Hardwired

by Trisha Leaver

Chris shone his flashlight at the door before swinging it back toward one of the dead guard’s feet. “The floor in the hallway is covered with glass, so you may want to take their boots.”

  I stopped Ryan as he went to pass by me. I’d promised him his freedom, and after everything I’d put him through, I sure as hell was going to deliver. “Wait for us by the front door. There are people outside, friends of mine, who’ll help us.”

  Thirty-six

  We did what we could—closed their eyes and tried our best not to disturb them—but in the end, the sight of all those kids lying there, four boys still attached to the probe end of a stun gun, did me in. There was no panic here, no sense of urgency to save myself like I’d felt in the van. I had time, as much time as I needed, to check for pulses, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, couldn’t face the fact that in my attempt to cause a mere distraction, I’d killed them all.

  I’d barely made it to the hall before I heaved up the contents of my empty stomach, the caustic bile no match for my guilt.

  Chris was still in the room, methodically checking each body, while I stayed in the hall, slumped against the wall, too much of a wuss to even face what I’d done.

  “All dead,” Chris said, inducing another wave of nausea from me. “If it makes you feel better, I think the guards did most of the damage.”

  It didn’t. Plus, it still made me puzzled about who killed Murphy.

  “Do you think Cam did this?” Chris asked as he handed me a rag. I looked at the white cloth, wondering which dead body he’d lifted it off of. My eyes settled on the jagged edge of his T-shirt, and I realized what he’d done—ripped a piece off his own shirt and given it to me. For the second time that day.

  “Who else could have done it?” I whispered, not wanting Carly to hear. She was still standing inside the door; she hadn’t moved from that spot since the first beam of her flashlight lit up the room. I think it was shock, or maybe fear, that had her immobilized. Either way, the look on her face as she took in the room was bad. “You saw the table leg in Cam’s room. It was covered with blood.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, but there’s no blood on the floor out here,” Chris said, swinging his light across the glass-ridden tile, then down the hall. “I don’t remember seeing shoes on Cam, not to mention he’d left all his clothes behind. Anybody walking out of here in bare feet would have left one hell of a trail.”

  “Maybe he grabbed shoes from somewhere else?” I proposed, grasping for explanations I knew were absurd.

  “I doubt it. There are only three sets of shoes missing off the guards, and Ryan and the twins just took them.”

  “I don’t know. No way was it Ms. Tremblay,” I said, remembering her reaction when I’d told her about Murphy dead in the isolation unit. Plus, she didn’t strike me as the overly violent type; more of a psychological tormentor. As much as I never thought I’d believe it, she wasn’t that different from us. She hadn’t wanted anyone to die, was actually trying to save people. But like with everything Chris and I had done so far, she’d failed. Turned all of her intentions into some warped version of a singular good thought.

  “All six of the guards in this facility are accounted for,” Chris said. “Five dead up here, one dead downstairs. The medic too.”

  “Please tell me you have some idea of where to go from here?” I begged. I was spent, my mind incapable of forming a coherent thought, never mind a back-up plan.

  “What do you mean, ‘where to go from here’?” Chris asked. “You gave Ms. Tremblay Joe’s files. We found Carly, and Cam is dead. We’re done. Nothing else to do but leave.”

  I nodded, one hundred percent on board with that plan.

  “Carly?” I reached for her shoulder, gently guiding her out of the room.

  “I just want to go home,” she said, tears clouding her eyes. “I want to go back home and forget any of this ever happened.”

  The pain I heard in her voice ripped me in two. She’d never be able to unsee Cam hanging from the end of that bedsheet. Shit, I still saw Tyler’s empty stare every time I closed my eyes. Every time I walked by the music store he used to work at on the weekends. Every time I looked at my mom or Suzie. Carly could beg, plead, drink herself into a stupor, but that image would never go away.

  “I’m going to take you home. I promise,” I said. “But I need to go back in the lounge for a second and look for keys to the front gates. I need you to stay here, right here, while Chris and I do that, okay?”

  Without a word, Carly reached into the pocket of her sweatshirt, pulled out a set of keys, and dropped them into my hand. Digging her hand back into her pocket, she pulled out another set, then another, until all six sets lay in the palm of my hand.

  “Where did you get these?” I asked.

  “From them,” she said. “From the guards in there and the one in the basement.”

  I shook my head, trying to wrap my brain around what she was saying. I’d been the first one into the lounge, had crawled across the floor checking the guards one at a time. But Carly hadn’t moved an inch until I’d dragged her out. How did she end up with all their keys?

  I looked at Chris, hoping he knew something I didn’t. Maybe Carly had helped him search the guards while I was puking. Maybe he’d found the keys and tossed them to her as he continued checking the bodies. Maybe Ryan had handed them to her on his way out.

  Maybe I was losing my mind.

  “If you had these keys this entire time, then why the hell did you let Ms. Tremblay go off looking for them? Why did you let Lucas and I paw through the guards’ pockets?”

  “Because Ms. Tremblay’s not one of us. She doesn’t get to come out of here alive.”

  “What?” I dropped the keys I was holding to the floor and wheeled around to face her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I know who she is, and I know what she did to Cam. She’s the one that had him thrown in that isolation cell to begin with, would’ve gladly left him locked up there forever. Cam deserved a second chance. She doesn’t.”

  “Did Cam do this?” I asked, flicking my hand toward the lounge door. God knew how long she’d been sitting in the bunk room with her brother; she could have easily seen the keys in his room and taken them.

  “No,” she replied, setting off a new round of sobs. “He’s dead.”

  I took a deep breath, reminding myself to be patient. “I know he’s dead, Carly, but do you think he was capable of killing the guards?”

  “No, Cam didn’t kill anybody. Why does everybody keeping thinking he did?”

  “Maybe because he already has,” Chris muttered, drawing a warning glare from me.

  “You don’t know him at all. You think you do, but you don’t. Nobody does.”

  “I know you’re scared, Carly, and I get that you’re just trying to protect your brother, but I need to know. Did Cam have these keys? Did you find them in his room?”

  “It wasn’t him,” she replied. “He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He just wants to be left alone.”

  Her response had me wondering exactly how close she’d come to Cam in those last few hours, how she could possibly know what Cam had wanted. “How do you know this?”

  “Because he smiled when he saw me. For a second I thought he knew who I was. That he was actually happy to see me,” Carly said. “But I don’t think he was happy at all,” she continued. “I don’t even think he really saw me. He was just … I don’t know, happy to be free.”

  Free? “Wait. What? When did you talk to Cam?” Other than finding him hanging from the bedframe, the only time Carly and Cam had been within eyesight of each other was in the isolation unit, and then they’d had six inches of soundproof glass between them. “When did you talk to Cam?”

  “In his room, right before he killed himself.”

  Thirty-seven

  Not once had I eve
r seen Chris speechless. He was always the one with a quick joke aimed at calming me down and keeping me sane. But there he was, standing in the middle of the dark corridor, staring at this twig of a girl with absolutely nothing to say.

  At least his mouth was closed; mine kept dropping open, no words, not a single sound ever coming out.

  “I found him standing outside his room, staring at the bunk bed, talking to somebody. At first I thought it was you and Chris, but the room was empty. There was nobody there.”

  I closed my eyes and willed the memories away. Tyler had done the same thing; he would slip into dark trances, muttering unthinkable things, then cock his head as if listening to a reply that no one but him could hear.

  “I reached for Cam’s hand. I thought I could pull him back from wherever he was, but he lost it on me, pushed me aside and started screaming. He accused me of things I never did, called me names I didn’t recognize. They let him beat him, did you know that? His roommate—they let his roommate beat him, on purpose. The guards actually placed bets on how soon he’d snap.”

  I shook my head, swallowing back my anger. Ms. Tremblay hadn’t mentioned that the guards placed wagers on it.

  “He laughed,” Carly continued. “It was this twisted sound of hatred. And then he turned on me. He wrapped his hands around my neck and swore he’d kill me.”

  I stepped forward, my hand going to the zipper of her sweatshirt. Yanking it down, I pushed the fabric aside. Her neck was bruised, deep purple welts marring her skin.

  “What else did he do?” I asked. The words rumbled from my chest, my anger riding so close to the surface that I wondered if I’d finally snap. If I’d survived all their tests only to lose it now.

  “I started crying, rattling off every single memory I could think of, hoping he’d realize who I was and let me go. Nothing seemed to work, and his grip just tightened until I mentioned Olivia and Tyler.”

  “What about Tyler?”

  “I reminded him of what happened to your brother, how Tyler had given in to them, let this place win. Cam was better than that, stronger than that, and I told him so.”

  I stepped back, my body meeting the hard, unforgiving wall behind me. Tyler wasn’t weak; he was the strongest person I knew. “They broke him. This place broke him.”

  “He let me go then,” Carly continued, ignoring my ramblings. “He mumbled an apology and sank down in the corner. You should’ve seen him. I couldn’t get him to move, couldn’t even get him to lift his head off of his knees. He was gone, completely gone. I told him I’d be back, that he was safe now and we’d come to take him home.” She turned and stared back at the darkened room. “They deserved it, Lucas, for what they did to Tyler. For what they did to Cam. For what I know they did to you.”

  Chris and I stared at her. She’d killed the guards?

  “So you came back up to the lounge?” Chris asked. There was no accusation in his voice, no hatred or disgust for what she’d just admitted to doing. “Where did you get the table leg?”

  “From me,” Ryan said.

  Chris and I spun around at the sound of his voice, each of us instinctively moving in front of Carly. “What are you still doing here?” I asked.

  “And how much did you hear?” Chris added.

  “All the exit doors are locked,” Ryan replied. “And I heard everything, but it’s not like I didn’t already know. I was in there with her.” He paused and waved the twins forward. “We all were.”

  I looked over his shoulder at the twins. Their heads were bowed, their hands fidgeting nervously with the cuffs of their sweatshirts. I silently willed them to look up, to meet my eyes for a fraction of a second, just so I could apologize.

  “There were ten of us and five of them, but they had weapons,” Ryan continued. “We may have thrown the first punches, but we were smart enough to back off and hide in the corner while everything played out around us.

  “Within twenty minutes, the guards had it under control. They were pissed about what we’d done. By the time Carly got here, they were screwing with us, kicking the unconscious and firing their Tasers for no reason. They thought it’d be fun to ‘scare some sense into us,’ or so they said.”

  “That’s when I hit the guard with the table leg,” Carly said. “They didn’t hear me come in. It was dark and they were laughing, going on about how they’d done society a favor. Ryan was sitting in the corner, and those two boys over there were hiding behind him. The guards were yanking on Ryan’s arms, trying to pull him away from the wall so they could get at the twins.”

  I turned and looked at the twins. They were shaking, and the entire front of their jeans was soaked with what I presumed was their own piss.

  “There was a stun gun sitting on the floor by the door, and I picked it up, not even knowing if it’d work,” Carly said, and I remembered the Taser I’d taken off Ms. Tremblay and then lost in the midst of the chaos. “I pulled the trigger, and the guard trying to drag Ryan away fell to the ground and started shaking.”

  “And that’s when I hit him with the table leg,” Ryan explained.

  “And the others?” Chris asked. Ryan had only admitted to killing one guard.

  Ryan shrugged, his reply seeming to be an attempt to give us all an alibi rather than answer Chris’s question. “It’s hard to see in the dark. Who knows how they died or who killed them.”

  “And what about the guard in the isolation unit?” I asked Carly.

  “I wanted to check on Cam, but I knew you wouldn’t let me, would insist we wait for Chris before making our move. So I smashed the lights in the hallway to buy myself some time, confuse you. I didn’t mean to kill that guard, just stun him like he did you. But after I did it, he fell down and hit his head.”

  I turned around and stared at Chris, waiting for him to reveal his role in all this. He just laughed and said, “Don’t look at me. My only job was to cut the power permanently, which I did.”

  I picked up the keys I’d thrown to the ground, turned around, and made my way back to into the lounge, back to the bodies littering the floor.

  Ryan and the twins were behind me, whispering questions about what I planned to do and if I would contact the police. I laid my flashlight on the floor by the door, illuminating as much as the room as possible, then motioned for everyone to hand over their lights and any other keys. One by one I put everything back in the guards’ utility belts, then motioned for Ryan and the twins to take their boots off and put them back on the guards’ feet. As far as I was concerned, none of us had stepped foot in this room.

  “No keys, but I found more flashlights,” Mrs. Tremblay said as I stepped back into the hall. Her eyes scanned the area in search of the guards and kids I’d told her I was going back for. “Where’s everybody else?”

  I stood there silently for a second, carefully weighing my words. “There are five dead guards in there. The medic too.” I paused and motioned to Ryan and the twins. “The three of us came here looking for keys, and that’s where we found these guys. They’re the only ones who survived. You can check the lounge yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “What happened?” Ms. Tremblay asked, looking over my shoulder to see inside the room.

  “From the looks of it, the guards panicked and lashed out at anything that moved, including each other.” I turned to Ryan, waiting for him to nod in agreement.

  “I didn’t touch anybody,” Ryan said, confirming my lie. “I hid in the corner with these two, hoping someone would eventually come back for us. They didn’t touch anybody either.”

  “It should’ve been me,” Ms. Tremblay said. “It should’ve been me who made sure you were safe, who got you all out of this room, not Lucas and Chris.”

  I shrugged. It didn’t matter who’d got them out, so long as they were alive.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother, Carly,” Ms. Tremblay s
aid.

  Carly didn’t respond, just turned around and walked out of the room after Chris. I knew what she was thinking; my mind was entrenched in the same thought. “Sorry” didn’t bring them back. It was only a word, a stupid two-syllable word that held absolutely no power.

  Thirty-eight

  Joe was standing by the Bake Shop’s outer fence, his hands twisted through the links. The four boys he’d brought with him were fanned out to his left. But not Nick. No, Nick had scaled the fence and was hacking at the razor wire with what looked like a pocketknife.

  Joe’s eyes skirted over the body slung over my shoulder. I’d gone back for Cam. I’d promised Carly I’d get him out, and after everything that had happened, it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Carly was beside me, Chris half holding her up as we shuffled our way to the gate. She’d started crying again the second I’d picked up Cam, the reality of all she’d lost settling in.

  “What happened?” Nick dropped to the ground and made his way to the gate too. Struggling under Cam’s dead weight, I pressed the keys up against the fence until Nick was able to reach through and snag them. He held them up one by one until Ms. Tremblay nodded, then shoved that key into the lock and pushed the gate wide.

  I took one step out into the open and lowered Cam down to the ground by Joe’s feet. “I said I’d get him out, and I did.”

  Joe let out a wail so broken and full of pain that I wondered if his hatred of this facility and everything it stood for ran deeper than I’d originally thought. I should’ve asked, but to be honest, at that point I really didn’t care. I knew he had questions; I could see them brimming in his eyes. I’d explain everything later, when I was hundreds of miles away from this place, away from the memory of Carly’s cries and Cam’s body hanging there, his lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling of the place that had ruined us all. But not yet. Adding another layer of agony to an already painful situation would literally kill me.

  Joe knelt down beside Cam’s body and pressed an ear to his chest, listening for signs of life I knew he’d never find.