Chapter 9

chapter Nine

"Keep up!" the PSF snapped. He didn't try to hide his annoyance as I hobbled after him, but he didn't need to worry; you couldn't have paid me to stay in the Infirmary, not while I was conscious. Not even with the new threat hanging over my head. I knew what they used to do there.

I knew what was under the layers of white paint.

The earliest kids they had brought in, the first guinea pigs, had been subjected to a whole array of electroshock and brain-chop-shop terrors. Stories were passed around camp with sick, almost holy reverence. The scientists were looking for ways to strip the kids' abilities-"rehabilitate" them-but they had mostly just stripped their will to live. The ones who made it out were given warden positions when the first small wave of kids was brought to camp. It was a strange bit of luck and timing that I had come in during the second wave. Each wave grew larger and larger as the camp expanded, until, three years ago, they'd run out of space completely. There were no new buses after that.

I still wasn't moving fast enough for the soldier. He pushed me forward into the hall of mirrors. The exit sign cast its gory light over us; the PSF shoved me again, harder, and smiled when I fell. Anger flooded through me, cutting through the lingering pain in my limbs and any fear I had that he was taking me out somewhere in order to finish the job.

Soon we were standing outside, breathing in the damp spring air. I took a lungful of misty rain, and swallowed the bitterness down. I needed to think. Assess. If he was taking me outside to be shot, and was on his own, I could easily overpower him. That wasn't the issue. But in fact, I had no way of slipping past the electric fence-and no idea where the hell I was.

When they had brought me to Thurmond, the familiarity of the scenery had been more a comfort than a painful reminder. West Virginia and Virginia aren't all that different, even though Virginians would have you believe otherwise. Same trees, same sky, same awful weather-I was either drenched in rain or sticky with humidity. Anyway, it might not have been West Virginia at all. But a girl in my cabin swore up and down that she had seen a WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA sign on her ride in, so that was the theory we were working with.

The PSF had slowed considerably, matching my pathetic pace. He fumbled once or twice against the muddy grass, nearly tripping over himself in full view of the soldiers high above on the Control Tower.

The moment the Tower came into view, a whole new weight added itself to the ball and chain of terror I was dragging behind me. The building itself wasn't that imposing; it was only called the Tower because it stuck up like a broken finger in a sea of one-story wooden shacks arranged in rings. The electric fence was the outer ring, protecting the world from us freaks. Cabins of Greens made up the next two rings. Blues, the next two rings. Before they were taken away, the few Reds and Oranges lived in the next rings. They'd been closest to the Tower-better, the controllers thought, to keep an eye on them. But after a Red had blown up his cabin, they moved the Reds farther away, using the Greens as a buffer in case any of the real threats tried to make a run for the fence.

Number of escape attempts?

Five.

Number of successful escape attempts?

Zero.

I don't know of one Blue or Green who had ever tried to make a run for it. When kids did stage desperate, pathetic breakouts, it had been in small groups of Reds, Oranges, and Yellows. Once caught, they never came back.

But that was in the early days, when we had had more interaction with the other colors, and before they shuffled us around. The empty Red, Orange, and Yellow cabins became Blue cabins, and newly arriving Greens, the biggest group of all, filled the old Blue ones. The camp grew so large that the controllers staggered our schedules, so we ate by color and gender-and even then, it was still a tight squeeze fitting everyone at the tables. I hadn't seen a boy my own age up close in years.

I didn't start breathing again until the Tower was at our backs and it was clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where we were headed.

Thank you, I thought, to no one in particular. The relief lodged in my throat like a stone.

We reached Cabin 27 a few minutes later. The PSF walked me to the door and pointed to the spigot just to the left of it. I nodded, and used the cold water to wash the blood off my face. He waited silently, but not patiently. After a few seconds, I felt his hand grab the back of my shirt and yank me up. Using his other hand, he slid his access card through the lock on our door.

Ashley, one of the older girls in my cabin, shoved the door open the rest of the way with her shoulder. She took my arm in one hand and nodded in the direction of the PSF. That seemed to be enough for him. Without another word, he took off down the path.

"Jesus Christ!" she hissed as she dragged me inside. "They couldn't have kept you another night? Oh no, they have to send you back early-is that blood?"

I waved her hands away, but Ashley pushed past the others and brushed my long, dark hair over my shoulder. At first I didn't understand why she was looking at me like that-with wide eyes, rimmed with a raw pink. She sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth.

"I reallythought you were" We were still standing by the door, but I could feel the chill that had taken over the cabin. It settled over my skin like cold silk.

Ashley had been around these parts for far too long to really crack, but I was still surprised to see her so frazzled and at a loss for what to say. She and a few other girls were honorary leaders of our sad, mismatched group, nominated mostly because they hit certain bodily milestones before the rest of us, and could explain what was happening to us without laughing in our faces.

I offered a weak smile and a shrug, suddenly without words again. But she didn't look convinced, and she didn't let go of my arm. The cabin was dark and damp, the usual smell of mold clung to every surface, but I would have taken that over the Infirmary's clean, sterile stench any day.

"Let me" Ashley took a deep breath. "Let me know if you're not, got it?"

And what would you be able to do about it? I wanted to ask. Instead, I turned to the back left corner of our cramped cabin. Whispers and stares followed my zigzagging path around the rows of bunk beds. The pills tucked tight against my chest felt like they were on fire.

"-she was gone," I heard someone say.

Vanessa, who slept on the bottom bunk to the right of mine, had snuck up to Sam's bed. When I came into view, they stopped mid-conversation to stare down at me. Eyes wide, mouths wider.

The sight of them together was still sickening to me, even after a year. How many days and nights had I spent perched up there with Sam, steadfastly ignoring Vanessa's attempts to drag us into some stupid, pointless conversation?

Sam's best-friend slot had been vacant for less than two hours when Vanessa had slithered in-and not a day went by that Vanessa didn't remind me of that.

"What" Sam leaned over the edge of her bed. She didn't look haughty or hostile, the way she usually did. She lookedconcerned? Curious? "What happened to you?"