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Bored and busy at the same time.
She checked the time. It was already half past three, and she’d done nothing to help Oskar, to find Reaper’s partner, or to investigate the oracles.
She grabbed her palm and cycled through her messages. Her spies had not found any information about where the Holguíns had taken Oskar. She might have to get involved herself, and she didn’t have the time for it. Of course, there was always Max Earlwell. An expense for sure, but she could trust him to get the job done.
Lila scrolled to the next message. Tests came back negative. Nothing wrong that I could find, and there’s nothing left to run at this point. It was the last in a long line of messages from Dr. Booth and Dr. Adams at Bullstow. They’d run a barrage of medical tests on Patrick, for Lila could scarcely believe the man had been so altered from how she knew him as a child. Unfortunately, it had happened without an identifiable medical cause. She had no way to sway the council from his pending execution and no way to excuse his actions. Patrick didn’t suffer from a brain tumor or an infection or a concussion or…
Or anything medical.
Dr. Adams had not found a psychological cause either, not some small excuse for his personality change. “Manipulative” was how the psychologist had characterized him. Manipulative, completely self-interested, and completely unaware of his own intellectual defects.
Like not realizing he shouldn’t allow a random hacker to dictate his criminal activities.
> In an effort to answer the question for herself, she’d hacked into Patrick’s life, including his time at university. Since he’d never been that bright and had a great many brothers and male cousins, his matron had allowed him to study whatever he wanted, likely assuming he’d marry into an elite lowborn family.
He’d chosen to study philosophy. Skepticism and Self-interest had been the title of his senior thesis. In it, he’d deduced that nothing actually existed in the world except for the self. He’d examined common ethical problems through that lens, a lens dirtied by four years of grasping, misused, and misapplied logic, granting himself carte blanche for the worst sorts of selfish behavior.
His instructor had given him a C-minus for his effort, probably because she worried for her safety. One section had mentioned that criminal activity, including murder, was moral if the crime benefitted the self. It was merely in one’s best interests not to get caught. His professor had sent his work to the university’s psychologist, but Patrick had graduated before the woman had received the first page.
Dr. Adams had called it a window into his internal logic. “It explains how he thinks. It doesn’t excuse it,” he’d said. “It doesn’t make him crazy, either. He doesn’t function as if he actually believes that nothing exists in the world but his own mind.”
Lila sent Dr. Booth a message, thanking him for his diligence.
She then turned on her desktop and searched for information on the oracles. As an agnostic highborn from a long line of agnostics, she’d never bothered to learn about them before, not even after her dreams the week before. All she knew was that the oracles’ clairvoyant gene traveled along family lines. Nicknamed “oracles’ disease” by the researcher who’d found it, it had turned out to be a specific type of epilepsy passed from female carrier to female offspring.
Lila believed the scientific facts. She didn’t doubt the women had seizures, but she didn’t believe in their so-called visions. There was the vision paradox for one thing. Though there were fewer oracles in the modern era, the number of visions for each one had gone up.
Substantially.
A few religious experts had studied the phenomenon, claiming that the gods talked to the oracles just as much as they always had, there were merely fewer oracles to receive the messages. Lila privately believed that the oracles had merely begun making up even more bullshit for attention, all to justify the expense of their compounds.
Lila typed in a few search terms about the vision paradox.
She jumped when her palm vibrated.
“I’ve made cookies,” Chef crooned, her face coming on screen. “A dozen chocolate chip and another dozen peanut butter. I know how much you like them.”
Lila narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”
“You’re so suspicious.”
“What do you want?”
“Rosemary found a restaurant that’s going out of business down south. I’d like you to check it out with me. You’re so fond of saying that I should open a bakery. I could use some business advice.”
Lila cocked her head to the side. There was no way that Chef had suddenly decided to open her own bakery, but Lila owed her far too much not to play along. Besides, Chef knew more about the oracles than anyone on the compound. It was a nice coincidence, though Lila normally didn’t believe in them.
“I’ll be right over.” Lila disconnected and shut down her desktop computer, picking up the entire stack of reports before she left. Sergeant Jenkins was still typing away at his desk when she dropped them in his inbox. “Gods, that feels so good.”
“Post-its again? You know I hate that. Your handwriting is tragic.”
“I sent you voice messages about some of them,” Lila said, shoving open the door with her butt. “You’ll get to hear my melodious voice—”
“Rambling about stuff I barely understand.”
“Nah, not today. Nothing’s technical.”
He brightened. “Well in that case, have a lovely day.”
