The Parrot's Last Secret (Paperback)

Paperback. At Brindle Meadows assisted-living home in Brindle, Vermont, an African grey parrot named Professor has become the residents' unlikely confidant. An SL-2 neural implant made him one of the Granted - animals with human-level minds - and Professor uses his new thinking not to escape but to listen. He remembers everything: the schedules, the voices, the small cruelties, and the night six years ago when a resident named Rose fell from a third-floor window and the home called it an accident. Rose's granddaughter Mia never believed the official story. When she returns to Brindle Meadows and meets Professor, she learns the parrot was in the room. With the help of a silver-haired "detective club" of residents and Rae - a veterinarian in the Underground, the hidden network of chipped, self-aware animals the manufacturer cannot surveil - Mia gets Rae to read Professor's memory through CogniLink. What surfaces is not an accident but a push, witnessed by a creature nobody thought to question. The memory points at Harold, the home's director, and at a cover-up the whole town helped keep quiet. But Harold has heard rumors of RQ-7, the remote termination switch Nexum Corporation built into the implants, and a parrot who can testify is a problem he knows how to solve. As the club races to surface the truth, the Underground moves to protect Professor - and the Accord, the fragile agreement meant to shield the Granted, formally blocks any RQ-7 command aimed at him. A warm, quietly suspenseful standalone story from the NeuroLink Universe - a series about what happens when the animals we love can finally speak, and what they choose to remember. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…