Redemption Prep

by Samuel Miller

  “That’s stupid,” he argued, trying to catch up. “She’s missing. Nobody’s gonna show up if they know she won’t be there.”

  Peter’s confidence was unshaken. “Yeah, probably not most people, right? Just the ones who’re really desperate? So desperate they might do something to her, only to find out she doesn’t have any more Apex? That she sold it all to her boyfriend?”

  It seemed almost like common sense as Peter said it. “Okay,” he agreed. “Okay. So how do we do that?”

  “Here.” He clicked open the door and leaned out into the hallway. “Ay, Mischa!”

  A tall kid Aiden didn’t recognize met him outside the door. “I need you to get the word out on something.” The kid nodded. “Tell people, they’re selling the rest of the Apex, nine p.m. tonight, at the old basketball court. Don’t tell them where you heard it. Got it?”

  “Wait!” Aiden shouted, but Peter clicked the door shut.

  “What?”

  “I have a voluntary shootaround tonight.”

  “Oh.” Peter ambled back into the room. “Don’t go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But it’s voluntary. It’s right there in the name.”

  “Voluntary doesn’t mean voluntary. Why don’t we just do the stakeout a different time?”

  “It’s a little late for that. . . .”

  “You just told him! Go catch him, tell him to change it!”

  Peter looked to the door but didn’t move. “Mischa runs track, man. Can’t catch Mischa.”

  Aiden exhaled, rocking back in his chair.

  “Look, if you don’t wanna miss your practice, I get it. I’ll do the stakeout and let you know who shows up.”

  Aiden’s eyes settled on the wall behind his desk. In the center, there was a photo of an AAU basketball team he’d played on when he was thirteen. In it, he lay across the front of a group of ten kids, sprawled out and holding a trophy, with a tiny gold basketball player at the top, doing some kind of one-leg-up crossover. The trophy itself sat a foot in front of the photo, on his desk, next to a dozen like it.

  His entire life, he’d been a basketball player. If that was going to continue, he couldn’t be distracted. He needed to find her.

  “Fuck that,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be there.”

  Neesha.

  HER WHOLE CLASS was tittering excitedly as they entered, Yangborne’s boom box blaring country music. With the B-School students in the room, there weren’t enough chairs, so students were standing between them, sitting on tables, leaning against walls. Several instructors from around the school—Dr. Roux from the P-School, Dr. Richardson from Human, and even Father Farke—were crowded in the back of the classroom, staring at a glass case in front.

  Two rats sniffed around inside, one on either side of a solid granite block. From the third row, Neesha could barely separate their glassy marble eyes from the matted fur of their faces. Two patches were shaved into that fur, on the side of their tiny rat heads, where a simple electrical wire was fused in.

  Dr. Yangborne killed the music and stood behind them, his hands placed lightly on either side. “Mice in a cage, the oldest of scientific experiments, today made revolutionary,” he said to the whole room, emceeing the proceedings in a white lab coat. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet the most important rats in human history, Turner and Hooch.”

  The class snickered; they’d voted on the names last week. Neesha leaned forward onto her elbows, watching Turner sprint corner to corner to corner inside her cage.

  “I’ve spent the morning teaching Turner a specific behavior task—touch lever, receive treat.” He demonstrated. As soon as the light switched on, Turner ran for a plastic protrusion at the front. She leapt up, a tiny paw falling onto it, releasing a brown pellet from the tube behind her. She pounced immediately.

  “Our implant connects Turner’s motor cortex to an electronic signal, which will then be sent to”—he traced his hands along the wire to the computer between them—“a shared electron environment. Hooch knows nothing of lights or levers. He’s simply living in his cage.” He flipped the light in Hooch’s cage on. Hooch stood still.

  “If Turner’s brain can communicate this behavior to Hooch’s, without ever physically interacting, it will represent the most sophisticated linkage between two brains in history. But, of course, the linkage isn’t the most complicated part of the experiment. More challenging is the translation of their brain signals. If you’ll remember, from when we last tried this experiment, we weren’t able to stimulate the right parts of the brain. Brain science students, we appreciate all of the work you did on the electronics side, I’m sure it will help, but today we’re accelerating the experiment with a more . . . human solution.”

  He placed a small paper dish inside both of their cages, and immediately the rats leapt for it, lapping up the white, frothy liquid with their tiny tongues.

  Yangborne beamed at Leia. “An impressive discovery from one of our own.”

  Neesha felt her lips curl into disgust as she stared at the glass case behind him. The Discovery Trophy was a holy relic. The people in the photos that lined the wall next to her were real scientists, actual innovators whose ideas changed the lives of millions, not hack students who passed off natural hormones as some kind of breakthrough for rats. But if tonight’s experiment went well, Yangborne made it sound like he was ready to bash open the case and offer Leia the trophy. Her stomach backed up at the image.

  Both rats finished the compound and began to chew through their paper trays.

  “Well,” Yangborne said, taking his time, smiling. “Should we try it?”

  The room cheered. Neesha kept staring into the cage, watching as Turner returned to testing the limits of her environment, revisiting each corner only to find that it still had her trapped. Her circles grew tighter and more panicked until eventually she froze in the center.

  Neesha shifted in her seat. Turner was staring straight at her.

  Behind the rats, Yangborne turned the computer on, and both rats went stiff. “All future communication will exist across open electron environments,” Yangborne shouted, over the hum of the machine. “This represents not a new technology, but a new framework for our species.” He flipped the switch on Turner’s cage. The light came on, and she flew to the lever. “Civilizations more advanced than ours require it—no secrets, no individualism, just shared information and emotion. That evolution begins now—”

  With force, he slammed forward the lever to the light on Hooch’s cage.

  Hooch stood perfectly still at the center.

  He turned it off, then back on again several times, but it didn’t change a thing. “His brain should be stimulated . . .”

  But Hooch didn’t care. He sat on his butt in the center, blinking and doing nothing else.

  Eventually, Yangborne gave up, and switched off the computer. “I’m sorry to disappoint everyone.” He spoke to the instructors huddled at the back. “Looks like our classes have a bit more work to do. But like I say, in science, if only one experiment in a hundred is successful . . .”

  Slowly, everyone filtered out of the room, the B-School first, and the C-School after, mumbling to each other.

  Neesha was among the last to file out and felt herself drawn toward the front. Yangborne still hovered at the case, wallowing silently as he stared at the rats.

  “Mine would have worked,” she mumbled in his direction without thinking.

  Yangborne looked up. “I don’t even know what yours is, Neesha.”

  “It’s an amphetamine—”

  “You say that. But I don’t know that.”

  “You’ve seen the work—”

  “You have no results,” he said, voice raised, drawing the attention of a few lingering students. Zaza poked his head back in through the door. “You’ve shown no initiative to test your work. Until it’s proven, it’s nothing.”

  Neesha felt a lump form in her throat. “Except I know it works.”

&nbs
p; He shook his head. “That’s not science, Neesha. The work we do here is the light of the world. We don’t get to slack off, and we don’t get to speculate. I need you to do better.”

  Neesha didn’t move, still hovering between the desks.

  “I have results.”

  Yangborne was already moving to his desk. “I haven’t authorized a single experiment for you yet.”

  “I did some outside of class.”

  He stopped. Everyone waiting in the doorway stopped. Yangborne looked her up and down. “You know that’s not allowed,” he said, but he didn’t look angry. “I trust you were safe?”

  She nodded.

  He pursed his lips. “Well, as a matter of discipline,” he said, using the word lightly, “I’ll need to see them.”

  Neesha smiled. “Absolutely.”

  As soon as she had cleared the door of the C-School, into the lounge, Zaza rushed up on her from behind. “Are you serious?”

  She rolled her eyes but slowed to let him to catch up. Overassertive as he always was, it was strangely comforting to have someone freaking out more than her.

  “Just curious,” he said. “Do you remember a day, in the distant past, when we said no one should ever know you were involved with Apex?”

  “Yesterday—”

  “It was yesterday!” He smacked a passing Year Two in the forehead with an animated gesture. “Then, today, you decide it’s cool to just let Yangborne in on your experiment? Why?”

  Neesha shrugged but didn’t answer.

  “I already know. You told me last night. But, for the sake of argument, do you think maybe there’s something more important than the Discovery Trophy? Like, not going to jail, for instance?”

  “Jesus, you’re dramatic.”

  “Nope, this is rational. This is what rational looks like.”

  “I’m not going to show him everything, just a little.”

  “And you don’t think that comes back to you?”

  She shrugged again.

  “You don’t think, with the school turning over every rock to try to find Emma, that it’s going to come back to you?”

  She shrugged again.

  “Wow. You are taking this trophy way too serious—”

  “Oh, I’m the one being too serious?”

  “This is high school,” he said, rounding the corner with her, following her down her dorm hallway. “There’s gonna be plenty of trophies to discover—”

  “God, you sound just like her.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like Emma.” She stopped in the middle of the hall. “She was always saying shit like that. ‘Oh, why do you care so much about this?’ ‘Oh, you take this too seriously.’ It’s fucking exhausting, being told what’s okay for me to care about and what’s not.”

  Zaza rubbed his head. “Well. In this case, she was right.”

  “No.” Neesha shook her head. “She was lying, mostly.”

  “Lying about what?”

  “She wasn’t saying that for my well-being. She was saying that because she didn’t want me to focus on the actual experiment. She wanted me to focus on selling it, so we could make more money. And now she’s gone, and she’s left me here to take all the blame, like it wasn’t her idea to sell Apex in the first place!”

  She was done with the conversation and pivoted back toward her dorm. Zaza kept walking alongside but lowered his voice.

  “Okay,” he said. “I get it. I don’t think that distinction’s gonna matter to the school, but I get it. Can you at least promise me you won’t tell Yangborne about it until Emma gets back? And you can figure out what’s going on?”

  She reached the entrance to her dorm and froze.

  “Please, Neesha. At least promise me that?”

  Neesha stared past him, her stomach backing up. She let her backpack drop to the ground.

  “What are you . . .” Zaza turned with her to face the door. “Oh.”

  Scrawled at eye level with a red marker, in childlike handwriting, was a simple message:

  she’s going 2 die.

  emma donahue investigation.

  edward velasquez—year 4.

  transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.

  YANIS (Administration) _ Okay. Last one of the day. I’m excited to get to talk to you because it sounds like you had quite the night. State your name please . . . Edward Velasquez . . . Can you hear me. Can you understand me. Do you know what you’re doing here. Do you know where you are.

  EDWARD VELASQUEZ (Student) _ No.

  Y _ Okay. But you know you are being spoken to.

  EV _ No.

  Y _ How about this. Repeat the word yes for me.

  EV _ No.

  Y _ Yes . . . Yes. Repeat this word. Yes. Yes. If you have any idea of what I’m saying at all just repeat the word yes.

  EV _ No.

  Y _ Jesus. What goes on in that brain . . . How about . . . Do you know this girl . . . You’re staring does that mean that you know this girl. Yes you can touch it.

  EV _ No.

  Y _ Eddy please. Give me something to work with here.

  EV _ No.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ He won’t.

  Y _ Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ Sorry for dropping in without warning. How is it going.

  Y _ He won’t say anything other than no.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ I know. It’s tragic.

  Y _ What happened.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ Some kind of trauma but we have no idea. Wait what is this.

  Y _ Oh it’s called a MONKEY. It records what we’re saying.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ I know I use one too. I am just surprised my name is coming up as unidentified voice.

  Y _ Yes you have to program the voices for each session.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ Of course.

  Y _ The school wanted us to record every conversation we have in this missing student search.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ How is it going.

  Y _ Not well. I don’t know if it’s this girl in particular or just how the students are here. But everyone seems to be very guarded and no one wants to answer questions about this directly. It seems like every time I say the name Emma.

  EV _ It took her.

  Y _ What. Eddy. What did you say. It took her. What took her.

  EV _ The flood.

  Y _ What did you say. Repeat that. Tell me what took her.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ He said the flood.

  Y _ What does that mean.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ It’s been a repeat phrase for him. Just started recently.

  Y _ The flood. The flood. The flood.

  EV _ It took her.

  Y _ Who is her. Emma. Is it Emma. Eddy do you understand. Emma.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ He doesn’t understand.

  EV _ The flood.

  Y _ What is the flood.

  UNIDENTIFIED VOICE (Unknown) _ That’s what all of us are trying to figure out.

  Aiden.

  AIDEN STARED, BAFFLED, at his own desk. “Why don’t you just swallow them?”

  “Faster if you snort it, man.”

  “I feel like it hits me fast when I swallow it.”

  “Not fast enough.”

  “It hurts my nose.”

  “Yeah, you’ll get over that.” Peter’s head dove toward the table.

  Peter boosted like an artist. He drew zigzag lines across Aiden’s desk with the tiny silver balls, emptied from the pill’s casing, cutting and sharpening them with his student ID and then—when they were angled just right—vacuuming them up in one swooping, ducking, floating motion across the desk, his nostril the crop plane, his Apex the crop. Except in reverse. Like, if the crop plane sucked the crops out of the fields. Or whatever.

  “Alright, that’s enough.” Aiden eyed the bag of pills on the desk. “We should get to work.”

  “It�
��s a focus drug, this is working.”

  “I think it’s just making you focus on doing more Apex.”

  Twenty minutes before nine, they loaded a few notebooks, a Polaroid camera, and the bag of Apex into their backpacks and slogged across the back lawn. It had rained off and on since morning, so there was standing water on the court and it was weighing down the ball more with every dribble.

  “You didn’t need to bring that, you know,” Peter said, nodding to the basketball.

  “Gotta blend in,” Aiden said, stroking a shot from the baseline, through the chain-link net.

  “Blend in with what?” Peter asked. “Besides, we’re not actually meeting anyone. We’re hiding.”

  He pointed to the end of the stands that ran alongside the court, where a huge gap in the wood was blanketed by darkness. Aiden followed as Peter crawled his way in and swung himself up into the metal bracketing.

  Once they were seated, Aiden pulled out his notebook. “I made a list of a few theories, based on what you told me earlier.” He stretched back the binding of his composition notebook and held it to Peter’s face. He’d spent hours filling in the document, using the terms he remembered from watching Law & Order with his dad.

  “We’ve got to establish motive and opportunity for any potential perps.” He turned the notebook to Peter. “Theory one, Evan Andrews; his motive is getting the drug. Theory two, someone else at the school; their motive is getting the drug. Theory three, someone outside the school, their motive—”

  “Wouldn’t everybody’s motive be getting the drug?”

  “Theory four,” he pressed on. “The school found out about it. And did something to her.”

  “Wow,” Peter said. “And you said I was being paranoid—”

  A hundred feet away, they heard the fence rattle. Someone was moving for the gate. Aiden checked his watch. It was eight forty-five.

  The grinding of the fence got louder as the person struggled. From where they were sitting, they could see the entrance, but not the figure behind it. The rattling stopped, and the fence was still closed. It was silent.