People smiled and greeted Jay as we walked through the gleaming main lobby, passing comfortable collaboration stations where groups of researchers were already huddling together with their laptops.
I received several curious glances from people as we passed, but no one seemed openly hostile like Melanie had been.
Jay led me to the elevators, and I learned why he didn’t have his key card on a lanyard around his neck like everyone else.
He held his forearm against the keypad, and it turned green, summoning an elevator to collect us.
I frowned, and he gave me a strange look.
“Once you reach a certain level, security gets a little more strict. They don’t want people snatching up C-level cards, so our passes are injected into our arms.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure how I would feel about having a device injected into my body like that.
He shrugged. “Comes with the territory.”
We exited the elevator, and I gaped in awe at the massive white space. It was filled with standing desks, coupled with walking pads, more comfortable collaboration stations, and several glass-walled rooms where people could go for peace and quiet if they needed it.
The space was peppered with fiddle leaf fig plants for a splash of greenery, and there was a self-serve kitchenette complete with a full-service espresso machine and tea bar.
Several people looked up from their work and waved as we entered. Jay smiled at them and waved back in that easy-going way of his that I envied.
“Hey, everyone, happy Monday!” he greeted, and the floor murmured cheerful greetings in response. “Everyone, I want you to meet Milo Murphy. He’s going to be assisting me on the Memory Manipulation project,” he said loudly, giving me a sly grin as my cheeks heated in humiliation.
Oh crud… now everyone was staring at me!
“Hi, Milo!” A chorus of friendly greetings erupted, and I waved awkwardly, doing my best not to hide timidly behind Jay as I shivered next to him.
“See? Nothing to worry your anxious little noodle about. Everyone’s excited you’re here.”
“My noodle?” I asked, feeling myself smile, despite the thrumming hum of social anxiety currently pumping through my veins.
Jay gave me a playful grin, tugging my arm to keep me close to him as he made his way to another set of elevators on the other side of the MRT floor.
“Yeah, as in your brain. You never heard that before?”
“I guess I have,” I said as Jay swiped his forearm over the keypad again. This time, the elevator went down, which felt counterproductive.
Why had we gone up just to go back down?
The elevator whooshed down much faster than the other one had, and when we stepped out, I realized we were underground.
Whereas the floor upstairs was bright and modern, this floor more resembled what I imagined the Batcave would be like.
There was a large, round, super high-tech desk in the center of the dark, polished concrete floor. On the far wall was a similar setup to the first room Jay had taken me to the day before, where he’d performed the memory extraction on me.
“Whoa…” I said, looking around at all the equipment.
“Yeah, pretty cool, right? I do most of my work down here. Not many people get to come to this floor. You’re the only person that’s seen it, actually, outside of Luke and Sebastian… and well, I guess my dad, of course.” His bright smile darkened slightly at the mention of his father.
My own mood dampened slightly at the brief look of sadness that flickered across his face, and I had the sudden urge to reach out and take his hand.
I stopped myself, remembering the rules in the employee handbook about touching other employees without explicit consent.
Jay ambled up to the surgical chair and gestured to a black version of the wand he’d used on me the day before.
“This is a prototype for the NeuroManipulator I was telling you about,” he said, handing me the device. As soon as my fingers wrapped around it, the tip lit up with that soft green light, and I smiled, geeking out over the fact that I was holding a freaking Neurovanceprototypein my hands.
This was so stinking cool!
