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had a basic privacy policy that kept her from scanning other people’s vibes unless she was on a maze run or in the presence of an enemy. This obviously eliminated anyone working for Detta. So there was an outside chance Westcott had mind-reading powers, but it was more likely the helmet and Juba’s control panel were some kind of mind-reading device.
    She’d always assumed the technology’s purpose was to put her into a trance so Westcott could get weirder and weirder answers out of her, but maybe the helmet could also pick up on what she was thinking. If this was the case, Westcott had been reading her thoughts for years and knew her entire act was a sham. A flush hitNellie and she ducked her head, riding out the bitter heat. If the psychiatrist had been somehow reading her mind, that meant he’d also been playing along with her act and pretending to be fooled by it for four years. How had she been so completely sucked in?
    A thick shudder ran through her. Okay, so Room Fourteen had been screwing her around completely. It was a fact, she could assimilate it and adjust accordingly. But that fact begged a second question, almost as important as the first: if Westcott was reading her thoughts, what was he picking up? Could he hear the actual words she was thinking, or ... Nellie paused, floored by the possibilities. Could he see images? Had he actually seen the shorn-headed girl and the green-eyed boy when they’d appeared inside her head? Was that what the helmet did — pick up her brain waves and translate them into words and images so they could be studied by Westcott and Juba at a later date? Horror of horrors, were they stored somewhere on a computer so anyone with the proper access code could get at them?
    At the front of the classroom, Col. Jolsen flashed diagrams of a bio-weapon called the venor virus onto the monitoring screen. Quickly Nellie reached for her laptop and scrolled through the research she’d completed on the virus’s methods of transmission. This was the bug, she reminded herself, that headed for the base of the brain. An assassin’s wet dream, the virus made it easy to cover your tracks because it took several weeks before the side effects became noticeable, but there was no reversing the progress of the disease and death was inevitable within two months of contact.
    Having caught up with the class discussion, Nellie fixed her eyes blankly on her laptop screen and returned to her thoughts of Room Fourteen. It was important to be rational about this, she told herself firmly. Think it through calmly . So Westcott appeared to know things about her that she hadn’t guessed. Well, so what? What harm was there in that, really? Everyone at Detta was on the same side, partners in the Great War. Anything the psychiatristlearned about her would be used to help her become a better agent, and that was the ultimate goal, wasn’t it? She didn’t need to hide her thoughts from Westcott, Detta, or anyone in the Advanced Program, not really.
    Except ... Nellie’s heart slowed to a dull thud. What if Westcott had shown her private thoughts to Duikstra? What if the Supreme Bitch of the Known Universe had secretly been privy to Nellie’s hidden thoughts and feelings about her for the past four years?
    Nellie felt ready to heave the contents of her stomach, big time. If she was correct about this, if Westcott had actually been entering her private thoughts into Detta’s database system, then he could also retrieve them at any time and show them to anyone he wanted. Technically, he could have shown her highly personal, private thoughts to Tana, mega-bitch roommate.
    Keep calm , Nellie told herself. Get a grip. Deep freeze .
    Slowly the tight hot lines piercing her brain dissolved. Then she was hit by a new thought. If Westcott had been recording her private secret thoughts in Room Fourteen, then he’d been doing the same to everyone else. So he couldn’t have shown a recording of her thoughts to another