Incognito by Katie Delahanty

Author:Katie Delahanty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen & Young Adult Books; Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age Fiction; Teen & Young Adult Dystopia; Romance; Opposites Attract; Opposites Attract Romance; Star-crossed Lovers; Heist; Spies; Thief; Secret Society; Classism; Social Class; Overcoming Odds; Entangled Teen; Keystone Series
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2021-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

September 20X6, Stanford

They split us into groups. Eric/Nash brings Cara/Chloe, me, and two of the guys to Dr. Nasif’s office while Bix/Sophia and the rest of the guys go with Beau/Garrett and Dr. Schilling.

Folding my arms over my roiling stomach, I watch Beau/Garrett retreat to Dr. Schilling’s office, unsure how so much could have changed since last night. Whatever happened to “I won’t let them find you out”?

Eric/Nash heads in the opposite direction. I’m in his hands now, for better or for worse—and I can’t help thinking for worse—but I scramble to keep up, lest I get lost in the Mind Upload Maze.

I come along Cara/Chloe, matching her purposeful stride. With her shoulders back and her chin tilted to the ceiling, her posture reveals none of the quaking that’s going on inside me right now. My back aches from my pinched stance and I don’t know how she can be so calm unless she has plans to throw me under the bus when our scans don’t match. Hopefully, I don’t have to find out. Hopefully Rayelle and Stewart come through. I clutch the tiger’s eye beneath my scrubs, silently asking it to soothe my raw nerves, as we follow Eric/Nash around so many twists and turns I’m completely turned around.

When we arrive at Dr. Nasif’s cramped office, to my surprise, some of the kinks in my spine unknot. The clean white space is surprisingly low-tech compared to the mind-maze that got us here. I guess the grant money is going to mind research, not Laborer office decor. But despite the starkness of the room, there is something comforting, human, in the small touches of color that dot the space: a sage green chair, a pale pink lamp, a vase holding wilted roses that are a purplish color so dark, they’re almost black. A whitewashed wood bookcase strangely holds real books—everything from The Feynman Lectures to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog—that rest alongside small vials and bottles filled with colorful potions and oils. The ambience is in sharp contrast to Dr. Nasif’s rigid exterior, and in glimpsing this side of her, an overwhelming sense that she won’t hurt me blossoms in my chest.

And, on her desk, the top of which is a screen with complex math problems displayed across the surface like a map, beneath a half-full coffee mug that reads “think like a proton—stay positive,” and next to a cup of antique pencils, sits my Book of Secrets.

Goose bumps shoot up my arms. Seeing the palm-sized leather-bound book that holds my most sacred memories—the ones that I hid even from my Life Stream—instantly has me alive with connection to my old friend.

Adrenaline clears my sinuses, and forgetting the impending scan, I concentrate my AMPs on the real reason I’m here, tapping out, ! Long-short-long-short-long-long.

Stewart’s message comes back: S-U-R-E?

I tap back the letter y. One long, one short, two long.

I wish I could explain that this is more than a hunch—that even if it was a hunch, Stewart

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