The Nancy Experiment

by McKenna, Tess

  Here, in the warm night of Sydney, Australia, I say goodbye to my last friend. She stands about a foot away, facing me, trying not to cry. She’s good at that: holding back her emotions. She had to learn, just like me, the art of apathy. Without apathy, we never would have made it; without emotion and fire, we never would have made it either.

  “So what are you going to do?” she asks me.

  “Something,” is all I tell her.

  “Come-on, Bia. I know exactly what you’re going to do,” she argues. “That’s why you won’t let me come with you.”

  I ignore her.

  “You’re not even going to give me a chance to change your mind, are you?” she asks.

  “You belong here, Margo. You deserve a better life here with your dad, and that’s the life I know you want,” I say.

  “But I want it to be your life, too,” she says. I can see she’s fighting harder to hold back her tears, and now she’s testing mine. “You can come with me, be my sister, and live here. I’m sure my dad will be happy to—”

  “I can’t, Margaret!” I shout. “You know I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can! Basia, please… don’t go to Cleveland.”

  “I have to,” I say, turning away from her.

  “No, just walk away from it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But it’s a suicide mission!”

  “I know…”

  She sighs. “I know you are angry at them for killing Cassie, and so am I, but you can’t just go out and get yourself killed just because you’re hurt. You have a life to live. Don’t just throw it away!”

  “I don’t care! I run and hide and run and hide… and for what? Nothing has ever made a difference! Run, hide, run, hide! But you know what—I can’t run anymore! I can’t hide from what happened,” I shout.

  I can see that Margo can’t hold back her tears for much longer, and I would hate myself for making her cry. I take a deep breath and start again, this time with more control.

  “I’m sorry, Margo, but I can’t… I can’t keep running forever. This is the only way that I can stop them, and I have to make a stand for Cassie, for you, for me, for all of us. I have to… I have to stop him. I’m sorry.”

  She hugs me tightly, resting her chin on my shoulder. I return the embrace and bury my face into her neck. We hold onto each other like this forever. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. The silence doesn’t scare us, and there’s nothing more we could say that would mean more than this precious moment of silence. I’m grateful for that, not the silence, but the friendship.

  When she finally pulls away from me, she wipes the tears away from her eyes.

  “Dr. Nancy keeps files on all his experiments and test subjects,” she says. “If you can get those files, and if you can get those files into the hands of someone who can access them… then you got him. Otherwise, burning down the—”

  “Burning down the building isn’t going to kill what’s inside it,” I finish, smiling. “I know.”

  She smiles and puts her hand on the door of the plane.

  “So this is goodbye,” she says.

  I nod.

  She opens the door.

  “Goodbye, Basia,” she says. She leaves, looking back only once. Part of me wants to run out to join her, part of me wants to stop her and give her one last hug, and part of me knows better than to do either.

  The plane starts again and soon takes off. I look out the window while we’re still grounded, but the black car is long gone. I back away from the window and close my eyes as the plane steers toward Cleveland.

  XVIII: I’ll Give You Answers

  Thursday, March 27, 2065; 9:25 a.m.

  First person

  “Get me that tray and heart monitor. Kiaria, hook up the heart monitor to her—quick! Elijah and X, guard the door,”

  I think the voice belongs to Nate, but I can’t be sure. I feel my overheated body placed against a cold table, and cold arms pull out from under me. A needle shoots into my arm, and small suctions fix to my chest and my arm over my veins.

  The mole… the mole must have put that envelope on my bedstand… How else would it have gotten there?

  Pain still surges through me, stemming from the radiation knife still in my back.

  How could they have not noticed that by now—or is the mole trying to hide the dagger that is slowly killing me?

  “AHhh!” I groan.

  Someone keeps giving out orders, but the burning continues. Finally a female voice says that my body temperature and something that has to do with my heart are still rising. Duh…

  “Maaahhhh aaackkkk!” I moan. I try to say, “My back,” but it doesn’t quite come out that way.

  “What’s she saying?” I think Zoë asks.

  I imagine Nate and Kiaria shaking their heads since I don’t hear anyone response. Someone secures the needle in my arm, and I scream in pain. The scorching seems to never end.

  “Everybody out!” someone screams. This time I’m sure it’s Nate’s voice, but I couldn’t even imagine him yelling like that—angry and scared.

  “We’ll handle it, Zoë,” Kiaria says.

  The door shuts, and Nate and Kiaria fiddle with some loud utensils and the needle antagonizing my arm.

  The mole… it has to be one of the Metanites, or Moton, perhaps. No, maybe not Moton. All I can hear now above the droning ring in my ears is Nate mumblings bitterly and frantically, though I can’t make out what he’s saying.

  “Wait, before you inject that into her bloodstream, there’s got to be something in her that’s causing her blood to react,” Kiaria says.

  “I know that, but there’s no chemical unusual to her blood that can be causing this. This tranquilizer should at least sooth the pain,” Nate says.

  “Maaahhhhh!!”

  “I know, I’m so sorry, Annika,” Nate mumbles.

  “Well maybe it’s not coming from her blood. What if it’s coming from a wound or something?”

  Both are silent for a moment, then I’m flipped onto my stomach, my nose smashed against the cold surface. A cold hand rests gently against my sweating skin, and the knife pulls away from my body with a last surge of fiery agony. I gasp—or probably holler—and my eyes snap open. I make out a dark room with small, bright lights. Nate turns me onto my back as I watch Kiaria put something into a small vial; my vision, though clearing, is still too blurry to make out what is in the vial.

  Nate… he was the one who stayed behind instead of going to Wade Oval… he left before the others did, so he had time to put the envelope in my room. He showed up right before Jericho crashed through the window in the cafeteria. He was there when I first met the Metanites by the Cuyahoga River, and could have staged his capture. He’s smart enough to get away with the whole ruse, and he’s been uncommonly kind to me. Nate’s the mole.

  “Annika, I’m so sorry,” he whispers to me. My vision blackens from the edges of my eyes, and soon I’m out cold…

  “Just keep your head up, and try focusing on something else,” someone says. It’s Marissa.

  I half-open my eyes and see her sitting in a chair off to the left by my feet. Nate sits next to her, though he looks uninterested in anything she has to say. He’s bent over with his elbows digging into his knees and his head buried in his hands.

  Somehow I know, despite the darkness of the room, that it must be nighttime or close to it. Everything is much more peaceful than it was before, and my body tells me it’s time to sleep some more.

  “None of us blame you,” she continues. “You know Moton, he… he just doesn’t like surprises.”

  Nate continues to ignore her and doesn’t move a muscle. Poor Marissa. But wait… Nate could be the mole, in which case she deserves better. Marissa… she can’t be the mole after what happened today. But then again, Bruce almost killed Nate. Maybe Nate’s not the mole. So many possible moles… but who… who…

  “You need anything?” a female voice asks.

  My ears
buzz, but I can hear enough to know that I’m awake again. My eyes flutter open, and I see Izzi has taken Marissa’s place, holding a tray of tea, coffee, and energy bars in front of Nate, who hasn’t move. He shakes his head, and Izzi sits down next to him.

  I’m in the same dark room, but I feel that the time is far from what it must have been when I woke the first time. Izzi sounds tired, so it must be early morning hours.

  “Is it bad, Izzi?” Nate asks.

  She hesitates then says, “It could be worse.”

  My eyes close again, too exhausted to stay open.

  “She looks alright, given her state,” Izzi says. “Do you think she’ll be up and moving soon, after she wakes up?”

  “Why—you want to throw her out so soon?” Nate snaps.

  “Look, I’m not happy with her staying with us, but I don’t think she deserves this.”

  “And the others?”

  “Most agree with either you or me.”

  “And Kono?”

  “Don’t ask. You should try to sleep, you know.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’ll wake you up if she needs any medical attention,” Izzi says. Nate doesn’t respond, so Izzi doesn’t say anything more. I feel myself drifting away again…

  My eyes open for a third time, and everything is still dark except for the light peeking through the blind in the window. For the first time, I recognize where I am: a hospital room similar to the one I was in when I first opened my eyes inside Kenyon. Is this even Kenyon? It seems like the same layout for the room, but the distinct darkness… without the sunlight I would swear myself to be in an underground bunker.

  I then notice Nate sitting in the same seat and same defeated position I had seen him in the two times I briefly woke. Elijah is in the chair next to Nate with his hoodie over his head, his head leaning against the back of the chair, and his mouth slightly open—he’s dead asleep. Nate leans back in his chair, dragging the palms of his hands down his face. His eyes peel open, staring straight ahead, then close again.

  I glance down at my body: I’m in the same jeans and tank top I wore to Wade Oval. I glance over to Nate and Elijah: Nate’s outfit hasn’t changed, at least I don’t think it has, and Elijah is wearing clothes that are a step above pajamas.

  I look back down at the table-like bed I’m lying on. No bandages except for some weird suction cup-like things on my chest, the white wrapping around my wrists, and bandages holding a needle in my arm. I feel fine—tired, sore, but well-rested and alive—so I rip away the suctions against my chest and the bindings holding the needle to my arm.

  “Whoa, hey! Don’t—” Nate says. He jumps to his feet, but I’m already pulling the needle out of my arm. The needle comes out quickly, but incorrectly… blood now pokes out of my skin where the needle once was.

  “Ahh!” I grimace.

  Nate leans over me to grab my arm and presses his thumb against the spot of blood. He reaches for a piece of gauze and replaces his thumb with that. When he’s convinced that I can’t bleed anymore, he sighs and closes his eyes again.

  “Every time.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “No, it’s okay,” he responds. “Saved yourself from me taking it out and probably doing the same thing.”

  “Because a doctor that’s been up all night is liable for suing?” I say.

  He smiles only a little… not the best time for jokes.

  “If you could find a lawyer to take your case,” he fires back, smiling. His smile disappears when he closes his eyes again. He adjusts the pressure on the gauze against my arm by switching from his thumb to his pointer finger.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “Don’t thank me,” he says. “I’m the one who put you here.”

  “You didn’t put me here.”

  “But I’m responsible for it. I should have been with you… stopped you from running off by yourself.”

  “Hey,” I say. I stare at him until he looks at me. “That’s on me. I was stupid.”

  “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “Most of it,” I admit. “I think you said something to me, and then I passed out. I came back a little when you took that dagger out of my back.”

  Nate turns to a small table behind him and grabs a vial. He holds the pin-sized, clear container for me to see. Inside it is a pocket-sized pin with a spherical, red head.

  “You mean this?” he asks.

  “Is that what was in my back?”

  Some dagger…

  “Yeah, and it caused your body to go into shock. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it sooner… if it had been in you for much longer you could have—”

  “Died,” I say. “I know.”

  Nate doesn’t say anything, but that crease on his forehead is back, which tells me he’s deep in thought. I hope he doesn’t blame himself for what happened, or what could have happened. How was he to know that a pin-sized dart was in my back and causing my body to… well… destroy itself.

  “That scar on your back…” Nate murmurs.

  “Which one?” I ask. I know exactly which scar he’s talking about, but god I hope he’s asking about anything else.

  “The one where the dart was,” he says.

  No… not talking about it. If he has anything to say about it then he can ask it himself, but he won’t get an answer from me.

  “Where did you get it?” he asks.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Just… I’m sorry,” he says. He turns away from me, but that crease in his forehead is still there.

  Is he dropping the subject? Why is he suddenly so intrigued by it? If I told him that was the weakest spot on my body, the made-made scar to remind me where I came from, the spot where I feel the most pain, the part that makes me human, the part that makes me not… what would he do with that information?

  “I X,” he says, still looking away from me. “Nine.”

  “Nate there’s a mole,” I tell him, trying to change the subject.

  I instantly regret it, remembering that he may be the mole himself. Nate turns and looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.

  “What?” he says. “How do you—”

  “There has to be,” I say. “I found an envelope in my room, and that’s why—”

  “Yes, I know about the envelope.”

  “Whoever put it in my room… that’s who’s responsible for the whole thing. They have to be from Kenyon.”

  Nate leans back, forgetting the gauze on my arm because his mind is far, far away. That crease sinks deeper and deeper between his eyes.

  “Where are the others? Are they okay?”

  “Oh… yeah. Everyone’s… okay.”

  “They don’t want me here anymore, don’t they?”

  “What? No, no. Why do you think that?”

  “Nate, I heard what Izzi said. She’s right, I shouldn’t be here. I…” I say.

  Nate can’t even look at me. He braces the edge of the bed and stares at my feet. His eyes are pure panic, and his mind travels far beyond anywhere I can imagine.

  “Nate, are you okay?”

  He looks like he’s about to burst into flames, and doesn’t answer my question.

  “Where are the others?”

  “They’re with Moton. They’re… they’re…”

  “They’re what?”

  “Talking… about the mole… talking about you.”

  I pull myself out of the bed, bumping into Nate, and I head for the door.

  “Whoa, hey!” Nate says. He grabs my arm and pulls me toward him, but he slips, and we fall into Elijah.

  “Ahhh! What the—” Elijah shouts. He winces as Nate lands on his arm. “Ah! Dude—my arm!”

  “Sorry,” Nate says, wrestling me as I fight toward the door.

  My body finally catches up with the beating it has taken over the past few weeks, and I’m too weak to escape Nate’s grip.

  “What are you two doing?” Elijah yells.
/>   “I don’t know! Annika just took off again!”

  “I’m finding the others and Moton!” I shout.

  “What? Why?”

  “I have to! Elijah, stop him!”

  “What’s the problem?” Elijah asks.

  “Nate’s the mole—that’s why he doesn’t want me to tell them! That why he’s trying to stop me!”

  “What?!” Nate shouts, but his grip doesn’t loosen. “No! They think you’re the mole!”

  “What?!!” I shout.

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Elijah yells above both of us. He shoves us off of him and stands up. Nate lets me go, and we both jump to our feet. Neither of us dares to move toward the door, so we stand at stalemate, our eyes locked on each other.

  “You think I’m the mole?” Nate asks. His voice is angry and betrayed, like a kid who just found out their favorite superhero was actually paid for every act.

  “I don’t know, are you?” I ask.

  “Of course not! You really think I’m the mole? Really?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell not the mole!”

  “Hey!” Elijah shouts. Nate and I turn to him. “First of all, let’s all calm down. It’s been a stressful twenty-four hours for everyone, so can we reign in the antagonism a bit? Now, no one is trying to accuse anyone of anything—f”

  Huh.

  “—because the stress and exhaustion is obviously wearing on you both. Neither of you could possibly be the mole because Dr. Nancy’s men have tried to kill you both and come, frankly, way too close. So let’s put the egos aside and think like rational people,” Elijah says.

  Nate and I shift and roll our eyes, but Elijah is right… I think, at least. Nate folds his arms across his chest and refuses to look at me.

  “And I was tackled off the side of the balcony, so I think that excludes me from being the mole, too,” Elijah says.

  I sigh and turn toward Nate. “I’m sorry for accusing you of being the mole,” I say to him. “I never really believed… I’m just… I don’t know who to trust. So I’m sorry.”

  “I understand, and I’m sorry, too,” Nate says.