The Revelations Erik Hoel (finding audrey .TXT) 📖

two are sitting under one of the few lit bulbs and it is glaring down on them. The rest is darkness.

“Well,” Skylar says, shifting around and looking puzzled, “about four months now.”

“And you asked for the assignment, right? You wanted to work with the macaques.”

“Umm, yeah. Why?”

Carmen leans back in her chair nonplussed—“I’m actually thinking of hiring a research assistant for my own lab.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I wanted to see if you were interested. Because of your background.”

“Well I don’t really . . .”

“You switched over, right? From sociology to a neuroscience degree. When was this again?”

“Ummm like a little while ago. I’m in a summer research program that you can sign up for.”

“So what made you switch?” “Why? I’m not really sure I want to work for you. No offense. And besides I don’t even know if I can change who I work for—”

“Why’d you switch, Skylar?”

Skylar looks around quizzically, like she is searching for a hidden camera amid the cubicles.

“I just did, okay? I wanted to switch. I, I took a neuroscience course and I just realized that—”

“Wrong,” Carmen says, her tone changing. “You changed majors at the beginning of the semester, before you took any of those courses.”

“What?! How do you know that?”

“Are you familiar with the Students Against Animal Research?”

Skylar stops in the process of getting out of her chair. After a second, she begins again—“Umm, I don’t know what that is—”

“How could you not know what it is, they’ve been all over the campus news,” Carmen says, almost smiling openly.

“No.” Skylar is shaking her head. “I meant that I knew who they were but I’m not—”

“You know exactly what I’m here about.”

“I really don—”

“I’m here to ask you some questions, Skylar.” Carmen’s voice is raised enough that it echoes in the empty lab.

Skylar is grabbing her sweatshirt and her phone and is standing, glancing toward the door. “I’m feeling really uncomfortable right now. I’m totally not in a safe space, so I’m just going to go . . .”

Skylar moves around Carmen, who, as Skylar passes simply says—“You can’t leave until you answer some questions.”

But Skylar is already hurriedly approaching the doorway. Then the outline of Kierk looms in front of her and Skylar lets loose a scream, waving her arms, backing up.

“Sit down,” Kierk says darkly as she bumps up against a desk, finding a seat with her hand groping blindly behind her. Carmen has the odd thought that it really is true that people go sheet-white when they’re scared.

“We’re not here to hurt you, Skylar,” she says reassuringly. “We’re here to ask you some questions. And you are going to answer them.”

“I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything about SAAR and I don’t—” Skylar has her phone in her hand and is beginning to dial.

Carmen leans over. “We already know you’re a member.” Skylar stops dialing and looks up at them. “And you better start answering our questions. Because if you don’t, we will destroy you, Skylar.” She leans in further. “We will ensure that you are expelled from NYU for deception and collaboration with a student group that has been banned on campus. We will make sure you are prosecuted in the criminal system for conspiracy and collusion. And we will call your parents.”

Skylar, her eyes bulging and stammering, blubbers—“I’m sorry! I didn’t . . . You can’t . . .”

“Skylar, if you tell us everything you know, we won’t do any of that,” Kierk says. “You’ll be able to keep your job here. You’ll have to disassociate yourself from SAAR, of course. Stop seeing them. Avoid them. Do whatever you have to. Make something up. But we won’t tell anyone.”

“But only if you to tell us everything you know about SAAR.”

Emotions ripple across Skylar’s face. They wait as she processes the situation.

“Okay . . . Okay. But you’re promising you won’t bring me into it?”

“We won’t.”

“What . . . What do you want to know?”

Carmen contains a triumphant smile.

“Do you know who Allen is?”

Skylar nods, one hand still gripping her phone but not using it.

“Allen said that you helped pull off a job for SAAR two weeks ago. Some kind of direct action.”

Skylar nods. “Ever since the thing with Double Trouble they’ve been trying to get more photos, videos, whatever, anything. The reaction was so huge. But SAAR can’t file for those freedom things—”

“Freedom of Information Act requests,” Carmen fills in for her.

“Right. So I was like, supposed to get people into the monkey rooms. I swiped them in to see the cages.”

“When was this?”

“It was, ummm . . . after that big storm.”

“You mean Saturday before last?”

“Right. Friday it had like, rained a lot. I remember that. We spent a few minutes taking pictures and videos but then the guard came by on like, a patrol or something and we like, hid in one of the rooms. Anyways, it was scary so we all just left right afterward . . . I don’t actually know who has the photos or what they’re going to do with them. They might already be up on websites.”

“We don’t care about some pictures, Skylar. That’s below our pay grade,” Kierk says. Carmen catches his gaze and rolls her eyes, imperceptibly shaking her head.

“Actually, Skylar, show us the photographs. Prove that you took them,” she says.

Skylar quickly thumbs through her phone, holding up a photo of a macaque in a skullcap screaming at the photographer from its cage. Carmen grabs it from her to a weak protestation and then thumbs through the photo roll, both Kierk and Carmen watching the pictures go past of monkeys screaming, baring their teeth, close-ups of their cages and the droplets of blood around their skullcaps. They recognize in the background a few of the people from SAAR meetings, and Allen is clearly identifiable in one picture with a camera in hand.

Skylar looks guilty and tired. “Allen would hit the cages. He was like, attacking the cages and hissing at them. That’s why they look so furious. It was really intense.”

Carmen,