Hardwired Read online

  Chris shook his head, grumbling something about me being as stupid as shit and how we should’ve left her on the side of the road for dead. I ignored him and turned back to Carly, not wanting to believe what she was saying. “You did this?”

  She nodded, a fresh round of tears rimming her eyes.

  “Who helped you?” I asked. “And why was it so important for you to stop that van?” I couldn’t imagine any reason for her to risk her life that way, except to save somebody she knew, somebody she cared about. “Who was on that van?”

  “No one I know was on that van,” Carly said.

  Chris chuckled and tossed the rock he was playing with to the ground. “All right, you want to play semantics—let’s play. Who’s inside the testing facility that you want to get to?”

  “Cam,” she said. “We did it to get you and Cam out.”

  eleven

  Chris cleared the distance between him and Carly in two strides and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to answer his question. “Who is Cam, and why would you risk all of our lives to get to him?”

  “He’s her brother.” The unfamiliar voice emerged from the woods behind me, and I swung my head in that direction. My eyes landed not on a face, but rather on the rifle he had leveled in our direction. “And I’d strongly suggest,” the man continued, his finger slowly inching towards the trigger, “that you take your hands off Carly.”

  I motioned for Chris to let Carly go, then promptly searched the ground for a rock, a big stick, a giant snowball, something I could use to defend myself. I didn’t stand a chance against a rifle, but that didn’t mean I was planning on going down easy.

  I reached down and grabbed a grisly looking pinecone—the only thing that was within my reach—and started easing my way backward. Chris and I could make a run for it, but the man would easily have time to get off a shot before the woods swallowed us up. That meant only one of us had a chance, and that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. With my life or Chris’s.

  “Who are you?” I asked, curling my hand around the gnarly pinecone. I searched his face, looking for something familiar about him, a reason to connect him with Carly. The man was old enough to be her father. His clothes were as dirty as Carly’s, but they were stained with blood—and from what I could gather, not his own.

  I quickly scanned Carly’s body again, looking for an injury I might have missed, some indication that this man had caused her harm. But she didn’t appear to be scared of him at all. In fact, she seemed relieved to see him.

  She jerked her arm free of Chris’s hold and walked over to him. Without so much as a second thought, she reached out to lower his gun. The man wavered for a minute, his eyes darting between me and Chris, before he re-engaged the safety and propped his rifle against a nearby tree.

  “They won’t hurt you,” she said, throwing my own words back at me. Funny how that circle-of-trust thing worked. “That’s Lucas. Lucas Marshall,” she said when the man cocked his head in my direction.

  A stunned silence swept over him. “Are there others with them?” he asked as he sidestepped around Carly and searched the area.

  “No,” Carly said. “How about the vans?”

  “I climbed through the wreckage looking for survivors, but the fire … ” He paused and swallowed hard before continuing. “The wreckage, the bodies … no one could have walked away from that.”

  Except us, I almost reminded him.

  The man turned around and motioned for whoever was lurking in the woods behind him to step forward. One by one, four guys emerged from the trees. They were my age, their faces poking at memories buried in my mind, ones I couldn’t quite grab ahold of. I gave up trying to place their faces and shifted my attention to their hands and the weapons they all seemed to be carrying. Three had axes; one had a two-way radio. No one else had a gun, but somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

  As if sensing my confusion, Chris leaned in and whispered, “Do you know these people?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know them. I mean, they looked familiar, eerily familiar, but could I place them … yeah, no.

  “So run on three?” Chris whispered, and I nodded, trying to figure out a way to communicate my plan to Carly. No way was I leaving here her with a bunch of axe-wielding strangers, no matter how at ease she appeared to be with them.

  Chris tapped out the countdown on my leg, and my entire body sprang into action the moment I felt the final beat. I lunged forward and yanked Carly backward, tucking her into my side as I took off running. Chris was beside me, glancing back every few strides to see if they were gaining on us.

  Carly twisted in my arms, arguing with me to let her go. I lost my footing and would’ve stumbled to the ground had something … no, someone not reached out to steady me. His sharp intake of breath, followed by a deep rumble of laughter, had me slowly lifting my head, my gaze moving from his tattered jeans to the red plaid shirt sticking out from under his jacket to the black gloved hands still holding me upright.

  Chris stopped a few feet ahead of me and spun around, his eyes flaming with fury. I fell backward to the ground with Carly still in my grasp, my thoughts scattering as I did my best to make sense of what I was seeing. Who I was seeing. “Nick?”

  I watched numbly as he gently placed Carly aside and knelt down in front of me, then stripped off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even mutter a coherent thought.

  The five people we’d been running from came barreling though the trees, skidding to a stop when they saw Nick. They fanned out, circling around us, preventing our escape.

  “You all right, buddy?” Nick asked as he worked my fingers into his gloves. “You know who I am, right?”

  I nodded, both in answer to his question and in disbelief. Nick was my brother’s best friend. When Tyler was alive, he’d spent more time at our house than me most days. He still did. Mom liked having him around, said it kept her connected to Tyler.

  “I know who you are. You’re Nick Meehan. Tyler’s best friend,” I finally said.

  “Well that’s a start,” he laughed. “You had me worried there for a minute.”

  With his jacket now off, I could see that he had a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Two with guns, three with axes, and one with a radio, I adjusted my mental notes.

  Nick sat down next to me and dug through his backpack. He pulled out a first-aid kit and tossed it in Chris’s direction, motioning to the gash on his head. “I’d clean that out if I were you. It looks pretty deep.”

  Chris stayed silent, his hands frozen on the still-unopened first-aid kit.

  “He with you?” Nick asked as he opened the kit himself and started tending to the gash on Chris’s head.

  “Yep,” was all I could manage to get out.

  “He have a name?” Nick asked.

  “Chris,” I replied.

  “I’m Nick Meehan,” he said when I failed to introduce him. “I’m his brother’s best friend.”

  “Fantastic,” Chris mumbled under his breath. “And you’re here, why?”

  “Because I promised his brother I’d look out for him. And that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Umm … you’re about a month late,” Chris said as he pushed Nick’s hands away and smacked a fresh wad of gauze to his head himself. “You should’ve convinced him to run the day before his seventeenth birthday, before they ever got a chance to test him.”

  “Probably, and I would’ve been here sooner, but coordinating with this bunch”—Nick paused, his hand circling to the guys settling to the ground around us—“takes some serious time.”

  The man who’d leveled his rifle in my direction stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Joe Thompson. It’s nice to finally meet you, Lucas.”

  I stared at his hand but made no move to take it. I didn’t know this guy for shit, and our brief
introduction earlier hadn’t exactly been friendly.

  twelve

  I dug the heels of my hands into my temples. The headache I’d been nursing since the accident was getting worse, and I didn’t know if it was because I was physically hurt or completely and utterly confused. Everybody was staring at me, Chris included, waiting to see what I would do.

  “How did you even get here?” I asked. I didn’t remember seeing so much as a squirrel on our trip down the mountain, never mind a car.

  “We drove,” Nick replied, thumbing his finger over his shoulder. “Car’s parked about a mile south of here on an old logging trail. We didn’t want to risk being seen. No chance of getting either of you out if that happened.”

  “Ooookay,” I said, my eyes darting between the five strangers now spread out around me and Chris. “So you were planning on breaking Cam out?” I shook my head at the impossibility of it all. I’d been there. Lived there. Encased in two rows of electrified fencing and four watchtowers, that place had electronically sealed doors and no windows. And Taser guns. It wasn’t designed simply to keep us in, but to keep the rest of the world out. “With a bunch of strangers?”

  “Cam and you,” Nick corrected. “And they’re not strangers.” He gestured to the four boys to move closer. “Do you recognize any of them? Do any of them look remotely familiar to you?”

  “Nope,” I lied. They looked familiar enough, but with the exception of Nick and Carly, I couldn’t put a name to a single face.

  Nick nodded, and one by one they stood up and rattled off their names.

  “Keith. We played on the same little league team in fourth grade. Catcher.”

  “Second base,” the one next to him said. “I’m Connor. We never played on the same team, but your sister Suzie and my sister Julia are in the same kindergarten class.”

  “In seventh grade some jackass stole all my clothes out of my gym locker when I was in the shower,” the third guy said. “You found me sitting in the locker room four hours later, wearing nothing but a towel. You gave me your baseball uniform to wear home, then went and kicked the shit out of the jerk who did it. Name’s David, by the way”

  Him, I suddenly remembered. “David Reinhart,” I said, and he smiled before glancing at the guy next to him.

  “Andrew,” the next one said without prompting. “I’m the guy you kicked the shit out of.”

  I shrugged, not an ounce of guilt surfacing. He had it coming.

  “Every single one of them knows you, knows Cam,” Carly said. “And they jumped at the chance to help.”

  I stared at them, stunned. There was no common denominator here. No reason for any of them to exhibit that level of loyalty. I barely knew them, and yet here they were, willing to risk their lives to save mine.

  “Why now?” I asked, pissed that it was me and not Tyler who had prompted Nick’s sudden action. “Why not when my brother was taken?”

  “Because Cam’s not coming home,” Carly replied. “We got the letter two days ago. Because of what they think he did, because of what those stupid tests did to him, they’re never going to let him come home.”

  “So you think you can just waltz in there? You do understand how crazy you sound, right? It’s not like they issue visitor passes or coordinate family days. That place is essentially a prison, one giant solitary confinement ward.”

  I spun around to see Chris. He was chuckling to himself, thought their plan was as idiotic as I did. “Do you even remember someone named Cam, because I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Can you name one other person on our hall besides me?” Chris asked.

  I looked away, not wanting to risk him seeing the shame in my eyes. There were eight other kids who’d lived on our hall, eight kids who’d listened to me spout off yesterday in our little feel-good therapy session. I’d eaten my meals with them every day, shared a communal bathroom with them, even watched them break down into tears on more than one occasion as they barely survived a test. Yet with the exception of Chris, I didn’t know a single one of their names, never took the time to ask.

  “My point exactly,” Chris said, then turned toward Carly. “Yeah, I know who your brother is. And I doubt he’s coming home anytime soon, I can tell you that much.”

  “Why not?” I asked as I cycled through the faces of every guy I’d ever met in that facility. I didn’t remember anyone who looked even remotely like Carly.

  “Remember the guy across the hall, the one who snapped and hung his roommate a few days in?” Chris asked.

  I nodded. I’d never actually met the guy. Sure, we’d been processed though the same intake center and shared an initial van ride up to the Bake Shop, but he’d kept to himself, never looked up, never made eye contact with any of us. Once inside the testing facility, he became a virtual shut-in, refusing to leave his room until the guards physically hauled him out. The whole building went into lockdown the night he killed his roommate, each of us confined to our room for what seemed like an eternity as the guards screamed orders to each other. The next morning, the door to the room across the hall from ours was wide open, the ten-by-ten-foot space completely empty.

  “What about him?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s Cam.” Chris replied.

  “My brother didn’t kill anybody,” Carly yelled. “Cameron isn’t like that. He gets straight A’s in school. He’s a camp counselor in the summer and the senior class president. He’s not a bad person. They did that to him. They turned him into a monster, and now they’re refusing to let him come home.”

  “They or the gene?” Chris asked.

  “They,” I replied, not wanting to think about that question. Nature versus nurture. It was a debate I’d been having with myself since the day they took Tyler away. A debate that would haunt me until the day I died.

  “Who’s to say he’s even still there?” I continued. I hadn’t heard any mention of the guy since he’d snapped. I assumed they’d transferred him out to a real prison, one where they housed murderers awaiting trial.

  “He’s in there,” Chris said. “There are isolation cells on the lower level of the facility for special people like him.”

  “And you know that how?”

  Chris shrugged. “I pay attention, listen to what the guards are saying to each other, and actually talk to the other guys in there with us. You should try it sometime, Lucas. It’s amazing the amount of information you can find out when you actually take the time to open your mouth and ask questions.”

  “Whatever,” I said, giving him my middle finger. “I wasn’t there to make friends.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Chris said, his words directed to the six people Carly seemed to think could accomplish the impossible. “There’s no way you’re getting inside that facility. Lucas is right—the place is like Fort Knox.”

  One of the guys held up his axe, a disturbing grin crossing his face.

  “You don’t have a chance in hell, not even with that,” Chris replied, shaking his head. “Once they see you, they’ll start shooting. The guards inside may only be armed with Taser guns, but the ones in the towers, they’re carrying rifles. You can’t break into that place. No one can.”

  “If what you’re saying is true and he’s still in there, if there’s a chance he’s still alive, then we have to at least try,” Carly said.

  Chris grumbled something under his breath, and I instinctively knew what he was thinking—neither one of us was sure that Cam belonged at home, not after what he’d done.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re asking these guys to do?” Chris turned and sought out the boy next to him. Keith, I think. “Do you have any idea what it’s like in there? Did you even stop to consider for a second what will happen when they find out who you are?”

  Axe-boy jerked his head as if he knew damn well what he was up against.

  “They all risked a lot to come here
, Lucas,” Carly said, completely ignoring Chris’s questions. “They left their families, their friends, their lives behind to help you and Cam.” As if that was supposed to sway me in some way.

  “Help Cam? Help him?” The brother she’d sent in there and the one she was intending to break out were different. Lethally different. “He killed someone, Carly. Even if you did get him out, what do you expect to do with him?”

  Nick sighed, his eyes meeting mine. “You honestly believe Cam is capable of hurting someone? Carly’s brother. Olivia’s brother. You honestly believe he could kill someone?”

  “If you asked me three years ago if my brother would ever commit suicide, I’d tell you that you were insane. But that place changes you, turns you into someone you’d barely even recognize. So, yeah. I think there’s a good chance he did it.”

  thirteen

  “We weren’t planning on forcing our way in, Lucas. At least not exactly.” Joe Thompson, who’d been letting Nick take the lead, now stepped forward and pointed methodically at each guy. “How old do they look to you?”

  I did a quick scan of their faces. I knew Nick’s age, Carly’s too. The rest of them … didn’t know, didn’t care. “My age, I guess. Why?”

  “What day of the week did you get transported to the testing facility?” Joe asked.

  “Tuesday,” Chris and I answered in unison. 4:03 p.m., to be exact. I remembered the moment we’d pulled into the Bake Shop. We were herded into a padded waiting room, where they verified our names and dates of birth. One by one they led us up into a small examining room and strip-searched us, three guards looking on as they checked in places no sane human being would think to hide stuff. It was humiliating, intentionally so, and I nearly took a swing at the guard myself when he asked me to drop my pants.

  “And how about Tyler?” Nick asked, pulling me from that memory. “Do you remember what day it was when they showed up for him?”

  Unfortunately, I did. I could still hear the sound of their tires on our stone driveway growing louder as they approached, small rocks sputtering onto the lawn. They’d knocked on the door, and when I didn’t answer it fast enough, they broke it down, trained their weapons at Tyler’s chest, and cuffed him. All because Tyler was in the bathroom and Mom was on the phone begging Sheriff Watts to intervene. He didn’t. No one intervened on Tyler’s behalf. Or mine.