Hardwired

by Trisha Leaver

  “Being found may be the last thing we want,” I replied. We’d survived an accident that had killed everybody else in our van, it was butt-ass cold and snowing, and we hadn’t passed a car, a search party, or even so much as a dead animal since we’d climbed back up the side of that mountain. Hiking back to the testing facility was one thing—I knew the guards there, could gauge their reactions and adjust mine in turn. It was people out hunting deer or trapping foxes that I didn’t want to run into. Most people considered us dangerous, and … well, they’d have rifles to back up their prejudice.

  “Trust me, there’s nobody out here worth running into,” I went on. “I say we find a hole and crawl into it, wait out the storm, and hike back to the Bake Shop tomorrow morning.”

  nine

  We ended up taking shelter on the side of the road, hidden behind the trees but still close enough to see the road. The sky had cleared, bringing with it a searing cold. I huddled into myself and closed my eyes, never once contemplating sleep. Since I was dressed only in a sweatshirt and jeans, sleep was my enemy. Had I given in to my exhaustion, I might very well have frozen to death.

  Looking for something to keep my mind alert, I started listening to the sounds around me, isolating each one. A screech owl in the distance calling out to his mate. The gentle howl of the wind as it tore through the tops of the pitch pines. The crunching of snow underfoot.

  The crunching of snow underfoot?

  That last sound had my eyes flashing wide, and I scanned the area as my mind cycled through a crapload of disturbing possibilities.

  Chris had heard it too, his gaze lost in the dark tangle of trees surrounding us. “There,” he said, pointing to an outcropping of rocks in the distance. “Person.”

  It took me a second to see the person; the faded jeans and dirty gray jacket blended perfectly with the wall of rock behind them. It wasn’t until they finally broke the stillness by standing up that I finally realized who it was.

  A girl. And from the looks of it, she was scared shitless. Of me.

  I held up my hands, hoping she’d realize I was unarmed and had no intention of harming her. Her eyes trailed to Chris, and she took a tiny step backward as if somehow she perceived him to be the bigger threat.

  “He won’t hurt you either,” I said as I stood up and took a tentative step toward her.

  Chris stood up too, his eyes now furiously scanning the area for others. He went to speak, but I held up my hand for him to stop. The girl was clearly spooked, and I doubted us crowding her space was going to help.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. From what I could see, she looked relatively unharmed. Her knuckles were bloody, her coat was torn, and her hair was a mess of dirt and pine needles. I didn’t see any gaping wounds or insane amounts of blood. But she was alone. In the woods. At night. And as far as I knew, there was never a good reason for that.

  “I’m Lucas, and this is Chris,” I said, motioning for Chris to stop moving. He’d been taking tiny steps towards her the entire time, forcing her farther from the outcropping of rocks she’d been hiding behind and out into the open road.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Carly.” It came out barely as a whisper. “Carly Denton.”

  Tyler’s face suddenly flashed across my mind, the image of his girlfriend’s quickly following on its heels. Denton? Tyler’s girlfriend’s name was Olivia. Olivia Denton.

  I closed the space between us in four giant steps. I hadn’t seen the resemblance at first, but up this close, it was undeniable. Her hair was the same auburn color as Olivia’s, and her eyes … they were the exact same shade of ice blue. And they were every bit as sad.

  I hadn’t seen Olivia since the day we buried my brother. I’d gone back to Tyler’s grave later that night to say goodbye to him in private. Olivia was sitting there, her hands sunk deep into the dirt, talking to Tyler as if he were sitting right there next to her. I didn’t expect her to do what she did; I thought her parting words of “I’ll see you soon” were nothing more than a promise to visit his grave the next day. If I’d known, if I’d only taken the time to stop by her house on my way home, maybe she’d still be here.

  “I know you,” I said. “You’re Olivia’s sister.”

  She nodded and backed away, her eyes flickering to Chris. I saw the request in them, the silent plea for me to protect her from him. It split me in two. “He won’t hurt you,” I said again. “Neither of us will.”

  She ignored me, her eyes darting to the trees surrounding us, looking for the quickest way to escape.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked. “Do you recognize me at all?”

  “No,” she said.

  It made sense, I guess. We’d never actually been formally introduced. She was a year younger than me and went to a different school. The only time we’d been within touching distance of each other was at Tyler’s funeral, and needless to say, I hadn’t been paying much attention to who was there.

  “I’m Lucas,” I said, hoping the sound of my name would jar her memory. “Lucas Marshall. Tyler’s brother.”

  We stood like that forever—Carly’s eyes darting from my hair, to my mouth, to the hole in my jeans—while Chris watched from a distance, confused.

  “Umm, I take it you two know each other?” Chris said.

  I nodded and Carly remained silent. She looked nervous, her weight shifting from one leg to the other as she scanned the tree line. I didn’t know what, or rather who, she was looking for, but it was obvious she didn’t feel safe out in the open. With us.

  “Yeah, we know each other. Well, we know of each other. Carly, meet Chris; Chris, meet Carly,” I said, waving my hands between the two of them.

  “And how, exactly, do you know her?” Chris seemed skeptical. I couldn’t blame him. It was one thing to run into people you knew at the movies, or the mall, or the grocery store. But out in the middle of nowhere in the wake of a blizzard? Yeah, that was weird.

  “Her last name is Denton,” I said, answering Chris’s question. “She’s from my hometown. Her sister used to date my brother.” I turned back to Carly. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” she asked, reiterating my question. “Why are you here? You’re supposed to be locked up inside.”

  Her gaze shifted to the tangle of trees behind us, and she started taking tiny steps backward again. Her hands tensed at her sides and she turned slightly, her stance widening as if she were getting ready to run.

  “Come here,” I said softly, coaxing her forward. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why she was so scared of me.

  “You screw her over or something back home?” Chris asked as he watched Carly hold her ground, her feet melding to the snow-covered road. “Because that girl looks more than a little freaked to see you.”

  “Shut the hell up,” I yelled. I hadn’t merely screwed Carly over, I’d let her only sister die. I’d been so fixated on my own grief that I’d ignored every word Olivia uttered at my brother’s grave.

  “I’m not scared of you,” she quickly spit out. “You’re Lucas? You’re Tyler’s brother? And you’re really here, standing in front of me?”

  I nodded, a small smile creeping across my face. Even out here, in the midst of an epically screwed-up situation, it was nice to see someone from home. Nice to know that there was a least one person who was actually happy I was still around. “Yep. Why, were you looking for me?”

  “Were you on that van?” she asked. “The one I saw go over the cliff and explode?”

  Chris shot me a look, one I immediately recognized. Suspicion. He didn’t trust her, and no amount of history between us was going to change that.

  “Nope,” he said to her. “We were in the van that hit it. We got the honor of clawing our way out through the windshield and freezing our asses off as we hiked God knows how many miles back.”


  “Wait—you’re walking back to the testing facility? After everything they did to you, you’re actually heading back there? Willingly?”

  “That was the plan,” Chris snapped.

  “Take me with you.” Carly clamped her hand around my wrist, refusing to let go, pleading with me not to leave her alone on the road. “Please, Lucas, take me back there with you.”

  “Umm … yeah, no,” Chris answered for me. “Trust me, that’s the last place you want to go.”

  “That’s exactly where I need to go,” she said and started walking that direction, dragging me along beside her.

  ten

  “Stop,” I yelled, yanking back on her hold. Chris and I had hunkered down on the side of the road for a reason—because neither of us had the strength to move at the moment. And Carly showing up hadn’t changed that.

  “Not yet,” I added, pointing toward the small clearing we’d taken shelter in earlier. It wasn’t an ideal spot, but the sweeping tree branches at least offered some shelter from the blowing snow. “Chris wasn’t lying. We literally just climbed out of a car wreck. Can you at least give us a few minutes to regroup?”

  Chris mumbled something about letting her find her own way back, but I ignored him and settled onto the frozen ground. Carly took a seat across from me, her eyes softening as she took in Chris’s injuries. I leaned my back against the tree and stretched out my legs. It felt fantastic to stop, just sit and not move. To not think for a few seconds.

  I groaned at the piercing numbness settling into my toes. The trees we were hiding behind did little to muffle the sound of the howling wind. My body had given out, was

  aching to the point of agony, and my mind was in a bad place. The soundtrack of the crash replayed itself over and over in my mind. The memory of screeching tires and the smell of blood and vomit were enough to have me swallowing back bile all over again. I could’ve dealt with those images; since Tyler’s death, I’d gotten pretty adept at ignoring my nightmares. But what kept my mind spinning on high gear was the girl sitting across from me and the thousand questions I had for her.

  “You think he’ll be okay?” Carly asked. She’d been staring at a sleeping Chris for the past ten minutes, a look of guilt marring her features.

  These were the first words she’d spoken since we’d sat down, and they caught me off guard. I looked over at Chris and nodded. He was snoring like he always did, loud and full of grunts. Plus, he was the strongest person I knew, had gone through the same series of tests I had, and not once had he shown a single sign of cracking.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said, praying I was right. “You want to tell me why you’re so intent on getting to the testing facility?” The only person she knew in that place was me, and I could all but guarantee everybody from back home had written me off.

  She wavered for a minute, as if debating whether to tell me the truth. “I know what happens to people in there,” she finally said. “And I won’t let them—”

  I shook my head, nearly chuckling at the stupidity of her last statement. “You have no idea what goes on in that facility. If you did, you’d be running in the opposite direction rather than begging me to take you there.”

  “Not true,” she said. “I know everything that goes on in there. I know what happens from the second you walk into that place until the day they drop you back home. I know they strip you of all your personal belongings. I know about the tests, and the cinderblock walls, and the cameras mounted everywhere.”

  “How so?” I asked, remembering my brief two-hour layover at the intake center. They’d taken every personal item they’d found on me, including my picture of Tyler. They tossed it in a Ziploc bag, then labeled it with a series of numbers. They didn’t even use my last name.

  “I have Tyler’s notes. The ones he wrote to Olivia each day.”

  Chris muttered something from his spot on the ground, his eyes finally opening. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Rules haven’t changed at all since he was there. No letters, no communication with the outside world at all.”

  “I never said he wrote them inside. He had a journal; he used to write in it at night when Olivia was asleep. Your mother gave it to my sister the day of Tyler’s funeral.”

  An inexplicable amount of shame filled me. I knew what was in that journal, knew it outlined every test my brother had suffered through and his body’s disgusting reaction to most of them. And just sitting there, watching the pity roll through her eyes, I knew what she was doing—taking everything she’d read and applying it to me.

  I’d begged my mother not to give the journal to Olivia for this exact reason. I didn’t want anybody to know what they’d done to Tyler, what they would eventually do to me. But mom disagreed, said they were addressed to Olivia for a reason.

  “Still haven’t answered his question.” Chris was on his feet now, inching closer to Carly with each of his clipped words. “Why. Are. You. Here?”

  She stood up, her eyes darting to me. I briefly toyed with backing Chris down, but Carly Denton had a crap-ton of secrets, all of which she was hiding from me.

  “You’re hiding something.” Chris was within two feet of her, towering over her, demanding answers.

  She inched her way backward, weaving around the thin pines. Chris matched her step for step. She misjudged her footing and slipped, her back slamming into the tree behind her.

  “Chris,” I yelled, stepping between them. Carly was slowly sliding to the ground, holding her hands out, silently begging him to stop. “What the hell? You’re scaring the crap out of her.”

  I’d known Chris for only a month, but through all the tests we’d endured, he’d always remained calm, level-headed. Now he seemed barely this side of crazy. If he kept it up, Carly would never talk.

  “You may have some warped sense of obligation toward this girl, Lucas, but I don’t. Something’s been off with her since she showed up, and I want to know what it is.” He ducked his head around my shoulder, jabbing a finger in Carly’s direction. “And I want her to tell me. Now!”

  A flash of panic lit up Carly’s eyes, and I shoved Chris back to give her some space to breath. She quickly jumped to her feet and sprinted into the woods.

  “Lucas!” Chris shouted, and I took off after her. She only made it a few feet before I hooked my arms around her waist and pulled her into my chest, holding her in place. Carly kicked out at me, her hands clawing at my arms. I squeezed tighter, a not-so-gentle demand for her to stop.

  “Enough,” I said, gritting my teeth. Her nails were digging into my skin, the thin weight of my sweatshirt offering little protection against her rage. “I already told you I’m not going to hurt you, and neither is Chris.”

  Carly’s response to my promise was nothing more than a high-pitched shriek, one that had me contemplating dropping her right then so I could cover my ears. Luckily my brain kicked in, and I clamped one of my hands over her mouth, smothering her scream.

  I slid to the ground with her in my arms, anchoring her to my chest.

  “You scream like that again, and everybody within a hundred-mile radius of us will hear you and come running, guns pointed. You want that?” Chris asked, and she shook her head. “You ready to explain to them how all those trees fell in such a perfect order? Or maybe tell them why there are a bunch of dead teenagers down there? Because the more I sit here thinking about it, the more convinced I am that you had something to do with it.”

  “I’m going to let you go now,” I said. “But if you think about screaming again, then I’m going to let Chris over there sit on you, got it?”

  Carly nodded, and I eased up my grip. “Got it?” I asked one more time before completely letting her go.

  She scampered out of my reach and dropped to the ground a good ten feet away from me, her eyes, yet again, searching the woods.

  Chris kicked at the snow-covered ground beneath his boot
s, staring into the dead space that Carly was so fixated on. “You’ve been staring into those damn woods since we found you. What the hell are you looking for?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Interesting,” Chris said as he reached down, picked up a rock, and started tossing it back and forth between his hands. “I asked you ‘what,’ and you come back with ‘nobody.’”

  Panic seized Carly’s features. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”

  “What wasn’t supposed to happen this way?” I asked.

  “They weren’t supposed to die. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. We wanted the van to stop, that’s all. There was only supposed to be one van on the road, not two. A van from Intake, headed to the testing facility. I knew the day you went in, Lucas, and I knew the exact day you were supposed to be coming out. You weren’t supposed to be on the road. I never would’ve agreed to it if I’d known there’d be more than one van. None of us would’ve.”

  She was rattling off these vague statements as if saying them out loud somehow relieved her of guilt. Problem was, I had no idea what she meant, and I was too tired and irritated to sift through her words. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She reached up and swiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks, her words broken and laced with a confusion that rivaled my own. “How are you even here?”

  “Storm,” I said. “Seems they were moving us out early because the storm knocked out the power to most of the facility. Apparently, that causes a security issue for them.”

  Carly shook her head as if that information made no sense to her. “He said he confirmed the schedule this morning. You and Cam should still be inside.”

  “Who is he?” Chris ground out, honing in on a detail I hadn’t even noticed. “Who, besides you, wanted that other van to stop?”

  “The trees were supposed to slow them down, make them come to a stop, not—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Are you saying you dropped those trees?”