chapter 3
“They can’t hurt you unless you let them.”
– Unknown
As the days go by, I begin to grieve the life I’ve left behind: simple days with my mom in the garden; riding my bike to the market; skipping down my tree-lined street with my best friend, Cassidy. The city was utterly safe, and growing up there had been easy. It was divided into many different sectors – each with neat rows of houses, tidy office complexes, shopping centers and of course, happy, normal people. Sleepers. I had never spoken the word aloud before, but the term referred to people who had gotten their mindscan. I always thought I would be one, too. But for some reason, I am different. The feeling is unsettling.
Now that I’m here, I have no choice but to catch onto the routine. It’s mostly forced sleep, with occasional tests, but they’ve adjusted my dosage and now in addition to sleeping, I alternate between foggy periods where I just zone out, staring at a wall for the better part of an afternoon.
The nurse from my first day, Dorie, returns and my conversation with Willow stops abruptly. She closes her eyes and lets her mouth fall open and slack. Without thinking, I do the same.
Dorie goes from bed to bed administering more injections to those who are beginning to stir, but when she reaches my bed, she passes by. I peek an eye open and see she does the same for Willow. Once we hear the door click again, Willow peeks one eye open at me and offers a lopsided smile.
“I always skip the afternoon dose,” she whispers, like it’s a secret.
I nod my understanding. It’s her silent defiance at what they are doing to us. It seems impossible to close my eyes and turn my head from the abuse here, but at the same time, a tiny bit of hope stirs inside, like maybe, if I had to, I could figure out a way to survive here, too. With the help from my new friend, Willow.
Willow says once they begin to trust me, I’ll be unshackled a few hours a day. After a few days, I see that she’s right. I must have slept through it before, but my days take on a new routine. At midday, we eat our one solid meal in a guarded cafeteria, and then get some time in a common room down the hall from the dormitory. Most of the others are too strung out to know what’s going on, and they sit slack-jawed on the plastic chairs staring off into space. Willow and I sit on the floor under the one window to feel the warmth of the sunshine, even if we’re not directly in its path.
I need to know more about what it means to be a Defect. I always had such confidence in the mindscan. I knew I wasn’t a criminal; I’d never had a corrupt thought in my life. But what I never considered was that I could end up a Defect. “What happened for you to end up here?” I ask, staring straight ahead.
“Same as you. My future was spotted with holes, and they couldn’t say with certainty that I was cleared.”
I hesitate, wringing my hands. That wasn’t exactly the way it was explained to me.
“Same for you?” she asks.
“I don’t think so. They said I failed it – they did it twice and …”
She clamps a hand over my lips and looks around us. Her eyes are serious, more alive than I’ve seen them. “You failed it?” she whispers once she’s sure no one’s listening.
I nod. “What does it mean?” I don’t want to tell her that there was some strange connection to my mother, too, that they seemed to know about.
“Failing it means they couldn’t read what was in your mind at all – that your future was completely blank to them. That’s not possible.”
I register what this means. Their technology didn’t work on me – I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t a criminal – but rather than admit that I’d somehow outsmarted them, they chose to lock me up and throw away the key. It fills me with rage.
Guard your mind. My mother’s words echo in my head the first time since the mindscan. Why would she tell me that if it meant getting locked up? Did she know what would happen if they actually saw into my mind? Whatever they found couldn’t be worse than them finding nothing at all. But that seems odd. Certainly there’s no way to keep them out of your mind, despite my mother’s warnings. It’s not something I did – it was just some strange effect.
The door swings open. It’s O’Donovan. “5491.”
I look at my wrist. 5491.
“Come with me,” he says.
I follow him from the room, glancing back at Willow, whose face is tight with worry.
“Where are you taking me?” I say to his back as I follow him down the hallway.
He glances back, surprised at my voice. It’s as if everyone else here just willingly accepts this fate. The strange thing is, they actually seem to.
“You’re resisting the drugs, huh?” A grim smile creeps over his face, only I know instantly that he’s not to be trusted. A cold chill runs down my spine. “This way.” He turns suddenly down a hall I’ve never been down before. The floor slants gradually under my feet. This place is like a maze, and I get the sense we’re moving deeper underground. “We’ll be doing some testing. There’s something different about you, Eve Sterling,” he says, as though weary of me, like I’m something dangerous, rather than the small, clueless girl I feel like.
I walk with him for a few minutes until we’ve crisscrossed through so many underground hallways and tunnels that I know we must be in a different building altogether. He stops and presses his finger to the sensor at the door and it clicks open. He pushes it open for me. It’s more brightly lit and open than the place I’m being kept.
We enter a lab with steel counters that hold bubbling vials of liquid. There’s a row of data terminals in the center of the room, along with a desk and two stools.
He sits on the edge of the stool and watches me climb up and plant myself on top of the other. Everything here is designed to make me feel small – from the oversized clothes they put me in, to the guards laughing at my underdeveloped body, to the tall stool my feet dangle from. I’m not sure why, but it infuriates me.
“How much do you know about this place?” he asks.
“Just that this is where Defects are kept.”
“Let’s have a talk.” He sits facing me, his eyes examining me from head to toe. “Tell me how you did it,” he says finally. I can see he’s trying hard to portray himself as calm and reasonable, but I can also tell if I don’t do what he wants, this front won’t last long.
“You mean fail the mindscan?”
He forces a fake smile and nods once.
“I really have no idea. It’s not … common?”
He waits, looking me over while my skins crawls. “This has only happened one other time in recent history. Your mother.”
“My mother? She was never here.” I’m sure of it.
“Oh, she was here. She was our first.” He grins, somehow amused that he knows something I didn’t. “Back before we really knew what to do with them. But you won’t get out that easily. You try to pull anything like she did – be advised – we’ll take care of the problem.”
His comment makes no sense. How and why was she released? Once you’re here, you don’t get out. Everyone knows that. And why doesn’t she have the tattoo?
His words break my concentration. “You’re wondering why she doesn’t have the tattoo, aren’t you?”
I swallow.
“As I said, she was our first. We did things … differently back then. We learned our lesson after her, though.”
Though I want to ask him endless questions about my mother and what it means to fail the mindscan, my mouth goes dry, my mind completely blank. My mother’s erratic behavior over the years, her distrust of the government, the mindscan process, her fear for me is suddenly justified. The only piece that doesn’t fit is why she’d warn me to protect my mind. Maybe she suspected I’d end up here no matter what I did, and her message was meant to remind me to be strong and not let them break me. God, I wish I could just talk to her one more time.
“So, what does this mean? What do you want with me?” My voice shakes, though I do my best to sound calm, strong. I have to.
“Instead of sitting in there to rot,” his head tips back toward the mental ward, “you’re going to become a side project of mine.”
I don’t know which is worse – laying in Ward A, drugged unconscious or being O’Donovan’s lab rat – but it’s not like I have a choice. Maybe I can find out what he knows about my mom.
He presses an intercom button on the data terminal. “Yeah, come in. We’re ready for you.”
The door pushes open, and a man with rectangular glasses and a white lab coat introduces himself as Dr. Nolan, followed by Will, who won’t meet my eyes.
“I want a full battery of tests, mental, intellectual,” O’Donovan says to Dr. Nolan. “Along with physical and endurance,” he says to Will who still won’t look directly at me. His eyes are focused on my hands that lie still in my lap, or more specifically, at my tattoo. The memory of him visiting me in the night floods my senses, and I blush involuntarily.
“We can’t seem to get inside your head.” O’Donovan reaches out toward me, and I try not to flinch as he taps a finger sharply at my temple. “And I intend to find out why.” The look in his eyes says it all. He’ll stop at nothing until I’m a broken heap on the floor. He turns back to Dr. Nolan and Will. “As long as it takes, as much as it costs, find me something. I want a report at the end of each day.” And then he turns on his heel and leaves the room, Will saluting him until he’s through the door.
The air in the room is heavy, too still. I can sense them deciding what to do with me, who should take me first.
“You start,” Will says to Dr. Nolan after a minute. “I’ll go set up for the physical tests.” The heavy door clicks into place behind him, leaving me alone with Dr. Nolan.
I position myself on the stool in front of the data terminal to begin the intelligence tests.
I scan the barcode on my wrist on the blue light at the side of the machine, and it comes to life. I tap my finger against the screen to start the test. A word association test appears, and after reading the directions, I begin arranging the words on the screen, dragging them into different boxes. I do it quickly, my mind barely processing each word before my finger slides it into the right place.
I move onto answering questions about how I would respond in fictitious situations, then onto a series of questions where I have to choose between two bad things, like being trapped in a fire or underwater. Lastly, I move onto finding patterns in numbers, where I predict which number comes next in a series, while Dr. Nolan busies himself on the data terminal across the lab.
I have no strategy when it comes to these tests, since I have no idea if it will be better or worse for me if I score well. Regardless, I do the best I can. My eyes burn from concentrating, and I’m hungry after several hours.
Just as I’m finishing, the door pushes open, and a guy I’ve never seen before comes in. “Ready?” He directs his question to Dr. Nolan.
Dr. Nolan is reading a print out from the data terminal tests I took. He looks up from the paper, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You can take her. We’re done for the day.”
The guy comes toward me. He’s dressed like Will – camouflage cargo pants tucked into heavy work boots and a black T-shirt strained across his muscled chest bearing the silver insignia of government, a crest with sharp edges protruding from the center of the circle in a sun burst pattern – so I assume he’s another guard.
“What happened to Will?”
He laughs, but there’s no joy in his face. “They all want Will.” He closes the distance between us with two more steps and grabs my arm. His eyes narrow and he brings his face directly in front of mine, looking at me with a cruel, mocking expression. His eyes are nearly black, and I find myself stumbling back from him, but his grip on my arm holds me in place.
“Will’s busy with the other recruits. I’m in charge of you now.” My arm turns red under his thick fingers. He hauls me after him, and I have no choice but to follow. He pushes me ahead of him down the hall, and I walk blindly ahead, unsure where we’re going, but knowing I don’t want to spend any more time with him than I have to.
“You didn’t say what your name was,” I say to the empty space in front of me.
“Who said you could speak?” His fingers prod my back, and I walk faster to stay out of his reach. “I’m Kane,” he says after a minute. “In here,” he says when we reach a heavy, metal door. He presses his fingertip to the sensor, and the door clicks open. Inside is a big gymnasium with ropes hanging from the ceiling, various weights, benches and barbells. And through the doors on the far end that connect to another room – I smell a pool – though I can’t see it yet.
“Over there.” He shoves me toward the weights.
I would gladly walk; I don’t know why he doesn’t just ask – probably an excuse to show off his control over me. I don’t like the thought of being alone with him.
He selects two twenty-pound dumbbells and sets them at my feet. “Start with curls – do as many as you can.”
I pick up the weights, which feel much heavier than twenty pounds. I was never strong to begin with, but the lack of food and proper rest certainly isn’t helping. I hold them at my sides and curl them up once, twice and by the third time, my arms are shaking. But Kane is waiting for me to fail, to give up, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction. I begin lifting one at a time, my entire body struggling with the effort. I make it to ten, and my arms are quivering. A drop of perspiration rolls down the back of my neck, and I set the weights calmly at my feet.
“This is boring – come with me.”
He stops in front of a rope suspended from the ceiling and motions for me to step forward. “Climb to the top.”
It’s at least thirty feet up. I grip the rope; it’s so thick my fingers can barely make it all the way around. I pull myself up and bring my feet up. I begin shimmying my way up the rope. Miraculously I’m doing it. My hands ache from my grip on the rope, and my muscles are tense, but slowly, slowly, I’m making my way up toward the ceiling. I can tell it’s not what he expected, and that pushes me forward.
When I reach the top, just to spite him, I stretch out and skim my fingers across the ceiling, then begin to slide down slowly so that I don’t get rope burn. Then I’m standing in front of him, out of breath, but proud of myself for the first time since I got here.
“Since you’re so good with ropes, let’s try something else.”
And suddenly I regret showing off, for climbing so high, for touching the ceiling. I follow him to the far corner of the room. He picks up a length of rope from a container in the corner. It’s about four feet long. He turns me around and takes my arms behind my back and begins tying the rope tightly around my wrists. Once he’s knotted the rope and tugged on it a few times to be sure it’s secure, he sets the timer on his watch. “Okay, get yourself free.”
I struggle with the ropes, thrashing my arms around, trying to pry my fingers underneath, but it’s no use. The look on Kane’s face is pure amusement. I swallow and calm myself. I stop thrashing long enough to think this through. My wrists are small, and that will work to my advantage.
I notice the rope seems to be tied in a figure eight, looping back around again, binding my wrists together. I pull until the left side is tight, causing the rope around my right hand to loosen just slightly. I pry my fingers under the rope to loosen it more, sliding my hand up. The rope around my left has gotten so tight, it’s cutting off my circulation, and my hand starts to go numb, but I don’t stop. After I get the rope over the biggest part of my fist, my right hand suddenly comes free, and then with a free hand, it’s easy to pull the rope off my left.
Kane’s grin fades when the rope drops to the ground behind me. “One minute thirty-four seconds,” he says, stopping the timer. “Let’s see what you’ll do when motivated. We’ll make it more interesting this time.” He pushes me towards the pool, bending to grab the rope.
We stand at the edge of the pool, my heart hammering in my chest. He turns me and begins to tie my wrists behind me again. I struggle against him, trying to pull my arms free. “You can’t – I can’t …”
He whips me around to face him and backhands me. The force of it stings, and I taste blood on my lip. I’ve never been hit before, and I’m more surprised than anything else. I swallow down the lump in my throat and stare defiantly up at him. I will not cry. I breathe through my nose, trying to stay calm. If I’m going into the water, I need to hold myself together.
He resumes tying my wrists, and I hold them apart as far as I dare without him noticing, giving myself more room to work. Once he tests the ropes, checking that they’re secure, I know I’m about to be shoved into the water. I take a few deep breaths, trying to clear my head. I feel his hands on my back and take one last gulp of air as he pushes me into the water.
I hit the water and instantly begin to sink, though I’m kicking my feet to stay afloat. My drenched clothes and the heavy rope are no match, and in a few seconds I’m on the bottom of the pool. The instant my feet hit the bottom I begin working at the ropes using the same strategy I did before to free myself. I know I can do it again. Except underneath the water, the rope seems to give differently, and my arms are exhausted from the weights and climbing.
The lack of air is already starting to become uncomfortable. I blow a stream of bubbles from my nose, preserving some of the air I have left in my lungs. My hands work faster, my fingers fumbling at the ropes. I know I’m not making any progress, and I begin to panic. I look up and see Kane’s blurry figure watching me from the edge of the pool. He waves at me.
The pain and anger push me to work faster. My fingers pry at the rope, twisting and pulling with all I have. I become disoriented and forget which hand I’m working to free. I release the last of the air I’ve been holding, and my lungs scream out for oxygen. I know I only have a few more seconds of consciousness and pull violently at the ropes, flailing my arms behind me. It only serves in making them tighter. My feet push up from the bottom as I try to swim for the surface, but without my arms, I’m like a rock and sink back down.
Above me, something catches my attention. I see Kane struggling with someone and hear shouting that’s muffled by the water. Suddenly someone’s in the water with me. But I can’t hold my breath any longer. My brain screams for air, and I choke down a gulp of water just as hands reach out and grab me.