But what we saw as we flew over changed all that. It was almost seven p.m. and light enough to see easily. In the courtyard—nice name for a huge square of dirt where we were able to go out to see the sun once a day and exercise—pale, flabby assassins might stand out. We had to look normal. Jericho had never been able to fix the assassin gene that resulted in the different colored eyes, but in every other way we were to look normal.
There hadn’t been any exercising in the yard when I’d flown the Cessna over it. There’d been ten dead guards, and that was a plan-changer if ever there was one. I’d landed—landed, not crashed—the Cessna while Stefan held on to his M249 machine gun with his free hand. It was surprising what people smuggled back from Afghanistan and more surprising how easy those things were to buy . . . if you knew the right people. When it came to weapons, Stefan knew all the right people. He had Saul make the purchase instead of making it himself, to keep us hidden, but it was surprising, all in all. It wasn’t surprising, though, that he thought he might need it here.
The numbness I felt walking toward the Alpha station wasn’t that unexpected either. I should’ve been experiencing a number of emotions, all of them bad, because I already knew what this meant, but at times, too much is too much. And I wasn’t talking about the massacre here. Understanding that was simple enough. It was a rebellion, as Stefan had said. I never would’ve imagined it, but it was plain that was what had happened. But the rest of it . . .
They had killed the ones who didn’t wholeheartedly embrace what they were. Although they would’ve done what they were told, obedient to the end, they’d killed them anyway. What did the army rangers say? The best of the best?
The worst of the worst had walked out of here and they were loose in the world. They were out there, able to do whatever they pleased. What pleased them most? Freedom? No.
Death.
Chapter 5
The station was empty. All the guards would’ve seen what had been unfolding on their monitors and had likely run out with guns and Tasers in hand, for all the good it had done them. I sat down in one of the three chairs and started typing on the computer. I needed the feed from approximately two weeks ago. It should be flagged. The guards would’ve hit the alarm when it all started to fall apart.
Or come together. It depended which side you were on.
“We’ll be able to actually see what happened?” Stefan leaned over my shoulder as I sat in the chair before the console. “I’m not sure that’s convenient; it’s going to be pretty damn fucking horrifying.”
I nodded at Stefan’s question. “We’re obedient. I mean, they were obedient.” Being a genius could suck. Being a genius meant you couldn’t fool yourself as often as you wanted to. But I was different now. I’d not been as obedient as was required while at the Institute, but I’d been too obedient in my eyes. I wasn’t obedient at all now; Stefan would be the first to tell me that. “They wouldn’t have done anything like this without someone telling them, pushing them. Someone only pretending to be submissive, which I would’ve said was impossible,” I told him as I found the logs from when the alert had gone out. I was about to pull it all up when I heard a door slam against a wall. Stefan hit me hard, knocking me out of the chair to land on the floor on my back.
Of all those movies I’d watched, and horror movies were the best, zombie stories had never been my favorite. In my opinion, if you get eaten by something whose brain has decomposed, you sort of deserve it. Fast or slow, they remained the closest thing to brain-dead you could come up with. If you couldn’t outrun or outthink them, it was hard to have sympathy when one started gnawing on your skull.
Now, in the position of all those victims I’d had little respect for, I changed my mind. When something that should be dead but isn’t dead looms over you, the skin slipping from its muscle, pieces of it falling on you, its eyes blinded with a thick film, there were so many psychological reactions to have. Fight or flight. Catatonia. Reversion to screaming for a mommy you didn’t remember. There were also the physiological responses . . . the least embarrassing being urinating in your pants. My body that was as frozen as my brain tried to pick one. I hoped it wasn’t the urinating one.
A hand, darkened and squirming with maggots, reached down for me. “Go . . . back . . . to . . . your . . . room.”
The voice was garbled, thick, and almost impossible to understand. Two weeks without water would do that to you. Some people thought you could last only three days without fluids. It wasn’t true. Although I knew this bastard would’ve wished it were true if he had a brain cell functional enough to make a wish. It depended on your environment, temperature, exertion level, and general health. Two weeks was at the end of the scale, but it could be done. It was one of those “don’t-try-this-at-home” situations. It was a horrific way to go.