Never Saw Me Coming

by Vera Kurian

  He hailed a cab and was about to tell the location to the driver when it occurred to him that this might be incriminating, depending on what Chloe was up to. Instead, he told the driver to take him to Children’s Hospital, which was fairly close to where the pin had been.

  He paid in cash, and then jogged east, away from the hospital and onto 1st Avenue, which had little traffic. This must be the sand filtration place, but he had no idea of what exactly it was—he had half assumed it was some warehouse taken over by hipsters.

  He paused outside a high chain-link fence, squinting at his phone, realizing that the little red flag was still east of where he was. He scaled the fence, then dropped down. Some of the streetlight was blocked by the fence—he could make out overgrown weeds and some structures, but he had no idea of what he was looking at. Even with his contacts in, he didn’t have good night vision. “Hello?” he called.

  He weaved between mounds of dirt and discarded machine parts. There was an opening leading into pitch-blackness, but he thought he saw an artificial glow deep within it. A cave? No, a concrete stairwell leading down. “Chloe?” he called.

  “...here!” he thought he could hear. Feeling with his hands, he headed into the darkness. He could see the bright light of an LED light bobbing ahead of him, maybe fifteen or twenty yards. His feet strangely sank beneath his shoes—sand? What was this place? “What have you done?”

  “What do you mean?” she said, only her voice sounded strange.

  Charles spun around, trying to see where she was. He stepped forward, then tripped into a sticky mess of firewood, almost falling before he braced himself with his hands. No...it wasn’t firewood. It smelled like the leavings of an old barbecue. Burned fat and sticky soot, something hard beneath his hand. Bone?

  He sat back on his heels, pulling his phone out and turning it on to shine a light down. The blast of light was so garish and bright that he almost couldn’t make it out. But there it was—a charred skull and a collarbone, crisped meat still clinging on. He turned the phone off, laying it down into the sand. She had done it, after all, hadn’t she. He could feel her behind him. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked quietly, not sure how he felt.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He turned, but then felt something smash into his head.

  59

  With all my spying on Emma, I was behind in my schoolwork, and I wasn’t going to let this bitch destroy my 4.0. I had reluctantly turned down the girls, who had decided to go someplace downtown for a three-course dessert, which is the best kind of dessert.

  After I finished my French take-home, my reward was getting to do some Emma planning. I had to orchestrate everything perfectly. I helped myself to some of Yessica’s trail mix and opened a new browser.

  I opened Pinprick52’s Instagram for inspiration. I hadn’t seen the most recent post: a picture of a statue of a muscular dude with a sword holding up a tablet that said LEX on it. A quick Google search revealed that not only was it a statue that sat out front of the Supreme Court, but Emma had simply caged it off the internet rather than taking it herself. She was sending a message.

  Frustrated, I moved backward in time through her posts, looking for clues I hadn’t noticed before. Ultimately, it didn’t matter why she was doing what she was doing, but knowing her motivation would help me anticipate her moves.

  Some of her posts were pictures of places on campus I recognized, but some were too bleary to see what they were. The first post was in July of this year of a cross street somewhere in DC. I tried a different tack: the only way I could see what she had favorited was to be a follower. I hadn’t done this already because I was afraid of making more connections between me and the account and the photo of me leaving McMillan. But at this point we had already talked to each other via DM. Which meant that eventually I would have to make the ultimate sacrifice: I would have to delete my Instagram account. But first, I would have to get my hands on her phone, the way I did with Will’s.

  I followed her account and tapped to look at favorites—then gasped. There was only one favorite. It was of a picture of a girl about our age. A Black girl with a huge smile and long eyelashes, her hair in an incredibly tight ponytail. I didn’t recognize her but I instantly made a deduction about what was going on. I shot off a text to Charles and Andre immediately, without thinking. IS THERE AN EIGHTH STUDENT IN THE PROGRAM!?!! DO YOU KNOW THIS GIRL??!!!!

  But we all know that a watched cell phone never texts back. It took two whole minutes before Andre got back to me. That’s Simone Biles, he responded.

  He knows her! is she a senior??

  Simone Biles does not go to Adams!! She’s an Olympic gold gymnast—won a bunch of national championships. Y do u ask?

  It hit me like a bat to the side of the head.

  The killer wasn’t Emma, it was Megan.

  She had favorited from the wrong. fucking. account. Her Pinprick murder account instead of her normal innocuous basic-ass bitch account.

  You guys it’s not emma it’s megan! She was a gymnast-posts about it all the time on her real account. But as soon as I sent the text to Andre and Charles I regretted it. I had been so proud of my deduction that it hadn’t occurred to me to withhold it from Andre, who I wasn’t planning on having at my final set piece. Okay—whatever, move on to plan B, whatever that was.

  Charles was typing: I know. I figured it out already. Come to the sand filtration site—I’ve got her.

  Fucking Charles! How had he figured it out before me and why the hell did he have to blab about it to Andre? Now I’d have to figure out a series of lies for a plausible explanation about a certain burnt offering.

  I couldn’t get there fast enough, pausing only to grab my stun gun and my hoodie. I sprinted out of the dorm, feeling the blast of cold air through my yoga pants, which were not made for cold weather. I ran down the street, desperately looking for a cab while also calling a Lyft. The cab came faster, but the driver seemed annoyed that I kept getting impatient with him. The police had blocked off some roads because of the destruction left from rioting and we had to take two detours.

  Then I was back out in the cold, my eyes adjusting to the dark as I scaled the fence outside of the McMillan site. I knew he would be where Will was. Just as I was running down the stairs to the cold innards of the inner cavern, I saw a bright light midway across the cavern, unless my orientation was wrong, right about where I had left Will’s body.

  “Charles?”

  Something smashed into my head, and my vision flashed bright white before it went to black.

  60

  Come to the sand filtration site—I’ve got her, Andre read. His cell reception was spotty—dotting in and out as the subway car made its way east on the Red Line.

  First the ridiculous question about Simone Biles, then the realization that Megan was allegedly the murderer they sought, and now Charles’s claim: I’ve got her. Got her for what? Andre wondered, feeling abruptly nauseated.

  Not quite knowing what to do, he got off at Union Station and for a moment stood paralyzed in the train station. Of course Chloe assumed she was right, and Charles had quickly bought her solution, but what if they were wrong? Would they...do something to Megan—or Emma, whoever it was? “I’ve got her,” not “The police got her,” or “They took her in for questioning.” He pictured the girl tied up in a dark place somewhere, Chloe and Charles circling with various instruments of torture.

  Andre paced through the main hall of the train station, oblivious to the people he was bumping into. Sand filtration—did he mean McMillan? A creepy, abandoned place in the middle of nowhere? It was the perfect place to do something, something terrible, without anyone ever finding out. In all his self-interested research on psychopaths, he had seen the same thing over and over again: they could be rash, callous, devoid of empathy for others’ pain, and if you crossed them, they could hold a serious and even deadly
grudge.

  Dazed, Andre stared at his cell phone as the realization had hit him. He had been so focused on his own series of lies that he had so easily fallen under the spell of Chloe and Charles. Sure, he occasionally saw that they were different than him, but he had been pulled in by Chloe and her jokes, her single-minded focus on finding the killer, Charles and his sheen of glamour.

  He had thought of their trio as a strange Scooby-Doo gang thrown together and had forgotten that the moral compass guiding each of them was radically different. What did he think was going to happen if they had arrived at a conclusion—something responsible? Something very, very bad could be about to happen, possibly to an innocent person, possibly followed by Chloe and Charles moving nonchalantly on, assuming that Andre would be okay with whatever half-assed vigilante justice had just occurred.

  Andre cursed quietly to himself, bringing his hands to the sides of his head and squeezing. He was the only one who knew what was going on. The only one who could stop them. His hands fumbled for his phone as he began to run toward the main exit where the line of cabs waited as he gamed out what he should do.

  61

  I could hear someone moaning. I was cold, my body shaking with chills. My throat ached and my head was throbbing. I opened my eyes, realizing that it was me who was moaning. I felt cold sand between my fingers. I closed my eyes, drifting, light-headed. Did Charles and I go to the beach?

  “Not everyone is here yet,” I heard a voice say. A female voice.

  I passed out again.

  * * *

  The next time I came to, I felt something gnawing on me. My arms hurt and were starting to feel numb in the shoulders. It took me a moment to realize that my arms were pinned behind my back, bound at the wrists as I lay on my side. I blinked into the darkness. What I saw was confusing.

  It was very dark, but my eyes had had a chance to adjust. A bright camping lantern was about ten feet away from me. Behind that, I could make out a slumped figure—Andre. He was sitting with his back up against a concrete column, his hands held in his lap in a strange way. To the right was a pale, wriggling blob that I couldn’t make out because it was directly beyond the lantern.

  There was something gnawing at my wrists again. Chewing on my restraints. I had a sudden memory of The Pit and the Pendulum and thought about rats. The rat chewed, occasionally catching nips of my skin. I tensed my arms, pulling, and the restraints snapped quietly. I rolled to my other side just in time to see Charles spitting plastic out of his mouth. There was dried blood on his forehead and his mussed hair was sticky and black with it. But his eyes were alert. He spoke quickly, barely above a whisper. “Run. Now. She’s coming back.”

  The muscles in my legs were about to spring to action, but it was too late. I saw a shadow cast by the lantern. A figure moving forward. Megan, dressed all in black, her hair back into a ponytail. Behind her was Andre. Charles was lying on the ground beside me—the only person who apparently had the honor of both their arms and legs being bound. Trevor was sitting cross-legged, looking strangely relaxed, staring to his right directly at Emma.

  Megan sauntered over. “It’s almost time for our little party.”

  “Party?” Charles echoed. “I didn’t get an invitation.” God, you idiot—now isn’t the time for jokes!

  Megan lashed out at him and I cringed as she kicked him, first in the chest, then right in the head. I thought of jumping up to attack her but something made me stop—Andre was looking right at me. Grimly, he shook his head. His hands were bound together but I could recognize the familiar gesture of a finger gun. I looked back at Megan and saw that she held a pistol in her left hand. Charles’s pistol—she must have taken it off him. My stun gun was gone—maybe she had that on her, too.

  Megan crouched down in front of Charles, who was weakly coughing up blood. Her assault had left him in bad shape, worse off than the rest of us. Trevor and Andre both seemed dazed—maybe she had drugged them or cracked them in the head like me. It was harder to tell with Emma, who was sitting stock-still, a blank, washed-out look on her face. “Are you done?” she said to Charles. “Done being a monster idiot?”

  “I thought I’d have another fifty years,” he said.

  Idiot!

  She kicked him again in the chest. I could feel the anger rising off me like heat. God, here I was, perfectly unarmed, when I had practically made it an art these past weeks of always being prepared for an attack.

  Charles was curled into a ball, protecting his chest with his bound arms, but he turned a bloody grin in Andre’s direction. Andre’s eyes were wide and not amused.

  “Megan, you can stop,” Emma said quietly. “It’s not too late. Just because you start something doesn’t mean you can’t stop.”

  Megan looked at her with disgust. “No one asked your opinion, mouse. I’m almost done here.” A very confused Trevor kept looking from Megan to Emma and back.

  I held my breath and edged closer to Megan. She had arranged us so that she had made a circle of captives, with her at the center. Charles was slowly struggling to a sitting position, which must have been hard, given his cringing. He blinked against the bright, fake light of the lantern.

  “Ah,” Megan purred, “here they come.” There were two lights moving across the cavern, coming closer, the bright lights of when people use their phones as flashlights. “You got my message,” she said as they approached the group.

  Dr. Wyman came closer with his hands up, one holding a cell phone. Elena was behind him, shock blanking out her face.

  “Put the phones down,” Megan shouted, raising the gun. She held it the wrong way. Sideways, like they do on TV. I don’t know a ton about guns, but enough to know that that isn’t how people really handle guns if they know what they’re doing.

  To his credit, Wyman stayed calm and obeyed her, setting his phone facedown. Elena dropped her own phone with a clatter where it landed near Andre. With all eyes on the two psychologists, I took advantage of the distraction and edged closer to Megan. Andre coughed.

  “Megan, someone is going to notice all these students are gone and call the police,” Wyman said calmly. Oh, stupid Dr. Wyman... I would have lied and said I’d already called the police.

  Megan snorted. “Yeah. Because they’re not busy with the Lafayette Park protests or anything. Let’s face it, no one cares about these five. All of you made it so easy for me.” She put the gun down by her hip and an innocent, sweet look came over her face. It was astonishing—as if one face were entirely washed off and replaced with another. “You’d be amazed at the places I can get into.”

  I tried to edge forward again, but Andre coughed again. I looked at him, annoyed, but he caught my eye and pointedly looked to my left, then back at me, then to my left again. I looked back and saw that about four feet away from me, at the base of one of the columns, an irregular shape broke the smooth architectural line. A broken brick.

  “Dr. Wyman, we’re going to play one more little psychology game before I kill all of you,” Megan chirped.

  “I don’t think you’re thinking straight. You’re obviously upset. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Wyman said.

  “What’s going on? What’s going on is this whole sick enterprise! You think I don’t know what a monster my father was? My sister?”

  “I’m not like him,” Emma said quietly. Megan found her comment so outrageous that it gave me cover to edge a full foot closer to the column and the loose brick.

  “Huh!” Megan exclaimed. She pointed the gun directly at Dr. Wyman. “What do you think of that? What did all your tests say? Twenty years of research and all that bullshit just to say that she’s just like our dad. Sick. Wrong in the head. Not normal like me.”

  I wondered if Megan was more fucked up than all of us put together.

  “It must have been hard thinking about who your father was,” Elena said quietly.

 
“Oh, fuck you! Fuck both of you and your study! Here you are, helping these—these freaks—” here she waved the gun at all of us “—when what you should be doing is collecting them all and giving them cyanide.”

  “Who’s your father?” Trevor asked, clueless.

  “Gregory Ripley, the CRD Killer,” Charles said.

  This almost earned him another kick, but Wyman interrupted it. “We believe in human potential,” he said. “We believe that people can be taught to make constructive choices, even you. Twenty years ago...some horrendous things happened, and I wanted to create work that would prevent things like that from ever happening again. Megan, you are standing at a crossroads just like he did. Please put down the gun, and let’s talk, just you and me.”

  Megan stared at him, her eyes narrowed, and slowly her eyes moved over to Emma in a way that almost gave me a chill. Emma was frozen on the ground, hugging her knees with her bound arms, looking up at her sister with an expression I couldn’t interpret. It wasn’t like it was fear—it was like it was resignation. Megan tapped the butt of the gun against her thigh.

  “You want to kill your own sister?” Charles said, actually sounding incredulous. His breathing sounded raspy even from where I sat.

  “My sister is a monster. I read her journal for years. I always knew there was something wrong with her, like our father, and when she got into this program, I knew for sure. I thought it was a joke at first—why would anyone collect a fucked-up menagerie like this group? I watched her, I watched all of you just to make sure I was being fair. But it turns out, you’re sick, you’re perverted. I can undo what my father did. The best thing I can do for society is take you out of the population.”