Ultraviolet Catastrophe (23 page)

I snatched up my phone and listened to it ring twice before someone picked up.

“Hello?” a girl’s voice asked.

I frowned. “Um, hi. Who am I speaking to?”

“Lexie, is that you? It’s Amy. Is everything all right? How’s your dad?”

I let out a gasp, turning it into a cough before I could answer. “Amy. Hi.” My brain whirled furiously, and I tried to keep calm. “He’s fine. The doctors say he’s going to make a full recovery. I just wanted to make sure you were okay after the explosion yesterday.”

She laughed, though I thought I caught a hint of nervousness. “Yeah, Asher and I were working from my house, thank god. Good timing, huh?”

“No kidding. Anyway, I should be going. Just wanted to check in.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Lexie, how did you get my number?”

“Asher. He was busy with his dad so he asked if I’d call.”

“Ah. Asher.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “Well, guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye.” I hung up and dropped my phone like it was a piece of alien tech. The weight of my discovery felt like a vise tightening around my chest until I could barely breathe. What was Amy’s connection with Avery?

And what was her number doing scrawled on a Branston brochure?

My head spun until it ached as Mom drove us to the hospital. She kept sneaking me glances, but I couldn’t speak. I didn’t even know what to say. I couldn’t stand Amy but for completely different reasons. I’d never thought she could actually
be
the Branston traitor.

“Lexie? Is everything all right?” Mom finally asked as we rode the elevator to Dad’s room.

“Not really.”

She squeezed my hand. “He’s going to be okay. I promise.”

I let out a shaky laugh. Of course I was worried about Dad, but I had bigger things on my mind right now.

Back in Dad’s room, I paused in the doorway. He looked like he’d been on the receiving end of a bad beating. He had a black eye, stitches across his cheek, and his hair stood on end.

Mom crossed to his bed and kissed his good cheek. “You had us worried, William.”

He smiled up at her, and my breath caught at the love in his eyes. “Sorry about that. I’m glad you’re here, Maria.”

“Me too.” She smoothed his hair back and adjusted his blankets before sinking onto the bed beside him and holding his hand.

“Are you okay, Lex?” he asked. Propped against the pillows, he looked so thin and weak. It hit me again like a punch in the gut, and I felt tears well up in my eyes. I could have lost him.

I sniffed and looked away. He didn’t need to see me crying. “I’m fine, Dad. I’m just glad you’re okay. Do you remember what happened?”

He shook his head. “Most of it’s a blur. The warnings started going off about halfway through the ramp-up, and it exploded before we could shut down the machine. I have no idea why it failed.”

I did, but now wasn’t exactly the best time to tell him. I needed to get my head together and get more facts first. “Whatever happened, I’m just glad you’re all right.” I kissed him on the cheek, his stubble tickling my skin. “I’m going to go grab some coffee from the cafeteria. You guys want anything?”

Mom nodded. “A bottle of water would be great. I’ll get the nurse to bring Dad’s breakfast. Don’t worry about him.”

“I’ll be back in a few.” I raised an eyebrow at Dad. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He smiled at me, his eyes still shadowed with pain. “Never, Lex.”

I grabbed a bagel and cream cheese in the cafeteria and sat in the corner to do some quick searches on my tablet. My head swam with questions about Amy and her family. How long had they been here in Oak Ridge? Where had they come from?

I found Amy’s parents easily; both were well-respected nanophysicists who’d gone to Harvard and spent most of their careers working in private companies on the East Coast. Three years ago, the same time Danvers had taken over QT, they’d both gotten jobs here and moved to Tennessee. I chewed my lip. It didn’t mean anything. There were lots of reasons they could have come here. Maybe Dr. Danvers had recruited them. Maybe they’d wanted to get out of the big city.

I didn’t find anything on Amy, which was a bit odd. If I searched for Zella, some of her research papers showed up. Max had Comic Con pictures and blog posts and some QT experiments that had made the rounds in a few scholarly journals. But this careful absence almost seemed like Amy had something to hide.

I stared off into space, my muscles tense and aching. It couldn’t be true. Amy couldn’t be the plant on the inside. Could she?

I tucked my tablet into my purse and went back upstairs. The door to Dad’s room was slightly closed, and the whispers from inside made me stop to listen.

Mom sounded panicked, her voice trembling as she spoke. “How is this possible? How could Branston get someone inside QT? I thought it was the safest place for Lexie. And for you. The whole point of bringing her here was to keep her away from them.”

“The whole point of
everything
was to keep her safe. And now I don’t know what else to do.” Dad paused, and I knew he was running a hand through his hair. “There’s someone working for them on the inside. Someone who knows about the experiments and who wants to stop Project Infinity and destroy QT. You have to take Lexie and go. It’s time for plan B.”

“I left once before, and I’m not doing it again.” Mom’s voice was determined. “I’m tired of living like this. Branston needs to be stopped.”

“They’re too big to be stopped. Too powerful. They’re not going to miss again, Maria. They’ll go to any lengths to get Lexie back.”

My head swam, and I tried to steady myself against the doorjamb. Why did Branston want me so badly? And if my parents thought I was going somewhere, they were sadly mistaken. These people had threatened my family and tried to ruin Project Infinity. There was no way in hell I was going to let them get away with it. Maybe my brains would finally come in handy for something.

I pushed open the door all the way. “How do we stop them then?” Mom and Dad stared at me with identical looks of horror. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so freaked out.

Finally, Dad shook his head. “
We
don’t do anything. You and your mom are going to go off the grid again for a while.”

“It didn’t take Branston long to find me this time. Do you think that’s going to work again?” I shook my head. “This is bigger than me now, Dad.”

I quickly told him about the real reason Asher and I had been in Avery’s office and about the brochure with Amy’s number on it. I reminded him of Grant’s threatening email.

Dad frowned at me. “But I don’t understand. Why were you searching Avery’s office in the first place?”

I studied the scuffed toes of my black ballet flats. If I told him about Avery’s calculations, I’d be betraying Asher, Max, and Zella. But if I didn’t, Branston might strike again before we could stop them.

“Lexie?”

I didn’t have a choice. I had to tell him. “Dad, Avery’s equation is wrong, and someone altered the project simulations to hide it.”

He blinked, his eyebrows furrowing. “That’s impossible. Dozens of people have checked that equation. Hundreds even.”

“I know, but it’s wrong. And when you plug it into the simulation, it still runs like it’s correct. Someone wanted the machine to blow up.”

“No. That’s not possible. You’re wrong, Lexie. Even with that brain of yours, you couldn’t be the only one to catch this.”

Mom and Dad exchanged a look that made my skin crawl. Of course I wasn’t the only one to catch it. If there were spies inside QT, they probably knew about it already, too, but the look that passed between them was even bigger than that.

“What does that mean? What aren’t you telling me?” I demanded.

Dad brought a bandaged hand up to rub his eyes. “There has to be another explanation.”

“For what? I’m not wrong, Dad. I figured it out a few weeks ago on my own, and Asher will back me up.”

He groaned. “Asher is involved, too? This just gets better and better. That boy has always been trouble.”

“Not as much trouble as you evidently,” I snapped. “Now, what’s going on?”

“Tell her, William. You should have done it when we talked about the meds.” Mom stared out the window and wouldn’t look at either of us. She only did that when she was hiding something.

My vision swam with black spots. What hadn’t he told me? What else was there?

Dad’s voice was hollow when he spoke. “I told you the reason I left Branston was because they were performing experiments on students, which is true. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave soon enough to prevent you from becoming part of those experiments.” Dad looked like he was about to be sick; his face had gone pale and a sheen of sweat covered his forehead. “When your mom got pregnant with you, they convinced me to let them include you in their latest experiment on fetal intelligence. I knew Maria would never agree, so without her knowledge or consent, we injected her with a new type of genome while she was pregnant, masking it as a vaccine. It mutated your DNA into something…more. Something that gave you super-intelligence.”

Okay, so I was smart. I knew that already and had come to terms with it. “What’s the problem then?”

“Your mom found out about the experiments when you were three, about how we’d changed you. That was the beginning of the end. I should never have experimented on my own child or on other children. But I didn’t know the whole truth — not until later — and that’s when I decided to escape. To create the serum to hide your intelligence. I wasn’t going to let them use you.”

That’s why they were holding a spot for me at Branston. They were waiting for my smarts to kick in. For me to want to join them.

“You said there were other children who were injected with this same drug? Who were they?” I croaked.

Dad couldn’t look at me. “You know.”

Oh god. Max and Zella and Asher. “What about Amy Green?”

“Yes, she was part of the experiment, too.”

The room spun, and I dropped into a chair. “But what do they want with us? And what does it have to do with Project Infinity?”

Dad’s voice was hollow. “Branston wants power, and knowledge is power. They’re building an army of scientists, and they think you’re their first soldier.”

“Me?” I frowned at him. “There’s nothing special about me. I’m not smarter than anyone here at QT. I’m barely keeping up. And I’m certainly not going to kill anyone.”

“Lexie, your intelligence isn’t in being book smart. It’s in spotting connections, in bringing things together in new ways. In seeing possibilities. Your mom told me you took one look at the patrol robots and spotted a flaw in his design a dozen of scientists couldn’t fix. You discovered Avery’s calculations were wrong when no one else saw it. Branston’s experiment didn’t work on the other subjects the way it worked on you, and now they realize you could be the key to everything.”

I shook my head. “But I don’t understand. Why are they trying to sabotage Project Infinity?”

“Because that’s what they do. They steal the plans and sell them to the highest bidder. Money and power. That’s the currency Branston runs on. They are infiltrating the highest levels of government around the world. And when they have enough leverage, they’ll be able to influence every policy and decision made. They want to destroy QT because, when it fails, there will be no one left to stop them.”

Mom shook her head. “Lexie, you can’t tell anyone about this. You have to keep it secret, even from your friends.”

“How can I keep this from them? Branston changed us. They want to use us to take over the world.” I wasn’t going to lie to my friends the way my parents had lied to me. I jumped to my feet feeling like I’d explode if I didn’t move. “I need to go. I can’t think about this right now.”

“Lexie, please.” My mom put her hand out, squeezed my shoulder. “Please know we only did what we could to keep you safe. We’re still trying.”

“You can’t keep me safe anymore. No one can.” I shook my head. “I can’t deal with this. I need some time.”

“Let her go, Maria. She’s smart enough to come to the same conclusions we did.”

Mom let her hand drop. “Be careful, Lexie. Don’t do anything stupid because you’re mad at us.”

I glared at her and tried to think of a witty comeback, but there was nothing but an ache in my brain and an echo in my heart. I spun away and darted from the room, blinking back the tears.

Mom and I settled into a sort of routine over the next two days. She made coffee and worked in Dad’s home office. I spread out on the kitchen table with my calculations, and we both tried to ignore each other. Worry about my friends, about the project, about Branston gnawed at me every time she tried to talk to me about my feelings. I’d snap at her, and then both of us ended up mad.

It was just better to pretend everything was fine and stay out of each other’s way.

I threw myself into the calculations. From breakfast to bedtime, I scribbled and typed and rearranged and tried to figure out what the heck an ultraviolet catastrophe had to do with a wormhole. It just didn’t make sense. They were both theoretical. Neither of them existed. But somehow, they were connected.

The ultraviolet catastrophe explained how radiation worked at different wavelengths and why it didn’t just kill us all where we stood. Avery’s Einstein-Rosen bridge calculations talked about time travel and space-time and matter. There was no connection I could see.

I read and reread them until the numbers ran together in weird ways. In ways that made no sense. In ways that almost made sense. Raking a hand through my hair, I let out a long breath. I was never going to get this. Maybe there wasn’t a connection. Maybe all we had to go on was Avery’s calculations and the wormhole simulations.

Maybe I was wrong.

The chair squawked as I shoved it back to pace the dining room. Everything that had happened in the last few months spun around in my brain. Branston, the drugs, Asher, Dad, QT. They were all linked. In my mind, it looked like a spider web, with me at the center and the connections that had brought me here joining everything together.

This must have been what my parents were talking about — this ability to see connections. So if there was one between Avery’s calculations and the ultraviolet catastrophe, why couldn’t I find it?

“Can I make you some dinner before I leave?” My mom called from the kitchen. “I’m going to the hospital to check on your dad. The QT regents are in town to visit, and he wants some moral support.” They’d spent more time together over the last few days than they had in the last ten years. It should have made me happy, but I was too distracted to care.

“I’m fine. I’ll make a sandwich later.” I leaned against the doorway and watched her pour a glass of milk. “Why are the regents here?”

“According to Will, they’re concerned about the status of the project. They’re meeting with the directors tonight to talk about if they move forward or put it on hold.”

I chewed my lip. Evidently, Danvers’ plan to push forward wasn’t set in stone. Good, it might give us a little more time. “Give him a hug for me.”

“I will.” Her dark eyes searched mine. “Are you all right, Lexie? You seem preoccupied.”

“I’m fine.”

“You know your father and I love you and want what’s best for you. Branston is out there. We just want you to be safe.”

“I know you do.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and frowned. “I just need a few more days to figure out what this all means and how to deal with it. Branston performed genetic experiments on me, and now they want me to help them steal scientific secrets to take over the world. I think you can see where I’d need some time to figure it all out.”

She joined me at the door and kissed my cheek. “I know, honey, and I’m sorry. You know where I am if you want to talk.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Mom.”

A few minutes later, I heard the front door shut, and Dad’s car revved to life. I paced toward the window and watched her drive away. The September wind rattled the windows, and a flurry of leaves whirled down the street. Maybe a change of scenery would help. I was kind of craving a pumpkin spice latte from Coco’s, and the fresh air might clear the cobwebs from my brain.

I turned away to grab my tablet when it suddenly all snapped together, like finding you’d turned a puzzle piece the wrong way.

If QT was trying to build an Einstein-Rosen bridge, my calculations were definitely the ones they should be using, not Avery’s. But Avery hadn’t been trying to create a wormhole.

His calculations were for a machine that could destroy the world.