I start the engine and head toward the school. “Okay, how do we bypass the scanners?”
“You said they just upgraded the security device to be a retina scanner.”
I nod cautiously. “Right, and despite what I told you this morning, I don’t have proper clearance. Plus it’s impossible to trick a retina scanner.”
He grins. “Exactly. So we’re not going to trick it.”
“I don’t understand.” I shift in my seat. “I really dislike this feeling of not knowing the answer to something.”
“The only part I can’t figure out is how to get into the Varga Industries side of the building unnoticed.”
Now it’s my turn to grin. “Leave that to me.”
I pull over to the side of the road. It only takes me a few seconds to hack into my brother’s email account and send a message to the night security guard at Varga.
Hey J,
Forgot my laptop at my office and need it to assess urgent lab results. Sending my sister to pick it up for me. She’ll be there in a few.
—Leo
The whoosh noise the email makes when it sends my message is almost as exhilarating as the rev of my engine. Before I put the car in drive again, I kick off another backup via my phone’s hot spot to add the Hypnotist memory to it and give Sebastian instructions to add the ones before that to the backup in reverse chronological order once the Hypnotist one finishes. I drive to Varga Industries, parking on the corporate side instead of the school side of the lot. Only a few lights inside the building glow, everything else eerily dark at the midnight hour.
“Now will you tell me the plan?”
“Nope.” His grin is all teeth and dimples. “I’m really enjoying how frustrated you’re getting by my not saying anything.”
I growl. “You’re lucky I trust you.”
I lead him across the parking lot and up the front steps of Varga Industries, trying to commandeer some semblance of the upper hand here. After a swipe of my badge, I pull open the front door to the building and step inside the entryway. Portraits line the wall behind the security desk, each one containing the smiling photo of an employee who has created a world-changing product that brought all the investors to the yard. The bald-headed guy with the subtle smirk invented synthetic plasma. The woman next to him designed a terabyte drive the size of a human cell. And then there’s my personal favorite, the guy who developed the ever popular but completely unnecessary LASIK procedure for changing eye color.
Jay, the security guard, raises his brow when he spots me. He shakes his head at me, but there’s a smile on his face. “Not again.”
“Ugh. I know.” I make a grand show of blowing my hair out of my eyes to feign annoyance. The trick to tricking people is all in your delivery. “My brother sent me to pick up his laptop.” I tack on a groan, as if doing this task is a huge burden to my social life. I jerk my head toward Sebastian. “Not exactly how I planned on spending date night.”
Sebastian glances down at his feet, and my insides clench. I said it as part of the ruse, but now that the words have fled my lips, I realize how much I want it to be true.
Jay rolls his eyes from behind the desk and clucks his tongue. “He keeps doing this to you!”
I sigh heavily. “What can I say? He’s lazy as all hell and I can’t refuse the twenty bucks he offers me to do his bidding.”
The security guard laughs and I say a silent prayer of thanks that tonight isn’t the first but the hundredth time I’ve pulled this trick. By now Jay can practically expect me to show up on behalf of my “brother.”
“You’ve got fifteen minutes.” He buzzes us through.
“Only need five. I’ll text you when I’m leaving. Going to stop at my locker on the way out and exit through the school.”
Jay points at the various security monitors. “I’ll be watching.”
I force a laugh at his joke, ending the conversation on a breezy, friendly note. But if Jay ever refused me or tried to turn me away, I have a plan for that too: blackmail. One time I synced to his mind to confirm he was alone before I pulled off this trick, but instead of finding him sitting at his desk, I found him a few doors away, inside the locked office manager’s door, using lock-pick tools to break into her desk and swipe a few bucks off the top of the petty cash supply. That wasn’t the first or the last day he skimmed from the cash reserves.
We traipse through deserted hallways, squinting into the near darkness, the only lights stemming from the glow of our phones. My mom’s access card grants us free rein of the locked elevator. I squint at the numbers. “Which floor?”
“Which one contains the hydrogel biomaterials?”
My eyebrows shoot way up. “The what?”
“Bioinks lab. Teddy’s project.”
I love that he has so much latent knowledge in his brain. “Why? Need a new arm or something?” I press the button for the eleventh floor.
“Don’t need any arms currently, but I could definitely use an inch or two in the height department.”
“No can do, buddy. I remember Teddy’s presentation from last year. Those machines can currently only copy from existing scans. There are a few scientists working on the ability to print biomaterials from scratch using modified 3-D animation software, but that advancement in technology isn’t ready yet.”
My heels click on the linoleum floor until we come to a door labeled BIOINKS PRINTING LAB. I swipe my mom’s card, and the little dot on the access panel blinks green.
I step inside the sprawling space filled with giant gray machines that look as if a computer printer and a crane mated and had a baby. 3-D bio printers aren’t new technology and most can only print tissue over several hours, but Teddy developed a more robust process that can print any body part in only a few minutes. The materials are derived from various biomaterials such as gelatins, alginates, and hyaluronic acids.
“What are we printing exactly?” I nudge one of the computers awake and the printer nearby whirs to life.
“It’s a retina scanner that we have to fool.” He blinks at me. “So we’re soon going to be the proud owners of new retinas! Well, and the eyeballs that belong to those retinas.”
Holy shit. Holy shit. This is brilliant.
“Okay, fine,” I say grudgingly. “You can be Sherlock.”
He squints at the machine. “Only thing is, I don’t know how to work this.”
“I do.” Last year, Teddy Day gave everyone in class a demonstration on how to use this machine as part of his project, and I say a quick-whispered thanks for his stupidity. He clearly had no idea how handy that demo would come in for someone planning to use this machine without explicit permission.
A password screen blinks at me, and I crack my knuckles, ready to get to work. “Do me a favor? Find my phone and text Jay that we’re exiting through the school.” While Sebastian grabs my phone, I run two hacks back to back. First, I gain control of the security monitors and pause all the footage so Jay can’t spy on our whereabouts. I replace the one of the bioinks lab with footage from five minutes ago, before we stepped in here, and I replace the footage of the elevator with a still frame of us waiting inside. Jay will think that camera’s frozen, and by the time he reboots it, we’ll be long gone anyway.
Next, I plug in a drive and run a password-cracking script from my arsenal. Within two minutes, the 3-D printing machine opens up for my prying needs.
Once inside the system, I pull up the list of saved scans. Back when this technology was still in beta testing, Varga Industries requested all staff and students to scan themselves into the system as a test. Which means all the people whose eyes currently pass the scanner clearance are in this system, ready to be copied.
I tap my fingers against the table as I scan the list of options. There’s my mother’s eye, of course, but that seems like a huge risk. The comings and goings to the basement are going to be monitored closely after the security breach, and she doesn’t have a reason to be entering there at random times, such as right now. There are a few other maintenance folks who have access down there, but who knows for how long. There’s only one person with guaranteed access, whose business down there won’t be seen as a red flag.
Brandon.
I have to steal my brother’s ex-boyfriend’s eye.
My teeth clench and I get a sudden wave of guilt. “Is stealing eyeballs more or less morally wrong than stealing memories?”
Sebastian considers this for a second. “Well, the frontal lobe of the brain plays a part in both short-term memory creation as well as eye movement thanks to its responsibility over frontal, medial, and supplementary eye fields. So basically, it’s all the same.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” I suck in a deep, shaky breath. This isn’t any different than anything else I’ve done. Besides, Brandon won’t be missing anything. He won’t even know I’m taking this. I select his scans, modifying the controls to zoom in on just Brandon’s eyeball.
I get the printer all set up to print one copy of the eye, but at the last second, I change my mind and set it to two. If there’s one rule of digital technology I abide by, it’s this: Always have a backup. I purse my lips. While we’re here, I should take extra precautions. Just in case, I also set up the printer to print a copy of my mother’s eye in case Brandon’s access becomes restricted. A backup for the backup.
“Stand back,” I tell Sebastian as the machine lights up. “This might get gooey.”
Sebastian stumbles backward so fast he slams into a metal countertop a few feet behind him. The printer lets out a loud buzzing sound, and a little laser zips around, forming the base of the sphere in mere seconds.
“Do you really think this will work?” My voice rises an octave.
“Retina scanners work because the intricate web of the capillaries that provide blood to the retina is unique in each person. It’s not genetic though; even identical twins have different patterns.”
I blink at him. “So is that a yes or a no?”
“If we’re printing a copy of someone’s eye, then it’s a yes. In theory.”
“Then we’ll try to get back into the basement tonight. What you just said about capillaries gave me an idea of something to try on you.”
“Good.” He lets out a breath. “Because I can’t stand it. Not knowing anything about myself.”
This I can work with. This I can fix for him. “Then let’s find out who you are while the oculi print. We can start by figuring out what you like to do.” I set my laptop on the counter. In HiveMind, I find the folder containing the list of hobbies I’ve collected for various customers. “Surfing? Skiing? Being prom queen?”
He raises a brow. “Prom queen?”
“You should try it. It’s quite popular among my customers.” The printer finishes the ocular nerve, which looks like a jagged string detached like this. It always starts from the inside out, creating the veins and bones first before fleshing out the rest, so to speak.
He wrinkles his nose. “Pass.”
I keep sifting through the list. “Skydiving? BASE jumping? Brazilian bikini wax?”
“Um, what?”
“Sorry, forget I mentioned that last one.” Zoey convinced me to get a waxing before a party last month. Decision: regretted.
“No, no. I’m intrigued. Let me see it.” He waggles his fingers as if I could drop the memory into the palm of his hand.
“You realize you don’t have lady parts?”
“I am aware of that, yes.” He fist-pumps the air. “Finally, something I can validate for sure!”
“Let’s go with something slightly less … revealing. Here’s a fan favorite.” I fumble with the track pad on my laptop until I find one of my biggest requests from my customers. “Winning an award.” It’s from last year, when I won the school’s equivalent of an Oscar. Most Likely to Succeed.
Sebastian closes his eyes as the memory of my stepping onstage to give my speech starts to play. “I’ve been meaning to ask, when you give me memories like this, does that mean you no longer have it yourself?”
“Nope. It works the same way as emailing a photo to a friend. The original stays untouched while they receive an exact duplicate.”
The smile on his face grows wider as he experiences the exhilaration of being the best. “And if you delete it from my mind?”
The printer moves in a radius, and a blue iris with flecks of brown emerges out of thin air. “It stays intact in the original owner’s mind, if that’s what you’re—”
He holds up his hand to silence me, eyes closed in concentration.
“Okay, it’s over. Sorry, you started thinking about … someone. Someone you wanted to see at a celebration that night.”
“Melody Clarendon threw a celebration party that night.… but—and I know this is going to come as a shock,” I say, unable to refrain from grinning, “I don’t recall talking to any boys there.” Just the usual mind escape via foamy beer and no obligations.
“You never mentioned a name. I wondered if it was…” He arches an eyebrow, one dimple creasing. “Me.”
My cheeks ignite.
“What are you thinking about?” Sebastian lowers his voice and leans closer to me, giving me a private view of the faint stubble sprouting along his defined jaw.
Daring. Be daring, Past Arden coaxes me. Instead, I play it safe. What I know versus what I want. And I know how to work HiveMind to my advantage. “What activity do you want to try next?” I flourish a hand at the computer screen, which tints my black leather seat with blue luster. “Horseback riding? Paintball? Swim—”
He shuts my laptop. “I don’t want someone else’s memory. I want to make my own.”
Every atom in my body ignites as he takes a step toward me. He leans against me, torso sealing along mine. I swallow and arch my back, hoping hoping hoping that he’s about to lean down and press his lips against—
Just then, the printer dings, breaking the moment. He glances at the eyeball wobbling on the table dripping with artificial tears. There’s nothing more romantic than the ambience of illegally sneaking into a lab and printing severed organs.
“This one’s yours.” I jerk my head toward it, heart thumping. “Some girls prefer flowers, but I like to give the gift of detached body parts.”