Nariko watched the activity on the wall of monitors, her attention drifting from screen to screen as she followed the movements of the inhabitants of the Nest. The group of friends were slowly beginning to form bonds again, but she noticed subtle differences in the way they interacted.
She’d been observing them since their arrival at the Conch Shell Resort earlier in the week and had been intrigued by the complicated dynamics playing out between the group of friends. They’d obviously known each other for a long time—their established patterns of behavior confirmed that much—but a gap of time had passed since their last gathering. Over a year for most of them as far as she could gather in her eavesdropped conversations at the hotel bar. Most of them had met in college although a few had known each other earlier. She got the sense that there were past relationships in their dynamics as well, but she had no data to confirm it.
You could learn a lot about a group of people simply from observing them, and if you were trained to pick up the subtleties of body language and tone, there was very little you couldn’t guess at that was hidden. She’d been trained by the best and she’d studied people for long hours trying to perfect the skill. This particular skill was one often cultivated by investigators or con artists, but she was neither. She was a scientist. And she used her skill to gain a new understanding of sociology and psychology. She had several hypotheses in progress right now, and this particular group had the potential to provide a great amount of data for a few of them.
They had gotten lucky this time. None of the group had reacted violently to their predicament. Several of them were suspicious and might become troublesome over time, but for the most part they had stopped thinking about their circumstances and begun to adapt.
She picked up her tablet and began flipping through the data they’d collected about the group from various sources, online personality tests and social media posts mostly. It was surprising how much information people gave away about themselves online for free. Enough to construct a complete social profile and a fairly thorough history. Enough for a decent baseline for comparison.
The memory suppression serum was the brainchild of her partner, Amos. He had concocted it and been testing it on volunteers for many years, but it was finally complete. The side effects had been minimized and very few subjects had an adverse reaction to the drug. A few were unable to fully regain their memories, but most of them had complications in their medical history that made the failure less troubling.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Any new developments?” Amos asked, joining her in the monitoring station.
“Olivia and Micah are up to something.” She pointed at the screen depicting Micah’ bedroom and the way they were hiding from the camera’s view. Micah had his back to the camera and was gesturing emphatically at Olivia as he spoke.
“Are the audio feeds still working?”
She shrugged. “Yes. But he isn’t saying anything out loud. As far as I can tell, he’s pointing at something on the wall behind him.”
“Out of view.”
Nariko nodded.
“Very tricky. What about the others? Is Zoe adjusting yet?”
“Yes. She and Ethan are getting close.” Nariko referred back to the tablet to pull up Zoe’s file. “They dated in college for a while, so that’s not a surprise. But her anxiety attacks are beyond anything we could have predicted.”
Amos looked at her, squinting over the tops of his glasses. “We knew she was taking medication for them.”
“Yes, but that medication can be prescribed for several different conditions. And her medical history contains no indication of anxiety.”
“She’s trying to become a doctor, isn’t she? A surgeon. Anxiety is a bit of a stigma in that field. And her father is rich and influential enough to have her record hidden.”
Nariko considered her response carefully before replying. “Or it is something new. A reaction to the memory suppression treatment?”
Amos scoffed. “We’ve seen no similar reactions.”
“It’s still a possibility.” She made a note on her tablet. “And until we’ve eliminated it, we have to make a note of it in the records.”
He laughed. “You say that as if we’re going to be able to publish this study just like all the others. You know we’ll never be able to publish what we’ve learned here without getting arrested or worse.”
“That’s not why we’re doing it,” she pointed out. “But doing this for our own purposes doesn’t mean we should do shoddy work. Our clients still want a reliable result.”
