Variant

by Robison Wells

Page 41

 

  Skiver looked confused that Oakland would help me and stared as I wrote the dates down in my notebook.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said.

  As I was turning to leave, Skiver spoke. “Nice job taking care of your girl, Fisher. ”

  I paused, rage building up in my chest. Taking a deep breath, I looked back at Oakland. I stared at him long enough for Skiver to wonder what was going on, so that he looked back, too. Then I sucker punched Skiver in the jaw.

  He dropped straight to the floor. Oakland’s eyes met mine for a moment, paused, and then he turned back at his computer.

  By the end of the night, I had gotten answers from almost all the guys. Two Society guys refused to answer, saying that they needed to ask Isaiah before they helped me. I wanted to hit them, too.

  Isaiah didn’t answer either, but I was able to find out about him from several others. Not surprisingly, he was one of the oldest. I knew it. He had to be an android.

  Over the next two days I was able to gather the information from the girls, in class and in the cafeteria. In the end, I found that there were five of them who had arrived at school together, including Isaiah. They all claimed to have been in the school for just over two years, and they remembered driving in together in a van. In addition to Isaiah, there was another Society kid, Raymond, and two girls from Havoc—Mouse and Tiny. And Rosa, one of the V’s.

  I didn’t know Rosa very well. She was one of the oldest girls. She had the best paintball gun. She had asthma. She didn’t seem to go out of her way to talk to people.

  I was going to have to keep an eye on her.

  Of course, the entire list was a guess. It was still all based on the assumption that the androids came first. And it was based on the even greater assumption that there were more than just Jane.

  That night, lying in bed, I wanted to say something to Mason. Based on my chart, he was among the newer half of the students. Hopefully that meant he wasn’t part of . . . whatever this all was.

  It was dark, and I could hear him in the bunk above me, quietly tapping on his minicomputer.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He yawned. “What’s up?”

  I paused. Dim light glowed from his screen, and it reflected off the smooth lens of the security camera in the corner.

  “Nothing, I guess,” I said.

  “’Kay. ”

  It would have to wait until we were outside, away from the microphones.

  I got up from my bed, too awake to sleep, and took my computer from the closet. The contracts were coming up for renewal again soon, and I was curious about the medical one. There had been talk that the Society might try to take it back from us. The gangs were supposed to get together to discuss it soon. It sounded like a silly thing to fight over to me, but I’d heard that the contracts disputes often got violent—that’s why everything had been settled with a truce.

  I read the medical requirements, but there wasn’t much of interest there. The points were relatively low, compared with the big contracts like groundskeeping and the cafeteria—the two huge ones that Havoc owned.

  Bored, I toggled over to the purchase screens and looked at what new items were being offered. It wasn’t much—a few new kinds of snacks, a few new outfits (all for girls), and a new video game.

  The paintball stuff was enticing—page after page of camouflage clothing, and eight different kinds of ghillie suits. There was even a white-and-gray one, for when the snow started to fall. Looking at the paintball pages, I wanted one of everything—not because I wanted to excel in paintball, but because escape would be so much easier if I could do it in full camo.

  But it’d be a while before I could afford anything good. Breaking the rules probably hadn’t been beneficial to my points, and I only had payment for part of a month. I clicked on a few menus to try to check my account—I hadn’t fiddled with it much—and it took me a few minutes to find it.

  That’s not right . . .

  “Hey, Mason,” I said, confused. “How many points do you have?” I knew he’d been saving up for several months for a ghillie suit, only splurging on a few things like the paintball grenades.

  “Hang on,” he said sleepily. I could hear the tap of his keyboard. “Looks like . . . a thousand eight hundred thirty. ”

  That was good—1,830—he could buy most anything in the catalog except the most expensive things.

  “I only need forty-five more,” he said. “Hey, did you see they finally added winter camo to . . . ”

  I wasn’t listening to Mason anymore. Something was wrong.

  My point total read five million.

  The school was trying to buy me off.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I didn’t want everyone to know about my points—the Society would have been suspicious if I’d ordered a ghillie suit with only a few weeks’ worth of points. But I’d bought a pair of cargo pants and I filled the oversize pockets with several expensive purchases—paintball grenades, binoculars, a flashlight, and, most expensive, a pair of two-way radios.

  I also started building a stockpile of supplies: granola bars, crackers, beef jerky. Hopefully the school thought that I was enjoying their bribes, but maybe they knew the truth: I was preparing for escape. Either way, whoever was on the other end of the security cameras must have been pretty confident in the school’s walls; the gear they sold practically taunted me into trying to run.

  I hated class now. Hated sitting there, day after day, staring at the two empty seats in front of Mason and me. Lily was dead. Jane was gone. Every day I’d sit in my desk, staring at her chair, remembering her hair, remembering her lying on the table in the basement.

  I noticed Becky was the same way, sitting alone now in her front desk. Laura always sat beside her, and Laura was gone. Good riddance.

  After several days of monotony, Iceman announced that we were to head outside for paintball. I tried to hide my excitement as I changed my clothes and packed up my gear. I wasn’t excited for paintball itself, but I wanted to use the time in the woods—away from the cameras—to work on something.

  Mason had already left the room by the time I finished dressing. I was purposely being slow, and as soon as the door closed behind him I moved to my bed and pulled out the bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  I shook it and looked at the color. It was completely reddish brown now. The night before I’d poured an entire can of cayenne pepper into it. I’d bribed a kid from Havoc to steal it out of the kitchen by telling him that it was for a prank I was playing on Isaiah, and giving him a three-hundred-point gold chain in exchange.

  And, when I’d gone back to the infirmary this morning to get another day’s dose of pain medicine from Anna, I’d stolen a syringe and gauze pads.

  Now I’d find out whether it all worked. I’d seen it done on TV, but that didn’t always mean anything.

  I dropped the bottle into a pocket of my cargo pants and headed down the hall.

  I could feel my extra gear weighing me down, thumping against my legs as I hurried for the stairs. I didn’t know who, if anyone, would get my second two-way radio. Of everyone left in the school, Mason was the one I trusted most, but he wasn’t eager to escape. Maybe no one would come with me.

  But that didn’t matter today. For now, I was just experimenting.

  Curtis found me as I was crossing the track. “Might get snow,” he said, looking up at the low clouds.