Justice, page 13
But who keeps an eye on you? thought M. She decided to steer the conversation back toward Vivian. ‘So this is what you do all day?’
‘Don’t look so excited,’ said Vivian. ‘It’s not all as glamorous as this.’
‘Well, not that it’s any of my business,’ said M, ‘but they should send you back out in the field. It felt like you pulled the muscles from my bones in the Maze. My shoulder and ribs are still angry at me for chasing you down.’
Vivian smiled, obviously pleased at her performance and to hear M admit that she still had what it took to take down an opponent. ‘In a few more weeks, I’ll be cleared for duty.’
‘A few more weeks, eh,’ said M. ‘That’s just enough time for you to finish being my babysitter. Coincidence?’
‘That’s the deal,’ said Vivian.
She doesn’t know, thought M. According to her file, Vivian was never going back into the field.
‘And since we’re being honest,’ Vivian continued, ‘how did you all disappear at the same time in the Maze?’
‘Lucky, I guess,’ M lied.
She looked up to see Vivian giving her a determined stare. Vivian seemed to study M’s every word, searching each one for a sign of truth. ‘I don’t believe in luck.’
‘Maybe you just never had any,’ said M as she parsed through another binder of the world’s most mundane papers.
Several mind-numbing hours and thirty paper cuts later, M went back to reclaim her suit from Keyshawn. Vivian stayed behind to finish documenting some extra reports, which M guessed was code for ‘reports that M did incorrectly.’ Roaming the halls freely as herself, without a mask or uniform, made her feel incredibly out of sorts. It was like walking through a prison, only she wasn’t sure if she was one of the guards or one of the prisoners. Her entire time at the academy had been spent trying to see through everyone else’s motivations and agendas, instead of considering what she was doing here – and whether maybe she belonged.
The Lawless School had taught her that the Fulbrights were evil barbarians, but wasn’t the Lawless education actually training her to be evil? She thought back to the Black Museum, with its exhibits on criminals and their ghastly crimes. She remembered the hallowed halls of the Masters’ dorm, set up like a shrine to the school’s most infamous alumni, with portraits of truly bad people who had done really bad things. And that’s not who M wanted to become.
But everything M had experienced with the Fulbrights proved them to be an overly aggressive group of vigilantes willing to go too far for justice. They’d kidnapped her mother, torched thousands of priceless paintings, spied on the spies of the world, and continuously threatened M and her friends. These were supposed to be the good guys, but they didn’t play that role at all. Morals weren’t part of their ‘good guy’ code. Their real goal was to defeat the Lawless School at any cost, no matter how deadly or destructive their actions.
Yet her father had been a Fulbright, a double agent, no less, and he had recruited M without her consent and without explaining the rules of this bizarre world. Running over everything in her mind, she should logically harbor a deep-seated mistrust of her father, who had withheld the truth from her and taken countless secrets to his grave. But he was her father. Good or bad, he had loved M and she had loved him. The same went for her mother. If her parents had kept the truth from her, there must have been a reason. The truth was probably uglier than she could imagine.
Keyshawn’s lab was much harder to find without her suit, but M was apparently the first one there. The four suits hung against the wall, empty skins under Keyshawn’s lock and key.
‘Oh hey, just finishing up here,’ said Keyshawn. ‘The suits were fine after all. Give me a second and I’ll get yours.’
‘Can I ask you a question first?’ asked M, willing to risk a hunch.
‘Sure,’ he answered with his back to her as he tapped something into his computer.
‘So, I know why I lied back in the Maze,’ said M. ‘But why are you lying about the glitch?’
Keyshawn looked up without facing M, as if he were searching the far wall for an answer, but ultimately he just shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I looked for a glitch, combed over every suit, but everything looks normal to me.’
M didn’t believe him. There was no way Keyshawn could search those suits without pinpointing Merlyn’s handiwork.
‘Wait. What did you lie about?’ asked Keyshawn as he took M’s suit down from the wall.
‘Why do you think the Maze drill ended?’ asked M.
‘Because you won,’ said Keyshawn.
‘Hardly. Vivian almost had me beat,’ admitted M, ‘when John Doe showed up. He was there, watching us. And why would that be? Why would Devon, Vivian, and Ben put up with us all? I think I know the answer. You’re grooming us for John Doe’s army, aren’t you?’
‘Every Fulbright is in John Doe’s army,’ said Keyshawn. ‘That’s nothing new.’
‘Oh no,’ replied M with confidence. ‘This is new. We’re training to be a whole different strand of Fulbrights, aren’t we? You gave us the shot. You gave us the tech. You gave us the Magblast. And you’ve kept us separate from the other Fulbright classes. We’re Doe’s very own black ops team. That’s why he’s watching us. That’s why you’re so nervous, isn’t it?’
‘Here’s your suit,’ Keyshawn snapped as he shoved the folded fabric into her hands. ‘Wear it in good health.’
She’d struck a nerve. She was on a hot streak for getting under people’s skin today.
‘So you don’t deny it,’ said M smugly.
‘You know what your problem is, Freeman?’ said Keyshawn. ‘You think you’ve got this all figured out, but you don’t. How could you? It’s not done yet.’
‘What’s not done, Keyshawn?’ asked Merlyn, who walked into the room and nervously added, ‘Um, the suits, uh, did you fix the glitch?’
‘Oh, he fixed a lot of things, Merlyn,’ said M. ‘Didn’t you, “Keyshawn Noles it all”?’
Tucking the suit under her arm, M stormed out of the lab. There was no reason why Keyshawn should let her, of all people, in on his plan, but it irked her that he ended up being exactly what she thought he’d be: a dishonest, scientific snake in the grass. She hated being right about people all the time. Just once she’d love for someone to surprise her in a good way.
Surprises or not, tonight M was going AWOL with her mother, who had to be the key to whatever came next. Why else would Lawless be after her? Why else would the Fulbrights hold on to her? Even Zara had told her that her mother was a small-time crook before meeting her father. Hopefully Beatrice would lead M to the moon rock and together they could destroy it once and for all, just like her father had planned. That was the only assignment M needed to complete, as far as she cared. Fox Lawless and his Masters want to cook up another plan to ruin the world, go ahead. The Fulbrights could handle it. They’d gotten this far without her help, right?
M marched into the cafeteria and grabbed her allotted meal, a drastic-looking purple blob with white stripes and puffy pink circles on the side. Before she could sit down, another student nudged her from behind.
‘Excuse you,’ he said. It was the hall monitor M had ditched during her first unaccompanied excursion.
‘Excuse me?’ she asked, flustered. ‘Are you seriously going to try to bully me? All I’m doing is eating my purple slop. Can I do it in peace?’
‘No, you can’t,’ said another Fulbright student, who stood up and smacked the tray back into M’s chest, smothering her with the hypercolored meal. ‘You’re not wanted here, you know. And you’re not safe.’
‘None of us are safe, since we’re all being trained for combat. So first, there’s that,’ M fired back. ‘And for your information, I’d rather be somewhere else, too. Just about anywhere else, actually. You don’t get to be the only one mad at this situation.’
As the rest of the tables emptied and stone-faced Fulbright students encircled her, M wished she had been more careful with her words. Why did she have to make such a scene everywhere she went? She was angry at a lot of things, but not at all these kids around her now. How could she dislike them? They were sheep following orders. They’d been trained to hate people like M, because to them, she looked like a wolf. She howled like a wolf, snarled like a wolf, and made a pack with other wolves. These kids were just doing their jobs and M was the only business in the room.
As the flock of Fulbrights was about to fall on its prey, the lights in the walls flickered. The aggro kids who had been ready to skin M alive stopped in their tracks and looked around the room, confused. A change in routine was obviously rare enough around here to steal the show from M’s big breakdown.
‘Cadets, return to your rooms,’ a voice rang out over an intercom. ‘We are implementing an early lights-out tonight.’
The spell of anger and frustration broke as the cadets’ training took over and they left the dining area in an orderly fashion, bussing their tables as they went. M followed suit, cleaning up as much of her mess as she could before hustling back to her room.
She arrived to find that Vivian was gone, probably still tied up with paperwork. M couldn’t have asked for a better set of circumstances. After quickly changing her clothes and putting on her uniform, she spoke softly through the comm link. ‘Hey, guys, you there? I think our mission is a go.’
CHAPTER 13
LIGHTS-OUT
‘Finally,’ Merlyn said, his voice tinny and nervous in her earbud. ‘M, we’ve been waiting for you. Everyone’s on the line. What’s the next move?’
‘Are you free to leave your dorms?’ asked M.
‘Keyshawn’s back in the lab, so I’m clear,’ said Merlyn.
‘Devon’s gone, so I’m good,’ said Jules.
‘Cal, you’re probably in the hardest situation,’ said M. ‘We can come get you, but you’ll have to be ready to book it.’
‘No, that’s the weird thing,’ responded Cal. ‘My guards deserted me when I was picking up my suit. I think this early lights-out thing is more than a technical difficulty. I’m out in the halls now.’
‘Merlyn, you’re sure we’ll be able to control these suits?’ asked M. ‘’Cause if not, then I’ll go this alone. It’s my mother out there.’
‘My modifications still work,’ said Merlyn. ‘I checked. Keyshawn didn’t catch the bypass.’
‘Guys, this feels like a setup; I’m not going to lie,’ admitted M. ‘But I’ll take any opportunity they give me. You don’t have to come if you don’t want.’
‘You think we’re going to let you do this by yourself?’ said Jules. ‘She may be your mother, but you’re our friend.’
M smiled and was filled with a new confidence by the fact that whatever was waiting for her in the hallway, maybe even in her whole life, her friends would have her back. ‘Then let’s meet by the dining commons in five.’
Minutes later the whole crew had regrouped. Quietly, they drifted single file down the dimmed halls, looking in all directions, waiting for a guard to turn the corner or a door to burst open – waiting to be caught. But nothing of the sort happened. They were alone with the flickering lights, which were especially annoying with their masks on. The goggles were constantly trying to adjust for the flickering, and the flaring visual corrections made M’s eyes ache. ‘I feel like I’m at the world’s worst dance party,’ said Cal, covering his masked eyes for some relief against the exaggerated strobe-light effect.
Finally they reached the door M was looking for, but this time it was already open. M rushed inside with her Magblast at the ready. The room looked undisturbed, and just as creepy as it had been the previous night. The coffinlike machinery, the chemical tanks, they were all still in place.
‘You gonna tell us what that first-through-the-door tough-girl act is about?’ Jules asked M once they were all inside.
‘Someone else has been here,’ said M as she looked up to the Glass House. But it was empty. ‘That’s where my mother was last night.’
‘They moved her,’ said Cal. ‘It’s too dangerous to keep a prisoner in one place. I’ll bet they’re moving her around every few days, like a shell game. As soon as you think you know where she is, she’s not there. That’s what they did to me.’
Then Merlyn interrupted their conversation by running past them and over to the rows of cylindrical tanks. ‘Whoa, do you guys know what’s in these?’ He passed his hands carefully over the spigots.
‘Oxygen? Hydrogen? Helium?’ guessed Cal.
‘It’s the gas,’ said Merlyn, astonished. ‘The special Lawless brew. Guys, this is enough gas to hypnotize the whole academy.’
‘Then what are these?’ asked Jules, pointing to the casketlike contraptions.
‘Don’t know,’ said Merlyn. ‘Looks like an oxygen chamber or a sensory deprivation tank, maybe?’
‘Okay, guys, back to the issue at hand, please,’ said M, redirecting their attention to the glass ceiling above. ‘My mom’s up there somewhere. How do we break through the glass ceiling?’
‘Why not take the stairs?’ Cal asked. ‘Too old fashioned?’
M shook her head. ‘They’ll be watching the stairs.’
‘Anybody got a diamond?’ asked Jules.
‘I think I’ve got one better,’ said Merlyn with a smirk. He pulled out a stone that looked like a diamond to M. ‘WBN, my friends.’
‘What’s a pretty little rock like this going to do against reinforced glass like that?’ asked M.
‘Wurtzite boron nitride,’ said Merlyn, ‘will slice that glass like butter. Observe.’ Then, standing on one of the large machines, he took the rock and scratched a circle in the glass.
‘Where did you get WBN?’ asked Jules.
‘Perks of being roommates with Keyshawn,’ answered Merlyn. ‘He has so much cool stuff in his room – you wouldn’t believe it. There. Now, Cal, would you do the honors?’
Cal jumped up and dislodged the glass disk with a gentle, precisely measured Magblast. Then he slid it over like it was a manhole cover. The whole group was impressed. ‘Guess I’m getting the hang of this thing.’
‘Okay, everyone,’ said M as she climbed. ‘The easy part’s over. We have no idea what’s up there, so be prepared for anything.’
Finding the exit from the Glass House wouldn’t have been easy if M hadn’t seen the guards come through it the night before. It definitely wasn’t a room designed with a quick exit in mind. Jules found the sliding panel and grabbed the wurtzite from Merlyn. Slicing down the seam, she unsealed the glass door and slid it open carefully. The hallway beyond shimmered endlessly, like a mirage. As they crept along, each wall looked into another empty room – all Glass Houses that reflected the Lawless crew and their movements. There wasn’t another soul in sight.
‘So far this actually seems pretty easy,’ said Cal.
‘She’s got to be here,’ said M. This was it. This was her big plan. But as they turned the first corner, then the second, then the third, they were met with consistently empty rooms. She started to doubt herself.
‘Maybe they moved everyone off this floor?’ suggested Merlyn. ‘As a precaution because of the lighting issues below?’
‘Oh no, the lights are flickering. Guess this calls for a mass evacuation of high-security prisoners,’ mocked Cal. ‘No, I’m with M. Her mom’s here, but there’s something going on.’
Suddenly there was a distant boom that stopped the group in its tracks.
‘What was that?’ asked Jules.
M scanned the glass rooms until she found one in the distance that was very different from all of the others. The room was filled with an impenetrable darkness, a black cube nested in the midst of this glass city. ‘It’s a smoke bomb. But why would someone set it off in a sealed room?’
M ran up to the wall and tried to see inside, but the deep blackness blocked out even her mask-enhanced vision. Looking down, she saw the outside door had an etched handle. She motioned to the others that she was going in. Everyone braced and gripped their Magblasts tightly. She slowly touched the handle and then counted to herself. One … two … but on three, the door ripped open inward, pulled clean off its track, and the black smoke flooded into the hallway. She could barely make out the two masked Fulbrights in full uniform who stepped out into the growing darkness. It was over. They’d been caught. But instead of stopping to apprehend M, the Fulbrights shoved past them, launching out of the cloud of smoke and down the hall.
Alarms pounded over the loudspeakers, echoing shrilly through the air, as M sorted out what had just happened. It was obvious now. The smoke bomb, a man with the strength to rip the door off its track, and most important, the sight of an old friend in a Fulbright uniform, like she’d seen on the plane to the Lawless School. M wasn’t the only one coming to save her mother.
Jones, the family butler, was here, too!
‘After them!’ screamed M over the mind-numbing noise. ‘That’s my mother! If we follow them, they’ll get us out of here!’
The crew hauled tail down the hall, following the false Fulbrights. M’s mother and Jones ran with determination; they must have known exactly where they were going. They sped past room after room until they reached an open hatch in the ceiling. M’s mother leapt up gracefully through the opening. Then before Jones followed, he threw a hockey puck–sized object that skated across the floor toward M.
‘Take cover!’ yelled M, but it was too late. Another blast went off, releasing an inky darkness that swelled around them. The gloom was incredibly dense; M couldn’t see anything. Stumbling forward, she finally found her way out the other side of the murky cloud, but the hatch was closed – clamped shut by the very same vault door they had faced back on the vertical course.
‘Come on!’ Cal yelled with aggravation as he stumbled into the light to see the familiar lock.
‘When are we ever going to come across a safe like this?’ Merlyn screeched sarcastically in a high-pitched voice.
