Free The Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart

wasn’t getting answers quickly enough to suit her, though she hadn’t allowed time for Mr. Benedict to respond—she began to repeat her questions from the beginning.
    Mr. Benedict held up his hands until she fell silent. “Let me answer your questions in order, my dear. First, I have used this study for so many years, any shift in acoustics—I mean the way sound carries—is bound to draw my attention. But by the time I realized that the hollow space in the wall behind me was no longer quite so hollow, it was too late to send away the wicked spies”—he smiled at the spies in question—”without calling Mr. Gaines’s attention to their presence. That would not do, you see, for it would subject them to all sorts of disagreeable inquiries, and no doubt the Washingtons and Perumals would be dragged in as well.
    “As for using the Whisperer to diminish the symptoms of my narcolepsy, what I told Mr. Gaines was the truth: It’s possible. My hope was to adapt the machine to transmit powerful messages—instructions, essentially—that could redirect certain faulty mental impulses. Whenever my brain, for instance, sent a signal to fall asleep at inappropriate moments, these new, more powerful instructions would be to ignore the signal.”
    “Basically a form of hypnosis,” said Sticky, and Mr. Benedict tapped his nose.
    “And you thought it might work on others, as well,” Reynie said, not a little wonderingly, for the real potential of Mr. Benedict’s project was only just now sinking in. “That would mean thousands of people—no, even more than that—why,
millions
of people might be helped…”
    Mr. Benedict nodded. “You see why I thought it worth pursuing, even though my chances of success were slim at best.”
    “And your nightmares?” Constance persisted. “The Old Hag and those other terrible hallucinations? Would it take care of those things, too?”
    “Again, it’s possible,” Mr. Benedict said. “Indeed, a great many things were possible—possible if not probable. I even entertained some small hope of using this project to persuade my brother to surrender. Under the right circumstances, if Ledroptha found himself in a terrible spot, with no good options before him… well, I thought the promise of relief might just draw him in the right direction. A less desperate and thus more peaceful one. But as I say, my research had only just begun, and now—”
    “Well, get to it!” Constance cried. “You have a little time, right? Or even more if Milligan snatches their papers again!”
    “That trick isn’t likely to work twice,” said Mr. Benedict. “At any rate, we cannot afford to dwell on those possibilities now, however grand they might have been to contemplate. The situation has changed, my dear. There is no more time. Our concern now must be what we
know
the Whisperer can do if it falls into the wrong hands.”
    “Gaines’s hands are the wrong ones, I can verify that,” said Milligan. “He doesn’t seem to be a spy for Curtain, but he has a lot of power and no judgment.”
    “A bad combination,” said Number Two.
    “He might as well be a spy,” said Rhonda. “If he succeeds in getting the Whisperer removed, he’s doing exactly what Curtain would want.”
    “Because taking it out into the open makes it vulnerable?” said Kate, remembering what Mr. Benedict had said earlier.
    “Yes,” said Rhonda. “When we first moved the Whisperer here—right after your mission to the Institute—Curtain was on the run and could do nothing to intercept us. He’s had time to prepare now, though. He has spies, and he most certainly has a plan.”
    “I’ve been pressed to move the Whisperer before,” said Mr. Benedict. “Usually the Monk Building is suggested as a preferable location. As you know, I’ve maintained an office there—for reasons only those of us in this house are aware of—and the government has offered to secure additional space in the building for me. But it has been