Michele Jaffe - Minders

She talked as she moved, in a precise, clipped way, as though every sentence was an order. “I decided to empower a group of young leaders and give them a tool their elders never had. When their minds were still pliant, I’d send them into the trenches to observe their counterparts at the riskiest moments of their lives.” Miranda had to be at least eighty, but she seemed to buzz with restless energy. “You, all of you, will finish high school next year, go on to college, get jobs. For you, a risk will be getting drunk the night before midterms. But these kids, a year or two out of high school, most of them are adrift. No school; boring, dead-end jobs. There are other options, of course: scholarships, gangs, everything in between. Through Syncopy you will know everything they think, everything they feel, every wish and desire and superstition. I want that information. I want to know them.”

Her eyes moved to Flora, and she glared. “Not every one of my initiatives works. And not every one of your Subjects will live to be notable—or even live. But I can assure you, young woman, there’s not a single Mind Corps Fellow who would say that his or her Subject was anything short of exceptional.”

Miranda pointed toward the bouquet of flowers in the center of the table. “Every one of those flowers is a species I developed myself. Three of them shouldn’t grow here, two shouldn’t be that color, and four of them, like this one”—she reached through the group to pluck a white flower with a single red spot on one petal from the arrangement—“started off as weeds. Despite what my enemies say, with the right care and vision, civilization can be cultivated anywhere.” The eyes beneath her high brow shone, and Sadie felt ignited by their fierce challenge. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m Miranda Roque. This is my house. Make me proud.”

She tucked the flower into Curtis’s buttonhole, then made her way toward the door behind Sadie. It slid apart as Miranda approached, only now there was no sign of the thick green carpet, no scent of wood polish and flowers that had been there when Sadie entered. Instead it opened onto a sterile, cream-colored hallway with a sign that read FLOOR −14. BADGE RULES IN EFFECT.

“Where are we?” someone behind Sadie asked.

“Home sweet home. Subbasement fourteen,” Curtis said. “Welcome to Mind Corps.”

Adecade earlier Miranda Roque had built the finest research facility in the country, staffed it with the top scientists and academics in the world, and buried it beneath the ground. Each of the twenty subbasement floors was headed by a different researcher and dedicated to cutting-edge specialties like geocorporation, cipherlogistics, and infodemiology.

Syncopy, which grew out of late-night coffees on several different floors, now took up all of subbasement fourteen with fifty-three staff members, four state-of-the-art laboratories, and the most advanced nanochip research facility in the world.

The Fellows’ tour guide, Catrina Devi, told them this as they walked from one cream-on-cream corridor into another. Catrina had dark hair styled in a pixie cut, high cheekbones, luminous brown eyes, and almond skin. She was what Decca would have called “one of those,” meaning one of those women who are so naturally beautiful they could wear a piñata—or in this case an ankle-skimming lab coat and no jewelry except a single gold bracelet—and make it look like they were dressed for a chic party.

Curtis had introduced her as soon as they got off the elevator. “Catrina was one of our first Mind Corps Fellows five years ago,” he told them. “Now she oversees our Stasis Center. She’ll be doing this next part of the tour. For the six weeks you’re in stasis, your life is in her hands.”

A smattering of nervous laughter. Sadie watched Curtis give Catrina a warm smile and wondered if their relationship was more than just professional. If she’d been a Mind Corps Fellow five years earlier, she would have to be twenty-one or -two, Sadie calculated.

A tight cluster of Fellows peppered Catrina with questions as she led them down the long hallway, most of which Sadie thought were designed more to get attention than answers.

The guy with the southern accent asked, “Could stasis be used to perform surgeries without anesthesia?”

“That isn’t something we’ve explored yet,” Catrina told him.

A girl with dark hair to her waist: “How old will our subjects be?”

“They’ve all been out of high school for at least a year, so usually between nineteen and twenty-two. Never older than twenty-five.”

The walls of the corridor curved gently, the floors absorbed the sound of their footsteps, and the light was buttery, shadowless. Everyone’s voice sounded slightly more pleasant, their movements more graceful, and Sadie was struck by the tranquility of the place. It reminded her of her home, but even more calm and orderly. It was, she felt, a place where nothing bad could happen.

They passed departments of bioethics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and chemical engineering, things she’d expect, but there were also unfamiliar specialties like neuronutrition, chronogeography, and bricolage.

As far as Sadie could tell, almost no one involved with Syncopy or Mind Corps was even close to thirty. Which made more sense when the boy with the perfect part asked, “How do you get a job here?” and Catrina answered, “By being the best in your field or by being a former Fellow. Usually, of course, those are the same thing.”

A few Fellows laughed, but Catrina’s tone made it clear she wasn’t joking.

Sadie wondered if she ever laughed.

They turned into another corridor, and Sadie was surprised to see an old-fashioned painting hanging on one wall. It was a portrait of a striking man dressed in nineteenth-century attire. Pausing, Sadie saw that a little metal plaque screwed into the frame identified the man as Judge Montgomery Prester Roque. It would have fit in perfectly upstairs, but down here it seemed strange, almost jarring.

When she looked at it more closely, she saw there were four round holes in it, right over the figure’s heart.

“They’re bullet holes,” Curtis Pinter’s voice said from just behind her. “Most people don’t notice.” He came and stood next to her. “It’s nice to see you again, Sadie.”

“You too, Mr. Pinter.”

“Call me Curtis,” he suggested. “I want you to feel relaxed around me.”

There’s little chance of that, Sadie thought as her cheeks flushed. “Curtis, then.” He was looking at her as if he was genuinely interested in what she had to say, but she found her mind had gone completely blank. Finally, unable to think of anything smart to say, she stammered, “How did the bullet holes get there?”

“It happened almost twenty years ago. After Miranda’s first major philanthropic project—”

“The Perfect Garden,” Sadie broke in, trying to look like less of a moron.

“I see someone overprepared for their interview.”

Sadie’s cheeks flamed. “I—I just didn’t want to miss anything.” She found herself strangely aware of his proximity. Forcing her attention away from the spicy citrus scent of his cologne, she recalled details from the articles she’d read. “The Perfect Garden was a home for underprivileged orphans, wasn’t it? But there was some controversy around it.”

“Gold star to Miss Ames.” Curtis nodded. “Miranda swore she could take children no one wanted and educate them in such a way that each of them would become a success. The curriculum was basically an intensive study of Shakespeare and weapons training. And it worked. They were creative, aggressive, and disciplined. Every student in the first class—the only class to graduate—had made at least a million dollars by the time they were twenty-four.”