“Her numbers are good,” she replies, pushing up her glasses. “But her exam reactions are far less ideal. She’s too unpredictable to be a reliable candidate.”
Taylor’s indifferent tone takes me aback. I glance at Jax to see what she might be thinking, but she only drums her fingers idly against her belt.
Taylor closes her eyes, her brow furrowed in frustration. “Show me Sasuke’s files again.”
The researcher does as she says, handing over a stack of papers and pointing out several lines on the top page. The two sit quietly for a moment, flipping the pages, occasionally nodding.
“Far more consistent.” Taylor’s voice is clipped and efficient in a way that sends a chill down my spine. She closes the folder and begins to rub her temples anxiously. “It’s too significant a difference. He would have been perfect. And now he’ll just die at home, withering away to nothing in a couple of years. What a shame. What a waste.”
“You won’t be able to continue on with him,” the researcher says. Then his voice lowers. “At least, not with his parents as willing participants.”
Taylor pauses to look sharply up at him. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m just stating the facts.” But I can hear an unspoken suggestion in his words.
She puts her hands down and studies his face. She doesn’t speak for a long moment. “We’re not in the business of kidnapping children,” she says.
“You want to save his life. How is that any worse than what will already happen to him? It’s like you said. He’ll be dead soon.”
Taylor sits with her fingers laced together, lost in thought. I wonder if she’s thinking about the murder of her father, if she’s dwelling on her loss, her fear of death. Whatever’s going through her mind, it leaves a calm resolve on her face. Something righteous.
“Those poor children,” she finally whispers, almost to herself. “What a shame.”
I can see it in her eyes. She thinks what she’s doing is noble.
The realization makes me shrink back in horror. It reminds me of the determination on Hideo’s face when he first told me about the algorithm.
The image lingers in my mind as I consider both of them, willing to do terrible things to save the world.
“If this experiment succeeds,” the researcher goes on, “you are going to have on your hands one of the most lucrative technologies in the world. The amount someone would pay for it would be astronomical. And think of all the lives you’d save.” He leans closer. “We are never going to find another patient better matched for this trial. I can promise you that.”
Taylor rests her chin against one hand as she stares out into space. The light in the room has shifted before she speaks again. “Make it quick. Make it discreet.”
“Of course. I’ll start putting together a plan.”
“Good.” Taylor takes a deep breath and straightens in her chair. “Then I recommend we move forward with Sasuke Tanaka for our Project Zero.”
20
Project Zero.
My heart seizes. I’d thought—Hideo had thought—that this nickname was just a hacker name, his marker. And it was. But what it really referred to was what Taylor called him. Project Zero. Study Zero. Their first experiment.
Taylor lets out a deep sigh before closing the folder in her hand and sliding the papers back toward the researcher. “Sasuke’s time is limited. We can’t afford to wait around.”
Before I can fully process what I’d just witnessed, the scene shifts to a small boy crouched in one corner of a room. Immediately, I recognize this as the same room I’d seen Sasuke in during our Duel.
So Taylor had taken him. She was the one responsible for that day in the park, when a young Hideo called for his brother and never heard him answer. She unknowingly triggered the start of the NeuroLink itself, the result of Hideo’s overwhelming grief. The reason Tremaine’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
She’s the reason why I’m even here, ensnared in this madness.
The scene now seems like dawn, with the barest hint of light from the windows, but Sasuke’s bed looks untouched, like he’s been sitting in the same spot all night. Instead, he stays in the corner with his knees tucked up to his chin, still wearing that white, long-sleeve sweater with the symbol embroidered on one sleeve. His fingers worry endlessly at the blue scarf around his neck.
The same scarf that Hideo had wrapped around him on their last day together.
The door finally opens, casting a slanted rectangle of golden light onto the crouched boy. Instead of scrambling to his feet, he just shrinks farther against the wall and tightens his grip on the scarf. In the entryway stands a tall woman I recognize as Taylor.
“How do you feel today, Sasuke?” she says in a gentle voice.
“Dr. Taylor, you said if I stayed quiet, you would let me go home today.”
Sasuke replies in English, and his young voice sounds so innocent it pierces my chest. This was when he was still fully himself.
Taylor sighs softly and leans against the door. Her kind face seems so sincere that, if I didn’t know better, I’d genuinely believe that she loved him as a mother would. “And I meant that, sweetie, with my whole heart. You’ve been so good. We just have a little bit more to learn about you, and then we’ll take you home. Can you do that for me?”
Sasuke tilts his head at the woman. “Then I want to call my mom first,” he says, “to tell her that I’ll be coming home today.”
He’s only seven, but he’s already trying to negotiate. In this moment, I’m fiercely proud of him for not falling for Taylor’s trusting voice as easily as I had.
Taylor must have had the same thought as me, because Sasuke’s words bring a smile to her face. “You’re such a smart boy,” she says, a note of admiration in her tone. She walks over to him and crouches down to lean on her knees. “But today, we just need to do a quick scan of your brain. If you talk to your mother on the phone, it might upset you, and your mind won’t be as calm as we need it to be. But I promise, it’s so easy—you’ll blink and it’ll be done. Then you’ll be on your way. Doesn’t that sound nice, Sasuke-kun?”
Sasuke ignores her attempt at an affectionate honorific. “No.”
Taylor smiles again at his reply, but this time she just looks on as a researcher steps in. Sasuke starts shaking his head as the man reaches him and tugs on his arm. “I’m not going,” he says, his voice turning more urgent.
“Now, Sasuke-kun,” Taylor says. “If you don’t, you’ll force me to take away your scarf.” She reaches out and taps the scarf’s fabric once, teasingly. “And I know that would make you very sad.”
At that, Sasuke freezes. He turns his large eyes up at her.
“I’m only trying to help you, you know,” she says softly to him, reaching out to pat his cheek. “That’s what your mom and dad were hoping for, when they signed you up. They wanted this for you, do you know that? That’s why you’re here.”
His small fingers close so tightly around the tail of his scarf that, even in the recording, I can see his knuckles turning white. Sasuke casts a reluctant glance back at the room before he follows Taylor and the researcher out. The door shuts again, returning the space to darkness.
My hand comes up to cover my mouth. While Hideo’s parents searched frantically for him, while Hideo lost his own childhood fixated on his brother’s disappearance, Sasuke was being held here against his own will.
The next scene opens back in the testing room. This time, Sasuke is sitting alone at one of the desks with his head resting on his arms. He’s staring blankly off into space. When he shifts, I notice a telltale pinprick in the bend of his left arm. A thin stripe of hair has been shaved off the side of his head, and there, near his temple, I see another pinprick.
The door opens. A girl steps in, whom I now recognize as young Jax. She sees him, hesitates, and then twirls one of her pigtails around her finger. She takes a seat next to him.
“Hey,” she says.
He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t even seem to notice her in the same room.