Chapter Thirty-Six

September 20X6, Stanford

“Um, no.” My stomach bottoms out. “We were talking about a tape we heard they keep in the stacks at Green Library.” I think fast, drawing on my studies from the CERN replica in the Vault. “It’s an old recording of Hemi-Sync binaural beats that are supposed to produce different states of consciousness. We thought maybe Chloe could listen to it with Dr. Schilling to distract her.”

“You guys are taking your cover identities way too seriously.” Seeming to buy my lie, he sits up and wipes sweat from his face with the hem of his t-shirt, exposing his taut abs. “Ugh. It sucks down here. Can we hurry up and get this over with so we never have to come to this hellhole again?”

“It’s not that bad. At least it’s private.” Stewart raises his eyebrows at me to see if I noticed the eye candy, too.

Officially immune to Nash, I grimace.

Chloe wordlessly shoves an envelope that must contain the transparency with Dr. Schilling’s handprint at Stewart.

“It’s about time,” he says, opening the envelope and peering inside. He nods like everything is in order.

“So it took a little longer than I expected.” Chloe shrugs, pushing away a rosy tendril of hair that clings to her cheek. “I risked my ass to get that with no help from you. Be grateful.”

“I would hate to deprive the world of that ass.” Stewart slips the envelope into his backpack. “On behalf of the entirety of civilization, I thank you.” He folds his hands in prayer over his heart and bows to her.

She sneers at him.

Sophia laughs until Chloe gives her the evil eye. Clamping her mouth shut, Sophia bites her lip. “How did you get Dr. Schilling’s print?”

Chloe tousles her pink waves. “I had a little help from Nash.”

Still uncertain of what sort of past she and Nash have, my gaze flits between them and I get a feeling they know each other better than they’ve let on.

“I made sure Chloe was the last person to take the test in the experiment today, so it was just her, me, and Dr. Schilling in the lab. But she did the rest.” Nash nods his approval at her. “After her test was finished, she asked Dr. Schilling to teach her how the test was run and convinced Dr. Schilling to take the test herself.”

Chloe pretends to be busy adjusting her bikini top like his praise is no big deal, but I don’t miss the pleased, upturned corners of her mouth. “While Dr. Schilling had the helmet on, I pretended to be busy behind one of the scanners that kept me out of view of the FR cameras and Nash tossed me a scrambrella,” she says, her shoulders lifting in nonchalance. “From there it was easy. Once I was off the grid, I dusted the biometric hand scanner Dr. Schilling uses to turn on her computer with cocoa powder and lifted it onto a sticky transparency paper I had hidden under my lab coat. I was back on the grid before Dr. Schilling finished her test.”

“Impressive,” I say, meaning it, glad that I’m not alone in this.

“And I suppose you were so much more inventive getting Dr. Nasif’s prints,” Chloe retorts, lowering her brow.

I flinch, my blood pressure rising. “No.”

“Enough, you two,” Stewart jumps in. “We don’t have time to waste. Elisha moved up this meeting because she has bad news.”

All eyes turn to me.

Shifting away from Chloe, I exhale my irritation with her and turn my attention to the team. “Dr. Nasif scheduled the experiment for the day after tomorrow at six in the morning, so we need to be ready to steal Ella’s book by then.”

Nash groans. “That gives us, what, thirty-two hours? We’ll never be ready in time.”

“I know.” I blink, trying to fathom how we’re going to pull this off. “But I don’t have a good reason to stall.”

“Maybe it’s better.” Sophia wrings her fingers. “Sometimes deadlines force creativity.”

“I don’t like it.” Nash shakes his head. “We should wait.”

“Wait for what?” I throw my hands up. “We’re not going to get another opportunity like this.”

“Maybe Dr. Nasif will want to do a follow-up experiment with you,” Chloe suggests.

“We can’t guarantee that.” I frown. “Besides, I don’t want to risk more brain scans than are necessary.”

Chloe narrows her eyes at me. “Who cares if they see your brain?”

I suck in my cheeks. “I don’t want them to upload me. Or figure out who I really am. We’re undercover, remember?”

She snorts. “Even if they found out you’re really some Maker girl slumming it as Kerri the Laborer, don’t you think they’d be happy to have you? What do you have to hide?”

That shuts me up. “Nothing. I don’t want to risk exposing Keystone is all.”

Tilting her head, she studies me, like she knows something is up, but I sit perfectly still, refusing to let her see me sweat beyond my soaked tank top that is uncomfortably glued to my body.

“Elisha’s right.” Nash stretches his arms over his head, his joints audibly cracking. “Dr. Nasif’s experiment is our best shot. Let’s see if we can find a way to pull this off. How close are we, Stewart?”

Stewart gets busy redrawing his diagram of the Engineering building in the dirt with his tactical pen. “The good news is the dragonfly worked and we’re all set with the AMPs for the eye-scans. Plus, now that I have Dr. Nasif’s mug and the transparency from Chloe, I can make the fingerprints to get us into the Connect-dome. So, we just need to get past the vein-scans.”

“Any ideas how we’re going to do that?” Sophia fans herself.

I hand her my water and she mouths a wide-eyed ‘thank you’ before she accepts it and swallows a gulp.

“According to my research, vein-scans work using near-infrared light.” Stewart circles the vein-scan on his map. “The hemoglobin in your blood absorbs the light, so veins appear black in the picture. No two persons’ veins are the same— They’re like a fingerprint. It’s possible we could use a SLR camera with the infrared filter removed to photograph the doctors, then use the picture to make a wax body replica of them that includes vein detail, but we’d have to photograph the doctors naked and smuggle in two wax figures.” He clenches his teeth, making a “yikes” face.

“Operation Weekend at Bernie’s.” I wrinkle my nose.

“Totally.” Rayelle giggles. “‘Hot enough for ya, Larry?’” She instantly quotes my obscure old-timey movie reference and I love her for it.

“‘No, Harris, why don’t you turn up the heat,’” I quote in return.

Chloe rolls her eyes.

Running his fingers over his forehead and through his hair, Nash exhales with a whoosh. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But it sounds impossible. Even if we had time to photograph the doctors—naked—and make their vein structures in wax, the veins have to show blood moving in them.”

“I hate to say it, but he’s right.” Stewart nods, tapping his tactical pen against the ground. “The blood’s a problem and nobody’s got time for making wax. We have to think of a way to fool the FR cameras into thinking we’re getting scanned—and that the scan is opening the doors—without really getting scanned or setting off any alarms.”

“You said the cameras are infrared.” Chloe fingers her full lips. “You can block them with glass or wear thermal suits that will keep them from reading you. Or deploy a dust bomb while you break the doors open.”

Sophia lifts an eyebrow. “I think we’re hoping for something a little less obvious than a bomb.”

Chloe scowls at her.

“What if we shine LED lights at the cameras?” Rayelle says, lost in thought, her chin tilted toward the ceiling. “That would keep them from scanning you, but the FR cameras would still see you there.”

“You might be on to something.” Stewart waggles a finger at her, his eyes flitting back and forth like they’re solving a complex equation only he can see. “It might work,” he says a moment later. ‘We’re already using LEDs to disguise our faces, why not turn them on the vein scanners.”

Hope flutters through me and I perk up. “Will the scanners trigger an alarm if they don’t immediately recognize whoever they’re trying to detect?”

“I’m pretty sure we have a three-minute window before the alarm goes off.” Nash bobs his head.

“Okay.” I exhale as the weight of the impossible begins to lift. “So, we can fool the scans for three minutes. How do we open the doors, then?”

“Based on my research—I was able to find blueprints from when the building was built—and the images I recorded from Elisha’s AMPs, the doors have magnetic locks.” Stewart draws the doors next to his map as he explains. “There are two plates inside with an electrical current that trigger a magnetic field. The vein scanner deactivates the field and opens the door, but if anything besides the vein scanner opens the door the magnetic field breaks, sounding an alarm.”

Rayelle’s chest caves in. “How do we get around that?”

“The Antwerp Diamond Heist.” The answer inserts itself in my brain and I recall a history lesson with Allard. “They had to get past a magnetic lock.”

“Exactly. They unscrewed the bolts and stuck them to an aluminum panel with double-sided tape on it, keeping the bolts side-by-side in position to maintain the magnetic field.” Dropping his tactical pen in the dirt, Stewart demonstrates with his hands, holding them up next to each other with his palms facing out. “We could do that and tape the panel to the wall inside the Super Brain.”

“How do you keep the cameras from seeing you fiddling with the lock, though?” Chloe leans back on her hands and straightens her legs into the center of the circle before lowering her micro-shorts on her hips, like she’s trying to tan her stomach.

Sophia and I exchange a glance. Only Chloe.

“That’s the hard part.” Stewart chews his lip. “Rayelle and I will be standing in the vein scanners, so Sophia and Nash will have to deal with the lock. Maybe Nash could block Sophia from the cameras?”

“Or we use a strobe?” Rayelle suggests. “A quick flash of light that blinds the cameras for a few seconds?”

“A few seconds isn’t enough time.” Nash scratches his jaw.

Chloe huffs, like Rayelle’s idea is the stupidest one she’s ever heard. “And if the cameras went down even for a split second, security would be after you in a heartbeat.”

Rayelle’s lower lip quivers and I jump in. “Could we use a scrambrella? If the cameras couldn’t detect Nash and Sophia at all, it would look like the doors opened on their own…”

“But anyone who saw us going in would see the scrambrella.” Nash stretches an arm overhead and cradles the base of his head in his palm.

Stewart clasps his hands around his knees. “Maybe I could take apart a scrambrella and use the elements to make lab coats that scramble signals.” He slowly rocks back and forth. “Invisibility lab coats. Nash and Sophia would look normal to any humans who saw them, like Eric and Bix, but the FR cameras would never register them—they’d only read Rayelle and me disguised as Dr. Nasif and Dr. Schilling—and the doors would look like they opened automatically. That way all four of us could go after the book.”

Nash straightens. “If you can do that, we’ve got it made.”

Sophia’s eyes light up. “Harry Potter would be so proud.”

I grin at her.

“I think I can do it.” Stewart nods, taking a pencil and notebook out of his backpack and jotting something down.

“In that case, I’ll pretend something is wrong with the door tomorrow when Dr. Nasif takes me to her office and I’ll loosen the bolts to make sure we can move them in three minutes,” Nash says. “Then, on heist day, once we’re inside we just have to find our way to her office through the Super Brain maze.”

“Any tips on that?” Chloe takes a square of cloth out of a compartment in her miniscule shorts and dabs at her glistening chest.

“I’ll come up with something.” Nash pauses, sucking on his bottom lip. “Maybe I can make it seem like Dr. Nasif slipped up and left some information lying around about working with Elisha and convince her to give me the path to her office for the day, since she’ll be busy with her top-secret research. She’ll have to trust me to keep quiet.” He strokes his chin. “If we have that, we can go in, break into the safe, and get the book. The safe is old-school. It doesn’t have alarms or anything biometric and the lock will be easy to pick. It’s the least of our worries. Then we’ll head back out the way we came. Easy. She probably won’t notice the book is missing for days.” He leans back, scanning the circle with satisfaction, like it’s a done deal.

My throat goes dry and I reach for my water. “Not that easy,” I remind him. “A lot has to go right for this to work. Are we sure we can pull it off?” I survey the limp crew and their flushed, sweaty faces. “Chloe, you’re sure you can distract Dr. Schilling and keep her off the grid?”

She twists her lips. “Of course.”

Rayelle brightens. “We have some ideas for that if you need help. There’s this tape in Green Library—”

“I don’t need any help,” Chloe cuts her off, raking her hair off the back of her neck with one hand. “I’ve got it. Trust me.”

I catch Rayelle’s eye and smile, knowing she only brought up the Hemi-Sync to back up our earlier story. My heart swells, glad she’s got my back.

“Okay. So, Nash will get the map of the Super Brain and loosen the locks.” I go around the circle and check in with everyone. “Stewart and Rayelle, you’ll make the handprints from the mug and transparency, build the invisibility lab coats, prep the LEDs to shine on the vein scanners, program my LED hat to make Rayelle read as Dr. Nasif, and build the aluminum board to stick the magnetic locks on. Sophia, you’ll program the LED freckles to trick the FR cameras into believing Stewart is Dr. Schilling and drop them in the library book.” My stomach churning, I sigh. “And I’ll get ready to be experimented on.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Nash stands and brushes the dirt off his hands. “Let’s do this.”

Everyone gets to their feet and Stewart takes my arm. “Just worry about you, Elisha. We’ll take care of everything else.” Then, leaning in, he whispers, so only I can hear, “Always say die.”