“I’m sorry, Jules. I should have told you right away.”
“That’s for sure. Wine? I was told to pair a sparkling red, but we didn’t have any of those, so I had to fire Jeeves.”
Val sat in the chair opposite Julie and eyed her glass. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to hide it.”
“Agreed.”
“I was embarrassed, and I thought it would fix itself without you ever finding out.”
“Do you still have your job? What are the terms of this leave?” Julie didn’t need to say they couldn’t afford for either of them to be unemployed.
“They said I had two weeks of vacation banked, and I should use those and then they should be able to bring me back.”
“Should?”
“Yeah. I mean, I caused a scene, but I didn’t hurt anyone or use any language I shouldn’t have. It’s ‘conduct unbecoming,’ not a fireable offense, I’m pretty sure. I just got loud.”
“You got really loud.”
Val frowned. “What did they say?”
“Only that you were out this week.”
“So how do you know how loud I got?”
Julie pulled her phone out of her pocket. “You do remember these things exist, right?”
“Ugh. So you saw?”
“Where did you get that costume? Your narwhal tusk needed starch or something.”
Val’s shoulders relaxed at the joke and she risked a sip of wine. “So . . . how mad are you?”
“Still pretty mad about the lie. I don’t begrudge you reaming out the recruiters.”
“And this is dinner?”
“This is dinner.”
No point in holding a grudge. She could be furious and stay furious, or she could invent a situation so absurd that Val recognized the absurdity of her own choices. Val would feel guilty over it, as she should, and Julie could let it go. Win-win.
Julie bit into her sandwich, dry after a day in the fridge, and washed it down with wine. The pairing worked surprisingly well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SOPHIE
The first surprise on the drive to Balkenhol headquarters came long before they reached the building: a highway billboard advertising Pilots, with a dirty-faced soldier in a tan helmet staring intensely into the camera. David was the soldier. The words above his helmet said pilots keep us safe and below his head, the faces project.
Sophie stared back at him, locking eyes with the poster. “That’s my brother!”
“Where?” Gabe asked, looking in the wrong direction.
“On the billboard we just passed. Weird.” She made a mental note to tell her parents later.
Balkenhol Neural Labs’ national headquarters were practically in the country. The ride went houses, houses, horses, houses, Balkenhol. Sophie had been out this way only once, for a corn maze with her family. She kept slipping away between the stalks, hoping they wouldn’t notice; she wanted to reach out and grab their legs and scare them. Every time she started to sneak, somebody would put a hand on her shoulder and draw her back, like a puppy that needed reminding she was on a leash.
Mr. Clary left the highway and drove past a suburb with identical houses and no sidewalks. Then a field with white fences and horses grazing, then suddenly an enormous parking lot. Beyond the parking lot stood a high fence with razor wire, and a guardhouse. Inside the fence, it looked like more parking, and then a giant building.
“How come some parking is inside the gate and some is outside?” she asked as Mr. Clary pulled into a spot along the fence. She didn’t want to sound stupid, but that seemed like an innocuous question.
“This is visitor parking,” Gabe explained. “Inside is where the employees park. They don’t call the cops so long as we don’t block the gate.”
“So Balkenhol lets the protests happen?”
“As long as we don’t block the gate,” Gabe repeated.
Sophie wanted to ask more, but decided against it. The first question she didn’t ask was Are we the only ones here? It was a nice day outside, so they lowered their windows and sat in the car. Waiting for something. Sophie checked the time on her phone: one thirty. Normally on a Saturday afternoon she’d be at home reading. She was glad for the opportunity to do something else, but wished she’d brought a book.
Ten minutes passed before a minivan pulled up beside them. Someone in the passenger seat lowered their window to talk with Mr. Clary.
“Want to play war?” Gabe asked, pulling a deck of cards from the seat-back pocket.
The next time Sophie looked, five minutes and half a deck later—she was winning, she thought—the lot was almost full. More cars jockeyed for position, dodging people who had begun to assemble near the gate.
“Come on, guys,” Mr. Clary said. Gabe scooped up the cards as if it didn’t matter who won.
The crowd pressed around Sophie as she followed Gabe toward the front, letting him push people out of the way for both of them. Sophie’s palms began to sweat. It wasn’t that she was afraid of crowds; she was afraid of herself. Her fear in a group like this was that she would have a seizure and nobody would recognize it; that she would fall, or be trampled, or wander off and be separated. Really, it was her mom’s fear, not hers, but it had lately started to rub off on her.
“Come on, Sophie,” Gabe said. He offered his hand; Sophie wiped her palm on her jeans, then took it.
Gabe pulled her to a spot near the fence. Mr. Clary had beaten them there. The crowd formed a half circle around him, but didn’t press against the wire. Sophie couldn’t tell how many people were here from this perspective—fifty, maybe? Fewer than it had seemed from inside the crowd, but still a good number.
She realized she’d been expecting a protest like she’d seen in movies or in her history textbooks, with cops in riot gear and flaming torches. These people seemed pretty tame in comparison to what she’d imagined. Some carried homemade signs. Most looked old enough to be parents or grandparents,
