Their destination was a modern but mundane office block, standing apart from its equally ordinary neighbors on a tree-lined street. A large sign read HELMONT DATA SYSTEMS, INC. She peered up at the building as the SUV drove into an underground parking area beneath it.
“Something wrong?” asked Tony.
“No, I just assumed we’d be going to CIA headquarters.”
“Helmont exclusively does contract work for the US government, including the CIA,” he replied, as if that explained everything. The SUV went down to the first subterranean level, stopping near an elevator.
They got out and went to the lift. A uniformed guard was waiting for them. Tony showed him his ID, then produced several pages of closely printed text. One of the many frightening security agreements Bianca had signed on the plane, she saw, recognizing her own signature on the last page. The man scrutinized it, then nodded. Tony inserted his card into a reader beside the elevator; a green light came on, and the doors opened. “After you,” he said.
Bianca entered, immediately noticing security cameras mounted prominently in each corner of the ceiling. “It’s a good thing cameras don’t really steal your soul,” she said, trying to cover her sudden nervousness. “You’ve got plenty of them!”
He grinned. “I dunno, that might explain a lot about people who work their whole lives in Washington.” The joke eased her tension, slightly.
Tony pushed the button marked “5.” The elevator began its ascent. “The bottom floors actually are used by Helmont,” he said. “They do a lot of low-level but still classified data processing, so nobody thinks twice about the security measures. The upper floors are ours, though.”
“The CIA?” she asked.
“Not quite. This project’s actually run by the Special Technology Section—STS.”
“I’m glad it’s not called the Special Technology Division!”
It took him a moment to get the joke, which produced a crooked grin. “It’s connected to the CIA and other US intelligence agencies, without being controlled by them. The org chart for the US intelligence community is … complicated. To say the least.”
“But your ID said you were with the CIA.”
“I am. On paper, anyway. STS is a black agency—it doesn’t officially exist. Like I said, it’s complicated.”
A chime announced that they had arrived at the fifth floor. The doors opened.
Bianca was almost disappointed. She had half expected some kind of elaborate control room illuminated by stylish blue lights, the sort of place where James Bond or Jack Bauer would feel at home. Instead, she stepped out into what looked like a perfectly ordinary business, corridors leading off to various offices.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter,” said a woman seated behind a reception desk. “Mr. Morgan is waiting for you with the admiral and Dr. Kiddrick in briefing room B.”
“Thanks. When did the admiral arrive?”
“About fifteen minutes ago.”
Tony’s expression suggested he had just tasted something bitter. “Should be fun,” he said, half to himself. “Okay, Dr. Childs. Follow me, please.” He led the way down a hallway and opened a door. “After you.”
The room was anodyne, the view of the linden trees through the windows masked by a heavy tint applied to the glass. A very large flat-screen TV occupied one wall. Three men sat at a long conference table, rising as she entered—one of them somewhat belatedly.
“Dr. Childs,” said Tony, “I’d like you to meet Martin Morgan, the project director”—a stern, middle-aged black man with glasses and graying hair—“Dr. Nathaniel Kiddrick, senior scientific adviser”—the gangling slow-stander; late fifties, with unsettlingly wide eyes beneath a domed forehead, sporting the kind of tough-guy-wannabe mustache that could only be carried off successfully by a cop or soldier—“and Admiral Gordon Harper, director of national intelligence.”
Bianca shook Morgan’s hand, then Kiddrick’s, before greeting Harper. Despite being introduced as an admiral, the white-haired man wore a suit rather than a uniform. His hand almost swallowed hers in a brief but steely grip. Unlike Kiddrick with his silly mustache, he didn’t need to try to be intimidating. Even though he was well into his sixties, he was still over six feet tall and clearly did far more exercise than the occasional round of tennis or golf. He had the hard, no-nonsense air of someone used to being obeyed immediately at all times, and who would not hesitate to take sanctions against anyone failing to fall into line.
“Dr. Childs,” said Harper, voice as curt as she had imagined. “Take a seat.” She did so, the men following suit. “Since you’re a Brit, I don’t expect you to know what my position as DNI entails. It means I’m in overall charge of the US intelligence community—CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, a dozen other agencies—and that I report directly to the president of the United States.” He gave Tony an irate glare. “It also means that my time is extremely important.”
Tony looked uncomfortable, but met Harper’s gaze. “Sorry, sir.”
“So, I’ll keep this brief. I know that you just spoke to Dr. Albion, and that he asked you to help us by temporarily taking his place on this project.”
“Yes, that’s right. But he didn’t tell me what the project actually was.”
His flinty stare warned her that he neither anticipated nor appreciated being interrupted. “Well, I’ll give you the précis. The Persona Project is a black-budget operation run by STS. The technology it has developed allows the memories of one person to be read, recorded, and downloaded into the brain of another.”
It took Bianca a moment to process the statement, and when she did, it produced a short, disbelieving laugh. “What? Oh come on. That’s not possible.”
If Harper disliked being interrupted, his displeasure at being contradicted was even greater. “Dr. Childs,” he said, interlocking his fingers and putting both hands on the table with an audible thud, “not only is it possible, it is being used to protect the security of the United States—and its allies—right now. The results it has obtained are valuable enough that Dr. Albion’s injury denies us the use of an important intelligence-gathering asset. And that is something I am not prepared to allow.
“Dr. Albion says you are the only person capable of continuing in his role. Without information to the contrary, I have no choice but to believe that.” He gave Morgan and Kiddrick momentary glances, Bianca realizing that he was waiting—even hoping—for either man to provide such information. But neither replied. “That being the case, I will do whatever it takes to make this happen. I’ll start by offering a carrot: We’ll pay you whatever you want, within reason, to take over from Dr. Albion until he’s fit enough to return to duty.”
Bianca was taken aback by the bluntness of the offer. “Uh, that’s very … generous. But I’ve got responsibilities back in England—my company’s in the middle of making a major deal, and I’m a key part of it. If I walk out on them, even if it’s only for a month or two, it could affect the deal, cost my friends their jobs—”
“I know about the deal,” Harper interrupted. He slid a sheet of paper from a folder. “You know what else could affect it? Thymirase being denied approval by the Food and Drug Administration for sale or use in the United States. I guessed from your file”—he tapped the page—“that the carrot wouldn’t do much for you, since money isn’t your motivation.”
“Wait—how did you get a file on me?” Bianca demanded.
But Harper continued, his words rolling over hers like a juggernaut. “So here’s the stick. If you don’t agree to help us, your investors will be officially informed, within the hour, that the FDA will never grant approval for Thymirase. Without access to the US market, no drug company will ever buy the rights or fund further research. Your company’s deal will be dead in the water.”
Bianca was so outraged she struggled to speak. “You—you can’t do that! That’s blackmail, that’s illegal. You can’t do that!”
“Yes I can,” was his cold reply. “In this bus
iness, if you have no choice, you have to make sure the other guy has even less. Right now, if we want the Persona Project to continue—and we do—we have no choice but to bring you aboard.”
“And I have no choice but to be press-ganged?”
“That’s about the size of it.” He pushed the paper back into the folder. “I’m not happy about it either. Under normal circumstances, a foreign national, even from a close ally, would never have been allowed near STS. Especially not one with your political leanings. But we need you. And we’re going to have you. I take it we have your agreement?”
Bianca shook with fury, made all the more intense by the humiliation of being rendered helpless. She had no doubts whatsoever that Harper would carry out his threat; if he did so, she would return to England to find that Thymirase was dead, taking the entire company down with it. The careers of fifteen people would be wrecked, and the two years she had spent working on the drug wasted.
As Harper had said: no choice.
“Do we have your agreement?” Harper repeated, more forcefully. She forced herself to nod. “Good. Martin, you deal with the specifics. Dr. Kiddrick can explain the technical side. In the meantime, I have a meeting at the White House.” He collected his documents and placed them in a briefcase before leaving without a further word.
Morgan looked apologetic. “Ah … sorry, Dr. Childs. I didn’t realize the admiral was going to be quite so …”
“Unpleasant?” she almost spat.
“Hardheaded. But we can talk money—and I’ll arrange accommodation, a car …”
“Whatever.” She clenched her fists under the table, trying to stop them from trembling. “Well, I’m in, you’ve got me—you might as well tell me all your secrets now. Since I’m apparently the only person in the world who can help you use them.”
“Apparently, indeed,” said Kiddrick. His nasal accent, allied with his suddenly condescending manner—which had manifested the moment Harper left the room—did nothing to endear him to Bianca. He picked up a remote control and used it to switch on the big screen. “I’ll give you the basics for now, since I’m guessing you’re not in the mood for a detailed lecture.”
“You guessed right,” she replied, scathingly.
A slide appeared on the screen, the logo of the Special Technology Section—an elaborate circular seal with a circle of stars enclosing circuit patterns forming a stylized American eagle—overlaid with text. THE PERSONA PROJECT: A PRESENTATION BY DR. NATHANIEL KIDDRICK, JR. Kiddrick’s name, she noticed even in her angry state, was larger than the other words.
“Persona, in this instance,” Kiddrick began, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice before a captive audience, “has a triple meaning. It’s the code name for this STS project, of course, but the obvious meaning also applies—the persona of a human being. Their character, personality, memories, all the things that make them an individual—”
“Dr. Kiddrick,” Morgan cut in. “I think Dr. Childs is well aware of that definition of the word.”
Kiddrick’s already wide eyes bugged even further to deliver an irate glare, but he composed himself, skipping forward in some mental script. “The third definition, though, is an acronym. PERSONA—Portable Electroencephalographic Recording and Stimulation of Neural Activity.” He clicked the remote, the text on the screen replaced by an illustration of a piece of technology resembling a laptop. “This is the PERSONA device. It is, in essence, a memory recorder. Designed by myself,” he added with pride.
In any other situation Bianca would have dismissed the idea as a hoax, but a private jet trip to the States was an awfully long way to go for a prank. “How does it work?”
“To put it simply, the device records a subject’s brain impulses three-dimensionally in real time using an advanced array of electrodes”—a click of the remote, and the black box gave way to a graphic of a head wearing a cap dotted with circular objects—“which it then processes and sends to a receiver.” Click, and another head appeared, animated arrows running from the first to the second.
“Wait, wait,” said Bianca. “So you’re claiming that reading a person’s memories and transferring them into somebody else’s mind is as simple as copying a file from one computer to another?”
“I’m not claiming that at all,” Kiddrick replied. “It’s far from simple. I’m just saying that for ease of explanation.”
“Well, I do have a PhD in neurochemistry, so I know a little about how the brain works. You don’t have to give me the Sesame Street version.”
Kiddrick frowned. “If you insist.” He clicked repeatedly on the remote. Slides flashed by, stopping on one showing a series of images taken by a CT scanner: “slices” of a brain’s activity.
It was instantly obvious to Bianca that the brain in question belonged to no ordinary patient. “Has something been implanted?” Fine white lines ran through the tissue, a tiny sphere at the end of each.
“Yes—they act as amplifiers, taking the signals from the agent’s own electrode array via induction and redistributing them throughout the synaptic pathways. Essentially, they’re re-creating the engrams of the subject’s brain by overlaying them onto the equivalent areas of our agent’s. Like a shadow, so to speak.”
That raised many questions in Bianca’s mind, but she asked the biggest one first. “But isn’t that just a fancier form of electroshock therapy? It’s more targeted, yes, but the end result will be the same—it’ll scramble the synapses, not neatly plop new memories into them. And what about the memories that are already there?”
“That’s where Dr. Albion’s work comes in,” said Morgan.
Bianca looked questioningly at Kiddrick. “Yes, yes, Roger played a role,” he said, as if the admission were being wrung from him in court.
“A role?” she said. “You make it sound as though he was just your lab assistant or something.”
“Roger is the Persona Project’s other senior scientific adviser,” Tony clarified. “They worked together to make it possible.”
“The drugs Roger developed were important, yes, but the concept behind PERSONA and all the basic research required to make it a reality were mine,” said Kiddrick sniffily. “But in answer to your question, the drugs in essence wipe the targeted synapses”—a sweeping motion with one hand to illustrate—“and make them ready to receive the new data.”
Bianca was horrified. “You’re wiping people’s memories?”
“It’s more like temporarily suppressing them. As you know, the brain doesn’t work like a computer by storing one byte of information in a single place—it’s more of a distributed network. Memories are reassembled through protein synthesis in a particular group of neurons when the brain specifically calls for them, but until then they’re kept in the cloud, you might say. One of Roger’s drugs, Neutharsine, modifies the recall process—basically tricking the brain into accepting the shadow memories as its own. But the effect wears off quickly.”
“How quickly?”
“The longest we’ve ever seen an imprinted persona last is just over twenty-four hours. And sleep seems to act as a natural reset button before then. Once the agent goes to sleep, everything that’s been imprinted is washed away.”
The list of answers Bianca wanted—factual as well as ethical—kept growing. “You said that’s one of Roger’s drugs. What do the others do?”
“The primary one, Hyperthymexine, is used on the subject. It’s a recall enhancer, putting the protein synthesis process into overdrive. A brainstorm, we call it; the subject remembers everything they’ve ever experienced, all at once. The electrical signals this produces are picked up by the PERSONA device and transmitted via the electrode net to our agent.”
“That sounds incredibly dangerous. Wouldn’t triggering that much synaptic activity at once carry risks? Overheating and tissue damage, or blood pressure issues, potential hemorrhage—”
“Nothing so far that we’ve seen,” Kiddrick interrupted.
“And what about mental side
effects? It sounds like you’ve got the perfect recipe for a psychotic break.”
The scientist was growing increasingly irritated at being challenged. “Obviously we’ve thought of that,” he snapped. “We use another drug called Mnemexal, a variant of the protein inhibitor we use to prepare the agent for the process, to completely erase the subject’s short-term memory. It’s no different from dentists using midazolam to repress a patient’s memory of a procedure,” he added, seeing that Bianca was about to raise another objection. “If they can’t remember the pain, then effectively it never happened.”
“That’s one interpretation,” she said, voice cutting.
“It’s an interpretation that fits the facts. The point is, PERSONA works. We can put one person’s memories—more than that, their entire personality—into the mind of another. Our agent can literally become anyone, know everything they know, use every skill they possess.”
“Reveal all of their secrets,” Tony added. “That’s what the Persona Project is ultimately about. It’s an intelligence-gathering tool that we can use to protect the lives of American citizens—that we are using. The mission Roger was on when he was shot gave us inside information on al-Qaeda that would have been impossible to obtain by any other means.”
The truth was dawning for Bianca, and she didn’t like it. “When you say ‘subjects,’ I take it they’re not exactly volunteers.”
“You heard what the admiral said,” Morgan replied. “We will use whatever means necessary to protect this country and its allies.”
“And it’s not as if we’re torturing them,” said Kiddrick, his tone almost mocking. “Would you prefer that? Once we’ve transferred their persona into our agent, we wipe their short-term memory and put them back where we found them. They don’t even know anything’s happened to them.”
Bianca matched his derision. “Until you send a drone to blow up their house.”
“But this way, we know for certain that we’ve got the right house,” countered Morgan. “There’s no guesswork, no interpretation of scraps of information from multiple sources. What we have is direct from the source, and one hundred percent accurate.”