Hardwired

by Trisha Leaver

  “Everyone up,” she called out. “You know how this works. Everyone back to their rooms.”

  The lights flickered as she opened the door to the hallway, the wail of the siren cutting off abruptly as if someone had purposefully disengaged the alarm.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Chris.

  “No clue,” he said. “Probably a fight in another wing or something.”

  I shook my head. The halls were too quiet, too empty for that. The only fight I’d witnessed so far was insane, every guard in the facility barreling down the halls and screaming orders into their comlinks. This looked different. Felt different.

  I turned and sought out the guard who’d been assigned to our group session—Murphy. He didn’t look too concerned; his gun was tucked back in his waistband, and he was motioning for the few stragglers to hurry up.

  “I don’t have time for your games right now, Lucas,” he said as he pointed us toward the residence wing. “I’ll let what happened back there slide, but any other issues with you and we’re going to have a problem.”

  I nodded my thanks, unsure why he was being so lax with us, and started walking down the hall. Our room was the first on the left. The electronic keypad securing our door was dark; the red light I was used to staring at silent, dead.

  The guard jabbed his fingers at the numbers, swearing when he couldn’t get the panel to respond. Eventually he gave up and simply yanked on the door handle. It flew open, hitting the cinderblock wall behind it with a deafening thud.

  “What’s up with the doors?” I asked as I stepped into my room. Everything in this building was electronic, from the doors to our rooms to the fences surrounding the facility to the timers in the showers. We always needed a key code to enter our room—a combination that changed daily and only the security staff knew.

  “Storm outside,” the guard replied, as if I was an idiot for not realizing it. Right. Like I was supposed to know that. I was housed in a building with no windows, and yet I was somehow supposed to know the weather.

  “And?” I asked, not sure what a little bit of wind and rain had to do with the sudden need to lock down the facility.

  “Small issue with the power,” Murphy explained. “The backup generators will kick in shortly, but until then, everyone is to remain in their rooms.” He motioned for me to step farther into my room and reached for the door. “I wouldn’t try anything. The electronic locks on the doors might not work, but you can rest assured that my Taser does.”

  Four

  I woke up the next morning feeling better than ever. Sure, the power was still out and we’d spent the last twenty-five hours confined to our room, amusing ourselves with a tic-tac-toe board we carved into our floor, but the power outage had disabled the sirens and the flashing light above my bunk, affording me ten solid hours of sleep. The few lights with battery backup flickered every couple of minutes, but the surveillance camera never came back on and the electronic locks on our door never reengaged.

  On top of everything, they’d decided to move us to the reintegration facility today, an entire two weeks early. At least that was something.

  Stepping through the large steel front door of the Bake Shop, I stared up at the electric fence that surrounded the perimeter of the facility. It was two rows deep and capped with razor wire. Watchtowers anchored each corner, and I suspected the guards posted up there were carrying something more lethal than Taser guns.

  The ground was covered in several inches of snow, and the wind whipped through the tight corridor housing the IGT van. I turned my face directly into the icy blast, catching an eyeful of snow. A month earlier, I would’ve despised the cold weather; I lived for summer, when my only concern was whether I had enough gas in my old Bronco to get to Narragansett Beach. Not anymore. The bitter cold slapping at my face reminded me I was almost free, no longer confined to four cement walls and a communal shower.

  A guard I didn’t recognize snapped his fingers in my direction, motioning for me to hurry up. Phase 2. We were about to enter Phase 2, reintegration. To me, that was code for you managed to survive our tests without going batshit crazy so we’re going to let you go. On our terms. In a couple of weeks. After we’ve made damn sure you aren’t latently psychotic.

  Pass Phase 2 without incident, and we’d be shipped home with the government’s “low risk” stamp of approval. And an ankle bracelet. If we could make it a year without screwing up, then we got to trade the bracelet in for the less invasive, equally humiliating scarlet letter of registering as an MAOA-L carrier. Being formally registered would earn us the opportunity to have our names distributed, confidentially of course, to the law enforcement officials in our area. Oh, and then there were the monthly meetings with a program-appointed shrink.

  The latently psychotic stuff, I got. It’s not like the effects of sleep deprivation took hold the first night. Everything they’d subjected us to was gradual, designed to steadily chip away at our self-control until we cracked. But I didn’t care about any of that; it was all the other baggage that came along with going home that pissed me off.

  The side door to the van was already open, four of the guys in our group settling into the back seats. I climbed the two steps and inched my way across the middle seat, seeking out a window.

  “Damn, it’s cold out here,” Chris grumbled as he took the seat next to me. “Why the hell would they move us now? I mean, look at it out there. It’s a blizzard.”

  I shrugged. Sure, it was snowing, but I’d seen worse. Plus, I wasn’t about to complain.

  “Think it has anything to do with the power still being out?” Chris asked.

  “Probably,” I said, remembering the lights dimming as we made our way down the exit corridor to the van. “I heard the guards talking when they brought us our breakfast this morning. There’s a new group coming in today. Without the electronic safety measures powered up, I guess they figure they need the guards assigned to us to cover the newbies.”

  “And what? We’re the safest ones to move out, so we get the honor of freezing our asses off in the van so they can keep their little impound schedule intact?”

  “Seems so,” I replied.

  Chris laughed, his amusement drawing the attention of everyone in the van. “Who would’ve thought a place like this, a place designed to test less than one percent of the population, would have a security problem?”

  “Beats me,” I said.

  The driver closed the door, and I took a quick head count. Ten of us, a driver, and a guard, all shoved into this nasty-smelling van, grunting as we tried to find a comfortable position. Short, tall, fat, thin; there was nothing physically binding the ten of us together, except maybe our exhaustion. And that damn gene.

  I blew a puff of air onto the window and watched as the fog vanished, leaving behind traces of liquid. It was pathetic, really. I’d spent the last two years of my life purposefully staying out of trouble, not wanting to give anybody a reason to suspect that I carried the gene. But I ended up here anyway. Thinking back on it, I should’ve made the time worthy of the punishment, maybe put a few rocks through the windows at school or practiced my batting swing on the neighbors’ mailboxes.

  I shook off that useless string of what ifs and stared down at my feet. They were cold. The floor vents in the van apparently didn’t work, and I curled my toes into my shoes, the tiny movement making me wince. Damn sneakers were half a size too small, and my feet had been aching since day one.

  I reached down to untie them, my hand grazing across a piece of paper stuck to the metal frame of the seat in front of me. Bored and curious, I tore it free, ripping it in the process.

  “What’s that?” Chris asked, and I held up the pamphlet for him to see. He cocked his head and recited the text: “A coed testing facility for adolescents, providing a supportive and nurturing environment committed to ensuring every individual leads a safe, happy, and product
ive life.”

  “Must’ve been left over from the last group they brought in,” I said. “I wonder if any of them believed a word of it.”

  “Hope not. And that coed part is a crock of shit. I haven’t run across a single girl in this place. Unless you count Ms. Tremblay. Which I don’t,” he quickly clarified. “And God knows a few girls would’ve at least made my time there a little more interesting.”

  I laughed. Leave it to Chris to ignore the “supportive and nurturing environment” crap and hone in on the word “coed.” But my smile slipped away as I considered his words more carefully. I hadn’t seen any girls in there either, and for a whole host of messed-up reasons, I was glad.

  “Doubt a girl would survive their tests,” I said, picturing a grown-up version of Suzie trapped inside the Bake Shop.

  I knew that the chances of her—of any girl—testing positive for the gene were one in a million, but that didn’t stop the terror from worming its way though my core. My mind conjured up images of her secluded in a dark room for hours as they watched her through a two-way mirror, waiting to see if the loneliness gave way to something darker. Even I had cursed the fear that wove through my system during that test, my tears collecting in the hollow of my neck as I begged for someone to talk to me, hit me, do anything so I’d know I wasn’t alone. And I knew what to expect—knew from Tyler’s journal that that particular torment only lasted six hours.

  “No, a girl probably wouldn’t,” Chris replied. “You think … I mean, if there was a girl in there, you think they’d go easier on her?”

  I didn’t miss the hesitation in Chris’s voice or the fear that accompanied his question. He didn’t have any sisters, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a cousin or a girlfriend. Didn’t mean it wasn’t their face he was envisioning.

  “Can I have it?” he added.

  “Have what?”

  “The brochure.”

  “Sure,” I said, tossing it his direction, not caring whether or not I ever saw the damn thing again. They could keep their glossy pictures and well-crafted lies. My memories of that place were all I needed.

  FIVE

  The inside of the van smelled nasty and my ears were clogged, the pressure building to a nearly intolerable level as we made our slow descent down the mountain. I’d have given anything for my iPod, a pack of gum, a bottle of water … anything to make my ears pop.

  I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt tighter around my head and changed positions. The van’s seats were rock-hard, and the guy in the row behind me kept jabbing his foot into my back. But no matter what I did, no matter what angle I twisted my body into, I couldn’t get comfortable.

  Every few minutes, I’d catch Chris staring at one of the guys, his gaze narrowing as if he was trying to figure them out. I’d done the same thing myself; and, if any of us were going to have a delayed reaction to the testing, my money was on the scrawny kid directly in front of us. From the smell pouring off him and the rather greasy tinge to his hair, my guess was he hadn’t showered since his first day at the Bake Shop. To make things worse, he was muttering to himself, so much so that the guard in the back of the van had angled his body to better watch him.

  I yanked on the seat belt digging into my shoulder, half considering taking it off. But the roads were slick, and that narrow strap of nylon had saved me from sliding sideways into Chris’s lap more than a couple of times already.

  “You nervous?” I asked Chris. He may have been lazily watching the passing trees, but his leg was bouncing a mile a minute, shaking the entire seat.

  “Nope,” he replied, never taking his eyes off the road. “I figure it can’t be any worse than what we’ve already been through.”

  He wasn’t looking for an answer, but I nodded anyway. He was right. The tests were one thing, but it was the sensation of constantly being watched that had me struggling to stay sane. If the reintegration facility was less intense, if people weren’t constantly tracking my every move, then maybe I could survive this nightmare after all.

  “According to the brochure, they even have a gaming system there,” Chris continued.

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one,” I said. None of Tyler’s journal entries had mentioned a gaming system, and the one thing he’d loved nearly as much as his girlfriend was shooting virtual zombies. I snagged the brochure from underneath Chris’s leg and flipped through the pages. Sure enough, there was a picture of a gaming system and a flat-screen TV. For some reason, I suspected that was a picture of a staff lounge and not our communal meeting room.

  “You got a girlfriend back home?” I asked Chris. I’d avoided asking him any personal questions up to this point. But I was bored out of my mind and a tiny bit curious.

  Chris shook his head but stayed silent.

  “Me either,” I replied. “Once Tyler tested positive, I pretty much became every parent’s worst nightmare. Being labeled potentially psychotic doesn’t exactly make you prime dating material.”

  Chris turned at my words, no doubt surprised I was volunteering to talk about anything personal. “What really happened with your brother?” he asked.

  “They broke him,” I breathed out. “He was with the first group that got tested. They took him a little over two years ago. Same testing facility, same series of tests.”

  There were only six of them at the Bake Shop then. They’d kept three of the guys for further evaluation, and three they’d sent home. I’d looked up the other two after Tyler died. I wanted to see how they were doing, if they were as messed-up as my brother. They were alive, but neither of them was still in school. Neither of them had a job. As far as I could tell, they were barely existing.

  “What was he like when he came home?” Chris asked.

  “Different,” I replied. “Angry. Closed off. Isolated. Take your pick.”

  “What about his friends? His girlfriend? Yesterday, back at that stupid therapy session, you said everybody would turn on us once we got home. Did they turn on him?” Chris asked, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was his biggest fear. Not failing these tests. Not have to register as a MAOA-L carrier. Rather, that the people he’d grown to love would all reject him.

  I smiled as I recalled Olivia. She was one person who’d never turned her back on Tyler, the only one who could get him to talk. “His girlfriend didn’t turn on him. Neither did his best friend, Nick. Olivia was waiting for Tyler the day he got home.” She’s with him now, I silently added.

  “So then you knew,” Chis said, a few minutes later. “I mean, you knew that if your brother tested positive, chances were you would too.”

  “Yup.” I’d known my days were numbered when Sheriff Watts first showed up for Tyler. The fact that I’d also tested positive wasn’t coincidental. The gene was hereditary, passed from one generation to the next.

  “So why didn’t you run?” Chris asked. “Why didn’t you take off the day before your seventeenth birthday?”

  “I thought about it.” I’d actually done more than just think about it—I’d completely mapped it out, had even started stashing supplies in the shed behind our house. Plan was to toss all my belongings into my Bronco and head for the Canadian border, but I didn’t have a passport or any real money to speak of. Plus, in my mind, running was like letting them win, admitting that I was scared of failing their tests. And scared or not, I wasn’t about to let them win.

  “I had nowhere to go,” I finally admitted. “It’s not like anyone was going to help me. Most of our friends wanted nothing to do with me after Tyler, and it’s not like people are overly excited to help a teenager with sociopath potential. So I figured, why put off the inevitable. Why let them see my fear and win?”

  “They won’t break us.” There was an edge of defiance in Chris’s tone, one that had me chuckling. He was as determined as I was to prove Ms. Tremblay and every last guard in that place wrong. To prove to the
world that we weren’t hardwired to kill.

  “I would have run,” Chris mumbled under his breath.

  I couldn’t say I blamed him. Looking back on it, I probably should have.

  SIX

  I’d forgotten how long it could take to go forty miles on snow-covered roads, let alone in an oversized, top-heavy van. What should’ve been a quick one-hour drive was painfully dragging on, the boredom of the trip bordering on psychological torture. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window. How the other guys in the van had managed to fall asleep was beyond me. Every few minutes, we’d hit a bump in the road and my head would bounce off the glass, painfully jarring me awake.

  “What time is it?” Chris asked as he stretched beside me. He hadn’t been able to sleep either and had taken to picking at the small tear in the vinyl seat between us. There was a gaping hole there now, a wad of yellowish foam scattered by his feet.

  “No clue,” I said. I’d given up trying to guess the time and started tracking our progress by counting the number of moose-crossing signs we passed. Only two in the last hour. “Probably late afternoon.”

  “This is insane. We could walk there faster,” Chris moaned.

  He was right. At this rate, it’d be morning before we got to the reintegration facility. Sure, it was snowing when we left, but things had gotten noticeably worse in the last hour. The lines marking the sides of the road were no longer visible; only a guardrail marked our route. That was it. No cement blocks, no breakdown lane, just a waist-high strip of metal designed to keep us from literally falling off the side of the mountain.

  The road narrowed, and our van slowed to a near stop as the driver navigated his way around a downed tree. I questioned why he just didn’t pull over and move it. It was a scrawny pitch pine no more than a few inches thick. Any one of us could’ve shoved it out of the way, the driver and security guard included. And given how desperate I was to piss, I would’ve gladly volunteered.