine. I’m guessing most of them would’ve turned their back on her. Or turned her in. I do have a crazy idea.”
“What?”
“I’ll find her for you.”
He leaned toward the glass, interest piqued.
“You mean…let you out.”
I was about to find out whether Edwin was more interested in studying me or finding Miriam. Of course—there was another option. The decision of what to do with me was no longer his.
“Track me,” I said. “Monitor me all you want. I’m the only one who can do this.”
He was considering.
Said finally, “I can’t do that.”
“But you expect me to help you while I’m sitting in a glass cell? Meanwhile, you’re about to release the one person who might actually have real information.”
Edwin said, “I wasn’t completely honest with you about where things stand with Soren.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Soren was never officially booked into our system. You got a DISA court judge to grant a ninety-day hold.”
Edwin didn’t say anything. He tried to maintain an unreadable face but failed.
“So where is he?” I asked. “At one of your other black-site facilities? This one?”
“He’s not here.”
“You’ve been interrogating him,” I said.
Edwin nodded.
“Enhanced?”
Nod.
“Virtual?”
No response. But yes.
I’d heard rumors of this happening in extreme cases with foreign bioterrorists, but I felt a pang of deep disappointment and shame to hear it confirmed by a man I used to respect. They were interrogating Soren in a virtual world, using military-grade DNI. They would’ve hacked the amygdala and prefrontal and limbic regions of his neocortex to trick his mind into experiencing all manner of pleasure and pain. Virtual torture had been banned a decade ago by the United Nations, but because it was so hard to track or prove, the ban was nearly impossible to enforce.
“I suppose there’s no point in reminding you that he’s an American citizen,” I said. “Oh, wait. So am I. Certainly no point in reminding you that he’s a human being. So what have you learned from him?”
“Nothing. Looks like he really didn’t know.”
Edwin stood, gathered up his newspaper.
“Edwin,” I said. “I just answered your questions. I didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“I would like my family to know that I’m okay. I’d like to speak with them. See their faces.”
The way he looked at me—lips pursed, eyebrows raised—belied a sadness just below the surface. I could see his pulse thrumming in his carotid artery. Bumping along much faster than it had been…129 bpm. I wasn’t sure how I knew the number. I wasn’t consciously counting. I just…knew. I possessed a specific, detailed awareness, where none had been before.
Edwin was sad and nervous I had caught him out. And in that moment, I knew—what he’d said to me my first day here had been a lie. He hadn’t told my family I’d been detained under suspicion of self-editing.
My mind instantly served up a 16K movie of my funeral. Closed casket. Beth and Ava crying. Edwin comforting them about what a hero I was. The silence of our home after all the mourners had left and the real grief set in.