Hardwired (16 page)

Thirty-three

We continued to search for Cam and Carly in silence, checking every nook and cranny of the Bake Shop's large industrial kitchen. No matter how hard I tried to push the thought aside, my mind kept circling back to the idea that Ms. Tremblay knew what this place was doing to us. She'd witnessed it with Tyler and Cam, and yet she'd done nothing but sit back and let them continue poking at us.

“Why?” I asked. “Can you tell me why, after knowing what happened to Cam, you did nothing to help any of us?”

She sighed, her eyes looking everywhere but at me. “Sometimes the ends justify the means, Lucas. If we could only find a way to identify those with a proven potential to become violent offenders, do you know how much safer the world would be?”

I'd heard all that crap before. Some government-paid scientist had discovered an anomaly while studying the brain of a school shooter, a “kink in the warrior gene,” he'd first called it. A couple of trips to Congress and a promise to end the youth-violence epidemic that seemed to dominate the nightly news, and bam, our government wrote him a billion-dollar check to develop a dozen facilities just like the one we were trapped in.

I slammed a pantry door with more force than necessary and twisted around to face her. “Do you have any idea what your stupid testing does to us?” I yelled. “Do you even care? I've done nothing wrong. Chris did nothing wrong. Tyler did nothing wrong. Yet here we are, your own personal science experiment, because some scientist who probably doesn't even have kids of his own decided screwing with our minds was a good idea.”

Ms. Tremblay shook her head. “Your brother wasn't adjusting well, Lucas. We shouldn't have let him go.
I
shouldn't have let him go.”

“That's where you're wrong. You shouldn't have brought him here to begin with,” I said, hoping that she'd let go of her save-the-world philosophy and admit it. Just once, admit that what they were doing here was wrong.

“I had a child once,” she said, and I tossed my hand out in a
so what
gesture. Joe had pretty much said that was the reason she'd changed sides, that her husband and daughter's deaths somehow convinced her that these facilities were the key to her revenge. I didn't much care.

“Her name was Emily,” she whispered, her eyes glossing with the memory. “We were travelling through Philadelphia. Sam—her dad—and I were at a conference in Atlanta, a preliminary hearing about IGT's claim that they'd found a correlation between the MAOA-L gene and the propensity to commit violent crimes. Emily's nanny was sick with the flu, so we'd brought her along with us.”

“Good for you,” I said, irritated that she'd stopped looking for Carly altogether and was now standing in the middle of the kitchen, reminiscing.

“Let me guess—your husband was a geneticist of some sort?” Chris snapped.

“No,” she said, “he was a psychologist like me. A profiler.”

I laughed at the irony of it all, wondering what he'd make of us.

“We were on our way home. I was driving; Sam was on the phone with Joe. Both of them were opposed to what IGT was proposing.”

According to Joe, so were you
, I silently added.

“I pulled off the highway, not even thinking about where I was. We needed gas, and Emily had been complaining about having to go to the bathroom for the past hour. We should've gotten back on the highway as soon as I saw the neighborhood, but the gas light was on, and, well … ” Ms. Tremblay trailed off. She didn't need to fill in the blanks; I knew what had happened next.

“I waited in the car while Sam brought her in to use the bathroom. They were victims of circumstance, ‘wrong place, wrong time,' or so the police told me. They caught the person who did it, but he died awaiting trial, some gang-related incident in prison.” She paused and looked at me. I don't know what she expected to see. Understanding? Forgiveness, perhaps.

“If we'd known about the gene, if we could've identified his potential to become violent, then we could've removed him from society.”

“Then what?” Chris prompted. “Your husband and daughter would still be alive?”

“Yes,” Ms. Tremblay whispered. “I lost everything that day. Everything. Over something that should've been preventable.
Is
preventable.”

“And you're assuming the guy who killed your family was defective? That he carried that same gene as me and Lucas?” Chris asked, and she nodded her answer.

“The files,” Chris said, nudging my arm. “Give her the damn flash drive.”

It was time. I bent down and yanked off my sneaker and sock. “Here,” I said as I placed the flash drive in her hand. “That guy who shot your family, they
did
test him.” Or so Joe had told me. “And he wasn't a carrier. He was just some random guy, doped up on heroine.”

I closed her fingers around the flash drive, squeezing a little harder than necessary. “It's all on there. You should think about that next time you lock one of us up in your little lab and play with our minds.”

Ms. Tremblay whirled around and walked out of the kitchen, muttering something incoherent under her breath. Chris shot me a
what do you want to do
look, and I shrugged before following her out.

She ducked into a room to the left, leaving the door open for me and Chris. There was a massive TV on the far wall, and it wasn't until I was within touching distance of the screen that I realized it was actually twenty-four frameless monitors all hung side by side. A U-shaped table was positioned in the center of the room, keyboards and laptops littering the surface. And in the corner, spilling out of a cardboard box, were what looked like broken surveillance cameras.

Ms. Tremblay went down the row of laptops, hitting the power button on each one. The fifth one down lit up, the tiny blue light flickering to life. She inserted the flash drive and waited impatiently, her fingers drumming the enter key until the information she was searching for finally scrolled across the screen. She scanned the documents so fast, I doubted she'd even begun to appreciate the extent of Joe's research. But apparently the small glimpse she got was more than enough.

She yanked the flash drive from the laptop and shoved it into her pocket. “Does anybody besides the two of you know about this?”

“No,” I lied. Sob story about her daughter or not, I still wasn't a hundred percent sure I trusted her.

“Good,” she said. “For now, keep it that way.”

Thirty-four

“You gave Ms. Tremblay the information, so I say we cut bait and get out of here now,” Chris said.

“What about Cam? What about Carly?” I asked, looking behind us. Ms. Tremblay had told us to go ahead, that she'd catch up with us shortly. Something about making sure none of the documents she'd downloaded had made their way to the facility's mainframe. But that was at least five minutes ago, and we hadn't seen her since.

“Screw them,” Chris replied. “Carly's been nothing but trouble since the second we laid eyes on her, and you saw Cam. He's pretty much checked out already.”

I shook my head. “You can go if you want, but I can't just leave Carly in here. Not after what Ms. Tremblay said about the guards and her brother. He—”

I stopped mid-sentence, the hint of a shadow at the end of the hall catching my attention. I turned around, half expecting it to be one of the guards from the lounge or Cam. But the shadow was already gone. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Chris asked. He walked down the entire length of the hall, then turned back and tossed his hands out, silently asking what had me so spooked.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking off the feeling that I was being watched. “I swear this place is screwing with me even more than usual.”

“You and me both,” Chris said as he pulled up next to me. “There's nobody down there. But the fact that you're starting to see things makes me think I'm right. We need to get the hell out of here before you crack next.”

“Can't,” I said. As infuriating as Carly was, I couldn't leave her.

Rounding the corner, I stopped dead in my tracks. It was another empty hall, but something about this one felt familiar. Agonizingly familiar. The white tiles that lined the floor, the graying grout, the small red streak on the wall that I'd always assumed was blood they couldn't get off …

“Our room,” Chris said, and we both ducked in. The beds were stripped bare, the uncomfortable squares of foam they called pillows waiting for the new residents. Ones who'd never made it here. Ones who were lying dead in a van. The camera mounted in the corner of our room was off, its giant eye hanging downward like a wayward child. I motioned for Chris to give me a lift, then reached up and tore it off the ceiling. I threw it to the floor, driving my foot into the lens until it was nothing more than a broken mess of wires. It felt amazing to actually destroy some little piece of this place.

“How could we have left this behind?” Chris laughed, and I turned around, found him lounging on the top bunk, the magazine I'd stashed in my mattress open in his hands.

“If you're done reminiscing?” Ms. Tremblay was standing in the doorway, her hands waving at us to get moving. She saw the magazine and sighed in disgust, but made no move to take it away. I guess in the scheme of things, one dirty magazine didn't matter much anymore.

Chris tucked the magazine back into the slit I'd cut in the mattress—a present for the next unlucky soul who got stuck in this room—then jumped down off the top bunk.

I headed toward the door, paying more attention to Chris kicking at the shattered surveillance camera than to where I was going, and I walked smack into Ms. Tremblay's back. I smothered a curse, wondering why the person who'd been bitching at us to hurry up a few seconds earlier was now stopped dead in her tracks. There were nine rooms in this hall, nine empty rooms that all needed to be searched.

There was a shuffling sound just behind Cam's doorway; nothing but an echo of movement. I walked in, half expecting Cam to be sitting there, rocking back and forth, completely oblivious to the fact that we were all searching for him. He wasn't, but finding him in that broken state would've been a blessing compared to what I actually saw.

Carly.

Her tiny frame was huddled into the corner of her brother's room. Her eyes were red and she was trembling, her words slurring together into what sounded like the phrase “too late.” It wasn't until I passed through the doorway that I saw him hanging there. The bedsheet was wrapped around the metal frame of the top bunk, and Cam's legs were dangling inches off the ground. He'd wound the sheet twice around the frame, ensuring it would hold, before slipping off the opposite end and snapping his neck.

“Oh shit.” I wrapped my hands around Cam's legs and lifted him up, pointlessly trying to ease the tension of the noose. “Help me get him down.”

Chris scrambled up to the top bunk and clawed at the sheet until it tore free. Cam fell forward, his entire weight slumping over my shoulder. Unable to stop our momentum, I tumbled to the ground, Cam's lifeless body landing on top of me.

“Move,” Chris yelled, and I slid Cam to the floor, then skidded backward out of the way.

Chris knelt down next to Cam and pressed an ear to his mouth, listening for signs that Cam was still breathing. He rotated his wrist to feel for a pulse, then swore and started alternating between pounding on Cam's chest and forcing his own breath into his lungs. Cam's chest rose and fell in time with Chris's breathing, but not once did he gasp for air. Not once did he look anything but gone.

For a few excruciatingly long minutes, my entire life revolved around Chris's hands on Cam's chest, Carly's ragged whimpers behind me, and the agonizing sense of despair gripping us all. Chris's hands slowed to a stop as he lifted two trembling fingers to Cam's neck. He shook his head and fell backward, his entire body collapsing onto the cold tile floor as he covered his face with his hands.

I knew what Chris was thinking: we'd failed. We'd risked everything to come in here, had put ten other boys' lives in danger, and for what? None of it had changed a damn thing.

“No,” I screamed as I shoved Chris out of the way and started pounding on Cam's chest myself. “I didn't risk everything,
everything
, for it to end this way.”

“Stop.” Ms. Tremblay laid her hand on my shoulder, gently squeezing until she had my attention. “He's gone, Lucas. He's gone.”

I leaned back, staring down at Cam's dead eyes. They were a darker blue than Carly's and filled with a pain that went soul-deep. I knew that look; I'd seen Tyler surrender to it in our backyard.

Bloody handprints marred Cam's bare chest, the deep crimson standing out against his pale skin. I tilted his head to the side, looking for claw marks, scratches, something to indicate that he'd fought—that the second the sheet had tightened around his neck, he'd changed his mind and struggled to live. But as with Tyler, I found nothing. Not a single outward sign that he'd had any second thoughts. Any desire to live.

I slid the makeshift noose off Cam's neck, flinching at the deep purple ring that ran from his jaw to the back of his ears. I screamed as memories flooded my mind. One after another they bombarded me, like flashes from that strobe light above my bed, burning my eyes and searing my very being. The rage built to a strangling level, and I stood up and slammed my fist into the wall.

“He killed himself,” I muttered numbly. “He went through all of this, for what? What's the point of getting out of this place, of going home at all, if this is what will happen? If eventually we'll just give up?”

“No,” Chris said. “We're not them. You're not Tyler and I'm not Cam. This won't happen to us. I won't let it.”

I laughed, the harsh sound hurting even my own ears. “First my brother, then Olivia, and now Cam? Odds aren't exactly in our favor.”

“We're
not
them,” Chris repeated, and I wondered who he was trying to convince—me or himself.

I wished I had half his faith, but everything I'd seen, everything I'd lived through, demanded that I believe otherwise. I dug the heel of my hands into my eyes, refusing to cry, refusing to give this place even an ounce of my pain.

“Lucas?” Ms. Tremblay laid a hand on my shoulder, her tone soft and pitiful. For a second I was back home again, loosening my tie after Tyler's funeral, listening to the minister try and comfort my mother by saying some stupid shit about how Tyler was at peace.

“You won,” I said, flinching her off. “Are you happy now?”

“No.” Her voice hitched, and I looked up and saw tears pooling in her eyes. Genuine tears. “It's going to be all right,” she said. “Somehow, I'm going to make this all right.”

“How?” I stood up and looked in Carly's direction. She was crumpled on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. She reminded me so much of the Cam I'd seen in the isolation unit earlier, lost in a world of agony with no desire to come back. “How are you going to make any of this better?” I asked.

“I'm going to get you home. I'm going to get you all home.”

“Home.” I tossed that ugly word in her direction, knowing full well that whatever life I'd had died the second that stupid genetic test declared me a potential killer. Suzie and my mom were it, the only ones who didn't look at me with a mixture of disgust and fear. No girlfriend. No college acceptance letters. No future to speak of. Absolutely nothing to look forward to. Nothing to live for.