Fearless

by Sarah Tarkoff

  At first it made sense—they were the two youngest recruits, so they had the most in common. Jenna, who had once sought attention from audiences at packed fashion shows, now sought it from the most eligible bachelor of their recruitment class. She cornered him at lunch on day one.

  “How many people do you think will make it?”

  “Through training?” Zack considered as he finished chewing. “Everyone but that accountant guy.”

  “No way. A program like this? They’ll take two, three tops.”

  Zack was intrigued. “Did Esther say that? How do you know?”

  Jenna shook her head, her long hair billowing as she moved, accenting every word she spoke. “The way they’re talking? How elite we all are? You think because you matched squares and triangles in some intelligence test, you’re fit to be . . . whatever it is they’re trying to make us?”

  Zack hadn’t thought about it quite like that. “What do you think they’re judging us on?”

  “Work ethic, obviously. You saw the number of degrees in that room. Physical fitness, but I’m here, so strength can’t be all that important.”

  “I think you could take down a KGB or two,” Zack teased, testing her arm muscle.

  “You know what I think will matter most? Street smarts.”

  Zack grinned. “You think you’ve got everyone beat on that one, don’t you?”

  She considered him a moment. “We both do. The way I see it, it’s me, you, and maybe that guy.” She pointed to the big NYPD officer at another table, who was boisterously telling a war story about taking down a pack of Outcasts.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I think he’s smarter than he looks. His guard is up. Everyone else is putting on this facade, trying to prove how top of their game they are. He’s playing along, but he’s watching everyone. He’s biding his time.”

  “Biiiiiding his time,” Zack mocked.

  She pushed him, playfully. Then, abruptly, changed the subject. “What room are you staying in?”

  I’ve talked before about sex-related Punishments, how it was confusing as a teenager to sort it all out, because some people seemed to be Punished for the most minor sexual deeds, while others could hump unrelentingly, Punishment-free. Of course, what most people didn’t know was that this all boiled down to guilt. Those who were conditioned by society to feel guilty about sex were more likely to be Punished for having it.

  Jenna, though, was not one to be held back by Great Spirit’s wrath, nor was she anything like the girls Zack had met in college. Though I thankfully managed to avoid hearing the details, Zack said he’d never found a girl who was quite so excited to see him behind closed doors, and quite so unwilling to be affectionate with him in public. He assumed, in a group this small, she must not have wanted to appear unprofessional. People could see there was an attraction between them, at least, but for the most part, they shrugged it off as “the kids having fun.”

  It was a competitive group; when given assignments, everyone worked hard, didn’t compare notes. Many of the early assignments favored the psychiatrists, and Zack initially felt overwhelmed: his college Psych 101 was woefully insufficient for the kinds of questions he was being asked. But as the days progressed, he found himself more and more capable of guessing the right answers. He learned to do psychological profiles like the ones they’d each been subjected to. He could predict behavior based on a subject’s personal history and evaluate personality on dozens of scales. But that wasn’t the end of their training.

  Next came activities the lawyers excelled in, especially the younger ones—the minutiae of prophetic law. There were so many variations between countries and cultures, so many conditions that might allow Great Spirit to Punish or Forgive you . . . to remember them all was excruciating. Late at night, Jenna insisted Zack quiz her on these, and he was surprised to see her struggling to remember basic rules even an elementary-schooler would know.

  And throughout, there was intense physical training. This is where Zack made the most progress, and Jenna began to despair. When he finished an obstacle course, he’d take a lap back around to encourage her; though in her exhausted state, she often spat back her frustration at her cheerleader. But Zack was undeterred and continued to help Jenna whether she wanted him to or not.

  It was when they finally began their weapons training that Jenna truly excelled. She’d done a lot of hunting as a child, she explained, and she’d always had a knack for it—only the NYPD officer beat her at their sharpshooting tests. Most of the others were squeamish around just about any kind of weapon—rarely were guns even available in post-Revelation society. But Zack pushed past his wariness and trained as hard as he could—and soon he could hit nearly any target.

  As the program neared its end, he’d fallen hard for Jenna, but he still couldn’t tell how she felt about him. He could never quite tell how she felt about anything. That was part of her street smarts, he could only assume. Like the big NYPD officer, she was keeping her emotions under wraps—they were safer that way. At least, he hoped that was the case.

  So far, no one had dropped out. No one had been kicked out. If Jenna’s prediction was going to come true, whatever lay ahead had to be a doozy. And indeed, Esther promised that their final challenge would pull together everything they’d learned.

  “Tomorrow, you will meet ten children,” she said. “I want you to tell me which one is a sociopath.”

  4

  As Jenna and Zack lay next to each other that night, he saw a flicker of concern cross her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. He knew her confidence that she’d be one of the lucky few had started to dwindle.

  “I’m getting restless,” she said, and he had to agree. Since they’d entered the facility they’d basically been locked up. They ate all their meals there, slept there, screwed there . . . and they’d been allowed no contact with the outside world.

  Zack tried to console her. “The program’s almost over. Either way, you’ll be out of here soon.”

  “I know, I just . . . it’d be nice to have one night out, you know? Go dancing, get really crazy.” She smiled, in that way that normally got her whatever she wanted. “Please? Leave with me.”

  Her request seemed so strange and out of the blue, it left Zack confused. “I don’t know how we could.”

  “You used to work at Homeland Security. You must know some way to sneak out of a government facility like this. Some old coworker that could help us?”

  Zack honestly didn’t. And he was concerned: “If you leave this building, you’d be quitting. So would I. We signed all those forms . . .”

  The fire in Jenna’s eyes had never burned brighter. “Screw that.”

  His past few weeks of psychology training made Zack feel confident he could diagnose this problem. He rubbed her back, trying to placate her. “Don’t give up. I know it’s getting hard, and maybe it feels like an easy excuse if you go out and break the rules and disqualify yourself. But it’s better to fail, trying, than to sabotage your chances.”

  When it became clear she would make no headway with him, she rolled over, annoyed. “I think I’d like to sleep alone tonight, okay?”

  It took him a moment to understand what she was saying. “Are you kicking me out?”

  She shrugged, and he grabbed his clothes, making one last attempt to mollify her. “I’ll be down the hall if you need anything.” She made no indication she’d heard him, and he left, feeling deeply unsettled but unable to figure out why.

  Jenna was still in a mood the next day, and Zack’s attempts to bridge the divide between them were met with hostility. It was only then that Zack realized how much time he’d been spending with her. The other recruits had developed a camaraderie with one another that he was not a part of. While Jenna sat off by herself, annoyed, Zack tried to belatedly fit in with the others.

  “I don’t understand why we bothered to learn all that prophetic law if we’re just going to analyze personality disorders,”
the NYPD officer was grumbling.

  “Obviously we’re doing more than that. Otherwise you’d all be psychiatrists,” one of the psychiatrists said.

  “What do we have in common?” the social worker asked. “What are we all qualified to do?”

  The NYPD officer suggested something like what Jenna had said to Zack on the first day: that they were chosen for their street smarts.

  One of the lawyers chuckled. “You mean we’re spies, right? That’s still the best theory?”

  The conversation quieted as Esther entered, asking them to follow her. They walked to a dimly lit room, where through a pane of one-way glass they could see ten preteen boys, playing with an assortment of provided toys. “You have one hour,” she said. “You cannot interact with the children in any way. After that hour, I want to know who the sociopath is. A correct answer will mean you remain in the program.”

  As soon as she left, Jenna sidled up next to Zack, as though the previous night’s fight had never happened. “Who do you think it is?”

  Zack was annoyed, but admittedly relieved she was willing to engage with him again. “I’m supposed to tell just by looking? It’s probably the ugliest kid, right? He’ll have been Punished the most.” But even as he said it, he could see that all ten boys were equally handsome.

  The psychiatrists were furiously scribbling. Zack watched the boys, all his training slipping out of his head at this crucial moment. What were the qualifications? Something about being emotionally callous. Manipulative. They were charming, right? Violent tendencies.

  The NYPD officer was watching two boys in the corner—Boy 1 was bossing the other around as they built a tower of Legos. The social worker had her eye on a quiet kid, Boy 6, who was scribbling a dark and disturbing crayon masterpiece.

  But Zack noticed Jenna was watching Boy 10. All the other boys seemed eager to listen to him, and he invented some kind of game that involved them wrestling each other for treasure—the kind of game where the rules only make sense to the children involved. Soon he grew tired of the game and walked over to the intense crayon boy, whispering in his ear. Boy 6 immediately jumped up and ran over to Boy 1, upset. They started to fight, and Boy 1 shoved him. Boy 6 shoved back. A teacher rushed into the room, separating them.

  Zack leaned over to Jenna. “Have you figured it out?” But she didn’t respond, just acted like she hadn’t heard him.

  When the hour ended, Zack handed in his slip—marked Boy 10. He wasn’t sure how many more might have seen what he saw, but he soon found out. When the group reassembled, everyone was present except two—both of the lawyers.

  “Congratulations,” Esther said. “You’ve made it to the next round.” Jenna smiled at Zack—they were both still alive.

  The NYPD officer spoke up, confrontational. “I’m sorry, but I think I speak for a lot of people when I ask this. What does any of this have to do with national security?”

  “That’s an excellent question. A question you’re finally ready to learn the answer to. But first, I have my own question for all of you—did anyone notice anything odd about the interactions you just saw?”

  The social worker’s hand shot up. “No one was Punished. Those kids who fought should have had some kind of physical reaction. Neither one did.”

  “Does anyone have an idea why that might have been the case?”

  Zack thought of his whole stay here. His tryst with Jenna that, he’d been surprised, had earned him no Punishments from Great Spirit either, despite a few things he’d thought the Big Man might have disapproved of. He hazarded a guess: “Is this place protected in some way?”

  “That’s very close. And while we’ll come back to that, you should know one other thing. That scene out in the real world? You would have seen Boys 1 and 6 come away from their fight with physical deformities. But Boy 10? He would never have incurred any Punishments. Sociopaths have a very special way to evade Punishment from Great Spirit.”

  “How?” Jenna asked.

  But these recruits would never learn the whole truth, only what Esther wanted them to know. “They are agents of the devil,” she said. “Able to carry out horrific acts without Punishment.”

  Esther then showed them a series of videos detailing gruesome crimes of various sociopaths. Showing the way they could go undetected for years, becoming parasites on the world around them, with no retribution from Great Spirit. When the video ended, she told them, “This is what you’ve been brought here to do. Learn how to stop these people.”

  The NYPD officer shouted out, “Are you sure we’re not spies?” The group laughed.

  Whether Esther cracked a smile under her burqa was unclear. “Now—your first mission. One of you is a sociopath. Figure out who.”

  5

  Zack knew. Of course he knew. He might have suspected from the beginning.

  As soon as Esther had uttered those words, sending shudders down the spines of every person present in the room, they’d been ushered out, ostensibly to their rooms to rest before dinner. But they all lingered, buzzing about who it might be.

  Zack overheard the social worker whispering with one of the psychiatrists. “What about Starsky?”

  The psychiatrist eyed the physically intimidating NYPD officer across the hall. Perhaps he was afraid to say anything. Or wanted to keep his suspicions to himself. He shrugged. “Could be anyone, I guess.”

  The social worker nervously asked, “You don’t think it’s me, do you?”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” the psychiatrist said, “everyone knows it’s not you.”

  Zack lagged behind with Jenna, who remained eerily silent. Wouldn’t make eye contact. She must have known he’d figured it out. As the group got ahead of them, he pulled her into a corner.

  “I’m not in the mood, Zack,” Jenna said, but he stopped her from walking away.

  “Is it you?”

  She seemed crushed. “No! How could you say that to me, after everything? Why would you even think that?” Zack had never seen her like this. They’d been dating nearly a month, and she’d only ever seemed cool, emotionless. All of a sudden she was close to tears. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Zack.”

  For a moment, he was fooled. And then, he asked the nagging question, “Why are you just saying this to me now?”

  “You don’t love me, that’s fine.”

  He shook his head. “Jenna, you don’t love me.”

  “Yes, I do.” The tears in her eyes looked so real.

  “Jenna, this isn’t going to work. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  She paused, perhaps formulating her next plan. “Of course I don’t. That’s why I latched on to you on day one. I think you’re smart. The smartest person here.”

  “Thanks.” And then he second-guessed himself—was she just playing him again? He doubted every word that fell from her lips.

  “I don’t know that I’m anything. I’m just me. And maybe I’m not perfect, but it’s not like I’m some sick monster. You’re the only one who’s close enough to me to even suspect anything, so let’s just let it lie, okay?”

  “You think Esther doesn’t know what you are already? After all those tests they put us through?” And then he realized: “This is why you wanted to go out last night, isn’t it? You realized what this program was about, you guessed that this was coming next. You wanted to escape.”

  “Well? Can you help me or what?” He couldn’t shake the pity he felt when he looked at her quivering frame. “Or did that video brainwash you into thinking I’m some evil serial killer?”

  “Of course I don’t think that.”

  “So help me. Please. Zack, you know I’d never hurt anyone.”

  Zack was torn. In all his experience with Jenna, he couldn’t imagine her being capable of anything more dastardly than a few snide remarks. He wondered if perhaps he was being tested, to see if he could show mercy. When he’d worked for Homeland Security, he’d heard of similar tests in other government agencies, designed to ferret out the most
pious. Maybe, rather than seeing who would report Jenna, the goal was to see who would take the initiative to rescue her.

  To Jenna, he simply said, “I’ll try to help you.”

  Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do it.

  Zack wandered the halls of the compound in a daze, consumed by his dilemma. As he entered the bathroom, he noticed the accountant at the sink, eyeing him carefully, still on the hunt for who their resident sociopath might be. “So what do you think? ‘There’s one among us, oooh.’ Do you think it’s bull?”

  Zack had no patience for playing this game. “I think we’re all sociopaths.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Not one of us has been Punished, right? Isn’t that the test?”

  The accountant seemed surprised. “I’ve been Punished. You haven’t?”

  Suddenly, Zack worried he’d been speaking too freely. He’d never even considered there might be more than one. Or that one of them might be him. Could he be a sociopath? He thought he had empathy, and he’d never been a particularly violent kid. He’d certainly been Punished before. But had he been Punished enough? Maybe he only thought he was normal because he knew no other way of being.

  “When were you Punished? What did you do?” Zack asked, curious.

  The accountant glanced toward his own reflection in the mirror, and in that moment, Zack relaxed. He was lying. Lying and looking to see if his face reflected any changes spurred by his guilt. The glance was a reflex Zack knew well.

  “I was Punished for lying,” the accountant lied.

  “Interesting.” Zack in fact had no more interest in this conversation. He knew that his number-crunching friend had been protected from Punishments somehow, just as Zack had.