After the Golden Age (Golden Age 1)

“Hmm,” she murmured, by way of polite observation.

“Ms. West, I’m curious. What do you think this does?” He watched her, gaze sharp, smile amused. His intensity burned; she felt like a mouse to his cat.

Calm, stay calm. “You know, I could make the argument that all this really belongs to me, as Jacob West’s direct descendant.”

“I heard that your father disinherited you. Or that you disinherited yourself.”

She gave a noncommittal shrug. “People hear lots of things.”

“Be that as it may, I claim salvage rights on behalf of the city.”

“You’re not doing this for the city.”

“Oh? Really?”

She tested her range, strolling a couple more steps toward the machine, moving partway around it, looking it up and down, purely out of curiosity. The gunmen didn’t move to stop her. All three men watched her closely, but she might as well have been a bug in a jar for their lack of apparent concern.

No one was afraid of her; she didn’t have any powers. But she wouldn’t flinch. That was her talent. That, and recognizing people under their masks.

“No one ever does anything like this except for themselves.” She offered him a sad smile, full of condescension.

“You sound so sure.”

“You’ve killed people to get what you want. The good guys don’t do that.” She made it an observation of fact, not a judgment call. Like she didn’t care that he’d killed.

“Weber, hand me that folder. Yes, that’s the one.”

One of the people in a lab coat brought Paulson a thick file from the top of a filing cabinet. The brown pressboard folder looked familiar; Celia had been looking through similar folders all week. The texture of files from that era was distinct.

Paulson passed the folder to her. “Take a look at this.”

She opened the file, balancing the spine in her left hand. Stacks of pages were fastened to both sides. She flipped through, taking in random lines and data. Charts, graphs, diagrams, rows of jagged lines labeled with numbers, black-and white-photographs.

The top page of text read, “Use of Directed Radiation to Induce Neurophysiological Responses, with the Intent of Encouraging Specified Emotional Traits in Human Subjects.”

The early West Corp logo, before the last couple of redesigns—the crescent moon as the arc of a bow and an arrow tipped with a star preparing to launch—was printed on the bottom of the page.

West Corp didn’t have a medical research division. At least, it didn’t now.

“This is the original lab report,” Celia said. “I found the financial statements, but not the research notes.”

“Because I found them here months ago. One of my aides uncovered this place during a survey of the area. This is what I put the highway plan on hold for. Go on, keep reading.”

Sito, a psychologist with an interest in how the physical structures of the brain contributed to the development of personality and psyche, had been experimenting with methods of altering the brain physically to treat mental illness, as an alternative to medication or shock therapies. Other potential applications had presented themselves.

In a memo to Jacob West in which he urged secrecy, Simon Sito outlined the potential applications of his procedure. Some of the most promising involved nonlethal crowd control: draining aggression from people at the touch of a button, or pacifying prison populations to prevent riots. The process could curb the sociopathic tendencies of habitual criminals.

Initially, Sito planned on concentrating his efforts on one emotion, one simple but particularly useful personality trait: loyalty. With a press of a button and a dose of mild radiation, the test subject would become instantly loyal to the chosen ideal or person. Convicted criminals could finally be made into useful citizens. And more—the military and police forces would have nothing but intensely loyal soldiers and officers in their ranks. No more treason, no more bad cops.

Sito had identified the characteristic that he believed held society together, and he wanted to learn to manipulate it. This was the same technique he would later use to develop the Psychostasis device, which used radiation to erase his victims’ basic sense of self and individuality. Like the rest of his psyche, he’d gone from wanting to alter—to improve—to wanting to destroy.

“I don’t understand,” she said, not because she didn’t, but because she didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe she could possibly understand what she was reading. The conclusion refused to allow comprehension.

The superhuman mutation was a side effect. Completely unintentional and unobserved by everyone involved in the experiment. It was crazy. But it wasn’t. It was all right here. She couldn’t let her shock show. She had to be vaguely interested. Not appalled.

Paulson said, “If it had worked, West Corp would have had a monopoly on the human spirit. Too bad for you it didn’t. Your father might have been the mayor now.”

Now that was an appalling thought. But he was missing something. He didn’t know about the superhuman connection.