Teen Killers Club

by Lily Sparks

  “Who the hell is that guy?” Kurt interrupts in a strangled voice.

  “He’s the Director,” Dave says tensely. “After we reported the intruder last night, HQ put him in charge of camp. Believe it or not, he’s here for your protection.”

  “He killed my brother!”

  “We could all rush him at once,” Erik says in such a serious tone that Dave lunges forward and grabs him by the collar.

  “If you want HQ to simultaneously activate all your implants at once, then go ahead, by all means. Play your asinine games with the man who planned and built this place.” There’s a desperate edge in Dave’s voice as he pushes Erik away. Erik bristles, rage and restraint fighting in his face, and I put my hand on his shoulder without thinking. He turns on me at the contact, breath catching, but something in my expression makes him calm enough to hold back.

  Dave looks at each of us in turn, then snatches up his walkie-talkie and yells for Kate to come handle us, disappearing up the hill. We all stand there, left without answers, and a small, muffled sob escapes Kurt as he sits down in the grass, hands over his head, his back to us, and I can’t handle it anymore.

  I kneel down beside Kurt and put my arms around him and he sags into me, the muscles in his neck and back rigid, his voice broken and jagged as he cries:

  “I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where he is.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I murmur nonsensically, “It’s okay. It’s okay …” and rub his back. Light footsteps, and Jada kneels down beside us. And then Nobody’s fingertips graze my hair as she winds her arms around Kurt and Jada, and then Dennis’s fine curls graze my hand as he closes around the other side of Kurt, and I can sense Javier in the huddle across from me, and the unmistakable heat of Erik’s arm reaching across my shoulder so he can rest his long, broad hand on Kurt’s back. Kurt’s neck and shoulders release then, and he lets out a long, broken sigh.

  “You know, in ancient times …,” Erik says, and Kurt lets out a dry, hot laugh, and then weeps again, but these are good tears. Necessary ones. Like he’s getting something out of him. We sit there in the long grass, huddled together against the wind coming off the lake, just holding on to each other as hard as we can.

  I’ve dozed off by the time Kate arrives. There’s a sick pallor over her usually cheerful features, and the sky is the color of milk. She clears her throat and asks us to come to the table, so we help each other up and sit in a tight knot as she passes out eight stapled packets of Google Map printouts.

  “I know this has been a difficult morning,” Kate says at last. “But in spite of all the arguments I could possibly make against it, you guys will be leaving tomorrow at dawn. So we need to get serious about getting you ready. The routes to your targets are in front of you.” I look down at the national view of our map, a pink squiggle that runs from Washington to California. “Study them carefully. It will be crucial that you stay on this route once you’re out of camp. You’ll all be given burner phones. Camp HQ will be programmed in as ‘Mom and Dad.’ If you need to make a detour for any reason, pull over and call us, and wait for us to give you the all clear. Because if you go a mile off your route in any direction, your kill switch will be triggered, and obviously we do not want that to happen—”

  “Wait, what?!” I blurt. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your kill switch, Signal,” Kate says in a tone like this should be obvious. “Until now, it could only go off if you crossed the fence or we clicked a fob. But when you go off on your missions, we activate the GPS, and your kill switch conforms to your route. You travel to your target, complete your assignment, and come back the same way. Or it will go off. Understand?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Becoming Someone Else

  I clench the packet of maps in front of me, my field of vision narrowing. I force myself to take deep calming breaths like my lawyer told me to the day my verdict was announced.

  This actually feels worse.

  Because back when they condemned me to life in prison, I half expected it. And I had been able to openly break down in tears. And I had the comfort of knowing I was in the right and they were in the wrong.

  But this … I am going to have to choose between dying and killing someone. That’s what this boils down to. I can’t escape and I will not be allowed to return until my target is dead.

  How could I have been so stupid? How could I have held on so tight to the illusion I could escape this place, this place so clearly designed to use us, to break us down, and stab us into other people as broken as we are?

  Kate looks at her watch, the wind ruffling her short hair. “I have to go back to the main cabin. I’ll see you campers back there in an hour?” The others nod and she heads up the hill, the grass bowing in ripples under a sudden rush of cool wind.

  “Since we have this time alone,” Dennis says to the table calmly, “I want to tell you what we found searching the cabins yesterday.”

  We all turn to him.

  “Not a ton of the bomb survived.” Dennis pushes his glasses up his short nose. “But what we did find indicated a beautiful, homemade device. On a timer. Dog Mask planted it under the cabin on a delay, in case he didn’t get all of us.”

  “So you think he made the bomb?” I ask Dennis.

  “Frankly, no,” Dennis says. “Because it appears he got the AM/PM setting wrong.”

  “He probably got it from someone in the Protectionist network. They blow places up,” Jada says softly. “They targeted a cell block full of Class As in Massachusetts. Fourteen prisoners killed.”

  “What was the headline?” Erik asks. “‘Good Riddance’?”

  “There’s something else,” Dennis continues. “Dave wouldn’t let me in the nurse’s office while he was sweeping the main cabin. Because he didn’t want me around the laptop. So he put me in Kate’s room. And I used the time to search her stuff.”

  With a swift furtive glance toward the hill, Dennis pulls out a crumpled sheet from the band of his Bugle Boy shorts and lays it on the table. “I found this. A spreadsheet with the exit dates and money given previous campers.”

  “Previous campers?” Javier’s shocked tone speaks for all of us. “There’s no previous campers. This is a new program.”

  Dennis shakes his head. “Not according to this.”

  We crowd around, scanning the fine print. It’s a long list of ID numbers, then a range of years and amounts paid. Several entries end in “KIA.” Killed in action.

  “They had them going out on mission for seventeen years,” Javier whispers.

  “This doesn’t make sense.” Erik sounds genuinely troubled. “They didn’t know how to identify Class As until two years ago. What, they just rounded up random homicidal teens? How did they keep them here? You’re saying they had kill switches in 1999?”

  “And what happened here?” I ask, my finger tracing the shortest entry, the only one that doesn’t end in “KIT” or “KIA.” Instead, it shows an enrollment of two years, and ends in “PARDON.”

  “That got my attention too.” Dennis nods to me. “But if we can’t manage one of those, at least we know what’s ahead of us. We will get retired … if we live through taking out targets for seventeen years. As approximately seventy percent of the last class did.”

  “My sentence was forty years,” Nobody shrugs. “So. Beats prison.”

  “Does it though?” Javier asks. He looks as queasy as I feel. Seventeen years of killing strangers. How could I have ever signed on for this? Why did I agree to this deal—

  “Deal with the devil.” I lock eyes across the table with Erik.

  “Dog Mask was a camper,” he says immediately. “Seventeen years ago he would’ve been sixteen or seventeen.”

  “Just the right age for the Teen Killers Club.”

  Javier’s eyes go from sad to alert. “That’s how he knew where and what camp is! But why kill us?”

  “Kate told Dave she thought the attack was meant to force us to g
o after our targets early,” I remind them. “Before we were ready. And that’s exactly what’s happening. When we killed Dog Mask we didn’t foil their plan. We just got the ball rolling.”

  “I don’t like this man.” Javier runs his hand over his hair, bouncing one leg on the ball of his foot compulsively. “I don’t like this one bit.”

  “‘Come try it,’ right?” Jada says, her eyes staring a mile over the lake, which has lost its sparkle under a lid of heavy clouds. The wind is a steady, audible stream now, and a heavy drop of rain lands at the top of my scalp.

  “I’m going back to the main cabin,” Javier says, shoulders slack as he gets to his feet.

  Erik stretches his head back as though to catch the next raindrop in his mouth, and there’s the low groan of thunder in the distance and a dart of light far over the lake. Another storm is coming, the air feels pulled taut by it. We get up and start trooping through the damp field, and I fall behind the others to talk with Dennis.

  “Hey,” I start. “You caught what Dave said before, right? About HQ setting off our kill switches? That they can do that without fobs, like remotely, that’s what he meant, right?”

  Dennis quickly looks from side to side. “Yeah, that caught my attention too.”

  “If they can set them off remotely then couldn’t you turn them off remotely? Like the pacemaker?”

  Dennis looks at me for a long moment. I can see him weighing and measuring what I’m asking: Will you help me escape?

  “Theoretically yes,” Dennis says at last. “But keep in mind it took me hours to figure out how to turn the pacemaker off. There were plenty of times I accidentally restarted it, or slowed it down, or sped it up. Knowing that, whose switch do I start on? Because if I mess up …”

  “They die,” I finish.

  More lightning silently glows on the other side of the lake and thunder sounds a moment after, the rain starting to fall in earnest. Dennis and I break into a run toward the covered porch beside the main cabin. When we get there, we’re half-soaked and the rain is drumming hard on the corrugated plastic roof.

  “Find your partner!” Kate announces, handing out worksheets. “Read over your character profiles!” Javier sits at the corner picnic table, face hard. He doesn’t look up as I approach; he just slides my packet of handouts to the other side of the table, away from him. I sit shivering on the metal picnic bench, head down so he can’t see my face, and scan the sheet: on this mission we will be acting as a couple, a boyfriend and girlfriend who go to school at USC, Jenny Smith and Hector Garcia. We’re on our way up to San Francisco to see my family.

  “That’s ironic,” I say thickly. “Acting like a couple now we’re broken up.”

  “So we’re broken up now?” he asks quietly.

  I thought that was obvious? And not my call. I look up, his eyes are wide—

  “Girls!” Kate claps her hands, standing in the doorway between the covered porch and main cabin. “Once you’ve finished reading your profiles, we’re heading to your old cabin to do makeovers. Boys, Dave will meet you in the bathroom of the main cabin. And we’ll all meet back up for dinner.”

  “Makeovers, hey.” Nobody nudges Jada. “You always said you wanted to give me one.”

  “What?” Jada startles, as though pulled out of deep thought, and Nobody and I each take an arm and help steer her toward our old cabin.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later I find myself staring into the photoshopped smile of a woman on a Clairol box, watching bronze-colored water circle my feet on its way down the drain. Blue hair is apparently “too memorable” for the mission, so Jada helped me cover my head in cheap dye.

  When we’d arrived at the cabin, three JanSport backpacks were lined up for us with clothing chosen for our new identities, as well as the burner flip phones. MomandDad is the first number, Hector G is the second. There’s at least ten more names, which Kate explains go to automatic voicemail proxies. I’d spent the half hour it took the color to develop sorting through clothes with Nobody, making sure we both had pants that fit, since swapping missions meant swapping clothes. Jenny Smith’s wardrobe is heavy on embroidered peasant blouses and cutoff shorts, which are pretty forgiving for length.

  When I get out of the shower Jada is at the mirror poking a safety pin through her ear. Her face is heavily made up and she’s in a crop top, miniskirt, illusion tights, and three-inch platform creepers, all black. She’s dressed the way I always wanted to in high school, except on her it looks right.

  “Signal?” Kate’s surprised gaze meets mine in the mirror. “I almost didn’t recognize you without the blue! Here’s your makeup kit.” She puts a quart bag with “Jenny” written on it in Sharpie on the edge of the sink. I haven’t seen makeup in so long, and there’s a lot, the nicer brands of drugstore stuff. Rooting through it feels weirdly similar to combing through my candy haul on long-ago Halloweens.

  Jada grabs my wrist and clings. “Can I do your makeup?”

  “Please!” I say quickly.

  “I love this kind of stuff,” Jada sniffs quietly. “Put your hair back?”

  The last time she was this close to me she had a sharpened arrow against my eye. Now she’s dotting concealer on the scar she gave me, and all I can think is I hope she’s okay. She becomes completely absorbed in making me pretty, staining my lips carefully, tracing precise lines inside my eyelids with infinite care.

  By the time my hair has dried out, I’m in a slightly-too-big peasant top, low-riding jeans, and I look maybe the best I’ve looked in my entire life. Jada is seriously talented; after months of nothing more than cold water on my face it’s amazing the difference some carefully applied brown eyeliner and blush can make. My hair has turned out pretty good, too. Instead of the usual blue over bleach and six inches of dark roots, it’s a surprisingly convincing bronze all over.

  Nobody looks stunning and miserable in her cotton sundress. She slouches around swearing she’s going to buy some sweatpants the second she’s out of camp.

  “And a ski mask?” I prompt.

  “No need,” Nobody says simply. “You guys know me now. And it’s not like Dennis and I are going to run into anybody.”

  The target she and Dennis are taking out is some paranoid recluse deep in Arizona, who never leaves his house even to get his mail, so Dennis will be doing everything online. All Nobody has to do is drive back and forth to the Best Buy to get him extra solid-state drives or whatever.

  “That could have been you, Signal,” Jada says. “Why did you trade?”

  Because I thought I was going to escape, so it didn’t matter. Because I came to camp to learn to hunt down Rose’s killer, and now that I know who he is and where he lives, he’s ironically safer from me than ever. Because I’m a coward. Because I’d rather kill than die.

  “You know me: boy crazy,” I tell her. “Still chasing after Javier.”

  “Listen to me.” Her small hands catch my wrists and she locks eyes with mine. “You seriously need to stop playing games and just tell him how you feel. The guy you like is right there—” she gestures wildly toward the main cabin “—where you can see him and touch him and talk to him. You both need to stop playing games and just be real about it while you still can. Okay?! Okay?! Promise me?!”

  I nod, stunned, and she releases me, then abruptly walks out of the bathroom, brushing by Kate with a look worse than a slap.

  After a moment Nobody and I follow Jada to the main cabin. We wait for the boys to finish getting ready, warming up mugs of cocoa in the kitchen. I’m on my second mug when I hear Erik’s throaty laugh and look up. My jaw actually drops.

  In black jeans, a scuffed leather jacket, and worn Pixies T-shirt, Erik looks like a rock star. The change is so striking it’s not till he ducks his head and fleetingly bites his fingernails that I remember he isn’t a celebrity—just Erik, a real guy I actually know.

  A gray-faced Kurt is dressed like a total jock in Seahawks Starter jacket, track pants, and Adidas shower s
hoes; Dennis wears an utterly generic navy blue sweatshirt and jeans but compared to the usual lost-and-found neon ensembles I’ve gotten used to him wearing it’s nerd chic on a par with Steve Jobs.

  And Javier stuns me in a tailored blue button-up shirt that shows off his broad shoulders. He’s got a USC cap and—I almost laugh—a pair of tasseled loafers. A preppy. He looks like a total preppy.

  And he’s staring at me.

  “Find your seats!” the Director’s voice rings out as the door opens. We return to our seats from this morning and fall quiet as the Director scans us, his expression neutral.

  “Tomorrow morning your first mission begins. We’re sending you out while your training is incomplete, which increases the risk of your missions.” He shrugs. “But given the state of the facilities, we can’t guarantee your physical safety here either. If we have to lose Class As, we might as well lose them in action.”

  Computer genius Dennis; exquisite Nobody who saved all our lives; brilliant Erik, with his humor and intelligence and courage; gallant, artistic Javier; beautiful, burning Jada; sunny, steady Kurt—they’re just “Class As” to him. As interchangeable and replaceable as gears in a machine. He’d use and discard them without a second thought, drown all their bright gifts in blood. Because he doesn’t see any of the good in us. We’re just monsters to him. And if we aren’t monsters yet, by the time we get back we will be.

  The Director clears his throat. “You have until lights out to finish studying your routes. Instant oatmeal is in the kitchen for your dinner. Make the most of the time.”

  I watch Dennis intently. When he gets up from his chair and heads for the kitchen, some greater impulse carries me after him.

  Dennis is warming up cocoa when I barge in after him, the microwave’s yellow window the only light in the dim room.

  “Dennis?” I whisper, “Look, about the kill switches?”

  He nods.

  “I want you to practice with mine.”

  The microwave goes off with a ding, but he doesn’t move.