The speaker in his cell crackled to life. Did she turn it on? Why?
“Where are we?” she asked, her tone forceful.
“Grasping at straws,” the closest programmer said.
“Grasp harder. We’re running out of time.”
Desmond wanted to turn toward them, but his instincts took over. He sensed that she—or whoever had turned the speaker on—wanted to keep that action a secret from the programmers or anyone watching the video feed. So he lay still in the bed, occasionally glancing over, showing only mild interest in the scene playing out.
“You know, telling us to work faster doesn’t actually help us, Avery. It just wastes our time.” The stooge grinned insincerely. “And I’ve heard we’re running out of time.”
“I see what you did there. That’s cute.” She raised her voice. “What would be helpful?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe some actual clue about what we’re looking for.” The programmer held his skinny white arms in the air and shook his hands theatrically. “I know that sounds super crazy. Like, why would we even need to know what we’re looking for?”
Avery turned away from them and once again fixed Desmond with a quick, fleeting glance. He thought this one said, Pay attention. Somehow he knew her. They were in sync, understood each other, like two friends who had known each other a very long time. Or lovers.
Avery’s tone was more measured when she spoke to the programmers again. “Look, Byron, you have all the information you’re going to get. Hughes has a Rapture Therapeutics implant in his brain. We think it’s been adapted to release memories. We know he has a substance throughout his hippocampus—in the memory center of his brain. Something sends a signal to the implant to unblock the memories. And somewhere in those memories is the key to finding Rendition. Without Rendition, the Looking Glass will never work. It’s very simple: you figure out how to trigger that implant, he remembers, we interrogate him, recover Rendition, and everyone lives happily ever after. You fail, the entire Looking Glass project goes down the tubes.”
Byron shook his head in disgust and looked over at the guy sitting next to him. “You know, I wish some useless hot chick would tell me a bunch of stuff I already know and pretend like she’s helping me.”
Avery’s tone betrayed no emotion. “I’m trying to help you see the big picture and anything you’ve overlooked. And, I’m trying to impress upon you the stakes of your task.”
“You think I don’t know?”
“I think you lack motivation.”
“Are you kidding? McClain telling me I better get this done or else is all the motivation I need. That guy’s like a walking Nightmare on Elm Street. Actually, Freddy Krueger’s got nothing on him.”
Avery smirked. “You know he’s watching right now.”
Byron went pale. The other two programmers slowly leaned away from him.
Avery broke into a grin. “Kidding.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Sure it is. That’s how scared you ought to be all the time—why you need to be working harder. Now—Hughes would have left himself a way to recover the memories. He may have already found it. Did you read the transcript from his interrogation?”
“Of course. He just found some prepaid credit cards and some dead ends. None of it worked.”
Avery nodded.
“Look, even if it is an app, and even if we could hack it, it might not matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“The implant could be set up to release the memories at certain times or certain locations. If so, until that time, or until he’s at the programmed location, nothing will happen. Or, he could have loaded a set of memories to release no matter what, and reserved whatever he didn’t want us to find for these locations or time points. Or—again, we have no clue how this thing works—memories could be keyed to sensations, images, sounds. Who knows?”
“Why do you think the memories might be triggered in different ways?”
Byron shrugged. “Simple logic. He wouldn’t want himself to be in the dark, but he also wants to keep us from knowing any sensitive information. If he runs into something he needs to know about, the implant could release memories to help him out without compromising his goal.”
Avery bit her lip. “Okay, fine. Just keep at it. Let me know what you find.” She held the tablet up again and tapped it. The speaker in Desmond’s cell fell silent, but Avery kept speaking to the programmers. Byron shrugged and gave an animated response, then Avery turned, again glanced quickly at Desmond, making eye contact for a fraction of a second, and left through the hatch.
The moment the hatch closed, Byron stood and began pacing and talking to the two other programmers. They pointed at the laptop screens and leaned back in their chairs.
Desmond wondered why she had let him hear the conversation. Was she an ally? Or was she trying to build trust? Was it part of their plan?
They were looking for an app. Could it be the Labyrinth Reality app? In Berlin it didn’t seem to work. Maybe Byron was right—maybe the app was waiting for the right time or location. But some memories had come back to him—memories of his childhood. They wouldn’t reveal what he had done with Rendition. Maybe that had been his plan: to hide the most sensitive memories until the right time. Or until he was ready.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He truly was in a labyrinth of his own making. He wondered if he would make it out alive. His breathing slowed, and another memory came.
One Saturday, when Orville was waking up, when he was sober, Desmond said, “I need you to take me to Oklahoma City.”
“What for?” the man grumbled.
“I need to buy something.”
Orville shook his head, annoyed.
“I need to buy a computer.”