Hardwired Read online

  “I still don’t see the point in saving him,” Chris muttered under his breath.

  I didn’t either, but I’d promised Carly I would at least try. “I need to get upstairs,” I repeated. I was done waiting for the generators to run out of gas.

  “We need to get upstairs,” Chris corrected. “And do you have any idea how to accomplish that?”

  I looked at the camera. “We need to catch the attention of whoever is watching that feed,” I said, knowing full well that the only thing that ever got any notice around here was violent behavior.

  Twenty-two

  “Okay. So let’s go over it again,” Chris said, distracting me from my attempt to catch Carly’s attention. There was no way to communicate my actual plan to her, no way for me to tell her to check her emotions and follow my lead. And given her rather sketchy track record thus far, I wasn’t feeling too confident in her ability to follow my non-verbal cues. “In about three minutes, that camera is going to come back on.”

  “Give or take a few seconds,” I said, waffling my hands in the air. The surveillance times had gotten unpredictable, shifting from twelve minutes of silence, to eighteen, then back to twelve. To be honest, sixteen was nothing more than a guess.

  “Got it,” Chris said, waving me off. “And when it comes on, you’re going to hit me, and I’m going to pretend it hurts, maybe even fall down and roll around on the floor like a pansy. Then we wait and hope one of the guards video-stalking us comes down to my rescue.”

  I nodded. That plan, as crappy as it was, was pretty much it. Except Chris wasn’t going to have to pretend anything; I had every intention of hurting him. Call it payback for his stunt upstairs.

  “Here’s the thing, though,” Chris said. “Being that we lived with each other in a ten-by-ten-foot room for a month and never so much as laid a finger on each other, aren’t the guards going to think it’s weird that when we aren’t being subjected to psychological stress testing, we go after each other?”

  “Maybe,” I mumbled, not really caring either way. All I needed was a momentary distraction so one of us could slip upstairs.

  “Or that we’ve been sitting here calmly for nearly five and half hours, and now, for absolutely no reason, you randomly lose it on me?” Chris added.

  Unable to think of a rational response, I simply nodded.

  “And don’t forget the fact that—”

  “Shut up!” I yelled. I knew my plan sucked, but that didn’t mean I needed him poking more holes in it or my already shaky confidence.

  He threw up his hands in a mock gesture of defeat. “I’m just saying that perhaps, considering what’ll happen if we screw this up, we should take a little more time to think this through.”

  The time for thinking was over, and I stood up, irritated enough to put some serious force behind the fist I intended to slam into his jaw. I took a deep breath and pulled back my arm, channeling a week’s worth of pent-up aggression, then got completely sidetracked by the streak of brown bouncing off the glass wall to my right.

  I swore and spun around to see what the hell Carly wanted. That girl had the worst timing ever. She’d ignored us the entire time down there, and now that I was ready to do something to get us out, she decided to launch her boot at the glass wall.

  “What the hell do you want?” I yelled, knowing she couldn’t hear me. The glass walls were six inches thick and soundproof.

  She nodded in the direction of the door. I turned in time to see Murphy, the same effin’ guard who’d tased me, walking down the stairs.

  “Shit.” I breathed out, distancing myself from Chris. “What’s he doing here?” He wasn’t supposed to show up until after I’d knocked Chris out.

  I reached for the flash drive I’d thrown across the room earlier and stuffed it into my sock before jamming my feet back into my sneakers. The guard was standing by Carly’s cell, punching something into the keypad mounted outside the door. She stepped out, her eyes meeting mine, and I shook my head. The last thing I needed was for her to make a move on him. She didn’t stand a chance against the guard, and it would kill my already bad plan if she did something stupid.

  “Trust me,” I mouthed to Carly.

  Carly stayed still, one foot still inside her glass cube, as the guard made his way toward our door. He slid it open and stepped inside our cell, his hand permanently melded to the Taser gun I was intimately familiar with.

  “I’m only going to say this once,” he started, his voice echoing painfully through our glass cube. “I need you to follow me upstairs. Either one of you makes a move for her, or for me, and that little shock I gave you earlier is going to seem like a walk in the park compared to what I’ll do. Understand?”

  “Loud and clear,” I said, pushing past him.

  “What’s going on?” Chris asked.

  “We finally got a call out to the utility company. They’re working on restoring the power as we speak, but until then, we’re going to house all of you in one room to conserve resources.”

  I felt more than saw Chris’s grin. He’d heard the same note of fear in the man’s voice as I had. This wasn’t about conserving power; this was about consolidating their security staff, containing the risk, which in this case was us.

  Murphy gestured for us to stand against the wall, his hands shaking as he fumbled with the keys to the door at the top of the stairs. My eyes instinctually traveled to the ceiling and what I knew what was happening on the main floor. They were panicking. Good. Let them be afraid. Let them feel half of what we’d been subjected to.

  Chris took the steps two at a time, only to meet the warning glare of a second guard waiting for us at the top. I was only a few steps up before I realized Carly wasn’t following me. She’d stopped at the edge of Cam’s cell and just stood there, staring at him.

  Shit, I knew she wouldn’t simply leave him behind.

  “Carly?” I held my hand out to her, beckoning her forward, my eyes pleading with her to trust me. To trust Chris.

  “Cam,” she mouthed to me, and I nodded. I was aware of the problem; I just didn’t know how to solve it yet.

  “What about him?” I asked Murphy, tipping my head toward Cam’s cell. “Isn’t he coming up with us?”

  “Nope.” He flicked the light switches off until only the small bulb illuminating Cam’s cell was on. Cam flinched. It was the first time I’d seen him move. Although I’m not sure you could call wrapping your hands around your knees and rocking in place purposeful movement … more like a change from one broken state to another.

  Carly saw it too, and her face fell as she watched her brother slip deeper into himself.

  “The guard up there is going to escort the three of you to the common area, where the others are being housed,” Murphy said, again gesturing for us to go up the stairs.

  “But when the power goes out—” Carly started to say, and I cut her off with a wave of my hand. She needed to shut up and remember that as far as the guards were concerned, she had no connection to Cam. None at all.

  But in true Carly fashion, she didn’t listen. “You can’t leave him down here. Alone.”

  “He’s been down here alone for weeks,” Murphy re-sponded. “It’s the safest place for him.”

  Twenty-three

  The room they shoved us into was cramped. Thirteen of us, plus five guards, the medic, and Ms. Tremblay, all housed in what looked like the staff lounge. There were a few scattered chairs, a couch, a small refrigerator, and a flat-screen TV I was quite sure wouldn’t work.

  The boys were spaced out, scattered across the room, most of them huddled into groups of two or three. They didn’t look like they’d been intentionally arranged that way; more likely they’d done it themselves. Buddy up and pick your allies wisely. It was a fact of life in this place, one Chris and I had sworn by.

  Every single head swung in our direction. Carly
moved closer to me, her sideways step almost unperceivable. But Ms. Tremblay caught it and rose from her perch in the corner, her smile genuine as she made her way over to Carly.

  “There are lot of adults in here. I promise that you’ll be safe,” she said, trying to coax Carly farther into the room.

  Carly looked from one boy to the next, then back to me, an unspoken plea to protect her swirling in her eyes. She may not have grasped it before, but judging by the fear I could feel pouring off of her, she did now.

  I reached out and grabbed her hand, tentatively taking it in mine, waiting for her reaction. She hadn’t exactly been predictable so far, and I wasn’t sure if she would trust me or throw me under the bus. It took her a second, but eventually she squeezed back, rotating her hand and lacing her fingers through mine.

  A stunned silence swept over Ms. Tremblay as she stared at our intertwined hands. For once, the woman had absolutely nothing to say.

  I kicked the heel of Chris’s shoe. He’d been too focused on taking stock of the room to have caught Carly’s initial flair of panic. A quick glance at her hand tucked into mine was all the hint he needed. “She’s with us,” he declared as he slid in front of Carly, blocking everyone’s view of her.

  Ms. Tremblay went to move around him, but he matched her step for step. Giving up, she simply held out her hand, beckoning Carly forward. There was maybe an inch between me and Carly, but Carly closed it quickly, angling her body behind mine—a clear sign that she trusted me and nobody else. Finally.

  “Like I said,” Chris repeated. “She’s with us.”

  A thousand thoughts flew across Ms. Tremblay’s face, suspicion finally setting in. Carly’s switch from scared victim to friend made absolutely no sense to her.

  I slid my hand free of Carly’s and moved it to the small of her back, positioning her between me and Chris. I doubted any of the guys in here would touch her, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  We took a communal step farther into the room, and I scanned their faces, looking for someone familiar. My eyes traveled downward, stopping at their feet. “Shoes,” I whispered to Chris. They were all wearing their facility-issued jeans and white T-shirts, but their sneakers and socks had been removed.

  “Guards must be freaked if they’re worried about them using their Nikes as weapons,” Chris replied.

  The guard who’d escorted us up here caught Chris’s remark. “Shoes and socks,” he demanded, holding out his hand.

  I curled my toes around the flash drive. I needed to keep my shoes on, at least until I had a chance to get Ms. Tremblay alone. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep them. My feet have barely begun to thaw out as it is.”

  The guard went to argue, but the medic cut him off. “For Christ’s sakes, Charles. Let them keep their shoes. In fact, did they ever get the heating pads and soup I asked you to bring them?”

  The guard shook his head and took a seat. Not that I cared about his lapse in judgment. The fear and anger coursing through my system had kept me plenty warm.

  “One guard at the door, one in each corner,” Chris whispered as we lowered ourselves to the ground by the far wall. Knowing Chris, he’d purposefully picked this spot—it gave him a clear view of the door and everybody in the room.

  “Thirteen of us,” I said, counting again. “Almost two to one against the adults. I like those odds.”

  “Fourteen of us, if you count Cam,” Carly added.

  I caught the haunted hope in her voice, the distant belief that somehow, someway, Cam would magically snap out of it and be the same brother she remembered. He wouldn’t. I’d stake my life on that.

  “You know that even if we manage to get him out, he won’t be the same person you remember,” I told her gently. “The Cam you knew is gone, Carly. Probably for good.”

  She didn’t disagree, just asked, “Was Tyler like that? When he first came home, did he act like that? Like he wasn’t even really there?”

  Tyler may have been distant and closed off, but he was still “there.” He talked to Olivia, wrote his thoughts down in his journal, would even give you a non-verbal answer if you asked him a question. He’d only technically lost it once.

  On his third day home, he’d spent every waking minute staring out his bedroom window. Mom asked him if he wanted to go outside, maybe light the grill for dinner or sit in the backyard and get some fresh air. He flipped out on her and tore his room apart, destroying everything. Olivia finally got him to calm down, even convinced him to tell her what had set him off. According to her, it was the open space and the fresh air that had scared the shit out of him. He needed four tight walls and darkness, needed the sensation of a cage to feel safe.

  But Cam … yeah, Tyler had nothing on Cam.

  “Tyler was different when he came home.” It was the truth, a watered-down version of it, but the truth all the same. Anything more might upset her, and what I needed right now was for Carly to stay strong and follow my lead.

  “You think Cam will kill himself too?” Carly asked, and I wondered if she was regretting coming here, if the small glimpse she’d gotten of her brother had her questioning whether or not any of this was even worth it.

  “No,” I lied. He would; he absolutely would. I’d contemplated it myself once or twice these past few weeks, and according to their tests, I was mentally sound.

  “Maybe once he’s home, maybe once he sees his friends and Mom and Dad, things will go back to normal. He’ll get better. He has a girlfriend, you know. I know Olivia couldn’t help Tyler, but maybe it will be different with Cam.”

  “Maybe,” I said, selfishly not wanting to destroy whatever determination she had left. Carly needed to commit to the plan, hard and fast, or it was her life and not Cam’s that would be in danger.

  Chris leaned over Carly and tapped me on the shoulder. “I don’t recognize any of them, do you?”

  I took another quick look around the room, then shrugged. “Nope, but it’s not like we were allowed to associate with anybody outside our little group. Everybody I would’ve recognized is lying dead in that van.”

  Chris sighed, a heavy sound that told me his mind was traveling the same disturbing path as mine. There was no one left here that we knew, no one we could guarantee would take our side. “You got any idea who to approach first?”

  I shook my head. No matter how you sliced it, it was a crapshoot. Where one guy might jump at the chance to escape, another might run to Ms. Tremblay or the guards, hoping to score brownie points. I pointed to the guy directly across from us. He’d been fidgeting since we got in there, his gaze darting between us and the door. He was either scared of Chris and me or was trying to come up with a way out. Whichever it was, I figured he was as good of a place to start as any.

  “Him,” I said. “I say we start with him.”

  Twenty-four

  “Not the best way to spend your day, huh?” I said, taking a seat on the floor next to fidgety-kid. He was alone. As cramped as this room felt, he’d managed to carve out an island for himself. “I’m Lucas, by the way.”

  He nodded, not offering his name or taking the hand I’d extended in his direction.

  “That’s Chris, and her name is Carly,” I continued, and his eyes drifted up, sweeping over both of them before settling back on the tile floor.

  I sat there for a minute, watching as he traced the outline of the tiles with his foot, questioning my decision to choose this particular guy. But there was something about him that I liked, that I could relate to. Maybe it was the way he kept to himself, or the fact that he hadn’t bothered to ask my name. Stick to yourself. Mind what you do and what you say. You’re not here to make friends; just survive and get out. That had been my plan when I first got here. His too, I imagined.

  “You have a name?” I asked.

  “I do,” he mumbled, again not offering it up.

 
I laughed. He was good. Better than me.

  “I’ve been in this place for thirty days,” I said, leaving out my brief stint on the outside. I needed him to talk. I needed to find some common ground I could use to gain his trust. “How long have you been here?”

  “Eight days,” he mumbled, looking up at the clock attached to the wall. “Eight days, nine hours, and twenty-six minutes.”

  “Which one is your roommate?” I asked. We all had roommates; that was part of the testing protocol. Cramped quarters, sweltering hot temperatures, and an overload of adrenaline to toss at each other. It was like forced interaction under the most extreme of circumstances.

  He jutted his chin in the direction of the lone reclining chair. A guy who easily weighed two-fifty was sprawled out in it, napping. If that’d been my roommate, I’d have left him alone too.

  “I’d like to say it gets easier, that the first week is the hardest, but that’d be a lie,” I said.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “Been there, done that.” I replied. “My only advice is to make sure you have the bottom bunk. It won’t make any difference until about the third week in, but trust me, having a body above you to block the view will save your sanity.”

  “Okay,” he said, not asking me to explain.

  “You see that girl over there, the one I walked in with?” I was banking everything on the hope that I’d picked the right guy. “She doesn’t belong in here, and I need to get her out.”

  “Then what’s she doing here?” he asked.

  “They were moving us to the reintegration facility,” I started, launching into our well-rehearsed story. “The weather was bad and there was an accident. We hit her car head-on. Chris and I were the only ones in our van who survived. We found her on the road, dazed and confused,” I continued, skirting the truth.

  “And you brought her here?” Was that disbelief or judgement I heard in his voice? Either way, it made me like him a little bit more.