“Shut up.” I cover my ears with my hands. In a cell farther down the hall, someone laughs, the sound sharp and cruel.
“One of us,” another girls says. I dig my fingers into my skull and start to rock. Another girl joins in, and another after that. I don’t want to hear them. I don’t want to believe what they say.
Their voices merge together, until I can’t hear anything at all.
Hours pass before the girls get bored and stop calling to me. I lower my hands and press my face against the cloudy glass door of my cell. The light in the hall looks different. Darker. It must be late. I sigh, and crawl over to my dirty mattress. I don’t want to touch it, but I remind myself that Jessica slept in this cell too, and that makes me feel a little better. I climb onto the mattress and curl into a ball.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. It’s impossible. I can’t sleep here. A million things race through my head. I think of Issie taking the SciGirls test, and I worry about what’ll happen to Cara and Mary Anne if Dr. Gruen catches them together. No wonder the other girls here go crazy. How can you stay sane when you’re locked up with only your thoughts to keep you company?
Mostly I think about Jessica.
Jessica is an infection. She’ll wipe out everyone here. The words chase themselves through my brain, repeating like song lyrics you can’t get out of your head.
I think about the photographs Dr. Gruen showed me. That tiny house. That sad family. I think of the newspaper article Cara found, the woman who looked like Jessica. The woman who died in a fire.
I roll over, uncomfortable. I can practically feel the cold tile floor through the lumpy mattress.
Still, my eyes grow heavy. I picture flames eating away at raw wood siding and a field of tall grass burning in the wind. I picture the little boy with tubes running up his nose. But it’s not Jessica’s little brother. It’s Charlie.
“It’s okay if you never come back,” he whispers, just before I fall asleep.
I wake to the sound of footsteps. Light seeps through my closed lids. I groan and rub at my eyes. Every part of my body aches.
The footsteps come closer. Suddenly I’m wide awake. Alert. I sit up on the mattress. Whoever’s coming walks slowly. Thick-soled boots hit the concrete floor at steady, even intervals.
Ben, I think. I push myself to my feet and stand, trying to smooth my short curls with my fingers. I’m very aware of the smell in here. I hope I don’t smell like that.
The footsteps move closer. They pass the other cells without stopping. What if he’s here to let me out? Relief bubbles up in my chest, and I have to bite down on my lip to keep from sobbing. I stumble across the cell and press myself against the glass door, anxious to see his face.
Brody stops in front of my door, a smirk twisting his thick, cruel lips. He’s holding an aluminum tray in one hand.
“You,” I say. I stumble backward, nearly tripping over the corner of my mattress.
“Morning, angel.” He flips the food slot open and slides the tray into my cell.
“Where’s Be—Mateo?” I ask. I’m surprised by how rough my throat feels. It’s only been a day, and already I’ve forgotten how to use my voice.
“Officer Mateo has been reassigned.” Brody stands up and loops his thumbs through his belt. He wrinkles his nose, considering me with those beady, watery eyes. “Dr. Gruen thought it would make more sense for me to oversee you.”
I move away from the door, wanting to put as much space between myself and Brody as possible. But the cell is small, and I haven’t taken more than two steps before the hard, cold wall is at my back. Brody’s smirk twists into a cruel smile.
“How long do I have to stay here?” I ask. He shrugs. It’s a lazy gesture, he barely even lifts his shoulders.
“The doctor didn’t say,” he says. “But you should get used to it. If I have any say, you’re never getting out.”
He wiggles his fingers at me in a mocking wave, then steps away from the door. I sink to the floor, listening to his footsteps echo down the hall. Every single thud reverberates inside my chest, like a warning.
Never the footsteps seem to say. Never never never never.
You’re never getting out.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Days last forever if you don’t know when they end. Or begin. I must sleep, but I’m not sure when or for how long. It feels like I’m always waiting. I wait for hours. Days.
The other girls whisper horrible things that creep through the walls like bugs. “Pretty girl,” they say. And “You’re just like us.” Sometimes they scream. The screams are the worst.
I watch the light in the hall fade. It creeps over the concrete floor like the tide. Hours pass, and then the light comes back again. Fingers of yellow crawl over the floor. Slowly at first. Then fast. I stretch my hand across the glass, trying to touch them.
Time passes. I’m half-awake and half-asleep when the security door at the end of the hall buzzes open. I hear low voices and footsteps. I press my face against the glass, but I can’t see who’s coming.
Keys jangle. A girl at the end of the hall giggles.
“Quiet!” a voice says. “Hands in diamonds.”
Brody. The girl stops giggling, and metal clinks against metal: handcuffs.
He’s taking her, I realize.
The whole process repeats about fifteen times. Once for every girl in the Seg Block. I hold my breath, waiting for Brody to come back for me.
The minutes stretch into hours. He doesn’t come back.
I close my eyes, and I cover my ears with my hands. He can’t just leave me here alone. He can’t.
But he does. I wrap my arms around my knees and rock. The silence is even worse than the screams.
I don’t belong here. I whisper those words to myself again and again.
But I don’t believe them. Not really.
I always knew this was where I’d end up.
A sudden buzz interrupts the silence. The far door creaks open.
The security door. Brody’s coming.
Every muscle in my body tenses. I scoot to the far corner of my cell. I do this every time Brody brings me food. It’s easier to ignore him when I’m as far from the door as possible.
Footsteps sound on the concrete. I shut my eyes.
The footsteps stop in front of my room. Keys jangle at my door, and my eyes pop open.
“How are you feeling, Miss Davis?” Dr. Gruen says, opening my door. I stare at her for a long moment, trying to work out whether I’m hallucinating.
“How long have I been here?” I ask. Dr. Gruen considers me, her eyes flashing. She brushes a wrinkle from her black dress.
“Four days.”
Four days. I close my eyes, forcing myself to breathe. It felt like longer.
“Have you had ample time to think about your situation?” Dr. Gruen asks. I nod without opening my eyes.
“I get it,” I say. “I’ll give you what you want.”
“Good.” I hear the smile in her voice, and my eyes flicker back open. “You have until tomorrow.”
She steps away from my cell, leaving the door open. Her heels dig into the concrete floor as she walks away. The sound makes me cringe.
I scramble to my feet and follow her, keeping my eyes straight ahead so I don’t have to look at the empty cells. I swallow, my throat cottony dry.
“Where did you take them?” I ask.
“Don’t concern yourself with that right now,” Dr. Gruen says, unlocking the security door at the end of the hall. “You might want to gather your things when you get back to your dorm.”
“Why?”
Dr. Gruen glances over her shoulder, considering me. She rests a hand on the security door, her fingers tapping the wood. Index, middle, ring. Ring, index, ring. Like she’s playing an invisible piano.
“Because you’re leaving,” she says, after a moment. “Bring me what I want, and you’re out of here tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirty
In the end,
it’s easy.
The dorm is empty. I hesitate at the doorway, but just for a moment. Then I walk over to Jessica’s bunk and I peel the poster away from the wall above her bed. Her teddy bear’s right where I left it. I pull it out of the hole and shove it into my pillowcase, then toss the pillow back onto my bed.
There. Done. When Dr. Gruen stops by tomorrow morning, I’ll just hand her the pillow. I won’t even have to think about it.
I’m supposed to head to the cafeteria for evening chores, but instead I crawl onto my bed and wrap my body around my pillow. I spent the past four days yearning for other people, but now the thought of them makes me cringe. I listen for the distant sounds of laughing and voices, but I hear nothing. It’s like all of Brunesfield is empty. Like I’m the last one here.
I close my eyes. If I concentrate, I can feel the teddy bear inside the pillow, its blackened arms and legs protected by layers of cotton.
A second passes, and I jerk awake. Darkness presses in around me. I hear the low, steady sounds of breathing and realize the others are already asleep. I must’ve slept through dinner.
I shift in bed, tugging my blanket up past my chin. It’s probably better like this. If I’d been awake when the others came in, I might have felt compelled to say good-bye or explain. Now I don’t even have time to pack. I roll onto my side and tug Cara’s newspaper article out from under my mattress and tuck it into the waistband of my scrubs. I lie on my back for a moment, thinking, but there’s nothing else I want to bring with me.
A beam of light sweeps into the room. I close my eyes before it hits my face. I feel the brightness behind my closed lids, and imagine Ben on the other side of the door, pointing the flashlight at me. He hesitates for a beat, then the light disappears, and I hear his footsteps walking away.
I open my eyes. My tape player sits on the locker at the foot of my bed, headphones wrapped around it. I stare at it for a long moment. I was wrong. There is something I want.
I kick the blankets away from my legs and crawl out of bed. I hesitate at the door, worried it might be locked. But the handle turns. I glance at Cara’s bunk: empty. I’m not the only one sneaking out tonight.
I follow Ben’s bobbing flashlight down the hall and around the corner. He’s a silhouette in the darkness, his body a jumble of black shapes. I think of how angry he was the last time he found me sneaking around at night, and I almost run back to my dorm.
Dr. Gruen’s the one who stops me. Her voice echoes through my head. Gather your things. It doesn’t matter if Ben gets mad at me. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll never see him again.
I stop in the middle of the hall and clear my throat. “Hey.”
Ben turns, his flashlight beam sweeping over the floor in a wobbly arc.
“Angela,” he whispers. He crosses the hall in two long strides. His hand closes around my shoulder and every nerve ending in my skin explodes. “Jesus. I was so worried about you.”
I lift my hand and brush a strand of hair back from Ben’s forehead. Just to see if I can. His hair feels softer than I expected, and thick. He moves his thumb along the line of my jaw. I lean into him, and the rest of my body disappears. All that exists is the few inches of skin where he’s touched me.
“I thought you left with the others,” he says.
“Others?” I stiffen, and take a step back. My eyes adjust to the flashlight. Purple bruises shadow the skin below Ben’s eyes. It looks like he hasn’t been sleeping. “You mean the girls in Seg?”
“No.” Ben frowns, and jerks his chin at the dorm next to him. “Didn’t you notice?”
“Notice . . . ?” I look through the dorm window and see empty beds, the mattresses stripped of sheets and pillows. I whirl around to check the dorm behind me. It’s empty too. I cross the hall without thinking, and press my face against the glass window in the door.
A cold, hard lump forms in my throat. Ellen used to sleep here. A stack of library books sits next to the foot of her bed, abandoned.
“A bunch of vans arrived a few days ago,” Ben explains. “They took all the girls who signed up for that SciGirls test. None of them came back, so I guess they all passed. There are only a few girls left.”
“No.” I think of the article tucked in the waistband of my scrubs. The Jane Doe dropped at the door of some hospital upstate, a SciGirls bracelet dangling from her wrist. “Issie.”
I was just in our dorm. I saw her. But that’s not true. I heard breathing so I assumed she was above me. It could have been anyone.
For a long moment, I’m not sure how to make my legs move. I stumble for a few feet, then muscle memory takes over and I’m running down the hallway. Ben says my name in an urgent whisper but I don’t turn around. I don’t stop running until I’ve reached our dorm and thrown open the door.
Moonlight spills in from the barred window at our ceiling. All I see is silver. I hold my breath as I step into the room, and blink to help my eyes adjust to the light. The top bunk comes into focus.
I see a shape below the blankets, a tangle of dark hair on Issie’s pillow.
“Oh God,” I whisper. Someone touches my arm and I flinch, but it’s just Ben. He holds a finger to his lips, and pulls me back into the hall.
“I tried to tell you,” he says, closing the dorm door. “She didn’t take the test.”
I exhale and sink back against the wall, but guilt pounds at my chest like a fist. Issie’s still here, but dozens of other girls have been taken, and who knows what Dr. Gruen’s going to do to them. I knew this was going to happen, but I didn’t think it would happen like this. It didn’t occur to me that they would all just . . . disappear.
“I should have warned them,” I whisper.
“Warned them?” Ben meets my eyes and it feels like the rest of the world has been put on Mute. “Angela, what’s going on?”
A scream rips through the hallway before I can answer. We stare at each other for a moment, frozen. Then Ben jerks away.
“I think it came from here,” he says, tearing down the hall.
We hurry around one corner, and then another. I’m so focused on keeping up with Ben that I don’t notice we’ve reached the bathroom until we’re standing in front of it.
“Hello?” Ben pushes the bathroom door open. He switches his flashlight on and the dim light illuminates grimy tile, and a shallow puddle of water.
Terror hits me in the second between stopping in front of the door and stepping into the bathroom. The air in here is wrong. It’s too thick. Like breathing in sand. Silence hangs over us, heavy as a blanket, and I feel the spaces where the scream ripped through it, like a wound ripping through skin.
“Ben,” I whisper. “Wait.”
He doesn’t turn around. He steps forward, his flashlight beam dancing off damp tile. He hesitates next to the wall that separates the toilets from the showers. I hold my breath. All the strings inside my body tighten, threatening to snap.
Someone sniffles. The sound barely stirs the air, but it sends every hair on my arms standing straight up. I drift forward and around the wall, ignoring Ben when he hisses at me to stay back.
Cara crouches on the cold floor, her knee covering a bit of blackened tile. She’s shaking so badly the air seems to quiver around her. She’s curled her hands around her face, her mouth hanging open in a silent scream.
“Cara,” I start. I take another step forward and the words freeze on my tongue.
Mary Anne’s body lies across the tile in the middle of the room. I stare at her and for a long moment I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s like she’s wearing a mask. Half of her face still looks perfect—skin smooth and pale, lips holding the hint of a smile. Eye closed, like she might be sleeping.
The other half is pure horror. Fire burned away the flesh on her nose and around her eyes, and burns creep along her cheeks and over her forehead. The skin that’s still left is black and puckered, and so thin I can see the muscle and bone twisted beneath it. A few singed strands of hair still cling to he
r scalp. The rest is gone, burned to ash beneath her head.
Mary Anne’s open eye stares at the ceiling, lifeless. Blood spills down her cheek like a tear.
Chapter Thirty-One
No.
My mind screams that word. The rest of the world comes in and out of focus, like a dream I’m trying to wake from. I’m dimly aware of the acid taste at the back of my throat, and of Ben moving around me. He shouts something, and pulls his walkie-talkie from the holster at his belt.
My knees buckle. I put a hand out, steadying myself against the wall.
“Angela?” Ben says, and, just like that, the world slams back into me. Cara doubles over, sobbing and shaking. The smell of burned flesh hangs in the air. Voices crackle from Ben’s walkie-talkie.
A memory unfolds in the back of my head: Peach screaming from her shower stall. Red burns unfolding across her shoulders. Jessica flashing me a private smile. Looking proud.
My stomach turns. I double over, catching myself seconds before my knees slam into the floor. I heave, but nothing comes out but air.
“Angela?” Ben says, again. He touches my shoulder. I’m suddenly aware of the thin veil of sweat coating my skin. I shake my head, edging away from the body.
“I have to go,” I murmur, stumbling out of the bathroom. I try to run, but my knees knock together. Nerves make my legs weak. They feel like they could dissolve beneath me.
I tear down the hall and into my dorm, slamming the door so hard that it cracks against the wall. Issie sits up in bed. She groans, rubbing her eyes.
“What the hell?” she says. I walk straight to my bunk and grab the pillow. The teddy bear’s legs shift below layers of fabric and cotton.
I turn. Jessica stares at me from her bunk. I think of Mary Anne’s ruined face, her blackened skin, and fear jolts through me. Jessica blinks, and bunches her blanket up under her chin.
“You said you could control it,” I whisper. I’m trembling so badly I almost drop the pillow.
Issie leans over the side of her bunk. “What’s going on?”
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