Hardwired Read online

  Murphy’s eyes were open and staring blankly up at the ceiling, a look of sheer agony clouding his expression. I despised that man, had vowed to make him pay for tasing me the way he did, but somehow, looking down into his vacant eyes, all that anger suddenly slipped away.

  Chris rolled him over, looking for some sign of injury—a gash to the back of his head, a bullet wound, a protruding knife. But except for a purplish-blue bruise the size of a quarter on his temple, there was nothing.

  “Keys are gone too,” Chris said as he patted down the guard’s pocket.

  “Cam!” Carly’s screech filled the isolation unit and I bolted upright, whacking my head on the underside of the stairs. My vision went spotty, and I reached out for something to grab onto. My foot snagged on the guard’s pant leg, and I lost my balance. I fell to the floor and landed on top of Murphy, my eyes level with his, my fingers digging into the front of his shirt.

  I tried to scramble up, but no matter what I did, no matter where I put my hands or where I braced my feet, I ended up tangled with him. I’d take a thousand live guards with their stun guns trained directly at my chest over this one dead one, who I couldn’t seem to escape from, any day.

  “I got you.” Chris hauled me to my feet, his hands locking on my shoulders as he physically backed me away from the dead guard. “You’re fine, man. Relax.”

  There was a dead man at my feet, a full-on riot erupting upstairs, and no lights to guide our way out. Apparently, Chris and I had very different ideas of what the word “fine” meant.

  “Cam!” Carly screamed again, the deafening pitch of her voice refocusing my fear on her.

  I flung my hands up, breaking Chris’s hold on my shoulders, and made my way over to Carly. The doors to all three glass cells were open. She called out her brother’s name a third time, and my mind finally processed what had her so panicked. Cam’s cell, across from the one Chris and I had briefly occupied, was empty. The only clue that he’d ever been there was a neatly folded pile of clothes in the corner.

  I walked in, bent down, and picked my way through the clothes in search of God knows what. Judging from the vile, nasty smell that wafted up each time I moved something, Cam had been wearing those clothes since the day they’d tossed him down here.

  I picked up Cam’s pants and shook them out, foolishly hoping to find the guard’s keys. Three white pills fell to the floor and rolled to a stop by Chris’s feet. He reached down and grabbed them, turning them over in his hand before holding them out for me to see. I didn’t recognize the three-letter marking etched into both sides, but I shoved them into my pocket anyway, thinking that when I got out of there, I’d look it up.

  “Shit. Where the hell is he?” Chris asked, his eyes sweeping the area. “You remember him having anything in this cell when he was down here? Anything he could have used as a weapon?”

  I dialed my memory back to the five hours we’d spent in that glass cage. I recalled Carly watching her brother, her shoulders curled in defeat as she tried unsuccessfully to get his attention. I remembered staring at the lights on the camera mounted on the ceiling, tapping out the seconds on my leg as I tried to figure out the pattern. And I clearly recalled Cam rocking back and forth in place, ignoring everything and everyone. But I didn’t remember seeing a weapon, not even a piece of metal that could be whittled down into a shank. Even the toilet and bed in these glass cells were bolted to the floor.

  “There’s nothing down here he could’ve used,” I finally said, coming to the same horrifying conclusion as Chris. Someone besides Murphy had been down here.

  “We need to find him!” Carly was nearly hysterical, one panicked stream of demands after another falling from her lips. “There’s got to be another way out of this area. I would’ve seen Cam come up. You would’ve seen him come up.”

  She was circling the isolation unit, running her hands against the walls as if blindly searching for a secret exit. This wasn’t part of the plan. Grab and go, that’s all I’d signed up for when it came to Cam. A simple grab and go.

  “We don’t know where he is,” I said as I pulled her away from the wall she was pounding on. It was solid cement, no chance of a hidden door anywhere in sight. “We don’t even know if he’s still alive or if he did this.”

  “You think Cam killed the guard?” Carly spun on me, her fists now meeting my chest. “You actually think Cam would hurt anybody?”

  “Well, somebody killed the guard, and as far as I remember, the only one down here with him was your brother,” Chris argued.

  “Maybe you did it!” Carly raged.

  Chris blew off that comment. “Like when? In my spare time? In between fighting my way out of that room and messing with the electrical panel? Or maybe when I had to feel my way back here because some mystery person smashed all the lights? Or maybe when I stumbled my way back to the lounge in search of Lucas because you said he was still trapped inside? Yeah, plenty of time for me to commit murder and stash that lunatic brother of yours somewhere safe.”

  Carly’s eyes flashed wide at his words, her fists clenching at her sides. “Don’t act like you weren’t down here, because you were! You were in the basement, too, at the electrical panel. Who’s to say you didn’t do it?”

  “For the record, the electrical panel isn’t anywhere near the isolation cells. And besides, why the hell would I waste my time with a guard?” Chris was within two feet of her, forcing her backward into her brother’s cell. “Or better yet,” he continued, “if I killed him, why wouldn’t I have simply dragged your brother with me when I was done?”

  “How the hell should I know? You’re the one with the faulty genes, not me.”

  “I swear to God, I’m so going to—”

  Chris lunged for Carly. I blocked his path, my chest taking the full brunt of his rage, then shoved him into the cinderblock wall with enough force to let him know I wasn’t joking around. “Both of you knock it off.”

  Chris shoved me off him. “She’s the one that accused me of murder.”

  “You accused Cam first,” Carly spit out. “Plus, you’re the only one of us who’s been alone.”

  I thought about challenging her on that, reminding her that I’d spent a fair amount of time searching for her by the door, only for her to tell me I was the one who was confused. But I doubted that would ease the quickly escalating situation. And besides, admitting that they were both technically unaccounted for when the guard was killed … even I didn’t even want to go there.

  “You do anything besides mess with the electrical panel?” I asked Chris. His answer came out as an irritated “no,” and I spun around to look at Carly. “Did you wait for me by the staircase like I told you to?” She nodded out a silent yes. “Then we’re good.”

  Thirty

  I helped Carly search for an alternate exit while Chris took up residence in the guard’s chair. He was pissed, and I didn’t blame him. I had no right to question him, to even think for a second that he had anything to do with the guard’s death. He was the only one in here I actually trusted. He had no obligation to Carly or me, yet he’d willingly signed on to this plan. The least I could do was show him some gratitude.

  “What you said to Chris back there was wrong,” I said to Carly as I checked behind the staircase for the third time. “Chris came back in here to help me, to help you. You’d do well to remember that.”

  Carly ignored me, her hands trailing across the same cinderblock wall for the millionth time.

  “You know, if Chris is messed up because some stupid genetic test says he is, then I am too. And so is your brother.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, not even bothering to turn around. “I know you. I know Cam. But him,” she said, “he’s nobody to me.”

  “Well, I trust him, and he’s the closest thing to a friend you have in here. So, from now on, I’d be careful what you say or you’ll end up
looking for Cam alone.”

  Carly went stone silent. Maybe it wasn’t the nicest thing to say, but judging from the cold set of Chris’s eyes, I’d say it was pretty damn accurate.

  “Got it?” I asked, my thoughts scattering as I came across a door I’d never seen before. At first, it looked like a storage closet. Metal shelving covered the two side walls and the inside of the door was lined with hooks. But at the back end, there was another door partially hidden by a gazillion folded bedsheets neatly stacked on the floor.

  “Found the sheets they took from our rooms,” I said to Chris. I put my hand on the knob, paused, and looked back to make sure Chris had followed me. Regardless of what was on the other side of that door, I needed … no, I wanted Chris at my back. He nodded, and I turned the handle, pushing the door wide to give us a clear view of whatever was lurking on the other side.

  It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but eventually I made out a staircase. Carly took off, the sound of her brother’s name falling from her lips. She’d cleared the first few steps before either Chris or I had time to react, but I reached for her anyway, falling flat on my face as I tripped over a broom she’d knocked off the wall.

  “You sure about this?” Chris asked, holding out a hand to help me up. “And I don’t mean about the creepy staircase hidden behind a closet wall. I mean about her.”

  I sighed. No, I wasn’t sure about Carly. Or the massive shithole of promises I’d made to the kids upstairs. I wasn’t sure about anything I’d done today, but it was a little too late to change my mind now.

  Chris tipped his head toward the stairs. “She’s a head case, Lucas. She can’t control herself, and she’s going to get you killed. I know they claim only one girl has ever tested positive for that gene, but if you ask me, she’s got the same faulty wiring as her brother.”

  “She lost her sister, and you saw her brother.” I understood how losing a sibling messed with your head. In a way, I could forgive her for being a little unpredictable.

  “And you lost Tyler,” Chris argued. “But you aren’t crazy, and I’m really beginning to think that girl is.”

  I went to argue, to explain to him how lost and angry I was those first few weeks after Tyler’s death, but Chris waved me off. “Listen,” he said, his eyes darting toward the staircase Carly had just sprinted up. “I agreed to come in here because of you. Because you thought that somehow getting that information to Ms. Tremblay would shut this place down for good. And I did it because I know you’re scared shitless that your sister will end up here. But I never agreed to chase Carly’s ass all over this damn building. I will look for her this one time, but she does it again, and I’m out.”

  Nodding, I fixed my eyes on the narrow hallway at the top of the stairs. Chris wasn’t wrong. He had no ties to Carly, and at the end of the day, my ties to her weren’t strong enough to withstand much more of this either.

  “Girl’s more trouble than she’s worth,” Chris grumbled as he leapt over me and took the stairs two at a time.

  We reached the top of the steps, and I scanned the hallway stretching out in front of us. “No way she made it far.”

  “She could be standing five feet from you and you wouldn’t see her,” Chris countered. “Without lights, this is a colossal waste of time.”

  A flashlight, a lantern, a damn match—I would’ve given my left arm for any one of those items right then. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face, never mind figure out which way she’d gone.

  I felt my way along the wall, my hand brushing up against what felt like a switch. Out of habit, I flicked it on. Nothing happened, and I slammed my hand into it. For all I knew, it wasn’t even a light switch, rather some on-off button for the heating units.

  “We can cover more ground if we split up,” Chris suggested.

  I shook my head, forgetting he couldn’t see me, and said, “Absolutely not. I’m not searching for you once I find her.”

  “I vote for not finding her at all.”

  I was right there with him. I was literally “this close” to being able to sleep in my own bed, eat off a real plate, and argue with Suzie over the TV remote, and here I was, risking everything for a girl who’d pretty much called me a genetic freak.

  “There,” Chris said, pointing to a small hint of light at the end of the corridor.

  I rushed toward it, trying to figure out where in the facility we were and how close the nearest exit door was. The light I was chasing spilled out from underneath a doorway and without thinking, I yanked it open. A series of emergency-lit corridors stretched out before me.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Chris griped. “They only smashed that one light? Which means whoever did it knows our plan.”

  It all made sense now. The jammed lock, the glass by the door, the dark, disorienting corridors. Someone knew our plan and was systematically dismantling it piece by piece.

  Chris caught me staring at his knuckles, and his eyes darkened with rage. “I already told you I. Didn’t. Do it.”

  I knew that. It was actually the only thing I did know.

  “You think someone heard us talking downstairs?” I asked, reaching for an explanation I already knew made no sense. The glass cells down there were soundproof, the intercoms couldn’t function on generator power, and I’d made sure the red light on the security camera was off before I ever opened my mouth.

  “Cam?” Chris suggested.

  Even I knew that was a stretch. Cam would’ve had to have been pretty adept at lip reading, but to do even that, he would’ve had to pick his head up off his knees and actually acknowledge one of us. And as far as I knew, that never happened. “No. Not possible. Not the way he looked.”

  “You think—” Chris started to say, and I cut him off. I knew where his mind was going, and I didn’t like it. Carly was emotional; I’d give him that. And trusting her to follow any sort of plan was dicey at best. But crazy enough to kill a guard and sabotage our whole plan? No way.

  “You saw how scared Carly was when they dumped us in the room with everybody else. Besides, we’re her ticket out of here. Her only way out of here. Why would she sabotage a plan that solely benefits her?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask me,” Chris replied. “She’s your friend from the outside, not mine.”

  She wasn’t my friend. She wasn’t even Tyler’s, but somehow guilt had made her my obligation. And lights or no lights, we were running out of time.

  Thirty-one

  “We need help, somebody who knows the layout of this place,” I said as I opened another door to an empty room. “There isn’t time for us to search every room.”

  “You suggesting we ask Ms. Tremblay for help?”

  I hated to admit it, but that’s exactly what I was thinking. “We need to give her the flash drive anyway, so two birds, one stone, right?”

  “And you’re pretty confident that she isn’t behind any of this? Because I’m not.”

  I shook my head. I trusted her about as much as I trusted the guards locked in that room, but I’d seen the way she watched Carly, remembered her plea that I keep Carly safe. The protectiveness I’d heard in her voice was genuine. If I could harness that, then maybe I could manipulate her into helping us.

  “Great,” Chris said, reluctantly agreeing with me. “Now I get to ask the one person I hate most in the world for help.”

  We searched for Carly as we went, ducking our heads into countless empty rooms. The silence was unsettling, especially since we had no idea what we might find around each corner. Judging from the partitions around the toilets in some of the rooms, we’d found the girl’s wing, the one that was in full operational order but never used. That, and there were actually sheets on the beds.

  “This one’s clear,” I said, shutting the door behind me, then drawing a giant X on it. I’d heisted a black sharpie from a janitor’s suppl
y closet two corridors over and started marking the hallways and rooms we’d already searched. Twice already, it’d prevented us from re-entering an area we’d already walked through.

  The wings were labeled—resident dorms, kitchen and maintenance, testing rooms. I paused, sighing in relief, when I came across the red plastic sign directing us toward the staff quarters. “This way,” I said.

  There were twelve rooms in this hall, six on each side. I took the left; Chris took the right. I knocked on the doors; he kicked them. I heard a noise coming from the last door he kicked, like a chair toppling over as someone scrambled to hide.

  “Ms. Tremblay?” I shouldered my way in front of him and tried to make my voice sound as small and helpless as possible. “It’s Lucas. Lucas Marshall. I need your help.”

  Chris went to kick the door again, and I put my hand up for him to stop. We needed Ms. Tremblay’s help, and scaring the shit out of her wasn’t the way to get it.

  I tested the knob. It turned, and the door opened an inch before catching. Chain lock. Funny, with all the technology they had in this place, she still felt the need to use a centuries-old device.

  “We can’t find Carly,” I said through the small gap in the door. “I was hoping she’s with you.”

  A tiny sliver of her face came into view, her eyes narrowing on my hands. I held them up, palms out, to show her I was unarmed, then spun around and pulled my shirt out of my waistband so she could see I wasn’t hiding a Taser. Her gaze shifted to Chris, and I motioned for him to do the same. “We aren’t going to hurt you,” I promised. “We really do need your help finding Carly. Is she with you?”

  Ms. Tremblay closed the door, and I held my breath until I heard the clink of the chain coming loose. She opened the door fully and stepped out into the hall rather than letting us in.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find her?”