CHAPTER TEN
The Apogee lobby looked exactly as polished as it had an hour and a half before, but the young man behind the reception desk was not the same one who'd walked them up to Nina Oakley's office. This one had a shorter haircut and a stiffer posture, and he didn’t stand up when Rachel and Novak approached.
"We're here to see Dr. Sloan," Rachel said, setting her credentials on the counter. "Agents Gift and Novak."
"I don't have anything on the calendar for a meeting with Dr. Sloan," the young man said, glancing at his screen. "Let me see if Nina's available."
"We don't need Nina," Novak said. "We need Dr. Sloan. We were told earlier this morning by Nina Oakley that it shouldn’t be a problem to speak with him.
"I can call up and check," the young man said, already reaching for the phone. But already, his tone suggested he expected the answer to be no.
"Check fast," Rachel said. "We're investigating two deaths connected to your company's product. If Dr. Sloan would rather do this through a subpoena, we can arrange that instead, but it'll take a lot longer and it won't look good for him or for Apogee."
The young man's composure slipped slightly. He dialed, spoke in a low voice for a few seconds, and then set the phone down. "Somebody's coming down."
It was Oakley who appeared first, stepping off the elevator with a tighter expression than she'd worn earlier in the day. She seemed very surprised to see them again and she looked quite nervous as she looked back and forth between the agents and the young man.
"Agent Gift," she said. "I wish you'd called ahead. Dr. Sloan's schedule today is extremely full."
“You said this morning it wouldn’t be too difficult to speak with anyone we needed to. It's been two hours. We're not asking you to move his whole day around. We're asking for fifteen minutes."
"I understand that, but—"
"We have two people dead," Novak said. "Both of them died the exact day your app told them they'd hit their peak. We were told the man who built the algorithm travels a lot, which is fine, but if he's actually in the building right now, that's a different conversation."
Oakley blinked, and for a second the polish slipped enough that Rachel could see her actually taking in the shift in tone.
This morning they'd been careful with her, deferential even.
Now Rachel could see her recalibrating, trying to decide what had happened between their last conversation and this one to account for the difference.
"You were both a good deal more patient a few hours ago," Oakley said.
"A few hours ago we didn't know there could very well be a source inside this building feeding individual peak date predictions to someone outside of your company," Rachel said.
"So yes, our patience has changed." She was speaking, of course, of Bryce; but she didn’t see the point in putting him in more danger.
It would have been reckless to name him.
Oakley's mouth opened slightly and then closed again. For a second, it looked like she might be sick. "I…I wasn't aware of that."
"Then you're not aware of a lot," Novak said. "We'd like to speak with Dr. Sloan. Now."
"Let me see what I can do." Oakley's voice had gone thinner, less rehearsed.
She turned and walked toward the elevator bank rather than picking up a phone at the desk, and Rachel took that as a small victory; it was evidence that whatever performance Oakley usually put on for visitors had been knocked slightly off its axis.
She was gone for nearly ten minutes. When the elevator doors opened again, it wasn't Oakley who stepped out first. Instead, it was a man of about fifty, moving with an ease that suggested he was used to walking into rooms and having the temperature of them shift around him.
He wore a gray sweater instead of a suit, and he looked somehow very friendly but also inherently professional.
"Agents," he said. "Pleased to meet you. I’m Dr. Elliot Sloan. I understand there's been some frustration. I’m happy to speak with you, but let's not do this in the lobby."
"We appreciate you coming down yourself," Rachel said, trying to rein in the frustration she’d been feeling over the past fifteen minutes or so.
"I'd rather come down than have my front desk turn into a standoff." He said it warmly, almost like a joke meant to include all of them. Rachel couldn’t get a read on how he was really feeling, though, and that made her a bit uneasy. "Come on up. Let’s have a chat.”
Oakley trailed a step behind him, and Sloan glanced back at her without breaking stride. "I've got this, Nina. Go ahead and get back to what you were doing."
Oakley hesitated only a second before nodding and peeling off toward the lobby's far side. Rachel filed the exchange away without comment.
Sloan led them to the elevator himself, pressing the button for the fifth floor before either of them could ask. The car was quiet on the way up, and he spent most of the ride looking at the numbers overhead rather than at either of them.
The doors opened onto a quiet hallway. Something about the place had the calm and reverence of a museum. Sloan walked ahead of them at an unhurried pace, nodding once to a woman coming the other way with a laptop tucked under her arm. She nodded back without breaking stride.
"Most of my day is spent up here now," Sloan said, mostly to fill the space as they walked. "It seems the company keeps growing and I keep getting further from the actual work. Funny how that happens."
Neither Rachel nor Novak answered, and Sloan didn't seem to expect them to. He stopped at a door near the end of the hall and pushed it open, standing back to let them in ahead of him.
Sloan's office was larger than Oakley's and considerably less staged.
Books were stacked on every surface, some of them medical texts with cracked spines, others clearly self-published research reports with plain covers.
A whiteboard along one wall carried a mess of equations Rachel didn't try to make sense of.
He gestured them toward two chairs across from his desk and sat down heavily in his own, as though the trip down and back up had cost him something.
"I assume this is about Renata Pike," Sloan said. "And Gerald Mott."
"Both of them," Rachel said. "Both died the same day their Apogee app told them they'd reached their optimal health peak."
Sloan nodded slowly, folding his hands on the desk. "Yes, Nina informed me. It's a tragedy. Genuinely. I built this technology to help people live longer, healthier lives, and instead I've got two people dead and a news cycle deciding my company killed them."
Or, Rachel thought, if Tanner’s information is correct, many more than just two…
"Do you think your technology killed them?" Rachel asked.
"I think two people died," Sloan said. "I don't know what killed them yet, and I don't think you do either, or you wouldn't be here asking me questions instead of arresting someone."
It was a very pointed and aggressive comment but he did not raise his tone at all. He still sounded conversational and unbothered.
"Do you think it's a coincidence?" Novak asked.
Sloan considered that, tilting his head slightly.
"I think grief and fear make people see patterns that may or may not be there.
I also think it's possible some of what's circulating online, this idea that our app is a death clock, could be creating its own effect.” He grinned at them and nodded his head.
“Yes, I am very much aware of what Bryce Tanner has been saying about us.
Anyway…if enough people believe reaching a health peak is somehow dangerous, you might see anxiety-driven events.
Panic mistaken for something worse. Copycat behavior, even, in the worst cases. "
"You're saying these could be suicides," Rachel said.
"I'm not saying that specifically." Sloan's tone stayed even, almost gentle. "I'm saying I don't know, and I'd be careful assigning a cause before the science tells us one. I've spent my career being careful about that."
"The medical examiner found a puncture wound on Renata Pike's neck," Rachel said.
There was a moment when she regretted giving up this bit of information, but she felt the need to see this man falter a bit; she needed him to understand the wider scope of what they were looking at.
"That's not anxiety. That's not a copycat panic attack. "
Something flickered across Sloan's face, there and gone fast enough that Rachel couldn't fully name it. "If that's confirmed, then obviously we're talking about something else entirely. I'm not in a position to evaluate a forensic finding I haven't seen."
"We'd like to understand who has access to individual peak date predictions before they happen," Rachel said. "Not aggregate data. Specific names, specific dates."
Sloan's hands came apart and settled flat against the desk.
"That access is extraordinarily limited.
I built safeguards into this system from day one, because I understood from the beginning how sensitive this data could be.
Hell, even here within Apogee itself, there are a very select few who can access that data.
The idea that someone could use our predictions to target a person is...
" He stopped, and his voice sharpened. "It's an obscene idea.
This technology exists to give people hope, not to hand anyone a target list."
"We've been told a source inside your company has been leaking individual predictions to a content creator for over a year," Rachel said.
“Tanner?”
“Yes,” Novak said. "Does that concern you?"
"Of course it concerns me. If someone inside this company is leaking protected user data, that's a serious violation, both of our internal policy and very likely federal privacy law.
" All the warmth from earlier had drained out of his voice.
"We'll be pursuing this aggressively. I've already asked our legal team to look at what kind of case we have against Tanner for defamation in the past. And if there's an internal leak, I want that person found and prosecuted. "
"We'll need to know what your legal team finds," Rachel said. Though, honestly, she knew how slow legal teams tended to be and she’d much rather this case be over by the time that came to be a valid approach.
"You'll have it," Sloan said, though his tone suggested the offer came with conditions he hadn't stated yet.
Rachel let a moment pass before she spoke again. The thought came to her quickly, though she did feel it was their next logical step. She’d really rather not come back and forth to the Apogee building over and over again if she could prevent it.
"We'd like to speak with Tessa Kline. Your lead engineer."
Something behind Sloan's eyes shifted—maybe wariness or resistance—but it quickly smoothed over. "Tessa's extremely busy. She's in the middle of a model recalibration that's been scheduled for weeks."
"We understand," Rachel said. "We still need to speak with her. Do you really want me to have to remind you of the deaths?”
Sloan looked at them both for a moment, his fingers tapping once against the desk.
"Fine. She works down in our sublevel. It's where the model team keeps their workstations, away from the rest of the building.
Ask the front desk for a badge escort. You can't get down there without one. I’ll buzz ahead and let him know to have them ready for you. "
"Thank you," Rachel said, standing.
Sloan stood as well, and some of the warmth returned to his face as he walked them toward the door…
though it felt more deliberate now than it had at the start of the meeting.
"I hope you understand, Agent Gift, that I take these deaths as seriously as you do.
Maybe more seriously. I've given my life to this work. "
“I understand that,” she said.
"We'll be in touch," Novak added as he filed in behind Rachel on their way out of the office.
Neither of them spoke until they were back in the elevator, the doors sliding shut.
"He didn't like the question about Kline," Novak said.
"No, he didn't." Rachel watched the floor numbers tick down. "Which makes no sense because Oakley told us this morning she’d be simple to have a word with.”
“Everything else, he had an answer ready. Suicides, copycat panic, the leak, the lawsuit against Tanner. All of it came out smooth. The second we asked about her, he had to think about it."
"You think he's protecting her, or protecting himself?" Rachel asked.
"I don't know yet,” Novak said. "But I can’t help but wonder if he’s hiding something. I just can't tell if it's guilt or just control. Guys like him don't like anything happening inside their company that they didn't personally approve."
"We could push for a warrant," Rachel said. "Get into their internal access logs directly instead of waiting on whatever legal team he's got combing through it first."
"We could try. But I really don’t want to wait around that long. For now, I say we swing by and speak to Kline…see what sort of vibe we get from her.”
The elevator doors opened, once again presenting them with the lobby.
She wasn’t all that surprised to see the young man at the front desk already waiting with their access cards.
And as they collected them, Rachel couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone they’d encountered at Apogee to this point was quite eager to get them the hell out of the building.