Semua Bab The space between the wrong : Bab 11 - Bab 20

“You’re going,” Priya says. It is not a question.I look up from my laptop. She’s standing in the kitchen doorway holding her coffee with both hands and looking at me with the expression she uses when she has already decided something and is giving me the courtesy of feeling like I have a choice.“It’s an optional campus lecture,” I say. “On false memory and belief revision. For my research.”“I know what it is.”“Then why are you looking at me like that.”“Because it’s Thursday night and you haven’t left this apartment since Wednesday and you’ve read that same page four times in the last twenty minutes.”I look at my laptop. She’s not wrong about the page.“I’m going,” I say.She raises her coffee cup. “Good.”The lecture is in the Behavioral Sciences building, a room that holds about sixty people and is three quarters full when I get there. I find a seat on the aisle, middle section, good sightline to the front. I take out my notebook. I am here for the research. That is the complet

"I think I should have called sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t." The voice is a blunt instrument. It hits me square in the chest, knocking the air out of my lungs before I can even process the name. Marcus Webb. The boy who was the match that lit my life on fire and then stood back to watch it burn. I don’t breathe. Around me, the graduate reading room is a hum of quiet productivity. Someone flips a page three tables over. A radiator clicks. Life is normal for everyone else, but for me, the floor has just turned into open air. "Nora? You still there?" His voice is different. It used to be loud and brassy, full of the unearned confidence of a star athlete. Now, it sounds thin. Hollowed out. "I’m here," I say. My voice is too steady. Clinical. "Why are you calling me, Marcus?" "I’m sober," he says, the words rushing out. "Six months. Part of the program is making amends. I didn't think you'd even pick up." "You were right the first time," I tell him. I look down at my research pages. Th

"We have to focus, Nora. Dr. Vass expects the preliminary data by Monday."Cole’s voice is strained. We are sitting at his kitchen table, laptops open, but neither of us has typed a word in twenty minutes. The air in the apartment is still vibrating from the moment by the door. We didn't kiss. We almost did, but the ghost of my brother’s debt and Cole’s silence stood between us like a physical wall."I am focusing," I say, my voice sharp. I stare at the screen. The words *Belief Perseverance and the Rejection of Corrective Information* blur into a gray haze. "I’m thinking about how we’re going to present a case study on false conviction when we’re living in one."Cole sighs, a heavy sound that fills the small space. He’s changed into a grey hoodie, the sleeves pushed up to reveal his forearms. He looks less like a star athlete and more like a man drowning."Vass chose this topic for a reason," Cole says. "He’s not stupid. He knows our history. He’s watching us to see if we can actuall

"Your father wasn’t just a researcher, Nora. He was a threat to the bottom line."Dex stands by the metal stool, the blue light from the laptop screen making his face look like a marble mask. He looks calm. Too calm. I stay by the door of the sub-basement lab, my heart hammering against my ribs. The air down here is cold and smells like old paper and copper. It feels like a tomb."The flash drive," I say, my voice steady despite the way my knees want to buckle. "Give it to me, Dex. You’ve had your fun. You broke my life once. Isn't that enough?""Fun?" Dex laughs, a short, sharp sound that echoes off the concrete walls. "This was never about fun. It was about stability. Do you have any idea how much money your father was going to cost the Whitfield Group? Millions. Tens of millions."I freeze. The name hits me like a physical punch. Whitfield. Cole’s family."What does Cole’s family have to do with my father’s research?""Everything," Dex says, tapping his fingers against the laptop l

The old ice rink is a skeletal remains of a building on the edge of the industrial district. The windows are boarded up, the parking lot overgrown with weeds that crunch under the tires of Priya’s beat-up sedan. I kill the lights and roll to a stop behind a stack of rusted shipping containers.The air here smells like stagnant water and wet concrete. It’s the kind of place people go to forget things. Or to be forgotten.I step out of the car. My hands are steady now. The panic has been replaced by a cold, clinical focus. I am a researcher. I am an observer. And I am going to find the variable that Dex Harrow didn't account for.I find a side door that’s been pried open. I slip inside, my footsteps silent on the dusty floor. The interior is a cavernous space, the old rink stripped of its ice and benches. The only light comes from a single work lamp set up in the center of the floor.Cole is there.He’s tied to a metal chair in the middle of the empty rink. His head is slumped forward,