Hardwired

by Trisha Leaver

  “Tuesday,” I finally replied. “9:02 in the morning.”

  “And Cam?” Joe asked Carly.

  She didn’t need to answer; I already knew what he was getting at. There was only one road leading to the Bake Shop, and Tuesday was the transportation day.

  “I knew that IGT transfer van was carrying four boys and one guard, plus their driver,” Joe said. “I know everything about the facility, right down to how thick the walls are and who won the bid to construct it. I sat on the Government Task Force for Violent Crimes for ten years and was privy to every discussion they had about how to effectively manage MAOA-L

  carriers. I was one of the few who voiced opposition to the construction of these facilities, and I was dismissed from the Task Force because of my views. But that didn’t stop me from watching what was going on and tracking every move IGT made. For the last two years, I’ve studied every bit of information I could get my hands on, hacked into their systems, and collected volumes of information about the kids they’re testing. I’ve done my homework, Lucas. And I’m done with waiting for Washington to figure out what I already know. These facilities and IGT’s testing protocols are only succeeding in destroying the lives of boys just like you. Just like Tyler. Just like Cam.”

  “And you, what, heard about Cam and figured Carly would be the perfect person to help you?” I asked, pissed that Joe was using Carly’s fear and grief against her. “Carly is all the Dentons have left. Olivia’s gone. Cam is pretty much gone, but you’ve dragged her up here anyway.”

  “Cam’s not gone,” Carly whispered back, her eyes welling with tears. “And that’s exactly why I went to Mr. Thompson. Dad tried to reason with the testing facility’s administrators. He talked to our congressman, even tried to get the press involved, but nobody would listen. Nobody cared. So when I saw Mr. Thompson on TV, protesting the construction of more facilities, I tracked him down, begged him to help. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  I understood her desperation. I’d lived through it myself two years ago when Tyler tested positive and my mother’s world—my world—fell out from under me. But even knowing how screwed-up that place was, I would never want my own sister, never mind a bunch of innocent guys from my school, risking their lives to save mine.

  “And you?” I asked, turning toward Nick. “How are you involved in all this?”

  “I told you. I promised Tyler I’d look out for you. So when Carly and Joe came to me, I signed on, no questions asked.”

  “So you were simply planning on swapping these four guys for the four on the van?” I’d figured out their plan and was amazed at the idiocy of the whole idea. “You thought it’d be super easy and you could just literally drive through the front gate?”

  Joe nodded, and I continued. “What about the guard and the driver?”

  “Why do you think I brought Nick?” Joe replied, as if it all made perfect sense. “Four boys, one guard, one driver.”

  A rumble of laughter erupted from Chris’s chest as he stood up and dramatically spun around, his arms wide, the smile covering his face more mocking than amused. “You guys are stupider than I thought. Do you notice anything similar about me and Lucas? Anything at all?”

  They stared at Chris, not catching what he was inferring. I stood up and went to stand next to him, hoping my proximity would clue them in. First thing the guards did before they transferred you from the intake center to the testing facility was take your clothes and replace them with IGT-issued jeans, white T-shirts, and gray hoodies. Hell, even the boxers I was sporting had the IGT logo stamped on the inside. The four guys Joe had recruited for this stupid mission were wearing a wide array of bright colors, jackets, and thermal gloves. None of which would get them past the front gate.

  It took Joe a few seconds, but his eyes eventually lit with recognition, a muffled curse falling from his lips. Despite everything he knew about the Bake Shop, he somehow hadn’t planned on facility-issued clothing, hadn’t even realized Chris and I were dressed exactly the same until we’d pointed it out.

  “They’re dead, you know. Every single one of them. Dead. Because of you,” I said.

  “I never meant for anyone to get hurt. I promise you, that was the last thing I wanted.” Joe shifted his feet against the frozen ground, his eyes never lifting to meet mine. “I came to get you out, to get all of them out. I found a back door into IGT’s transportation logs. I checked it last night, and again this morning before I dragged them up here. There was no mention of an outbound van heading to the reintegration facility. If there was, I wouldn’t have risked it. What happened back on that road was an accident. A horrible, tragic accident, Lucas, but nothing more.”

  The guy looked genuinely upset, but that didn’t mean I believed him, didn’t mean I was about to place my trust—or my life—in his hands.

  “And the boys on the van … where were you planning on stashing them after you stole their van and impersonated their lives?”

  Nick yanked the zipper of his backpack open and turned it upside down. A blanket, a compressed sleeping bag, and at least a dozen protein bars spilled out onto the snow.

  “We weren’t planning on being in there more than a few hours, Lucas. Definitely not long enough for them to freeze to death or anything,” Nick said as he pulled a pack of zip-ties out of his back pocket. “We were just going to detain them for a little while and borrow their van.”

  “Well, that plan went to shit, now didn’t it?” Chris mocked as he snagged a fistful of granola bars from the stash. He tossed one my way, then opened one for himself before shoving the rest into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

  “So what’s your plan now?” Chris continued, through a mouthful of granola. “How exactly are you proposing to get inside without a facility-issued van or clothing?”

  And once you’re in, how the hell do you plan on getting back out, I silently added.

  “And what about Carly?” I asked. “Are you planning on just leaving her here in the woods to fend for herself until you get back?”

  “Nope,” Carly answered. “I’m going in there with them.”

  “There wasn’t a single girl on that van,” Chris said. He had no idea who was on the transfer van, really, but given the fact that only one girl in the entire history of the program had ever tested positive for MAOA-L, it was a safe assumption. “How were you going to explain your sudden appearance?” he went on. “Girls don’t test positive for the gene—”

  “That’s not true,” Carly interrupted. “One has.”

  She’d done her homework, I’d give her that. But the government had questioned the results of the girl who’d tested positive, stunned that a female was carrying what they’d assumed was a male-only gene mutation.

  “And you expect them to believe you’re the second one?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Carly replied

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it,” Chris fired back. “One quarter of the population carries the warrior gene, and of that, only a tiny of fraction test positive for the MAOA-L mutation. A girl … well, you’d have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while fighting off a shark attack than you do of testing positive. Trust me, if a second girl had tested positive, the entire world would know about it. There’s no way that information wouldn’t have made national news by now. She’d pretty much be every scientist’s wet dream.”

  It was a crude analogy, but Chris was right. “You showing up at all is gonna tip the guards off to that fact that something is wrong,” I said.

  “They won’t know. Not right away, anyway,” Nick countered. “We have papers for her, ones we forged. Sure, in a couple of days they’ll figure it out, but we aren’t planning on being there for more than a few hours tops.”

  Carly looked to me for help. I shrugged my shoulders. There wasn’t much I could do. Chris was right. Her chances of getting in there were slim to none.

&nb
sp; “Then there’s got to be another way,” Carly said. “We can’t just leave Cam in there. I won’t. I can’t.”

  I understood her desire to rescue her brother, but I wouldn’t risk what little I had left of my own life to save his. “It’s not possible, Carly. Trust me. I’ve spent a month living inside that place; it’s not happening.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Nick said, and I glanced in his direction, oddly curious to see what half-baked plan he was cooking up now. “The power is down across this whole area,” he mused out loud. “A transformer went down about ten miles south of here. I gotta think it will take at least a few days to get it up and running. That could buy us some time.”

  “Buy you time to do what?” I asked, not seeing where he was going with any of this. “You planning on jogging to the local Wal-Mart and outfitting yourselves to look like us?”

  Nick laughed, sounding more annoyed than amused. “Think, Lucas. If the power is out, then my guess is most of their security systems are down as well. We could walk right in there and take him. Who the hell cares about forged documents or switching these four guys out for the ones on that van. We don’t need their help anymore.”

  “Let’s forget about how stupid that plan is for a second,” Chris chimed in. “Are you forgetting about the backup generators? The ones that keep the lights on and their security system intact?”

  “No, Nick is right,” Carly said, completely dismissing Chris’s concerns. “You told me they moved you out early because of the storm, that they were worried about security with the power down, yes?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, if there’s no power—”

  “They’re running basic utilities, counting solely on the guards to keep order,” Joe said, finishing her thought. “The question is, can we kill the generators and slip in unnoticed?”

  “Technically, the generators could be down as long as you need them to be,” Chris replied. “It’s easy enough to disable them if you know what you’re doing.”

  “And do you?” Nick asked, his smile hinting at the plan he was obviously constructing on the spot.

  A disturbing grin crept across Chris’s face. I didn’t know much about Chris’s past, but I’d learned he had some mad skills when it came to electronics and was the nightmare of his school’s tech department. My guess was, something as simple as knocking out a generator wouldn’t be a problem for him.

  “I could keep them down for the next week if I wanted to, but I have no intention of helping you,” Chris told Nick, and I sighed in relief. For a minute there, I’d thought he was signing onto this insanity.

  “I’m with Chris,” I said as I walked over to the pile of supplies Nick had emptied from his backpack and grabbed the sleeping bag. I was cold and tired of listening to them go on about their asinine plan. “No way am I getting involved in this. No way in hell.”

  Carly’s hand banded around my arm. “What’s wrong with you?” she yelled, her fingers tightening to a near painful level. “How can you not even consider helping us? They basically killed your brother. My sister. And now they have Cam.”

  “Even if we could get him out, Carly, he wouldn’t be the same. Do you get that? Do you have any idea how messed up your brother truly is? Because I do.” I’d seen it with Tyler, and he hadn’t even killed anybody.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “He’s still my brother. He deserves a chance.”

  I tossed that warped concept around in my mind for a half second before waving her off. “You have no idea how hard it is to survive that place. No clue! And what you’re asking me to do … ” I paused and fanned my hand out in Chris’s direction. “What you’re asking us to do will take away any chance we have of a normal life. And for what? To save your brother?”

  “You weren’t born evil, Lucas. Neither was Tyler or Cam,” Joe said.

  He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. No matter how many times they’d labeled me potentially violent or how many tests they’d put me through, I’d never once bought into their gene theory. If you asked me, the whole idea of trying to figure out who had psychotic potential was about as reliable as playing darts blindfolded. Regardless of the odds, if you kept on throwing, eventually you’d hit the target. Problem was, the target they’d set their sights on this time was me.

  “In the country I grew up in,” Joe added, “we didn’t put people away solely on the idea that maybe, someday, they might do something wrong.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then perhaps you should move,” I said. “Because that’s exactly what this country is doing.”

  fourteen

  “Let’s look at it this way, Lucas,” Joe said. “I’m not asking you to risk your lives to sneak Cam out; I’m just asking you to help me get inside. I can show them the results I’ve compiled from my research, convince them to rethink what they’re doing. Maybe they’ll give Cam, and everyone like him, a second chance.”

  “They took your brother, the one person my sister ever loved,” Carly added, sliding to the ground next to me and burying her feet beneath my sleeping bag. “And because of what they did to Tyler, I lost my sister. They may not have physically put the razor blade in her hand, but it’s their fault all the same. And now they have Cam. How long do you think it’ll be before they take someone else we know? Someone else we love?”

  It was that “someone else” comment that had me burying my head in my hands and considering, for half a second, helping them.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Chris insisted. “There are only a handful of guards in there, but they aren’t going to be interested in helping you. They hate us as much as the rest of the world does. And that counselor couldn’t care less about Joe’s research or what happens to us.”

  “You mean Anne? Anne Tremblay?” Joe asked. “I know her. She’s the reason I chose to infiltrate your facility instead of one of the others; it’s one of the main reasons I agreed to help Carly. Anne will listen to me. I assure you, she will. With my research files and her testimony, we can make a case to Washington and have all the facilities shut down permanently. But I need to get inside. I just need five minutes of her time to show her what I’ve learned.

  I laughed; I couldn’t help it. If that idiot was banking on Ms. Tremblay helping us, then he was dumber than I thought. “And what makes you think she gives a damn about any of us?” I asked, remembering the countless times she’d stood watch as they poked and prodded at our willpower, her eyes always focused on that stupid tablet she carried around to record our results. “We’re nothing but data to her.”

  “Not true, Lucas. Her husband was a criminal psychologist. She is too. We worked together on the Government Task Force for Violent Crimes. At first, she was as vehemently opposed to these facilities as I was. She vowed to never see a single one of them constructed.”

  “Umm hmm,” I mumbled, not for a second buying that lie. “If that’s true, then tell me—what changed her mind? Because I can guarantee she hates us as much as the rest of the world.”

  “The death of her husband,” Joe said. “And of her daughter.”

  In all the times Ms. Tremblay had tried to get us to open up about ourselves, about our families, she’d never once mentioned a husband or daughter of her own.

  “If you know Ms. Tremblay so well, if she’s so trustworthy, then why do this? Why not just pick up the damn phone and call her?” Chris asked.

  “You think I haven’t tried that? You think I’d drag these kids out here and endanger their lives if there was any other way?”

  I shrugged. If I was being honest, then yes, that was exactly what I thought.

  “I haven’t seen or talked to her in nearly three years, Lucas. Not since the funeral. Not since I learned she’d signed onto the project. The calls I’ve tried to place to her have been ignored or sent to a dead voicemail.”

  “Then wait until her six-week s
tint in there is done, have her over for a dinner, and lay out your evidence,” Chris offered up. “I don’t know about you, but that kinda feels like a more logical plan to me.”

  “Sure, that would be nice if it were remotely possible. But the information going into the facility is as tightly controlled as the information coming out. Anne has pretty much been forbidden to talk to me, or to any other member of the Task Force that voiced dissent over the testing protocols.”

  “So, what … if she won’t willingly talk to you, then you figure the best—the only—alternative is to lie your way in, force her to listen to you?”

  “That’s exactly what I plan to do. It’s the only way.”

  “Well, good luck to you,” Chris said as he settled into a sleeping bag next to me. “Can’t wait to hear how that plan turns out for you.”

  fifteen

  It was dark, the shadow of the moon behind the clouds casting an eerie glow across the snow. Chris was lying next to me, his breathing labored as he struggled to stay warm. The blankets and sleeping bags Nick had brought with him did little to stave off the chill, never mind insulate us from the cold, wet ground.

  My body needed rest, but my mind refused to let go. Every time I closed my eyes, Tyler’s face would merge with Cam’s, twisting together as a tormented scream ripped from their communal throat, sending me bolting upright.

  The nightmares about Tyler I could handle; they’d been my nightly companions for the last two years. It was this new dream about Chris and Suzie that had me fighting for air.

  Chris blindfolded, his arms and legs strapped to a chair as they sent pulses of high-pitched frequency through the earbuds crammed into his ears. His face screwed up in agony as he clawed at the zip-ties, begging to be set free. His head fell forward in defeat as I walked toward him, intent on releasing his binds. But when I undid the blindfold and he raised his eyes to meet mine, it wasn’t Chris staring back at me, but rather Suzie, silently pleading with me for help.