Cages

by Chris Pasley

  The latches to the door creaked open, the metal slab swinging wide. There on the other side stood Remi and Dave. Remi's face broke into an unashamed grin and he vaulted into the room, nearly knocking me over with a hug. "Sam, you fucktard! I can't believe they let you out!"

  I weathered the rough hug as best I could, keeping my eyes on Dave. The athlete calmly walked to his bunk and stowed his bag in his locker, not saying a word.

  Remi's smile fell. "Dave? What's wrong with you?"

  Dave glared at me. "See what he's got in his hand, Remi? That's what's wrong with me."

  James never prepared me for this. My palms were sweaty. I bit my lip. Through trick after trick I had lured these three boys into my confidence, following James's roadmap for me as best I could. His words had been a codex for me, solemn rules to live by, but he never told me what to do upon being discovered that you were a dirty rat. I suppose he never thought the issue would come up. "No, this...this isn't..."

  Even Remi fell silent as he watched me try to bumble through an explanation. I saw Ben's eyes on me, the only one of the three that seemed free of accusation. It seemed like this moment of weakness had won Ben over even more – why, I had no idea. I started saying something about luring Conyers into my confidence for the best trick, the ultimate trick, but no one believed that so I said then that I was lying to him, that I was forced to talk but never told the truth, but they had read the booklet and knew my falsehoods. Finally I broke down, far weaker than James could ever have imagined me to be, and sat on Ben's bunk, tears welling in my eyes.

  "I was afraid," I sniffed. "I had never seen...a Beast before. And the way it happened...I was just scared."

  Dave snorted. "And you thought Conyers could save you?"

  "I don't know," I said, miserable. "No, I guess I knew he couldn't...but I just wanted someone to tell me that...that I was a good kid, and that...and that something like that could never happen to me, that I could never become that...that monster. He did that for me and I did whatever he asked to get him to keep doing it."

  "That's pathetic!" Remi said, clenching his teeth. "We ought to run you out of here, you sad mother –”

  "That's enough, Remi," Dave said, patting him on the arm. He knelt down in front of me, eye-level. "We all do things we're not proud of. Jesus, Remi, you're teaching a fucking class. As for me...I do whatever's expected of me, just like Sam did."

  Remi shook his head. "It's not the same, Dave. It's not the same at all. I teach the class – "

  "You teach it because you like it," Dave said curtly. "Sam liked having false hope. You both betrayed something you once stood for because of it."

  Remi looked like he might protest again, but he stayed quiet.

  "I'm sorry," I said to Dave, trying to wipe my tears away casually, but everyone could see. "I'm really sorry."

  "It's all right, Sam," Dave said. "But you gotta make amends, you realize that, right?"

  I swallowed. "H-how?"

  Dave grinned. "By doing what you do best. We gotta show 'em there are gonna be consequences for fucking us over."

  Remi shook his head. "What? More banners? More glue? What's that gonna prove?"

  "No," I said. "I've got a plan. Everything we've done so far has been jabs, little shit. But now we go for a full one-two punch."

  "What are we gonna do?" We turned in surprise; it was Ben, his eyes alight with excitement.

  "Two things. First," I turned to Remi. "We build your dirty bomb."

  Remi's eyes grew round as basketballs and I knew I had him.

  The chemistry classroom was a cramped place with gas nozzles at every cold, marble desk.

  It smelled like bitter chemicals and sulfur. Remi wasn't given access to the keys; he was shoved into the room at the bell the same as any other student. But whatever else Remi was, he was certainly clever. One day while everyone else had been poring over a chemistry assignment he made sure was physically impossible, he had filled the lock with a complex foam he made earlier. The lock was built for rigidity, not real security; it was meant to keep Beasts in, not burglars out, so it was more like an old skeleton-key mechanism than an actual modern locking device, which were more complicated but delicate. The upside to that was that when Remi removed the foam from the lock, it managed to retain its simple shape. A wood file and some trial and error later and Remi had an all-access pass to the chemistry lab.

  "If we just had some Mentos and Coke we wouldn’t have to skulk around looking for bomb-making materials," Remi joked as he unlatched the door.

  It was clear as he walked around the room that Remi was at home here. He knew where every compound was, where to find every measuring implement. I could only imagine the room filled with his peers, sneering at him for his obvious intelligence and enthusiasm for the subject, especially as he had pissed so many of them off at one point or another. Remi would just keep talking, not for their sake but for his, as he opened up his genius and let the Philistine student body take what they wanted.

  "I need a Phillips head screwdriver and a soldering gun." I wasted no time, unzipping my bag with the calm hurry of someone who wants to look like they know what they're doing.

  Remi slid a drawer open and tossed the two items at me, along with a coil of thin solder. I set these down on the marble and pulled out the two disposable cameras James had given me.

  Everyone knows how to make a stungun out of a disposable camera. It's as simple as exposing some wires connected to the flash and snapping a picture. It's an old trick and not usually all that dangerous. But James hadn't sent me to Quarantine with any old cameras. These had been specially prepared. Each concealed a slim battery pack from a hand-held stungun. Two pairs of copper tines sharped to needles were concealed under the plastic of the film cover and I soldered these to the connection points between the circuitboard and the flash on each camera. Then I unhooked the tiny batteries the cameras was intended to have - left connected in case I had to take a picture for some reason - and soldered in the stungun batteries. I snapped the plastic closed with satisfaction and set the flash to charge. Once the little light indicated the flash was ready, I clicked the picture button. Electricity surged from the beefed-up flash capacitor and danced up the tines, a bright blue arc forming between the copper needles. I smiled. The batteries were weakened from disuse and I had no idea how many shots I had, but they were better than nothing.

  Caught up in my work I hadn't noticed Remi. He had taken a large lab beaker and filled it with a dark blue liquid flecked with black powder. In a thick test tube he added a slimy yellow substance filled only a quarter of the way, then cut a cylinder of thick plastic with a silver scalpel and packed the tube tight, upending it several times to make sure none of the yellow liquid could get through. Now the test tube was bifurcated by the plastic; yellow liquid on the bottom, empty on top. He sat that aside for a moment and turned his attention to a large cork stopper. In this he hooked two snipped pieces of clothes hanger wire, threading it through the cork so that the bent ends were perpendicular to the rest, which made it seem as if the cork had grown stilt legs made of cheap brass. Next he fashioned a loop out of more clothes hanger wire, making sure the test tube fit snugly inside. Remi bent the ends of the cork-wires around the loop with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

  Remi noticed me watching and grinned. "The best way to get a destructive explosion is to heat something unstable and flammable. But that would be too difficult for our purposes today, so instead I've opted for a simple gas-generating agent. This blue stuff here is harmless on its own, even with the extra stuff I've put in there as an accelerant, but when it comes in contact with this yellow stuff, reactions start and the mixture releases carbon dioxide very quickly. Now this," he waved a small bottle at me "is industrial hydrofluoric acid. Are you ready? Cause when I put this in there's only going to be about thirty minutes until happy fun time."

  I slid my two makeshift stunguns in my bag. "Ready when you are."

  "I just hope Dave is," Remi said,
his voice hesitant. "This is a bad idea. This stuff is pretty volitile. If I guessed wrong, it'll go boom early."

  "Too late for second thoughts now," I urged. "We're on a schedule."

  He sighed. "Here we go."

  Remi's hands reminded me of the old industrial robots you used to see in movies about Detroit, when there was still a Detroit. He emptied the hydrofluoric acid into the empty half of the test tube, where it immediately started to steam. Gently but quickly he slid the tube into his metal loop, smeared some goop from a tube onto the cork and lowered the whole assembly into the beaker. The test tube settled to rest with its end partially submerged in blue liquid, the cork flush with the top. "Hydrofluoric acid eats glass," he explained as he worked. "What I've done is use the acid as a chemical timer. The acid will eat the test tube and cause the bottom part with the yellow liquid to fall into the blue in roughly half an hour. The acid will have eaten away at the glass around the plastic, so the little stopper I put in there will slide out. Then, reaction. Pressure will build until it seeks out the weak point, which would normally be the cork, except I've applied some really nasty glue to it that dries super-quick. Still..." He took out a thin nail and a piece of copper tubing and slid the nail down it to gently tap the beaker, creating hairline cracks. "If I want a uniform burst, I should create weak points."

  "What now?" Watching Remi at chemicals was to watch a completely different person. I wondered for a moment what he would have been like had he been born to a normal family in a normal Quarantine Zone. Would he have realized his genius? Or would he have wasted it away in lighter pursuits?

  Remi looked at me askance. "Now we go meet Dave as soon as we fucking can."

  After checking the halls to make sure the guards were still on their normal rounds, we snuck out of Largo's classroom, Remi balancing the beaker oh-so-tenderly in his hands. Cameras recorded our every move, but there were too many cameras throughout the school to think that Security could watch all of them. We would get caught later, but we didn't care about that, even if it meant more time in the Bell.

  Dave was waiting for us back at our dorm cell. "Jesus, is that it?"

  "Do you have it?" Remi barked, clearly worried about his hommade device. "We have no time to waste."

  "Oh, I got it. One of the guards saw me with it, so I said it was my lunch." Dave laughed and I chuckled along at the joke.

  Remi only glowered. "Give it here."

  Dave hesitated. "Don't you want me to do that, I mean...it is mine..."

  Remi shook his head impatiently. "This is my bomb. Give it here."

  I shared Dave's grimace as he handed the paper bag over. Remi pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and scooped out what was inside, smearing it on the beaker.

  Yes, we made a shitbomb.

  The English Hall was guarded. It always was, except late at night when the halls leading to it were on lockdown. The barriers at the north end were toppled Saracen stones, manned by two faceless guards seated on aluminum stools, their guns cradled to their chests. I've often marvelled at the resiliency of security guards, the discipline it must take to sit in abject boredom, both wishing something would happen and praying that it doesn't. It must eat at the soul.

  Dave and I approached them shorty before the dinner bell. Dave because he seemed trustworthy and me because, hey, we only had so many options. The guards tensed as we drew near. The one on the right barked "No access until tomorrow. Beat it to dinner, now."

  "I left my book in there," Dave whined, pointing past their shoulders into the hall. "I gotta read that book by tomorrow or I'm going to fail English Lit."

  "Not my problem kid," the guard sneered. Part of me felt relieved. Had he been like Biff, I wasn't sure I could have gone through with it."I guess you fail for not remembering to get your shit before you leave."

  That's when we hit them with the stun guns. We had managed to inch ourselves close as Dave waved his arm down the hall and stabbed them with the makeshift copper needles and punched the picture button. Two flashes went off and I saw my guard's eyes roll back in his head as the other one fought to bring his gun to bear before eventually falling too.

  "Jesus Christ," I breathed. I was shaking. "We could have died just then."

  Dave half-smiled, not understanding. "What? Everything went fine."

  Everything always went fine for Dave.

  Remi joined us as soon as the first body hit the floor, the beaker-bomb held tight in a cheap plastic bag. "Hurry!" he said, gesturing at the guards.

  I bent down and pulled one of the guards' key rings off his belt. He was still breathing, but every few seconds his entire body would shiver. "Got it –” I started to say turning back to Remi.

  Remi was staring, transfixed at the MP5 machine gun that had spilled onto the floor by the barrier. He knelt down, one hand reaching for it.

  "Are you fucking nuts?" Dave slapped his hand away.

  Remi blinked twice, then shook his head. "Fine. Let's go, hurry!" He walked quickly down the hall, bomb still dangling from one hand.

  Dave and I shared a look of horror and followed.

  Mr. Jarvis's classroom seemed huge when there were no one in it. The desks sat forlornly in want of students. The air stood ready in want of sermons.

  "Do you want to say anything, Sam? This is your chance." Remi peeled the plastic bag away and set the shitbomb gently on Jarvis's desk.

  I thought hard. Jarvis seemed to deserve something eloquent, some Monte Cristo monologue, some burning tirade about trust and betrayal. He would have liked that. I thought about the Literary Society and how comfortable I was there. I thought about Kate, arguing with me about literature, Kate defying my theories with her own, Kate lounging at her desk waiting for class to start. Kate staring at me with disgust.

  "Fuck you, Jarvis," I said and walked out.

  Remi, Dave and I sat in our dorm cell, waiting. Dave sat on his bunk, tossing a baseball in the air, patiently biding his time. Remi paced, walking the same uneven oval into the floor that he had perfected every day in the Bell. Ben had gotten a deep gash on his arm from a bent nail in the boys' locker room about an hour earlier, so he was still in the infirmary, probably getting stitches. I sat on my bunk in a very calming lotus position, earbuds firmly wedged in my ears, my radio turned all the way up.

  "It should have happened by now," Remi said, grinding his teeth. "What if I fucked up the amount of Hydrofluoric acid? What if –”

  "Calm down," I said. "I'm listening."

  "What'd he doing now?" Dave asked.

  "I don't know. He's not talking. I just hear breathing and some papers shuffling sometimes."

  Both Remi and Dave had been fascinated to hear about my radio and the bug I had planted in Conyers's office. It was only belatedly that I realized that I could well have used that to win my friends back over, by telling them I only went to the Principal's office to plant bugs, but it was too late. They forced me to recall every single conversation that had occurred in Conyers's office. They seemed hungry for them. I decided that just such a story was appropriate now, to take their minds off the waiting.

  "One time," I said in my deeper storyteller's voice, "Conyers was filling out paperwork, or whatever the hell it is that he does, when he looked over at one of his monitors. I could hear him gasp, then he knocked the phone off the hook trying to pick up the reciever, he was so agitated. He must have been talking to the head of Security, that Jason guy, and he must have been asleep, because he starts yelling, like, 'wake the fuck up! We got a Beast on the Science Hall!' He slams the phone down and sits there staring at the monitor. I could hear his foot bouncing off the floor.

  “Then the phone rings again. The security guy tells him it's just a garbage bag they put over the old trophy case there where those two guys broke it, remember that? But Conyers, he's having none of it, he's all 'that's bullshit, I saw what I saw and it wasn't any fucking garbage bag! Well, eventually he's got the whole guard force out of bed and canvassing the school until the wee hours of
the night, when he announces, get this - he thanks them for their help in this, what was it: This Very Necessary Surprise Readiness Test."

  Remi was too keyed up to laugh, but Dave left a few chuckles loose.

  "That reminds me," Dave said, his laugh fading abruptly. "When I went to the infirmary yesterday to scope things out, I talked to the nurse there."

  "There's actually a nurse?" I quipped. "I thought it was just Conyers with a pack of band-aids and a blowtorch."

  "No, honest to God woman, white nurse uniform and all. Anyway while she was hunting in her cabinets for antacid for me I remembered the story you told us about Sharon Norse. So I asked kind of casually if the nurse had known Sharon." Dave looked me seriously. "She said that Sharon had come in once with a severe sinus infection, but other than that she had never seen Sharon the entire time she'd been there."

  I shook my head. "I don't understand what you're...wait. Something's happening!" I cupped my hands around my ears.

  "Did it blow?" Remi asked, his eyes alight with his old familiar fire, all traces of the professor gone.

  I smiled. "One of Conyers's pet guards just burst in to tell him that two guards had been assaulted and that some sort of bomb has gone off in the English Hall."

  Dave and Remi whooped and gave each other high-fives, but I crushed the headphones further into my ears. "He's gonna...it's...yep! Lockdown!"

  This time I joined the celebration and we yelled our fucking throats out, dancing around the dorm cell like idiots. We were drunk on our own power and we starting singing a giddy, exaggerated version of "There Will Be Another Sun," Dave pelvic thrusting his way triumphantly through lyrics that honestly didn't really merit it.

  It was only another twenty minutes before the iron locks that held us locked in started to churn open. We swallowed our laughter and tried to look serious as the door swung open, revealing Conyers, flanked by his guards. We wanted to present a stern image to the Powers That Be, but I think we all wore a shitfaced smirk.

  "Jesus Christ, boys," Conyers rumbled. "You have no idea how much trouble you're in."