Sanctuary Bay

by Laura Burns

  “No, that’s the thing. You didn’t see them. It was freaky. They can’t all be such good liars or actors,” Sarah protested. “Nate was the weirdest. He got agitated and became … I don’t know, nonsensical. And Izzy! I know her, Ethan. I know her secrets. I would know if she was lying.”

  “Well, she either lied last night or she lied the night you took Karina to the Pine Tree. You said she actually bragged about killing Karina,” Ethan said. “Which is it?

  Sarah hesitated. The night she’d shot Karina, Izzy had been alive somehow, animated in a way Sarah had never seen before. “Honestly, that night in the clearing I felt like I was seeing the true Izzy for the first time,” she admitted. “But last night, when I looked her in the eyes, she really had no idea where Karina was.”

  “Well, I’m going to talk to her. I’ll get the truth,” Ethan announced, getting to his feet.

  “She’s not going to tell you anything she didn’t tell me,” Sarah said.

  “She shot my girlfriend. I’m talking to her.” Ethan pulled out his cell. “Locate Izzy.”

  “Administration building courtyard,” the cell replied.

  Ethan glanced at Sarah. “You coming?”

  Sarah grabbed her latte and stood. She definitely wasn’t going to let him talk to Izzy by himself. “She’s probably going to therapy. She has early morning appointments a couple of times a week. Did Karina ever tell you Izzy’s getting treatment for post-traumatic stress?”

  “It’s not working. She’s still nuts,” he deadpanned.

  “You know, whenever I start thinking you might actually be a decent person, you say something to convince me you’re a jerk again,” Sarah told him as they walked.

  “I like to keep you on your toes.”

  “Mental illness is an illness.”

  “No shit. But PTSD doesn’t make you calmly grab a gun and kill someone, and that’s what you said she did,” he argued. “Do you see her anywhere up there?”

  “No.” There were only a few people out this early, none of them Izzy.

  Ethan checked his cell, and frowned. “Not there.”

  “Where is she?”

  “No, I mean, she’s not on the map. Her dot disappeared,” he said.

  Sarah’s stomach clenched. “Is it a cell screwup?” she asked.

  He hit a few buttons. “You’re on there,” he said. “And Mr. Fisher’s dot is moving toward the dining hall just like he is.”

  “The Wolfpack meets in the basement of the main building, and that doesn’t show up on our cells. If the Admin building has a basement, maybe it doesn’t either,” Sarah suggested.

  “I’ve seen a staircase around the back of Admin,” Ethan said thoughtfully. “I never bothered going down. I was looking for ways out, not deeper in.” He led her around the building to a narrow walkway blocked by a wrought iron gate. A sign on it read NO ADMITTANCE.

  Sarah hesitated.

  “Really?” he asked her. “Because of a sign?”

  “Sorry. Habit,” Sarah replied. “When people always expect you to be a fuckup, you tend to follow all the rules just to prove them wrong.”

  “Sounds boring.” Ethan flipped up the latch and opened the gate.

  “How was that not locked? The security at this school is so random,” Sarah said as they started down the walkway. “Like the door to the subbasement where the Wolfpack meets. It has a regular lock, no fingerprint pad.”

  “Yeah, the student areas are high tech, but a lot of the things I’ve found off the grid are barely any tech at all.” He opened the door at the end of the walkway. “Case in point.” They started down the stone steps. “Guess they expect us to be good little boys and girls and stay where we belong. Or else they don’t want to spend money on the staff areas, since staff don’t pay tuition.”

  “Well, there are nicer spots on campus.” The concrete stairway was steep and long. And cold. It obviously led to a subbasement. “I … I think I was wrong about Izzy going to therapy,” Sarah said.

  “Unless her therapy is in a janitor’s closet or whatever they keep down here,” Ethan said.

  The last ten steps were almost completely dark. Then the staircase ended at a closed door. Sarah pulled it open slowly, unsure what to expect.

  A tunnel made of textured stainless steel stretched out in front of her. Brilliant lights ran down either side, high on the walls. About six feet away, something that looked part car and part train sat between two rubber bumpers that lined each side of the tunnel. It was like she’d stepped into the future.

  “Is that a monorail?” Sarah asked. She’d seen a picture of one in an ad for Disney World once. “A mini one?”

  “Holy shit. They have something like this at Heathrow, but what is it doing under the school?” Ethan asked.

  “It’s like the boat,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, but the boat’s part of the package to impress the parents. ‘A Black Diamond yacht will transport your child to the Academy.’ Nobody said anything about this.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Ready to take a ride?”

  Sarah stared at him. She was ready to turn around and run. “But we don’t even know if Izzy came down here.”

  “There’s no other reason she’d be off the grid,” Ethan said. “But even if she’s not, I’m finding out where this thing goes. This might be where I finally learn what’s really going on at this school.”

  Sarah hesitated, then nodded. He was right. Whatever was down here, they had to know what it was.

  “Do you know how to drive it?” she asked.

  “If it’s the same as the one at the airport, it drives itself.”

  Of course it does, Sarah thought. She followed Ethan over to the little car, so sleek, with rounded edges. Sensing movement, both doors slid open without a whisper of sound. They stepped inside. There was a short row of seats on one side. The other side held a padded bench, with restraints. Sarah’s body went cold. What was that for? She sank down onto one of the seats with Ethan beside her. When he grabbed her hand she was more grateful than she’d ever been in her life.

  After a low warning chime, the doors closed, and they began to glide through the tunnel in their pod. Sarah thought they must have gone at least a couple of miles before they reached the other end and the doors swished open again. A few steps led up to an ordinary-looking door.

  “Here we go,” Sarah said, reaching for the handle. As her fingers brushed the metal, a scream split the air.

  Sarah jerked the door wide. Another hallway stretched out in front of them. The screaming continued. “Izzy!” Sarah gasped. She and Ethan both took off, sprinting down the empty hallway in the direction of the scream.

  The hall turned sharply, and when Sarah rounded the corner, she saw a door about a hundred feet away where the screaming was coming from. Ethan reached it first. He yanked the door open into a big room, with overhead fluorescent lights and a few carts full of surgical instruments. A row of computers lined one wall, the monitors scrolling names of medicines or chemicals—dopamine, 5-hydroxytryptamine, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, 3-bromcyan, norepinephrine, somatostatin—

  Sarah’s attention snagged on “3-bromcyan.” Bromcyan. That drug again!

  “What are you doing here?” somebody cried.

  A man stood in the back of the room, dressed in scrubs like an OR nurse. He moved toward her, and that’s when Sarah saw the tubes running from the computer to the table behind him. To Izzy, on the table.

  Izzy lay flat, pinned down with metal bars like the ones in the old asylum. Her wrists were restrained with leather straps, and her head had been turned to the side and locked in place with a tight strap over her forehead. There were electrodes on her temples and some sort of port at the base of her skull. A thin silvery tube led from there to the computer.

  She was screaming.

  “Oh my god!” Sarah cried. “Izzy!”

  She raced for the table, and began working on one of the wrist restraints before the nurse could stop her. Ethan strug
gled with the restraint on Izzy’s other wrist. Izzy’s shrieks echoed off the walls, piercing and feral like an animal in pain. Sarah managed to free one of Izzy’s hands, and she began clawing at the strap over her head.

  “Stop! Get away from her.” The nurse grabbed one of Sarah’s arms, tugging hard. Sarah flipped her wrist around, got a grip on the guy’s arm, and jerked him toward her, kneeing him in the balls.

  The nurse went down with a cry of pain. Sarah whirled back toward Izzy. Ethan had freed the other wrist restraint. Now Izzy clutched at the head strap with both hands, twisting her torso in agony, her hips and legs still held down by metal bars.

  “I’m not sure if I should pull this out.” Ethan hesitated with his fingers inches away from the tube feeding into the port at the back of Izzy’s head.

  Chemo patients had ports installed sometimes, but the tube plugged there didn’t look like any IV line Sarah had ever seen. “Do her legs first. I’ll try to get her head loose, then maybe we can figure out the best way to deal with the tube.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw the nurse haul himself up on one of the surgical carts. He hit some kind of button on the wall. “Hurry! He set off an alarm,” Sarah warned. “Izzy, calm down,” she said. “We don’t have much time. Let me get this off.” She ran her fingers over the strap around her roommate’s forehead, trying to see where it connected. Izzy clawed at her, nails digging into Sarah’s hands, scratching hard enough to draw blood. Sarah cried out in pain.

  Ethan grabbed both of Izzy’s hands so Sarah could keep working. “It’s okay, Izzy,” he said in a soothing voice. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

  “Get away from her,” the nurse panted, still doubled over in pain.

  “Shut up, you sadist,” Sarah snapped. She dropped to her knees and peered under the table. There! A buckle to hold the strap tight. Sarah reached up and worked it loose.

  That was all Izzy needed. The instant the strap loosened, she shoved it off her head and sat up straight, still screaming. Ethan struggled to keep his hold on her. “Easy, easy,” he said.

  “Iz, you have to calm down,” Sarah pleaded, getting to her feet. “We’ll take off those metal straps somehow, but I need to get a better look at the tube in your—”

  Izzy wrenched one hand away from Ethan, wrapped the strange-looking tube around her hand and yanked.

  Sarah cringed and closed her eyes for a second, half expecting blood to come gushing out of the port along with the tube. When she opened them again, Izzy was working on the metal restraints. Ethan had let go of her other hand and was trying to help. If pulling the tube had hurt her, it was impossible to tell. The screams hadn’t changed—still shrill and nearly unbearable.

  Why is she still screaming? Sarah thought, growing frantic.

  “Let me help. Security’s going to be here any second.” She reached for the metal bar holding Izzy’s hips down.

  Izzy backhanded her across the face.

  Sarah’s head jerked to the side, wrenching her neck. She stumbled, lost her balance, and fell to her knees. For a split second, her eyes met the nurse’s. “I told you,” he said.

  A grinding, metallic sound filled the air, and then Izzy was free. She jumped from the table just as the door banged open and a security guard appeared. Izzy launched herself at him, her hands out in front of her like claws. She went straight for his eyes.

  “Izzy, no!” Ethan yelled. He managed to grab her by the shoulders, but not before Izzy raked her nails down the guard’s cheek.

  The guard grabbed Izzy by the forearms, but Izzy twisted erratically, managing to kick over one of the carts, sending surgical instruments crashing to the ground.

  Ethan struggled, finally pulling Izzy into a chokehold. Izzy twisted her head, sinking her teeth into his arm. At the same instant she kicked out with both legs, slamming her feet into the guard’s chest. His head smacked the tipped-over cart when he hit the ground.

  “Stop! Izzy, stop!” Sarah screamed. The guard bellowed in pain. The arm of Ethan’s shirt was soaked with blood, but he was still holding Izzy. Sarah turned to the nurse. “Do something. Don’t you have a sedative?”

  The nurse ignored her. He had recovered enough to stagger over to the counter next to the computer.

  “Let me help. I’m sorry I kicked you,” Sarah said in a rush. “I can give her the shot.”

  But he wasn’t preparing a hypodermic. He was pulling up a virtual keyboard.

  The guard was grunting and bleeding, and Izzy was still screaming and fighting like a cornered cat. “What are you doing?” Sarah cried. “We need to knock her out!”

  The nurse typed something into the computer, his face grim.

  The screaming stopped. Stunned, Sarah spun toward Izzy—just as she went limp in Ethan’s arms.

  “Izzy!” Sarah gasped.

  Ethan staggered back, gently releasing Izzy. She crumpled to the floor and lay perfectly still, her blond hair covering half her face, her mouth hanging slightly open. For a few seconds Sarah wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. “Wh-what happened to her?”

  “She was a danger to herself and to the rest of us. I told you to leave her alone,” the nurse barked.

  “Don’t talk! Do something!” Ethan shot back.

  “Is she okay?” Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off her roommate. “Why is she unconscious? What happened?”

  The outside door slammed, and a woman in a lab coat ran into the room. She took one look at Izzy on the floor and pulled out a cell phone. “I need transport in Lab One,” she said, then she hung up and gestured at Sarah and Ethan. “Take these two to the dean,” she ordered the security guard, who was still holding his bloody cheek.

  “No. Wait. Are you the doctor?” Sarah asked. “Why did Izzy just collapse like that? Is she hurt?”

  “Answer her!” Ethan yelled.

  The woman walked briskly over to the computer and began examining the information on the monitor, ignoring both of them and Izzy lying on the floor. The nurse, still hobbling, picked up the strange wire that had been attached to the port in Izzy’s neck. Neither looked at Sarah.

  The security guard moved toward Sarah, ready to drag her off to Dean Farrell.

  “Izzy, wake up!” Sarah commanded, throwing herself on the ground next to her friend. “Iz! Are you okay?”

  Izzy didn’t move a muscle. Her arm felt warm, but the stillness frightened Sarah. Was she dead? Sarah brushed her hair out of her face to get a better look. Izzy’s eyes were open, staring lifelessly at Sarah like two cold blue marbles. It was like gazing into Karina’s eyes after she was shot. “Iz?”

  “Give her a minute,” Ethan said as the guard reached for her.

  Sarah slid her hand down to Izzy’s wrist to check her pulse. It was there, strong and steady. But while her body might still be working, Izzy just wasn’t in there.

  “Let’s go,” the security guard muttered, hauling Sarah up to her feet. She shook free, and she and Ethan followed the guard quietly. She couldn’t help Izzy anymore. She just went along with the guard, as numb on the inside as Izzy seemed to be.

  * * *

  “Ms. Merson, Mr. Steere. Do you want to explain to me what you were thinking?” Dean Farrell barked the instant Sarah’s butt hit the chair in her office, Ethan taking the chair next to her. “You were in a restricted area. More than that, you assaulted a nurse.”

  “A nurse who had Izzy strapped to a table doing who the hell knows what to her,” Ethan shot back.

  Sarah automatically looked at the dean’s shoes. Red soles. Louboutin. Completely inappropriate for work. Sarah felt tears prick her eyes. That was Karina’s voice, Karina’s thoughts. She always did a Farrell Shoe Inventory for Karina, because her roommate loved that kind of stuff.

  She pushed her thoughts of Karina away. Right now she had to focus on Izzy. “She was screaming. She never stopped screaming.”

  I can still hear the screams …

  The dean sighed. “I’m sure that was terrible to see.
But what you did was incredibly dangerous, for you as well as the staff in the room. And, more importantly, for Isobel. She suffers from a very serious emotional disability—”

  “PTSD. I know,” Sarah cut her off. “She was going for therapy, she told me. But I’ve had a few hours of state-mandated therapy, and it’s sitting in a chair talking about your behavior. It’s not being tied down and brutalized.”

  “Sanctuary Bay Academy is known for its cutting-edge psychiatric treatments,” Dean Farrell said. “Many of our students would not be able to function in a regular high school, regardless of their high intelligence. Frequently families will petition to have their children sent here for that reason alone.”

  She sounds like a catalog, Sarah thought. “Izzy has always been perfectly functional,” she said aloud, though her voice wasn’t as confident as she wanted it to be. Izzy-in-the-woods flashed through her mind. Izzy-the-murderer.

  “That’s because our treatment works,” Dean Farrell replied.

  “Is that what you call it? Treatment?” Sarah shook her head.

  “It looked like torture,” Ethan added.

  “It’s experimental,” a new voice said from the doorway. “Sorry it took me a few to get here.” Dr. Diaz came in and sat on the couch. “Izzy was just brought to my office, and I wanted to check her over.”

  “Is she okay?” Sarah asked anxiously.

  “All her vitals were strong,” Dr. Diaz answered.

  “That’s a stroke of luck,” Dean Farrell said. “Interrupting the treatment midstream is … well, frankly, it’s never happened. When Dr. LaSalle called me from the site, she was afraid that Isobel might have suffered brain damage.”

  Sarah exchanged an alarmed glance with Ethan. “All we did was unstrap her,” she explained. “Izzy pulled out that … tube … herself.”

  “Which is precisely why she was restrained to begin with,” the dean pointed out. “And her reaction to your interference was violent.”

  “She was violent the whole time,” Sarah argued.

  “As soon as Sarah got one hand free, Izzy started clawing at her,” Ethan jumped in. “It wasn’t our fault.”