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by Robison Wells

Page 18

 

  Her voice was softer now. “You’ve met everyone here?”

  I nodded. “I think so. Unless they’re hiding someone else. ”

  Becky rested her head on my shoulder. “So you know who all the robots were back at the school?”

  “I do. ”

  She was quiet, waiting. I could only guess how much it would hurt her. She’d been at the school a lot longer than me, and she’d cared more about the other students than I had. I’d been watching out for myself since the day I’d started at Maxfield, but Becky had been watching out for everyone else. She’d helped start the Variants, and then she’d joined the Society because she couldn’t handle watching people die.

  I swallowed. “There were twenty-two. ”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped.

  “By my count, there were sixty-eight of us back at the school when we tried to escape. Twenty-two of those were robots. ”

  Becky didn’t make a sound. For a long time, I couldn’t even hear her breathe. When she finally spoke, her voice wasn’t even as loud as a whisper. “Who?”

  I recited the names. I’d made the list, and I’d looked over it a dozen times. I knew them all. Jane, Mouse, Carrie, Mason, and on and on.

  She was silently crying by the time I finished.

  “It gets worse,” I said. “Sixteen people died when we went over the wall—humans. And there’s reason to think that at least a few more died after. We’ll find out. ”

  I could feel her body tense against mine as she stifled her cries.

  “There’s a little good news,” I said, knowing it wasn’t much. “Lily’s here. And Jelly and Walnut. And Laura. Anyone who got sent to detention. They weren’t killed. ”

  “They came here?”

  “The school recycles. ”

  Becky smiled and wiped her eyes. “So, what is there to do for fun around here?”

  “A lot of sitting around and talking,” I said. “We’re building a new barrack. I saw some guys with a Frisbee. Jane milks cows. ”

  She looked up at me. “I assume you’ve been getting into trouble?”

  “Always. ”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It wasn’t snowing, but the clouds were dark and low. It had to come soon.

  The second day of the construction hadn’t gone very well. The concrete wasn’t setting in this weather, and none of us really knew what to do about it. Shelly had said they’d move forward anyway.

  I helped out for a while, but there wasn’t much to be done. Some of the supplies were missing—the heavy bolts we needed for attaching the support beams to the piers apparently hadn’t come in with the rest of the lumber, and the board count was off. There was an elevator in the commissary—like the supply elevators back at the school—and Shelly left a written message there requesting the missing materials.

  I spent most of the day back at the fort, and in the evening Becky finally felt well enough to leave the Basement. The heavy wooden door to the fort was closed and locked, and there were guards on the roof—Mason was up there, and three others. We were safe for the time being.

  I sat on the boardwalk, looking across the courtyard at where Becky sat with Carrie, laughing quietly and talking. “You’re lucky,” Harvard said.

  I nodded, my eyes still on Becky. Her arm was in a sling, but I couldn’t see it now, hidden under the heavy parka made for someone a foot taller and a hundred and fifty pounds heavier.

  “If you can call this luck,” Birdman said, leaning forward to warm his hands over the campfire that we’d built on the ground. “So she’s getting better. Big deal. ”

  “She almost died,” Jane said.

  Birdman shrugged and shoved his warmed hands inside his pockets. “Great. Now she can get caught and have an implant jammed into her head. Or she can get killed trying to escape. ”

  I couldn’t say the same thoughts hadn’t been going through my head, but it still hurt to hear them out loud.

  “Or they’ll escape. ” Jane’s tone wasn’t very convincing.

  “We will,” I said. “That’s what we’re here for. ”

  Becky glanced over and smiled.

  I didn’t turn my head as I spoke. “I have a question. ” Becky was getting better, and an escape attempt seemed more of a certainty. It was time to figure out whether Lily had been right.

  “There are always new people showing up at the school, right? And more people keep trickling in here. And it’s been going on a long time. So why aren’t there any adults here?”

  Harvard turned to me, excited. “Here’s my theory. Someone is trying to create hyperrealistic androids, right? Well, we’ve speculated on a million reasons for them to do that, but no one can think of any reason they’d only want hyperrealistic androids of teenagers. I mean, can you?”

  The thought had never really crossed my mind.

  “Maybe they … I don’t know,” I stammered. I couldn’t think of a reason. “Create an army of robot teenagers and release them on the population because no one would suspect kids?”

  Birdman laughed at the suggestion.

  “That’s part of my theory, though,” Harvard said. “We know they’re making androids of teenagers, and we know that doesn’t make sense, so I think we can assume this isn’t the only android training facility. ”

  “What do you mean?”

  Harvard started to answer, but Birdman talked over him. “It means that we’re screwed. ”

  “Depends on how you look at it,” Jane said, staring at the fire.

  Harvard nodded. “When you get too old, they take you away. It’s happened a dozen times since I’ve been here. ”

  “Really?” I said. “That’s weird. Maybe they just take them away to kill them. ”

  Harvard scoffed. “You’re still stuck in the mind-set that this place is some evil torture chamber. No, I think they have to have a reason for what they’re doing. We’ve seen them kill plenty of people here—you saw them kill Dylan—so if they just killed adults, then why wouldn’t they do it here? No, they take adults away. I think it’s to another training facility. For adults. ”

  “So it never ends. ”

  “That’s bad and good,” Jane said. She flicked a sliver of wood into the fire and watched it burn. “We don’t get out of here. But we don’t die, either. ”

  Birdman stood up and turned his back to the fire to warm himself. “And what’s so bad about this place?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve heard that crap before. ”

  Birdman’s response was sharp and fast, like he’d been waiting for me. “It’s time you listen to it. You’re not going to lead a rebellion here. ”

  “I thought the whole reason I’m here is to help you escape. ”

  Birdman looked at Harvard, who answered in his usual excited tone. “We have a lot of things we want you to do—like look for the transmitters—but most important, we want you to escape. It’s not that we don’t want to get out of here. We just don’t want to put our necks on the chopping block. ”

  “So you’re putting mine. ”