The Mod Code

by Heidi Tankersley

  The guard smiled. “His head hit the wall. That should make him good and mad when he wakes up.”

  Dr. Adamson unclipped the keychain from his belt. “This is what happens to traitors in our line of work, Officer Basque. We don’t have the time, nor the patience, to put up with people like you.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Caesar lifted his head and glanced at me with his eye that wasn’t swollen shut. Dr. Adamson ignored me. The cell lock clicked open and one of the guards pulled back the heavy metal door. Caesar gave me one last look before they shoved him inside.

  I listened to them cuff his wrists to the cell bars. I knew how long it took Max to wake up. He burned through the tranquilizer darts faster than any of the others. Sometimes, I couldn’t even get through cleaning his cage before he started waking up.

  Dr. Adamson gave one last satisfied look at Caesar and then spoke to the guards as they all disappeared back into the lobby. “Meet me in the surveillance room. And bring Jimmy in immediately to take over.”

  I shrank to the back of my cell and pulled out the earbud. “Jack? You there?”

  “Yes.” Somehow, just the sound of his voice calmed me. “I had to take the vent for a minute. Too many guards in one place.”

  “Listen. They just chained Caesar in a cell with Max. We have five minutes before the tranquilizer wears off.”

  Jack was silent for a long minute. “I’m coming.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. “Hurry,” I said. Then, trying my best to calm the shaking that threatened to overwhelm my voice, I stepped to the front of the cell.

  “C?” I said, speaking across the concrete wall that separated us.

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” He sounded like he tried to mask it, but a tinge of pain slipped into his voice.

  “Jack’s coming,” I said.

  “Sage, listen to me.” The handcuffs rattled. “I got in touch with your father on the mainframe before everything went south. He said he would make it here by 8am. That’s as quick as his men could get here. They’re landing on this side of the island, right on the helo pad. You’ve got to get out there to that helicopter, do you understand? With or without anyone else. You’ve got to figure out a way to get out of here.”

  “We’re all getting out together, C.”

  I slid down the cage door and stretched my arm outside the bars, getting as close to Caesar as I could. But my arm only extended halfway across the concrete wall separating our two cells. If C’s hands weren’t cuffed to the bars, we might be able to touch fingers. I sighed and pulled my arm back in.

  “He’s twitching a little,” Caesar said. “Listen, if I don’t make it out in time, tell Jack—”

  “Stop.” I cut him off. “You’re making it out, okay?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. It hadn’t been five minutes yet. Had they used a half-dosage dart or something?

  “Jack’s on his way. Just hold on.”

  I slid to the back of my cage. “Jack,” I hissed. “We have movement on Max. Where are you?”

  Silence on the other end of the line, then Jack’s strained voice. “I ran into trouble.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Two minutes.”

  I stood back up and didn’t reply. What was there to say? Caesar was right. He might not have that much time. I paced back and forth in the cell, only pausing when Caesar spoke again.

  “Listen, Sage.” Caesar’s handcuffs jingled, like he shifted positions. “Jack loves you. He might not ever say it, hell, he might not even know it himself, but he does. He’s a stubborn ass, but he needs you. Remember that, alright? If anybody can reach him, it’s you. Don’t give up on him. He’s going to let you in eventually.”

  I bit the inside of my lip. Through the wall, I heard Max groan.

  “You tell Jack this is not his fault,” Caesar said, his voice urgent. “He’ll think it is, you know that. Don’t let the bastard blame himself for this. You tell him that he’s getting out of here and he’s going to stop all this. A helicopter is coming. You hear all this, right?”

  My throat caught. “Caesar. Jack’s coming, just hold on.”

  “Tell him.” Caesar’s voice grew more insistent. “Promise me you’ll tell him all of that. And tell him I’ll see him around.”

  I couldn’t stop the tears. I was afraid if I tried to respond, Caesar would know I was crying.

  “Promise me, Sage,” he said.

  I sucked in air, nodding. “Yes,” I replied between my silent sobs, “I promise.” Vaguely, I wondered if Jack could hear everything Caesar was saying. The other end of the line was silent, so I had no way to know.

  Max let out a loud half-yawn, half-growl. I didn’t want to picture what would happen if Max woke up before Jack could get here.

  Caesar shifted again and his handcuffs clinked against the cage bars. He muttered something under his breath, the words I couldn’t hear, but the sound of resolve and fear in his voice I could. A cold numbness rolled through my cells. What should I say to him? What if Jack didn’t make it, and this was it?

  I swallowed. “You’re a good person, Caesar.”

  I needed to say more, to say the right thing—something better than that, but I didn’t have the chance. Max let out a small squeal, like maybe he was stretching. Caesar inhaled sharply. Then came a deafening growl. Other modwrogs shrieked in response. Caesar might have shouted something, but it was drowned out by another screech from Max—who was at the cage bars.

  Time stopped. All other noise stopped. All I could hear was the banging. Over and over, the banging and the clang of Caesar’s handcuffs on the bars. And the high-pitched shrieks from Max, and the screams of pain erupting from Caesar, his body hitting the bars, the wall.

  “No!” I cried. My body shoved against the cage door, straining to somehow help him. “Jack!”

  There was nothing I could do.

  I crouched down against the wall and covered my ears to block out the sounds.

  “Jack! Where are you?!” I shouted. I didn’t care who knew I had an earbud.

  Jack where are you. Jack where are you. Jack where are you.

  Three seconds.

  Eight seconds.

  Eleven seconds.

  Sixteen seconds.

  Guns fired in the lobby, and I knew he was there. Max kept screeching. Caesar’s cries had stopped. The lobby door opened, and Jack strode into view with the key ring and a gun. His face was littered with cuts, his shirt torn. He bled badly from a wound on his stomach. I squeezed my eyes shut as he shot three times into Max’s cell, the sound of the real gun echoing through the west wing.

  Max fell silent. Jack lowered his gun and began flipping through the keys. I couldn’t hear Caesar.

  Jack glanced down at him. “C, hold on. Hold on.”

  Jack tried the first key, then the second; there had to be at least two dozen keys on the ring. Jack’s hands shook so badly. I’d never seen Jack’s hands shake. The keys jangled on the ring, clanging against the cage bars while he tried a third key.

  Caesar groaned, the noise barely audible.

  “Don’t shake your head at me, you bastard.” Jack’s hands trembled so badly that he struggled to insert the next key into the lock. “Caesar. Stay with me. Stay with me.”

  Jack began to try another key, but the key ring slipped from his hands. When he knelt to retrieve it, he didn’t stand back up. Instead, he reached out and clasped Caesar’s hand, the muscles in his forearm pulled taut from the grip.

  “Caesar.” Jack spoke his friend’s name like an order and a plea.

  I couldn’t bear the look on Jack’s face. Behind the dampness in his eyes flashed a pain I’d never seen before. Jack pressed his fist hard to his mouth.

  I tried to breathe, nothing came. I knew Caesar was dead or near dying. My body felt numb, like I wasn’t inside myself.

  Down the hall, I heard the door open.

&
nbsp; A voice rang out. “You found your friend, I see,” Dr. Adamson called. Jack didn’t look up. “Pity,” his dad said. “Looks like you were a little too late.”

  Jack still didn’t look over, but I saw anger flash across his eyes. Slowly, he reached his hand down along the side of his body. His fingers gripped the gun that lay next to him on the floor.

  In one swoop Jack was up. But, before he could aim, a shot rang through the hall. Jack jolted. I screamed. Modwrogs screamed. Billy started banging his head. Blood stained the sleeve on Jack’s right upper arm.

  Jack hesitated only for a moment before switching the gun to his other hand. Another shot. Jack jolted again, blood on his leg now, but he continued to advance toward his father, limping, working to steady his aim. Jack moved out of my view.

  Another shot blasted. More shrieks from modwrogs. My eyes looked to the sky as I heard Jack’s body hit the ground. It couldn’t end like this.

  It couldn’t end like this.

  “Clean up his wounds,” Dr. Adamson said. “Then lock him up.”

  I heard shuffling, guards lifting up Jack’s body and carrying him out.

  Dr. Adamson stepped in front of my cage and held his hand through the bars. “Your ear bud, please,” he said.

  “You can go to hell.”

  “Would you like me to have someone come in and extract it from you?”

  The idea of that forced me to yank the device from my ear. I threw it hard at Dr. Adamson. The defiance backfired when the doctor caught it in his hand. “Thank you.”

  He glanced down at Caesar’s body and spoke to his guards. “Leave this body here until morning. They can stare at it all night long.” His footsteps moved away. The door clicked shut, and they were gone.

  59

  SAGE

  I turned away from Caesar’s bloodied hand, visible just outside his cage. My body slid to the ground, my knees too weak to hold me up any longer. I leaned against the bars, not realizing how badly I shook until I looked down at my arms.

  The power switched back on, the hum of the electricity moved across the cages again, bringing them back to life. A few minutes later, all hope of escape leaked from me when the guards dragged Imogen inside and put her in the cage with Beckett.

  The noise seemed to rouse Beckett back to consciousness. When the guards left, no one spoke. I couldn’t face them—didn’t want to watch their faces while they took in Caesar’s body—because whatever he looked like, they had a full view. Instead, I crawled to the back corner of my cage like the weakling I was.

  I knew when they saw him, because Beckett muttered a curse word under his breath. No one said anything else, but eventually I heard Imogen sniffling. Billy clicked his nails against the wall. The other modwrogs had gone silent, calm in the aftermath.

  Might as well say it now, while things were so bad.

  I stayed out of view while I talked. “Your dad shot Jack. Two times, maybe three. They’re cleaning his wounds and locking him up.”

  Another curse from Beckett. No reply from Imogen.

  “Caesar said a helicopter is coming at 8.”

  “And how do you propose we get there?” Imogen said sharply.

  I didn’t reply.

  What now? Caesar’s final instructions repeated in my mind. 8 am. Helicopter pad. How were we going to get there? Caesar was dead. Everyone else was locked up. Finn injured. Jack injured. Would my dad send someone inside when we didn’t show up?

  *

  In the hours that followed, the modwrog hall remained silent. Billy eventually stopped clicking his nails. Only once, Beckett tried to talk to me. Sometime between 1am and 3am, while Imogen slept, he called my name. I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to talk until I’d come up with a way to get us out of here. Either Beckett had thought I was sleeping, or he realized I didn’t want to talk, because he didn’t say anything else.

  As the night wore on, despite the hollowness in my chest, and the fact that I hadn’t moved from my balled-up position in the corner, things began shifting inside of me. That’s the only way to explain it.

  Even though I should have been growing more tired with each passing hour, my senses seemed to waken. Across the hall, the image of Billy turned sharper. If I stared long enough and blinked a few times, I could make out the hairs on his arms, the size and color of the bumps on his skin.

  I could hear the modwrogs breathing in the cages next to mine. If I paid close enough attention, I could hear the breathing of all the modwrogs. When I licked away the last of the dried blood on my lips, it tasted tangier than the hours before, the sensation on my tongue more potent than ever. And then, there was the smell. The scent of refuse and urine pushed its way into my nose, nearly unbearable. I spent much of the time with my face buried in my shirt sleeve.

  What was happening? What had that drop of serum done to my body? And what, exactly, had my dad really meant when he said I was “special?”

  Whatever it was, it provided me with a spark of hope. If my senses were getting stronger, maybe my brain was, too. Maybe I could think our way out of this mess ….

  I couldn’t give up. If we didn’t get out of here, Finn wouldn’t either. He would die. I’d do something that would get me killed by Dr. Adamson. Jack would eventually kill himself. And that left Beckett to deal with all of this pain on his own.

  I had to pull myself together. I had to figure this out.

  *

  I couldn’t doze.

  With each passing minute, I felt more and more alive—a pulse, completely separate from my heartbeat, thrummed through me in an even rhythm.

  But by the time 6am rolled around, I still didn’t have a plan. Whatever heightened capabilities my senses offered, the feeling was dulled by the reality that we were still locked in these cages. I’d halfway hoped Jack might come for us in the night—but how? His body was super human, but not that super human. He’d been shot three times. They’d locked him up.

  All of us were awake—Imogen, Beckett, Billy, and most of the other modwrogs. If I listened closely, I could even hear Finn down in his corner, tapping on his feet.

  Beckett broke the nighttime silence. “We’re only two hours from the helicopter arrival. We need a distraction. We need to get one of the guards to open up our cages. Then we knock them out, take their guns, and go find Jack.”

  Imogen suggested shouting to draw them in, then working at bringing a guard in close enough to grab through the cage bars. This needed to happen near the time of the helicopter arrival, but still allow us enough time to find Jack. We decided we needed at least an hour. We’d stay together, get as many guns from guards along the way, get to Jack, and make it to the helicopter pad. Besides that, we had no other hard and fast plan. Improvisation was allowed as needed.

  Just before 7am, we started shouting.

  After a few minutes, just one guard came in, holding handcuffs. Beckett and I glanced across the hall at each other. This was it. We had to make this work.

  My hope immediately deflated. As the guard approached their cell, he aimed a tranquilizer dart at Beckett.

  Beckett didn’t flinch when it hit his skin. He looked at me as he slumped against the wall with a look that said, What now? The guard turned to Imogen.

  “Oh, come on, you’re not that afraid of me, are you?” Imogen said.

  She ducked from the first dart and lunged toward the front of the cage, but the second dart hit her in the belly. The guard opened the cage after she’d gone unconscious.

  I held my breath, thinking maybe she was just pretending—that the dart hadn’t worked on her at all. But she didn’t move as he handcuffed her and dragged her down the hall to the exit. When he pressed open the door that led outside to the arena, morning sunlight shone into the hallway.

  The modwrog hall went silent again. My mind spun. What was plan number two?

  After a few minutes, another guard came in. He shut the door to Beckett’s cage again. The guard started delivering bowls o
f dried food to each of the cages. He slid a bowl of food through my cell bars and smirked.

  “Eat up.”

  When he finished delivering food to all the cages, he left.

  I listened to the modwrogs’ chomping and Beckett’s breathing. I felt myself going slowly crazy. This cell was making me crazy.

  We needed out. OUT.

  I felt like Finn. No wonder these modwrogs acted so wild. Being trapped in a cell makes anyone crazy. No wonder Finn attacked me. No wonder he’d attacked Jack and Beckett when they were fighting. No wonder he’d thrown that bucket at the wall.

  Wall! Button!

  These cages had a button. And I had a bowl.

  Of course the idea was impossible. The button was down the hall on the wall in the foyer, twenty-five feet away. No way could I hit it with this bowl.

  But still, the button sat in my line of sight, tempting me.

  I picked up the food bowl. Metal material. Heavy enough. I tossed it into the air to gauge its velocity, its flying power, the way the rim affected the spin. I stuck my arm out the cell bars, lining up with the button. It would have to be my left hand, even though I was right-handed—unless I wanted to toss it facing backward, which wouldn’t be nearly as accurate. And I would have to wait until Beckett woke up, so we could get out of here together. My mind started spinning at the possibility that this might actually work.

  And then, out of nowhere, I simply believed it.

  I believed the bowl would hit the button.

  It sounded absurd. I knew it. On any normal day, it would have been inconceivable. But somehow, I felt sure of myself. I was so absolutely certain that I’d hit the red button, that my brain didn’t have any space left for doubt. I remembered the way Jack had tossed those tape balls into that tiny cup. Is this how he’d felt? The action so easy, so obvious, that there wasn’t space for failure? It made me wonder if the one time he’d missed had actually been on purpose.

  From inside my cell, I tossed the food dish into the air, visualizing it hitting the button. A rush of energy moved through my muscles, affirming me, bolstering my confidence.