Hardwired

by Trisha Leaver

  “This was the closest shelter I knew of. Besides, it’s not like the weather was cooperating with us.”

  He cocked his head as if he wasn’t buying my answer, and I quickly changed my approach rather than risk losing him altogether. “It doesn’t matter why or how she got here, just that she is. The roads are closed, and they pretty much said they won’t be able to get her out for a few days. But you saw the way the guards looked at her when we first walked in. I’m not sure she’d survive a night, never mind a few days, in here.”

  He shrugged, as if to say not my problem.

  It wasn’t, but I was about to make it his problem all the same.

  “Ever thought about what it would be like to walk out of here? To go back home and put all this behind you? Start over?” I felt like crap baiting him, but if he wouldn’t consider helping Carly, if he wouldn’t sacrifice anything without a little incentive, then so be it.

  He looked up, unable to hide his interest. “You think it’s possible?”

  “I know it is. Why do you think we’re all sitting here in this staff lounge instead of locked up nice and tight in our rooms?”

  I leaned back and watched him as he tossed my words around in his mind. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, and twice he snapped it shut, his eyes darkening and his breath catching in his throat.

  “It’s a test,” he said without a hitch. “They want to see how we interact in a larger group, see who goes for who first.”

  I shook my head. That had Ms. Tremblay written all over it; convince them this was some sort of evaluation they had to pass to keep them in line.

  “The power to the building is out,” I said. “There’s a transformer down about ten miles south of here. Even after they get that up, they have about a dozen other smaller utility poles to fix.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Van. Crash. Long walk back here with that girl,” I said, refreshing his memory. “In a few hours, the generators powering this place are going to cut out, and the only thing that will be separating you … separating us all from the outside is them. No locks, no electrified fences, nothing.”

  “Thirteen against five,” he mumbled, and I found it interesting that he completely discounted the medic and Ms. Tremblay from the equation. It was as if he knew they were unarmed and posed no threat.

  “Exactly,” I said, nearly positive he was coming around to my idea. “Easy pickings.”

  He pointed to the guard who’d escorted us up to this room. “I want that one.”

  I laughed but didn’t argue. I briefly wondered what that guard had done to him, what sort of special attention he’d directed the kid’s way. In the end, I didn’t care which guard he claimed for himself, so long as he caused one hell of a distraction in the process. “He’s all yours, buddy. But do me a favor and give him an extra shove for me.”

  I stood up, my eyes already scanning the room for my next recruit. One on our side was good, but I’d feel better with a few more at our back. My focus settled on the three guys sitting near Chris. They were all playing cards, but one had his cards face-down on the floor as if he’d bowed out after the first deal.

  “Not that one,” fidgety-kid said. “If you’re looking for more of us to help, then I would steer clear of him. Ask them.” I followed his gaze to the corner, where two identical-looking boys sat staring at each other. Twins. Smart choice; brothers would do almost anything for each other. I should know. I would’ve laid down my life right then for Tyler had I been given the chance.

  “And my name’s Ryan by the way,” he added. “Ryan Banks.”

  Twenty-five

  Thanks to Ryan, I recruited the twins with ease and moved on to take my chances with a couple of exhausted-looking guys at the other end of the room. I remembered that feeling of being totally spent—the alarms, the lights, and the constant need to be on high alert. I hoped they were in better physical shape than they were mentally, that the fear and exhaustion in their faces was nothing compared to the desperation in their minds. But then again, it didn’t much matter. It wasn’t an all-out brawl I was looking for, just time.

  “Five guys,” I said as I sank to the ground next to Chris. “Is five enough, or do you think we need more?”

  “I don’t know about this,” Carly whispered. I’d let Chris explain the finer details of our plan to her while I took on recruitment duty. “We’re going to sit here and wait for the generators to go out, and then hope those five can create enough of a distraction to occupy the guards? Pray that we don’t get caught up in the chaos and can slip out unnoticed?”

  I nodded. Unfortunately, that sounded about right.

  “And then Chris is somehow going to cut the power to the main circuit board while you and I go for Cam,” she finished.

  “I have to get Joe’s files to Ms. Tremblay too, don’t forget that,” I added, quite sure Carly cared more about getting her brother out than anything else.

  “Sure, the files,” Carly said, dismissing the idea. “And the guys you talked to, you’re positive they’ll help?”

  “We have no choice but to trust them,” I replied. “The guards aren’t exactly on our side, and while Joe may trust Ms. Tremblay, I sure as hell don’t.”

  “So we’re going to leave them all here to fend for themselves while we go get Cam?”

  “Umm hmm.” The look of disappointment on Carly’s face hit me in the gut. I didn’t know what she expected me to say. I’d come back to save her brother. As for the rest of them, that’s where Joe’s research would come into play. “I can’t exactly save them and help you get to Cam at the same time. Pick your poison.”

  “This all sucks,” she said.

  “Sucks is pretty much the way things work around here,” Chris said.

  The lights flickered twice, then dimmed, as if the generators had turned everything down five notches in a futile attempt to keep working. The five people clued in on our plan tensed, their eyes swinging in my direction, silently asking what to do. I grabbed ahold of Chris’s arm, my signal for them to sit tight.

  One of the guards handed Ms. Tremblay a Taser gun. She balanced it in her hand, testing the weight. She looked confused, as if she had no idea how to use it. It seemed pretty simple to me. All you had to do was point and pull the trigger; the electrical current did the rest.

  I’d have given anything to get my hands on one of those. Not for protection, but because I’d love to light up Murphy, let him wallow in a puddle of his own misery for a change.

  “Do you have any idea where the main electrical panel might be?” I asked Chris, my mind running through details we should’ve long since figured out.

  He shook his head. “Nope, but my guess is in the basement, most likely on an outer wall. How hard can it be to find?”

  Given the size of that place, pretty hard. But voicing that would’ve only put unnecessary credence behind my fears. “What about the guard who’s still downstairs with Cam?” I asked, wondering how Chris planned to slip into the lower level of the facility unnoticed.

  “I doubt that’s the only entrance to the basement,” Chris replied, unconcerned. “This place is huge, and it doesn’t make sense that they’d house the mechanical equipment next to the isolation unit.”

  “And you’ll meet us down there by Cam,” I said, seeking out his assurance. I was positive I’d have to carry Cam out of there, and I wanted Chris’s help if it came to that. Or at least a spare set of hands to fend off anybody who tried to stop me.

  “Yep, that’s the plan. Staircase by the door to the isolation unit,” he said, then leaned toward Carly. “Remember what I said. Stay close to Lucas and do what he says.”

  “It’s about to get dark in here fast,” I said, just to remind Carly. “People aren’t going to take the time to figure out who you are before they throw a punch. I know for a fact most of these guys want out, and they’
ll go through you to get there. So no matter what happens, stay close to me.”

  The lights flickered again, and the guards spread out, moving away from the walls, crowding us in. They looked hesitant, scared, and I couldn’t help but laugh. What was it my old English teacher used to say? Some random crap about the hunter becoming the prey? That’s how it was, and I had a distinct feeling they knew it.

  There was an audible click as the heat vents in the ceiling shut off, seconds before the lights. Steeped in darkness, the entire room went eerily silent. But I didn’t need light or sound to know each guard had his hands on his Taser, their eyes trained on the emergency lights above the door as they waited for that tiny flare of light to come on.

  “It’ll take a minute or so for the emergency lights to kick in,” Chris reminded me. I started ticking off the seconds in my head, willing myself to stay put and wait until the timing was just right. I rapped my hand on the wall behind my head, signaling for the five guys I’d recruited to spread out across the room and slowly count to fifty before striking together. Each one had been instructed to go for the guards in the corners. Ryan, the one I trusted the most, was covering the guard stationed by the door, the one he’d all but insisted on taking down himself.

  “Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four.” Carly was counting next to me, her nails digging into my arm with each passing second. Just as she hit fifty, the room exploded, the five guys I’d spent no more than fifteen minutes talking to risking everything for me. For a chance at a life not defined by this place or the gene they carried.

  Twenty-six

  Luck wasn’t something I flirted with, but I got it in spades that day. No one bailed on me, and luckily, no one took it upon themselves to change the plan. Chris had less than thirty seconds to smash the bulbs on the emergency light above the door. Without the cover of complete darkness and the fear it induced, we didn’t have a chance.

  Not trusting anybody else, Chris and I slid our way across the wall toward the door where the emergency light was threatening to come on.

  I dropped down on all fours and tapped Chris’s foot. He needed to move quickly and with a steady hand. He was heavier than I thought, and I forced down a grunt of discomfort as all his weight pressed into my back. He moved from side to side, his heel digging into my tailbone as he blindly swiped at the wall above his head. “Found it,” he said, and in seconds his fist slammed into the light, sending shards of glass raining down around me.

  “Shit,” he swore as he jumped off my back. I didn’t need a light to know he was cradling his hand, carefully picking out the tiny pieces of glass embedded in his fist.

  “Stairs,” he said, instructing Carly to head straight for the door and wait for us outside. Without lights, the guys had a better chance of hitting one of us than a guard. And neither Chris nor I wanted Carly in the middle of that.

  “You’re right behind me?” she asked, her voice hesitant, untrusting.

  I reached out, my hand trailing down her arm until I

  found her hand. I squeezed it in reassurance. Chris and

  I needed a few minutes to adequately stir the pot in here, and then we were out of this room: Chris headed downstairs to look for the electrical panel, and me headed for Carly and Cam.

  I sensed more than saw the guys moving, heard their rage-filled screams as they charged headlong into the guards. I wondered what the rest of the group would do, the ones who had no idea that this rebellion had been staged.

  The guards’ guns flared to life, the flickering blue hue giving away their locations as the sound of electricity crackled through the air. They were shooting blind, training their Tasers on any and every sound in a futile attempt to regain control. One Taser made contact, and the blood-curdling scream echoing off the walls kicked me into action. I gave a not-so-gentle nudge to Chris’s arm and we both took off, each of us zoning in on one blue flare. One guard.

  We hit them from behind, tackling them to the ground. Mine went down with a grunt, his gun skittering across the floor. I didn’t know who picked it up; all I knew was that they didn’t use it on me, and for that, I was thankful.

  “Shit, get off me.” With nothing but the sound of his voice to guide my feet, I turned, praying Chris would say something else so I could find him and help fight off whoever was on him. No matter which way I turned, strangled curses filled the air, one coming on the heels of another until I could barely hear myself think, never mind isolate Chris’s voice. My only hope was that Carly was far away before what was supposed to be a coordinated attack descended into madness.

  Someone hit me from behind. There wasn’t much force to it, barely enough to knock me off balance. Whoever had thrown the punch was swinging randomly, a defensive move more than anything else. It pissed me off nonetheless, and I turned around and clocked the person, spilling them to the floor.

  I went to hit them again, my anger finally having an outlet and loving every second of it. It was the small whimper of a plea, a female whisper, that had me backing off.

  “Please,” Ms. Tremblay begged. It was one word. One simple yet insanely complicated word. This was the woman who’d spent weeks watching the guards dissect my moods and pummel my willpower. She’d stood there that entire time with her rehearsed smile and fake reassurances that “we’d all be stronger because of this experience.” And now she was on the floor at my feet, pleading for mercy.

  I quickly patted her down, looking for the Taser the guard had given her earlier. Her fingers were clawed around it like it was the one thing that would keep her alive. Swallowing down the urge to give her a small taste of what we’d suffered through, I ripped it from her hands and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans. In my mind, using it on her—using it on anybody—would make me no better than them.

  She reached up and grabbed onto my leg, anchoring herself to me. I pulled back my other foot and was about to slam it down on her wrist to break the contact when her trembling voice broke through my concentration.

  “What’s happening?” Her voice seemed so tiny, so fragile compared to the explosions of unleashed anger surrounding us. “You said you could control them here, that bringing them all together was the safest option.”

  Ha! She assumed I was one of the guards, and that I was here to protect her. Her bad.

  I went to shake her off, completely content to let her die in here until she said, “The girl … Carly. You have to get her out of here.”

  Reaching down, I yanked Ms. Tremblay to her feet. Her plea to save Carly, her need to protect a girl she correctly assumed couldn’t handle this place, had just saved her life. Well, that and the stupid flash drive wedged between my toes.

  I grabbed her wrist and swiped my other hand out to my left, clearing a path toward what I thought was the door. My bearings were off. The noise, the flare of Tasers, and the darkness had me all turned around.

  I tripped over a body, and my mind instantly flashed back to the crash, to the eight dead kids I’d left on my van. Eight dead kids whose only crime was testing positive for a gene that might, at some undetermined point in their future, make them predisposed to violence. Eight kids exactly like me and Chris. Exactly like the ones in here.

  Ms. Tremblay yelped when I flattened her face-first to the wall and pressed myself into her back. I’d done this. In some stupid attempt to protect Suzie from a fate that most likely she’d never meet and get Cam out, I’d set this entire shitstorm into motion. And now here I was, determined to get the one person I despised most in this place out of this room unharmed.

  I inched us along the wall, my hands at either side of her head. The wall jutted outward, a three-inch strip of metal meeting my palm. Finally, the doorjamb.

  “Go back to your room and lock yourself in,” I said as I guided Ms. Tremblay’s hand to the doorknob. “Don’t open the door for anybody, not even the guards. Understand?”

  “Lucas?” she said.

/>   I smiled at the surprise I heard in her voice. Yes, Ms. Tremblay, even the genetically flawed are capable of being good, decent people.

  “That girl you came in with—”

  “I got Carly,” I promised as I opened the door and shoved her out.

  Chris yelled something from behind me, his words lost in the madness overtaking the room. I heard the crack of a fist hitting someone’s jaw, the body landing at my feet. “Watch your back,” Chris whispered into my ear. “I’m outta here. Get moving, find Carly. Now!”

  Twenty-seven

  The Bake Shop really was nothing more than two floors of cinderblock-encased steel. Not only were there no exterior windows, but there were no skylights. Even the doors were made of solid metal. Essentially, the building was a cold, dark cave of interlocking corridors, all frustratingly similar. There were more rooms than I could count, and the corridors were laid out like a maze, spidering off each other. None of them looked even vaguely familiar.

  The emergency lighting would have been my enemy inside the staff lounge; but, out in the hallway, I was grateful for it. It would save me minutes of precious time.

  I started retracing my footsteps back to the door that led to the isolation unit, my hand trailing along the wall for extra support. I had limited time to find my way back there and meet Carly. I didn’t know if it was fear, sheer exhaustion, or the punch I’d taken to the chest inside the lounge, but I suddenly felt weak and short of breath.

  Rounding a corner, I stepped back and scanned the corridor for confirmation. The emergency lighting was evenly spaced—two spotlights every ten feet, all lit and guiding my way. Yet the corridor I’d just turned down, the one I was positive led to the isolation unit door, was dark. Pitch black.

  Luckily, when the guard had escorted us up to the staff lounge, I’d purposefully counted my steps, memorized each turn. And as far as my calculations went, I was right where I needed to be.