Chapter 8 #2
“No,” Max said hastily, “no, it is. It’s just—” He scanned the lab, as if checking that anyone was listening.
No one seemed to be paying attention, but still he dropped his volume by two notches.
“It’s different, you know? Back then, it was still just a start-up with big dreams and a small but scrappy team.
” Dani couldn’t tell how much of this was her and how much of it Max would have told them anyway—different colors were going in and out of her brain as he talked, like he couldn’t decide how much he wanted to say or how he felt.
“It’s only been a few years, but things have gotten… ”
“Corporate?” Oliver volunteered.
“Complicated,” Max said.
“Makes sense,” Dani said. They were making progress. “It’s probably just growing pains, though, right? What with the new product and everything. Are you involved with that at all?”
“Not much. I help with the back end, onboarding and discharging participants”—a significant look at Oliver—“but that’s about it. I haven’t even been allowed in the lab. Dr. Rodriguez actually told you more about it than I’ve heard in my three months of working here.”
“Really?” Dani asked, genuinely surprised. “You didn’t know what the product did or what it’s made of?”
“I mean, I kind of knew what it did. I think it is lucid dreaming,” he said, and Dani held perfectly still as a pensive azure appeared in her mind, not wanting to scare him off this train of thought.
“Dr. Rodriguez pitched it to you kind of differently, which was weird, but it’s probably just marketing speak.
No idea what it’s made of, besides some combination of the plants she grows on the twentieth floor. ”
“What’s on the twentieth floor?” asked Oliver, unable to disguise their interest.
“The hydroponics lab,” Max said. “Dr. Rodriguez is an expert arcanobotanist and develops all the plants used in the products up there.”
Oliver and Dani swapped a look of bridled excitement—but not bridled enough, because Max caught it, and his face flushed.
“I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this,” he said. “We’re not supposed to talk to reporters.”
“Max, this is a school paper,” Oliver said, laughing. “Not hard-hitting investigative journalism.”
“Still.” Max shook his head. “Anyway. Did you want to see the other lab? The circadian rhythm one?”
Dani was ready for this whole thing to be over, but she felt like they were circling something. “Sure,” she said, “if you don’t mi—”
The shriek of an alarm sliced through her sentence, and Dani’s notebook hit the floor. Red lights flashed from bulbs on the ceiling, in tandem with the noise. The researchers looked up from their work uncertainly.
“Shit,” Max said. “Not again.”
“Again?” Oliver said as Dani stooped to grab her notebook. “What do you mean, not again?”
Max shook his head. “I’ve got to get you out of here. Follow me, quick.” He herded them into the hall, where the alarm was still screeching and the floor lights had turned scarlet. The security guard was nowhere to be seen.
The trio hurried down the hall, frantic voices reaching them as they neared the lounge. Dani could hardly think with the alarm raging in her skull. “What’s going on?” she asked breathlessly.
Max didn’t get the chance to answer even if he’d wanted to—just as they stumbled into the lounge, a woman’s scream javelined from the hall to their right, higher pitched even than the wailing alarm.
“Someone call Dr. Rodriguez!” a man yelled.
“Come on,” Max said, steering them to the elevators.
“Is everyone okay?” Dani asked. She craned her neck trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on down the hall—the one that led to the lab for the clinical trials—but all she could see were a few people clustered around a door at the far end.
“Maybe we should see if we can help?” Oliver asked.
“No, no, everything’s fine.” Max pressed the down button repeatedly. “They’re professionals, trained to handle any scenario…”
Another scream, followed by a deep pulse that throbbed in Dani’s eardrums. She watched as the people at the end of the hall exploded apart, two of them slamming against the wall and one tumbling to the floor.
“Hecate’s bones,” she said, clawing at Max’s shoulder. “Max, something’s wrong, I mean, seriously wro—”
A fourth figure stepped into the hallway, pausing for a moment to survey the people sprawled at their feet. Something in the slump of the figure’s posture felt unnatural, almost otherworldly. Dani’s hand slipped away from Max’s shoulder, and she moved toward the hallway, squinting.
“Dani?” Oliver said.
“Hey,” Max said. “Come back!”
Turning at the sound of their voices, the figure stepped over the people to drift down the hall.
Now Dani could see it was a young woman, sporting pajamas and what looked to be long, tangled hair—then Dani blinked and realized it wasn’t hair at all, but electrodes attached to her forehead, torn from whatever they’d been plugged into.
The woman was barefoot, her movements fluid, as if she were traveling through water.
“Are you okay?” Dani called. The woman didn’t answer.
A shiver rolled down Dani’s back and into the soles of her feet.
The red lights flashed again; she caught sight of the woman’s face and stumbled backward.
She was staring straight at Dani, her pupils huge, but her gaze was hollow, like she was looking through her, not seeing her at all—
Dani understood what was happening in the split second before the woman’s arm stretched out, power rippling around her palm, and sucked all the air from the lounge—then blasted it out. Dani went flying and slammed into Oliver, sending them both tumbling to the floor.
“Shit,” Max said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Dani’s head was spinning. “She’s asleep,” she mumbled. “I think she’s dreaming.”
She disentangled herself from Oliver and rolled to face the woman, who was looming over them, lifting her arm a second time. Dani braced herself, but before the woman could conjure another spell, her eyes rolled back in her head, her knees went loose, and she crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
“Holy Amaterasu,” Oliver said, getting to their feet. They took a step toward the collapsed woman, then seemed to think better of it and turned to offer Dani a hand. “What should we do?” they asked Max.
“We should get the hell out of here,” Max said.
As if on cue, the glissando of the elevator sang out.
Oliver pulled Dani up as the doors slid open, revealing not an empty car, but Dr. Rodriguez flanked by two security guards.
Gone was the hyper-polite businesswoman with PR at the top of her mind, replaced by a soldier heading to battle.
She didn’t spare them a glance as she marched past, hands curled into tight fists; the Head of Research and the guards clustered around the unconscious woman, obscuring her from view.
“Come on,” Max said, a quaver in his voice. “Dani, come on.”
She glanced over her shoulder to see both him and Oliver already inside the elevator, Max holding the door open.
She hesitated for a moment before stepping in after them.
Max took his hand away and the door slid shut, but not before Dr. Rodriguez looked back, her gaze meeting Dani’s.
It was clear what was written in her eyes: You weren’t supposed to see this.
Then the elevator was moving, and the three of them were quiet for a minute, catching their breath. Oliver was the first to speak.
“So,” they said, their voice low and uneasy, “are you going to tell us what’s really going on, or are we supposed to walk out of here pretending like we never saw anything?”
There was a long, fragile pause. Dani looked over at Max; he was staring straight ahead, face flushed crimson.
“Max,” she said, imagining his name on a cloud of gold. She wasn’t sure if it would make a difference, but they needed him to explain what had just happened—even if she still didn’t feel good about using her ability.
She thought he wasn’t going to reply, but then, in one swift, decisive motion, Max punched the emergency stop button and the elevator came to a grinding halt.
“Okay. Here’s the deal,” he said. A velvety merlot red seeped into Dani’s brain as he faced them; her attempt had worked.
The resulting pang of triumph was flanked by guilt.
“Shit’s been going down here since before I got hired.
They’ve been keeping it covered up, but—but I think the trials for the new product haven’t been going well. ”
“You think?” Oliver asked incredulously. They were obviously shaken, and Dani could understand why. She didn’t know how long that woman had been taking OneiroLabs’s new product, but if there was even a chance of that happening to Oliver … well, she was terrified on their behalf.
Forcing herself to stay calm, she turned to Max. “What was—what exactly happened to that woman back there?”
Max shook his head. “I’m not sure. All I know is that the product isn’t working the way they wanted it to.
They’ve gone through hundreds of trial participants, because they kick people out as soon as they show a negative side effect.
” He glanced at Oliver, an unstated like you.
“They keep trying, but no one’s lasted more than a week without something going wrong. ”
“Like losing your shit and attacking everyone,” Dani said.
“Yeah,” Max said. “Like that.”
“Is that going to happen to me?” Oliver asked. They kept their voice steady, but their fingers were trembling.
Max frowned. “You were in the trial weeks ago. You’re not still having symptoms, are you?”
Oliver nodded. “I can’t sleep more than an hour without getting stuck in a horrific nightmare. One time a doctor had to wake me up using magic. So yeah, I don’t sleep much anymore.”
“Holy shit,” Max breathed. “I’m so sorry. That’s not supposed to be happening. Why didn’t you contact us?”
“I did,” Oliver said incredulously. “I got a message back telling me they weren’t responsible for any of it, per the paperwork I signed.”
“I’m guessing their message never made it to you,” Dani said to Max.
“No,” Max said swiftly. “I’ve always assumed that once participants stopped taking the product, everything just went back to normal…” He swallowed. “But like I said, I don’t have high enough clearance for sensitive information like that.”
“So they’re even hiding it from their own employees,” Dani said.
“Sounds like it,” Max said, his initial shock seeming to harden into dull resignation. “Have you tried taking DreamLite?”
“It was the first thing I tried,” Oliver said. “It’s worked for me in the past, but even a double dose couldn’t touch the nightmares I’m having right now.”
“Gods,” Max said.
Oliver turned away, and Dani wished she had some kind of comfort to offer them, but nothing felt like enough.
“Why are they rushing this?” she asked Max instead. “If they know it’s dangerous, why would they still want to launch it so soon?”
“Why do they do anything?” Max asked tiredly. “Money. They’re on the hook for a new product announcement by the end of the year. If they don’t come up with something big, the usual investors will pull funding.”
“Can’t they just keep making their other stuff for now?” Dani said. “They have a metric shit ton of money.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Max said with a humorless smile.
“But the truth is, all that venture capital they raised during the start-up phase? Gone. They spent a lot on DreamLite and DreamRite, but they blew even more on this building. A skyscraper they don’t use half of, the most expensive security system money can buy, a spa for the execs—it’s all for show, and they have to keep that show running. ”
“Are you serious?” Oliver said, turning back. “They messed up my sleep and my life for a spa?”
“You can’t put any of this in your article,” Max said, seeming to realize the implications of everything he’d told them.
“We won’t mention you in the paper. I swear,” Dani soothed. It wasn’t a lie, since they weren’t actually writing an article.
“Thanks,” Max said with obvious relief. “I should probably get you out of here. If you hang around … I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
Before Dani or Oliver could weigh in on the matter, Max pressed the emergency stop button again.
“If you don’t want us to write about it, why tell us at all?” Oliver asked as the elevator descended.
“I shouldn’t have told you all that stuff,” Max said as the elevator descended. “If they find out I talked, getting fired would be the least of my problems. But I just don’t know who else to tell.”
No, Dani thought, but we do.