The Trial (The Tree House) (18 page)

I lay there in silence for a while. My
arms throb with a deep burning ache from wiggling them around in the cuffs. Sure my stitches might heal quickly, but I won’t have any skin left on my wrists. The old fluorescent light over my head flickers for a second and I wonder how long this building has been here. I’ve probably never noticed it before and I’ve lived in Seattle my whole life. I guess it’s just one of those buildings that get lost in the jungle of taller buildings and other buildings. This place is just another structure on another street. People walk by it and drive by it every day and they’re completely oblivious to what happens here. Since there are no windows, I’m sure I’m on a basement level. Maybe I’m far below the ground floor. Maybe there’s someone up there mopping a floor or typing on a computer or sitting on a toilet and they’re just as oblivious to what’s under their feet.

For all they know, this floor doesn’t exist. For all Jack knows
, I’m dead. Maybe he’s dead. I don’t know if he got back to the Tree House. I don’t know if he ever found Hailey. They could all be dead for all I know. Everyone. Sy, David, Root, Arie, Keeta, Melody, Logan. I hate not knowing. I hate feeling so powerless. I hate being strapped down to this stupid, uncomfortable, crinkly bed.

The light flickers again and I can’t help but feel forgotten.

What else is there to do but close my eyes and try to fall asleep? The gray guy probably won’t be coming around for a couple more hours. I don’t know what time it is so I can’t really see how much time is passing. All I can think to do is close my eyes and hope something will happen when I open them again.

* * *

Something does happen while I’m out. I don’t really remember what I was dreaming about but I have this feeling in my chest like it was about something familiar to me. I feel an essence of a memory about my brother but I can’t place any details. I want to remember but it’s especially hard with all the shouting going on out in the hall.

“Don’t touch me! Let me go!”

I wish I could get up and peek out of my little barred window but I’m still stuck on this bed. I bet Anna is watching from her cell like she watched me when I first got here. I can hear multiple sets of feet scraping across the gritty, concrete ground and a lot of overlapping breaths as whoever that voice belonged to continues to struggle with however many people are holding onto him.

The door a couple cells down from mine clangs open and then
shuts again. The patient continues to yell though now the only other sound I hear is that of multiple footsteps walking back down the hall and the heavy door shutting behind them. Looks like Anna and I have a new neighbor. I listen from my bed as the guy continues to freak out.

“No. This can’t be happening,” he cries to himself. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.”

“Well it is,” I interrupt irritated.

The guy is silent. “Is someone else here?” he croaks.

I shift on my mattress and it crunches like newspaper. “There are two of us actually. And at least one of us is trying to sleep.” Anna lets out another groan. “Correction, both of us are trying to sleep.”

“What is this place?” the guy asks with a shaky voice. He sounds terrified.

I really want to get up. I want off this bed. I hate this place. “It’s your new home,” I say more to myself than to him. The sound of scraping concrete has me picturing him sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. I did the same thing when I first got here. I know just how he’s feeling. Like the only way he can find comfort is by making himself as small as possible. Maybe then he can disappear from this place. Too bad it doesn’t work quite like that. He’ll lose all track of everything here. The day, the month, the year. I haven’t even been here that long but it feels like it’s been a decade. “Hey,” I say breaking the silence. “Do you know what day it is?”

The guy sniffles once. “Tuesday
, the sixteenth,” he replies. His voice is muffled like he has his head buried in his arms.

It’s been three days? I’ve been here for three days already? There’s no way. Maybe I was out for longer than I
thought. How long was I on that operating table while they were patching up my bullet wound? How long have I been laying here? Well, this guy just told me. Three days apparently. I can’t believe it.

Another sniffle comes from his cell. If he’s here
, it must mean he’s one of the hundred patients like me. Maybe he’s one of the ones Jack and I thought we lost. “Hey,” I say trying to sound calm. “What’s your name?”

Another sniffle and then he says it weakly. “Ryan Roemer.”

chapter four

Immediately, I put a face in my head with the name and the voice. He’s Hailey’s brother. He’s the one I said we didn’t need to find because he was so far away. “What are you doing here?” I think out loud. I guess I wasn’t really looking for a reply.

Ryan answers anyway. “I came to surprise my family for Christmas.” His voice is weak and full of regret. “I should’ve stayed in Nashville.”

I close my eyes and let out a sigh. The straps around my sore wrists cr
eak as I shift on the mattress. Should I mention Hailey? Should I tell him we were out looking for her before I got caught? No, then he’ll want answers and I don’t have any. I don’t know if she’s safe. I don’t know if she’s alive. She could be in the building, drugged up in a cell for all I know.

Ryan is still whimpering to himself. “I should’ve called first. I should’ve gone straight home. I shouldn’t have
drank with Sam.”

“Alright,” I interrupt a little more irritated than I mean to sound. “You should’ve done a lot of things. I get it. But
you didn’t and now you’re here.”

“Ben,” Anna interjects.

I press my lips together and squeeze my eyes shut. I want off this bed. Even from behind my eyelids, the flickering fluorescent light is bothering me, making my head and my heart pound. I better be careful. If I get too anxious, that stupid thing in my arm will go off and I’ll be whisked away to the operating room again. Maybe that’s what I want though. At least I’ll be free from these restraints. It’s worth trying. What set it off the last few times? Pain. Every time I was in too much pain, the monitor went off like a freaking fire alarm. I just have to get myself into that much pain again. This isn’t going to be fun but I’ll do anything to get out of here.

The mattress covers most of the wooden bedframe except for a little bit above my head. I manage to scoot myself up, the edge of the leather straps digging more into my wrists and my ankles painfully. Ryan has started talking to himself again going on and on about Hailey and Nashville and his parents. Anna has started in
, trying to get him to calm down. Her voice is low and soothing even when her words catch as she tries to stifle her nausea. Both of them stop talking when they hear my head smack against the wooden frame.

“Ben?” Anna calls to me.

I try to ignore her and focus on the pain blooming at the base of my skull. It hurts, but not as bad as it could. I need to be careful. I just want to hurt myself enough to get my monitor to go off, not put myself into a coma. I lift my head again and slam it back against the bedframe again. Pain bursts behind my eyes and I grit my teeth hard wanting so badly to block out the pain but forcing myself to feel it. Feel it.

“What is he doing?”

“I don’t know. Ben?”

Again.

Again.

Coldness is spreading down my neck, into my arms and down my torso, down my legs into my feet. Anna’s small voice gets louder and soon she’s yelling at me and Ryan is trying to talk over her and I can hear their voices but I can’t tell what they’re saying. I feel like my head is about to explode and I’m trying to drown myself in the pain.
Trying to feel it, to soak in it. My heart is hammering and my ears are ringing. No, it’s not my ears that are ringing. It’s an alarm outside my door. I did it. My eyes fly open and I’m looking up at the fluorescent light as it flickers. The pain is racking my skull. Sweat is pouring from my skin and I hear the faint sound of a door being opened. The lights flicker again and my breathing is ragged. I let the hurt wash over my body like a fiery wave, scorching its way down my neck. My eyelids are heavy and it’s taking everything I have not to scream. One more hit against the bed frame as the door to my cell opens and then the lights flicker out and I’m surrounded by darkness.

* * *

“This kid is ridiculous.”

“I know. Remarkable isn’t he?”

It worked. When I open my eyes again, I’m met with a couple of shadowy faces. One of them has a surgical mask on and the other is Eli. What’s he doing here? I go to sit up only to be stopped short by a throbbing in the base of my skull and a strap across my neck and arms. Seriously?

“How’re you feeling, Benny Boy,” Eli asks putting a hand on my shoulder. I wish I could rip that arm of his right off and beat him with it.

“I’d feel better if you let me up,” I reply keeping my eyes locked on his. There’s no way I’m looking away from him. When the light over his head flickers, my heart skips for a second. So we’re not in the operating room. I shift, feeling the uncomfortable crinkle of my mattress. I’m still in my cell. But what is Eli doing here?

He cocks his head a little and gives me the concerned parent look again. “We had to get those stitches healed up first. We took them out and I’ll remove the straps if you promise to quit hurting yourself.” Finally I dip my head in a nod and Eli smiles. With a couple clicks, the straps loosen from around my wrists and my chest and I’m able to sit up. My side doesn’t ache at all and I pull my shirt up to find a fine raised scar with pin sized brown holes down either side.

“How’d I heal so fast?” I ask rubbing my sore wrists. They aren’t even raw like I thought they would be. There’s no hair where the straps rubbed and the skin is slick and shiny but there’s no blood. No redness. What did that man keep injecting into my neck? It must have done this.

“You’ll understand soon, Ben, that I’m not the bad guy here. I just want you to be the best
person you can be.”

With that
, Eli and the surgeon leave my cell and disappear down the hall. I get up carefully off the bed expecting pain to shoot up my side but I feel fine. Great in fact – if it weren’t for the whole entrapment thing and the illegal human experimenting. Anna coughs hard from her cell confirming my thought.

Eli said I was remarkable. What was that all about?

“Anna,” I call looking out my window. Another cough and then I see her pale fingers wrap around the bars of her own window and she pulls herself up. Her white blonde hair hangs in strings in front of her face. She looks worse than the last time I saw her. So much worse.

“What is it, Ben?” she croaks sleepily. I feel bad for bothering her. I glance over at the cell next to hers. Maybe I should ask Ryan if he heard anything else while I was out instead. “The gray men came and got him while you were unconscious.”

I feel my stomach twist in a knot. “What do you think they’re doing to him?”

Anna coughs hard making me bring a hand up to clutch my own throat.
“Something bad. He’s been gone for a while.”

“It’s always something bad.”

When the door at the end of the hall opens we both jump and Anna’s hands and face disappear from her window. I don’t want to hide so I press the side of my face against the bars so I can see what’s going on. There’s a familiar picture. Ryan is slumped forward in a wheelchair and murmuring the way Anna did whenever she was brought in. I don’t remember ever being wheeled in like that. Even under the influence of those crazy drugs, I’m sure I’d remember blabbering like an idiot. What is Eli waiting for?

After one of the men in gray puts Ryan in his cell, he starts back down the hall with the others. I didn’t even notice one of them falling behind until he’s walking my way with a tray of food. Well isn’t it my luck that the one with the personal vendetta against me stops in front of my door and leans in so our faces are close. “Back up, lab rat,” he says.

Without saying a word, I take two steps back and wait as he opens the door to my cell. Once he’s in and the other gray men have closed the door at the end of the hall, his dull eyes sharpen and the lines in his forehead deepen. “Listen,” he says in a low voice. “We don’t have much time.”

I find myself taking another step backward.
“Uh…what?” I stammer.

“You’re Ben,” the man says and I flinch when he quickly goes over to my bed to set do
wn my tray of mush. “Ben Morgan.”

There’s nothing blocking the open door to my cell now. I’m so tempted to make a run for it but what would I do once I got
to the end of the hall? The door is locked with the same mechanism as my cell door. “Yeah,” I finally say eying him suspiciously. Again he moves quickly, taking a couple steps toward me and I tense up bending my knees, ready to spring if he tries anything.

“Calm down,” the man says putting his hands
up. “I’m Zack. I’m a friend of Allison’s.”

Now
, I feel myself straightening up at the sound of my old accomplice’s name. “You know Allison?”

“Knew,” he corrects me.

My heart sinks. “So it’s true then,” I whisper more to myself. “She really was killed helping us.”

Z
ack nods. “Unfortunately yes, but we’re not here to wallow. I told you there isn’t a lot of time.”

“Time for what?”
I ask feeling angry both for him just brushing off Aly’s death like that and for wasting our supposedly “precious” time telling me we don’t have time. Ryan lets out a pain filled scream and Zack and I both jump when the alarm outside his door starts going off.

Zack
swears and digs into his pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. “Just take this,” he growls jabbing it into my stomach. “And don’t let anyone see it. I mean it.” Then he rushes past me, shutting and locking my door before hurrying over to Ryan’s cell. I run to stuff the paper under my mattress then go back to look out my window. Zack is already pulling a barely conscious Ryan out of his cell and another couple men in gray are wheeling a gurney down the hall toward them. There’s a big red stain on Ryan’s shirt and I feel a shudder go through me when he coughs, sending a waterfall of blood down his chin.

“Hey, what’s wrong with him?” I yell. “Where are you taking him?”

My supposed ally looks my way. “Nothing to see here, lab rat,” he yells back and dumps Ryan onto the stretcher. The three of them disappear back down the hall and through the door with Ryan in tow.

Fire is making its way up my throat and I feel like my skin is crawling with bugs and electricity. In a fit of rage
, I slam my hands against the metal bars and let out a scream. “Let me out!” I yell even though I know no one can hear me through these cement walls. “Let me out!” There has to be someone somewhere that can hear me. My eyes search the hall until a flicker of movement catches my eye. Up in the corner near the door is a tiny black box. It turns with a stutter and points in my direction. A camera. Who’s watching? I think I can guess.

After yelling out a few choice words that would make Anna gasp if she
wasn’t so weak, I turn away from the camera and sulk back to my bed. The mattress crinkles when I sit and it makes me want to take a knife and slash the whole thing to shreds. Since I don’t have a knife, I do the next best thing and grip both sides of the mattress hard. I throw it with everything I have and it sails through the air and smacks against the metal door with a crunch. In my head the mattress is Eli and I just broke every bone in his body. It makes me feel a little better.

When I turn to the bedframe again
, I notice the small folded piece of paper sitting on the edge. I already forgot about it. The paper is flimsy, almost like a napkin, so I have to be careful not to rip it when I unfold it. At first the black lines and circles and scribbles sprawled across the paper don’t make sense but as I follow the angles and sharp turns to the left and right and up I realize what this is.

“Holy crap.”
It’s a blueprint of the floor I’m on complete with markings of surveillance cameras and a route to take to avoid them.

I have to tell Anna. I have to tell Ryan. Folding the paper back up, I stick it in my pocket and kick the mattress away from the door.
“Hey Anna. Wake up.” She groans but doesn’t respond. I guess I should wait. Yeah, I’ll wait till Ryan gets back and then I can tell them both. Though with all that blood he was coughing up, there’s a chance he won’t be coming back for a while. If at all.

* * *

I ended up falling asleep on the mattress in front of my door and am rudely awakened when the metal corner jabs into my ribs. With a yelp, I roll out of the way and jump to my feet. Zack is standing there with a syringe in his hand, finger poised on the plunger. “What’s that?” I ask, my voice cracking from sleep.

“It’s just more of the healing serum,” he responds. “I’m sure your he
ad is starting to hurt again.”

He’
s right, but just because he’s on my side doesn’t mean I have to like him. “I’m fine,” I say bringing a hand to the back of my neck. There’s still a big goose egg from where I smacked it against the bedframe.

“Suit
yourself,” he says with a shrug and presses the plunger letting all the clear liquid shoot out of the syringe like a fountain and speckle the concrete floor. “You are a stubborn one.”

Just like my dad. I’m almost surprised he doesn’t finish with that but then I remember he doesn’t know my dad. I guess I’m just used to hearing that. So many people have told me I’m just like my dad. I guess it doesn’t really matter that he’s not my real father.