Hardwired Page 9

  “It’s been cold for the last twenty-four hours,” Chris fired back. “Where the hell have you been?”

  I ignored him and went about removing my other sneaker. My socks were soaking wet, the navy blue dye streaking my feet and giving them a morbid appearance.

  “You do get how absolutely hysterical this is, don’t you?” Chris asked as he watched me cradling my foot. “They take us from our family and friends, on some stupid assumption that we could be dangerous, and lock us up. They secure this place to the hilt to make sure we can’t get out, submit us to a battery of tests, and—”

  “And yet here we are, two potential psychopaths, sitting on the ground, tired and half frozen, on the outside,” I said, finishing his thought. It was insanely ironic and completely absurd.

  “I don’t get what’s so funny,” Carly said.

  “They’ve locked us out,” Chris replied. “The government spent millions of taxpayer dollars trying to keep the general population safe from our kind, and here we are, trapped outside their walls with all you innocent victims at our disposal.”

  “Kind of makes you want to do something stupid just to make a point, doesn’t it?” I replied.

  “No, it doesn’t, and sitting here laughing about it isn’t helping anything,” Carly snapped. “We need to find a way to get in.”

  I wanted to get in just as badly as she did. Now that I was sitting here, a few yards away from a warm bed and hot food, the cold I’d refused to acknowledge bore into my bones. I didn’t care what awaited us inside, what they’d do to me, or how many lies I would have to tell—I just wanted in.

  “What did you have in mind then, sweetheart?” Chris’s drawl was intentional and sickeningly sweet. He was as tired and irritated as me and not above amusing himself at Carly’s expense.

  “I don’t know.” Carly scanned the exterior of the building, looking for an access point she’d never find. “Maybe there’s a window in the back or another rock we could throw at the door. You said the main power was down and they wouldn’t want to waste generator power electrifying the fence, so maybe we just climb over.”

  I pointed to the top of the fence I was leaning against. “See that mass of wire up there? That’s razor wire. It’ll tear you to shreds, but feel free to give it a try and let me know how it goes.”

  She huffed out a response I couldn’t quite understand and went back to her pointless surveying of the facility’s impenetrable walls.

  “You want me to do something?” Chris mocked. “All right, I’ll do something. How about this?”

  He stood up and walked a few feet away to a clean patch of snow. I barely controlled my laughter as he unzipped his fly and pissed out WE’RE BACK. “That should catch their attention, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t bother to point out that the cameras were off and there wasn’t a window in the entire building. If it made Chris feel better to pee out his aggression, then that was fine by me.

  eighteen

  I would’ve kept on laughing, completely oblivious to the Bake Shop’s door opening, if Carly hadn’t jabbed me in the ribs. I jumped to my feet and spun around, scouring my brain for the story all three of us had memorized. I came up empty, fear stealing my words.

  I wrapped my hands around the links of the fence and leaned in. I couldn’t make out the face of the person standing by the door. Whoever it was had their back to us, as if trying to shelter their face from the driving cold.

  “Ms. Tremblay,” Chris whispered, and I nodded as my eyes trailed down to the heels she always wore—dull and gray, just like the facility.

  She took a few steps away from the safety of the building and lifted her cellphone into the air. We were smack in the center of a no man’s land and she honestly thought she could get a signal. Idiot.

  “So once we get in, we should—”

  Carly took off running along the fence before I even finished my sentence. So much for the warning I’d given her about trusting Chris and me.

  “She’s gonna get us killed,” Chris hissed, darting after her. His fingers grazed the hood of her jacket. He yanked hard, and she fell backward into the snow.

  It was that sound—the thump of Carly landing on her butt, followed by the string of curses she launched in Chris’s direction—that caught Ms. Tremblay’s attention.

  “What in the—” Ms. Tremblay slapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened as she realized that she wasn’t alone, that Chris and I were standing on the other side of the fence, completely unsecured in the outside world.

  I smiled, a bit of smug satisfaction settling in. Ms. Tremblay hadn’t planned on ever having to see me again. And definitely not without all of the fancy electronic locks and Taser-armed guards to keep her safe.

  I waved, my smile anything but friendly.

  “Lucas? Chris? What are you doing here?” The question was directed at us, but her eyes never left Carly. Her gaze ran the entire length of Carly’s body, searching for some indication that she was hurt. There were a couple of scratches on Carly’s hands and a day’s worth of dirt ground into her clothes, but other that, I’d say she looked pretty damn good.

  Ms. Tremblay took a step toward us, her tone softening, her eyes sympathetic as she curled her fingers around the fence. Something about the look on her face bothered me. Maybe it was the way her focus lingered on Carly’s scrapes rather than Chris’s bloody head.

  “Are you okay?” she finally asked Carly, her shoulders stiffening as she sent an accusing glare in my direction. “Did they hurt you?”

  That last question pissed me off beyond belief. For weeks I’d listened to her spout off her psycho-babble bullshit, promising us that she was here to help us adjust, become more comfortable expressing ourselves with words instead of violence. And her first glimpse of me and Chris on the outside had her condemning us as predators. It didn’t matter how many tests we’d passed for them; in their minds—in her mind—we’d always be dangerous.

  Little did she know that Chris and I were the only innocent ones here. Little Miss Perfect was responsible for the deaths of over a dozen people.

  “We didn’t touch her,” Chris barked, obviously as angry as me.

  Ms. Tremblay ignored him, her attention still solely focused on Carly. “I’m going to go inside and get one of the guards. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back. You’ll be safe here.”

  “You got to be kidding me,” I mumbled under my breath. Carly was bundled up in a winter jacket and boots, with nothing wrong but some pine needles twisted into her hair and a dirty coat. But Chris and I were a wreck. His head was caked with dried blood, my shoulder was killing me, and neither one of us had more than a thin sweatshirt on. Still, Ms. Tremblay’s first concern was for Carly.

  “Wait! There was a crash,” Carly called after her, launching into our well-rehearsed lie. “Their van collided with my car and then rolled over the cliff. My car did too.”

  “Shut up!” Chris yelled at Carly. Our plan was to get inside, then stall for as long as we could before telling them the whole story. We were hoping to buy ourselves some time to look around and figure out how bad things had gotten before explaining our sudden reappearance. Apparently, though, Carly missed the memo. Or she was making up her own plan as she went along.

  I walked over to Carly and whispered, “Save some of that information until after we get inside.”

  Carly shook her head and inched closer to the fence. “I was trying to find my dad’s hunting cabin, but I must have taken a wrong turn. I got lost and then … then … ” She trailed off, her eyes skirting over me and Chris. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who they are. I just need to use a phone. I need to call my dad and let him know where I am.”

  “Enough!” Chris reached out for her, but I held him back, curious to see how far Carly would take this. That, and her plan was actually working; Ms. Tremblay had finally shifted
her attention to me and Chris, her face paling as she took in our injuries.

  “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “We walked,” I answered.

  Ms. Tremblay looked past me to the road, quickly realizing what I already knew. There were no tire tracks, no flashing blue and red lights; just three solitary sets of footprints in the otherwise undisturbed snow. “Nobody stopped to help you? You made it all the way back here on your own?”

  I nodded. “It’s not like there was a 7-Eleven we could’ve walked into and asked for help. You picked a good place to build this facility. Out in the woods, away from people, away from any kind of help should an accident occur and leave a bunch kids like me and Chris hurt and alone.”

  Ms. Tremblay gave a small, sympathetic nod. So far, so good.

  “We followed the road back here. We didn’t know what else to do,” I finished, hunching over and groaning in pain for effect.

  “There was a van that was supposed to be heading up here. It had four boys on it, along with two guards. We assume they waited at the intake facility until the storm passed—the phones are down so we can’t verify that. Did you pass them on the road? Did you see them?”

  “Nope,” I lied and turned toward Carly. “Did you pass them on the road?”

  She shook her head, a small tear sliding down her cheek. “I didn’t see them either.”

  “And what about us?” Chris asked. “Did you think twice before sending us out in that storm? Did you wonder at all if we had made it safely to the reintegration facility?”

  “No. Well, yes.” She paused and bowed her head, blindly searching the ground for an explanation. “If I’d known there was an accident, if I’d suspected you boys hadn’t made it safely to the reintegration facility, then I would’ve gone looking for you myself.”

  “Well, you’re in luck, because now you don’t have to,” Chris replied, holding his hands out wide. “We came to you.”

  “What happened to the others on your van?” she asked. “Where are they?”

  “We’re it,” Chris said.

  “What do you mean, ‘we’re it’?’”

  Chris pointed in Carly’s direction. “Like the girl said, it’s only the three of us. Her car slammed into our van and we rolled down the embankment. She managed to climb out of her car before it fell over the edge, smashing, yet again, into our van. If you ask me, it’s all her fault. She’s the one who caused the whole accident in the first place.”

  Carly shot Chris a glare, and I swallowed down my laughter. Chris would play along for me, but there was no way he was going to let Carly forget who it was that set all this in motion.

  “Chris and I got out,” I quickly said before Carly had a chance to fire something stupid back at Chris. “We checked the others, but none of them were breathing. We found Carly crawling out of her car up on the road. Like Chris said, she barely made it before her car tumbled over the ledge.”

  “You mean they’re all dead?”

  “Yep. Every single one of them,” Chris shot back. “Not sure what you guys expected, though.” He stepped up to the fence and curled his fingers through the links. “You shipped a van full of innocent teens out onto icy roads in the middle of a blizzard. What exactly were you hoping would happen?”

  I waved Ms. Tremblay off when she went to answer. My toes were numb, my shoulder killed, and I was two steps away from falling flat on my face. I’d tell her whatever she wanted to know as soon as she let us in.

  “Please, can we go inside?” I begged. “I’m tired, and cold, and everything hurts.”

  Ms. Tremblay hesitated for a second, then walked back toward the door, her eyes landing squarely on me as she pounded on the steel frame. “I’m sorry,” she said. “And I meant what I said. I would’ve come looking for you myself, had I only known.”

  nineteen

  The harsh fluorescent lighting in the room seared through my eyelids, intensifying the headache threatening to split open my skull. Now that we were finally inside, warm and relatively safe, the adrenaline that had kept me moving disappeared, and I began to comprehend exactly what I had gotten myself into.

  “I thought you said the storm knocked the power out,” I said, fishing for information on the generators. We were sitting in a room I’d never been in before, in a part of the building I didn’t even know existed. And the lights seemed to be working fine to me.

  “It did,” the guard who’d been assigned to us replied. “Backup generators.”

  “There’s more than one?” I said, hoping Chris had also caught that distinction.

  “There are three,” Ms. Tremblay replied, not even turning to acknowledge me. She’d sent for the Bake Shop’s only medic and was watching over his shoulder as he assessed Carly’s injuries. Chris had a gash on his head and some nasty-looking cuts where he’d literally dug shards of glass out of his leg. I was exhausted and seriously contemplating slicing my toes off rather than dealing with the pain shooting through them as they thawed out. But as usual, Ms. Tremblay didn’t seem overly concerned about us. Carly first.

  She’d actually taken the time to find Carly some dry clothes, had scoured her own closet looking for something comfortable and warm for Carly to wear. Not for me and Chris. The girl whose only injuries were a dirty face and scratched-up knuckles got pampered while the two guys who’d earned their way out of that place were left sitting in their own blood.

  If I dug deep enough, part of me understood Ms. Tremblay’s concern. After our hike here, Carly actually looked the part of a girl who’d escaped a car crash. Her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with tears, and she was huddled into herself, shaking. But still, a little concern focused in our direction would’ve been nice.

  “So,” Ms. Tremblay started, finally satisfied that Carly’s injuries were superficial at best. “Tell me what happened again.”

  “Let’s not,” I spit out, praying Carly would keep her mouth shut. Chris had gone silent, hadn’t chimed in or said a word since we’d walked through the front door. And Ms. Tremblay seemed hell-bent on launching the world’s most miserable game of Twenty Questions. The three of us needed to regroup. Fast.

  I turned toward Chris, trying to figure out where his mind was. “You got anything to say?”

  “Nope,” he said with a quick shake of his head.

  “It’s important that we—”

  “We’ve already told you everything,” I said, cutting Ms. Tremblay off. “We can’t make it any simpler. Car smashed into van. Big cliff. Fire. Everybody dead. There, is that clearer now, or do you need me to draw you a picture?” I was half tempted to grab the pen out of the medic’s hand and do it. The images of the bodies, the shattered glass, and the blood-stained seats were right there at the forefront of my mind, begging to be sketched out.

  “Ah, that hurts.” Carly groaned, and everybody, including me, swung our heads in her direction. The medic was cleaning the scrapes on her knuckles and, from the smell of it, straight rubbing alcohol was his preferred antiseptic.

  The medic hesitated for a moment before tossing the bloodied strip of gauze into the trash, apparently deciding the wound was clean enough. Either that or her little-girl-in-pain act had actually worked. “Sorry about that,” he said, “but that accident banged you up pretty good.”

  Chris smirked, and I kicked him beneath the table. Asshole thought this was funny.

  “What?” He held his hands up in the air, feigning innocence. “I’m not allowed to feel bad for the poor little girl and her teeny weeny scrapes?”

  There was a loud rap on the door. The guard opened it a crack, barely enough for him to see out, then visibly relaxed and opened it wider.

  I recognized the guard who entered. He’d been assigned to our block of rooms, was the guard I’d had that little conversation with about the locks and the weather the other day. The one who’d warned me not to try anything. M
urphy. And Murphy was now back in uniform, his Taser gun in full view.

  His gaze roamed over Chris and me before resting on Carly. A flash of pity crossed his eyes, a crude assumption that we’d done something vile to her.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he finally said, addressing Ms. Tremblay. “But I’m trying to straighten out the sleeping arrangements for tonight. Where, exactly, are you intending to house her?”

  “In the girls’ quarters,” Ms. Tremblay answered, waving him away as if it were the dumbest question in the world. “Each facility has one. We’re required to have a minimum of three spaces devoted to female residents. I assume, since we were evaluated last month, that we’re still within compliance of that mandate.”

  “I’m well aware of their location,” Murphy replied. “And yes, under normal circumstances, the quarters are in functioning order. But housing her there isn’t feasible right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have enough fuel on site to keep the generators going for three days, but even that is pushing it,” he said, and I did the simple addition in my head, then glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. We were in the morning of day two, 11:00 a.m. to be exact.

  “In an attempt to stretch the fuel out, we cut power to those areas currently not in use,” Murphy went on. “That includes the girls’ quarters.”

  “Then reconnect the power,” Ms. Tremblay suggested.

  “Absolutely,” Murphy said. “And what part of the building should we take that power from? Perhaps the hall that currently houses the boys? Or maybe the keypads that secure your personal quarters from the rest of the building? Or better yet, the security camera we have on the Denton kid?”

  There it was—the confirmation that Carly’s brother was still in there, still alive. I’d suspected it, Chris had assured me of it, but until I heard his name pass the guard’s lips, I’d wondered, or maybe even hoped, that he wasn’t there.