Sanctuary Bay (36 page)

“Why, Dr. Wissen, of course,” Dave said. “Though he was pretty old by then. He died a few years later. But it was his brilliant idea to create Sanctuary Bay Academy. The school was founded nearly as soon as Fortitude was. Think about it: What better setting for controlled psychological testing?”

“It's never been a school?” Sarah asked. “Not even at the beginning?”

“Nope.” Dave grinned. “What we like about Bromcyan, as I'm sure you've realized, is that it lets us explore the idea of mind control. The drug itself tills the soil, so to speak. It renders the mind open to suggestion, to influence. And teenagers are all about influence. I mean, everything in high school is based on peer pressure, am I right?”

“You're talking about the Wolfpack,” Sarah cried. “All those missions! They were psychological tests.”

“Yup.” Dave beamed. “The Wolfpack, the lacrosse teams, the student government, even the debate team and math club! Everything can be a test. It's fantastic. See, the Wolfpack drinks the Blutgrog, that's Bromcyan. The lacrosse players have their special protein drinks, that's Bromcyan. The cheerleaders suck down homemade alcohol and diet Sprite, that's Bromcyan. Hell, we even put it in the food sometimes.”

“The entire school is a giant petri dish? It's not just some students,” Ethan said. “It's all of us?”

“Well, of course,” Dave replied. “We're not just testing Bromcyan anymore—we know how
that
works. I mean, we've had eighty years to research it!” He laughed loudly. “No, at this point we're mostly testing the people, the candidates. We try out various types of stimuli, gauge reactions to psychological stress, anything the scientists want.”

“Candidates,” Sarah repeated.

“We're talking about brain chemistry here, Sarah. You're good at chemistry, so you understand how tricky a subject this is—everybody reacts differently to a drug. We need to make sure a candidate is able to handle the Bromcyan both mentally and physically before we proceed.”

“Proceed with what?” Ethan asked. “Candidates for what? Why don't you just skip the history lesson and tell us what you're talking about,
Dave
?”

“Okay, if you want. Proceed with implanting the tech. Candidates for usage in the field. Happy?” Dave asked.

“No,” Sarah said. “What tech?”

“Ooh, I'm glad you asked. Right now, we're running a pilot program for our new nanotechnology,” Dave said. “Back in the day, we injected operatives with Bromcyan and used hypnosis to give them their orders. Then we graduated to implanting a device to pump out the Bromcyan, which still required hypnosis, of course, but made it easier to maintain the proper dosage levels. That lasted for a long time—I mean, we'd upgrade the implants from time to time. Originally they were very crude, but then we learned to equip them with sensors that could send back readouts, and eventually the sensors were able to analyze the results themselves, and adjust dosage accordingly. Technology is something, huh?”

“All the biotech equipment in the underground lab,” Ethan said, turning to Sarah. “It was producing this.”

“Not anymore. Now it's producing nanites,” Dave corrected him. “See, we first developed the smart chip—that was an implant that monitored enzyme levels, controlled the Bromcyan dosage,
and
produced Bromcyan right there in the body. Basically, it was a tiny factory that used the body's own chemicals to create Bromcyan. But the problem was that we still needed hypnosis to give orders.”

“Now you just do it wirelessly,” Sarah said. “We saw that with Izzy. You figured out a way to have your smart chip send electrical impulses to the brain to create the behavior you desired.”

“I knew you were a keeper, Sarah,” Dave said. “That's exactly right. Only now it's not one smart chip anymore. Now we're using a bunch of nanites that move through the bloodstream and operate in unison. The idea is that this will give us a more precise control of hormone and Bromcyan levels, and a more sophisticated interface with the brain commands.”

“What kind of commands?” Ethan asked.

“That all depends on what we're using them for,” Dave replied. “If the operative is a soldier, we're giving them military commands. If it's a diplomat, we'll be giving them commands to act in whatever way advances our political agenda. If it's a business executive, the commands will be to help us further our financial goals. If it's an assassin, well, that one's pretty obvious.”

Sarah just stared at him.

“You know what a sterling reputation Sanctuary Bay has,” Dave said teasingly. “Our students go on to become leaders in almost every walk of life. Presidents, ambassadors, tech gurus, rock stars, you name it.”

“And you're controlling them,” Sarah whispered.

“Have been for years!” Dave crowed. “I told you, this school was a stroke of genius. It gives us the perfect setting for testing, and the perfect vehicle for placing our operatives.” Dave frowned. “There are bumps in the road, of course. Right now the nanotech is in the initial testing stage, and unfortunately that always means a higher incidence of mistakes. We run a lot of tests before we move on to implanting the nanotech—we like to be sure how a candidate will react before we make the investment. But sometimes it still goes wrong. You can never tell how a host body will act.”

“Like Nate. Nate was a mistake,” Sarah guessed. “Something went wrong with him.”

“Yes, unfortunately that was a mess,” Dave agreed. “You know, that was a little bit your bad, Sarah. No guilt, but if you hadn't pushed him so hard about the Karina situation, he would've been fine.”

Sarah was stunned.

“It was basically a domino effect,” Dave went on. “We told Nate that he spent Halloween getting down and dirty with you, so that's what he believed. When you kept needling him about it, he got stressed. His hormone levels went nuts, pumping out a cocktail of glucocorticoids, catecholamines, prolactin … It got out of control. The nanotech tried to keep his Bromcyan production regulated, but eventually it was overwhelmed. Still, though, Nate's experience gave us a lot of information to work with. Sometimes you have to get it wrong before you know how to get it right.”

“I hate you,” Sarah snarled. “You sit there smiling like it's funny but you're playing with people's lives. I'm not the one who killed Nate,
you
are.”

“But I'm not!” Dave cried, insulted. “Nate had had the tech for more than a year. We were finishing up his post-implant testing. Everything had been stellar until you came along. Now Izzy, that's another story. She just flat-out rejected the nanotech. Well,
you
know, Sarah. You saw her getting the little guys pumped into her head.”

“That treatment? When she was screaming,” Sarah said.

“Yeah. We hoped it was just a short-term reaction, but nope. The nanites have trouble regulating her adrenaline levels. Whenever we increase her Bromcyan, she becomes unpredictable and violent. When we decrease the levels, she doesn't follow commands. It's really too bad. I was convinced she'd be a perfect candidate for an assassin. I mean, did you see the way she shot Karina? Stone cold.”

“Screw you,” Ethan growled, jumping from his seat. “You let Karina get killed as part of some experiment?”

“Whoa, whoa! Calm down, tiger.” Dave threw up his hands. “Don't you remember the wax bullet? You weren't supposed to find that, by the way. But Karina's fine. Look.”

He grabbed Dean Farrell's cell off her desk and typed in a command. Two seconds later, the door opened and Karina walked in. Her long black hair was as lustrous as ever, her dark eyes bright, and her smile happy.

“What's up?” she said. She beamed at Sarah and Ethan. “Hi! I'm Karina.”

A rock seemed to settle in the pit of Sarah's stomach. There wasn't a trace of recognition in Karina's eyes. Sarah had no idea who they were. She glanced at Ethan worriedly.

His face was pale, his expression haunted. “How … how long?” he choked out.

“What, the nanotech?” Dave asked. “Karina's had that since before you ever met her. Her primary mission was to convince you to join the Wolfpack, Ethan. You're such a nonjoiner that we've had trouble testing you! Anyway, you turned down the chance once, so we put Karina on the case. She can be very persuasive.”

With a grin, he typed a few more words into the dean's cell. Karina's smile grew wider, and she walked over to Ethan, plopped herself down in his lap, and kissed him.

Ethan shoved her away so hard that she fell to the carpeted floor. “You don't even remember who I am!” he cried.

Karina picked herself up, her pretty face puckered in a wounded expression.

“Don't be so hard on her, you big bully,” Dave protested. “She's our greatest success story. You want to talk about influence. A pretty girl has it in spades, am I right?” He input another command, and Karina went to the couch in the back of the room, sat down, and zoned out. Her mouth hung slightly open, and her eyes stared blankly. Cold brown marbles.
Dead eyes.

“She's in standby mode,” Sarah said. “You just turned her off.”

“Yup,” Dave said.

“When Izzy shot her with the trick bullet, that's what happened. You put Karina into standby.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “It's a fantastic test. We wanted to see how the rest of you would react to the killing. And then afterward we wanted to test your memory, Sarah, to see how well that total recall of yours would withstand the Bromcyan and the influence of your peers. Most of all, of course, the whole mission was designed to find an assassin. Sometimes nobody is willing to pull the trigger, but usually there's one who works up the nerve to do it. Izzy, though, she didn't even hesitate! Bam! No one has ever been so willing to kill before.”

“How many times have you done that test?” Sarah asked. “You tried to do it again the next day.”

“Oh, we do it whenever we want,” Dave replied. “It's easy enough to wipe everyone's memory—sometimes the Bromcyan alone works for that, and if not, we use midazolam. Then we just start over. In that particular test, Karina always makes the best victim—so sweet and funny and pretty, such a nice girl. Anyone willing to kill her has to be a real badass. Or a sociopath, which I think was the case with Izzy.” He sighed. “I'm usually very good at matching a candidate with their eventual line of expertise. It's important to have a basic inborn compatibility between the operative's psychological makeup and the types of commands they're expected to follow in the field. The better fit they are, the less likely they are go against the suggestion. Less fighting. Less stress hormones. A higher success rate. I mean, we've got spies, policy makers, seducers, hackers … whatever a client needs. We can't just plug any operative into any job; it still comes down to who they really are. You can't expect a hacker to turn into a ninja.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Ethan asked. “These are human beings you're talking about.”

Sarah felt a pang of sadness. She'd said something just like that to Ethan once about the patients at the asylum. In a normal world, she would be happy that he had finally learned to be a decent person.

But the world would never be normal again.

“I'm just helping them realize their full potential,” Dave said, unperturbed. “I tell you what, though, you kids are really putting me through the wringer lately! First you, Ethan, refusing to do what we expected. Half the time we couldn't even manage to dose you with Bromcyan! And then Izzy turning out to be an uncontrollable killing machine. And
you
, Sarah! We really got you all wrong. After you promised Dean Farrell you'd be a good little girl and acted like you hadn't seen Izzy shoot Karina, I thought you'd passed the test. I thought you were malleable enough to doubt your memory after some peer pressure, that you'd be a candidate we could control without any glitches. We were all ready to install your nanotech—I couldn't wait to see how it would work with that brain of yours. But you were lying. You're a liar.”

His friendly eyes had turned mean, finally. It had always been there, the ruthlessness, but now it was on the surface.

Ethan reached out and took Sarah's hand. “I couldn't have imagined a better partner than you, Sarah,” he said softly. “No matter what they put us through now, I want you to know that.”

“Aw, so touching,” Dave said smarmily. “Why would I put you through anything? I'm not the bad guy.”

“You just sat here for twenty minutes and told us
everything
about Fortitude's sick behavior. And you know Sarah's memory won't let her forget. The Bromcyan doesn't work on her. So there's no way you'll let us live after that,” Ethan said. “But I think I'd prefer to be killed than to be pumped full of your precious tech, so it's okay.”

“You'll get away with killing me,” Sarah told Dave. “I'm an orphan. Nobody to give a shit. But if Ethan turns up dead, you'll have a world of trouble. He's got a family. His parents are well known and wealthy. They've got connections—”

“And heads full of nanotech,” Ethan cut in. “Right, Dave?”

Dave winced. “Busted. But it's not nanotech. Your parents kick it old school with the smart chip, and theirs are too old to be very smart, frankly. The nanotech is first generation.”

“Oh my god, Ethan,” Sarah gasped. “Your parents?”

He nodded, his face set. “It's okay. It at least explains why they sent me here, why they never cared about what happened to Philip. Fortitude probably killed my brother. They'll have no problem killing me too.”

“You two are so melodramatic,” Dave said, shaking his head. “No one's getting killed. Well, unless you refuse to cooperate.” He typed something into Dean Farrell's cell, and Karina popped up off the couch with a smile on her face.