Justice, page 6
‘Let’s make a deal. Don’t run away and I won’t stop you from running away,’ said Vivian.
‘That doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me,’ M said as she undid the back of her suit. It wasn’t clenching tightly around her at the moment, but still, she felt better with the magnetized latch open. Then in an effort to keep the chitchat civil despite her hurt pride, she switched conversational gears. ‘So, the Maze, huh? It’s sure something else.’
‘That’s what they say,’ answered Vivian absently.
Getting Vivian to talk was like pulling teeth, but since M had been put in a full-body sleeper hold for most of the day, she was anything but tired now.
‘But you’ve run it, right?’ she asked. ‘Like, it must be standard training around here.’
‘Standardish,’ said Vivian, disappearing behind a partition wall to prepare for bed.
M sat on her bunk, still dressed in her Fulbright suit. Looking at the black webbing and wires, she felt like an off-duty superhero who hadn’t changed back into her secret identity yet.
In a pair of light and airy pajamas, Vivian breezed across the floor and into bed. Her hair was neatly combed and draped loose around her shoulders. M was suddenly ashamed of her rugged wear and rat’s-nest hair in a way that she’d never been at the Lawless School. Pretty wasn’t something the students did there. No, there was always another safe to crack or trophy to steal. Plus, coiffed hair and painted fingernails rarely survived the Box. Still, the allure of soft pajamas was a siren song to M. ‘Do I have a pair of pj’s, too?’
‘You’ll find everything you need in your closet,’ answered Vivian, who had picked up a book by her bedside.
M stood up clumsily and stepped behind the partition. Through her open closet door, she saw an empty hanger on the rack. Pausing, she stole a glance at Vivian’s closet to see her roommate’s lone Fulbright suit hung there, mask and all. The mask sat motionless and empty, and M couldn’t help thinking of the discarded mask she’d found months ago on the crash-landed plane to Lawless. The hollow eyes, the green webwork of wires – that mask had been a very unsettling sight. ‘Ugh, still a creep factor nine,’ she whispered to herself and shuddered.
Peeking from behind the partition, M saw that Vivian was engrossed in her book. Without a sound, she slipped over to her roommate’s chest of drawers. She needed to get her hands on Vivian’s tablet. That thing was M’s control board, and M didn’t like being controlled. Vivian had the tablet when she’d come back here, but not when she came out. It must be in the drawers, reasoned M.
But she froze as she was about to pull open the top drawer. Taped across all five drawers were tiny strands of blond hair: Vivian’s hair. This was an old and effective security trick. The hair was difficult to see if you weren’t looking for it. Once broken, it would prove that someone had gone through Vivian’s property. A trap like this had to be reset every day, assuming Vivian wanted to get into her drawers, which meant using a new strand of hair each time.
‘Paranoid much?’ M whispered to herself, but then she realized that Vivian had a very good reason to be paranoid. She was M’s roommate, after all. M pieced together a scenario in which she swung for the fences tonight, breaking into Vivian’s dresser, cracking the tablet, and bolting to find her mom. But no, it was too much for right now. She needed a little more time to gather intel. When she had it, Vivian’s bombshell blond strands wouldn’t stand in her way.
M slid back over to her assigned set of drawers and found pajamas and a brush neatly displayed in the top drawer. So, following Vivian’s example, M quickly hung up her suit and changed. The new clothes were heavenly, but brushing her hair for the first time in what seemed like months yanked her back down to earth by the roots.
‘There,’ M said as she walked out from behind the partition. She presented herself as a model on the runway, hoping to get a smile out of Vivian. ‘Now I feel at least a little more human and a little less like a cyborg.’
Vivian looked up from her book, unfazed, and nodded. ‘Indeed. And please stay out of my personal things. I’ll give you a warning this time.’
‘How in the world did you know?’ asked M, looking behind her for a well-placed mirror that might have broadcasted her every move.
‘I didn’t know. I was just guessing. You’ve got to work on your poker face, Freeman.’
‘So,’ M continued casually, even though she was totally aggravated at herself for stumbling yet again, ‘are you going to tell me why you haven’t been in the Maze?’
If she surprised Vivian with her question, her roommate hid it well. ‘Who says I haven’t?’
‘You say it,’ said M. ‘It’s written all over you. Avoiding the conversation, not answering questions, and that suit in your closet looks brand-new, while mine is already beaten down from a single run in the Maze. Now, are you going to tell me or are you going to make me guess?’
Vivian closed her book and sat up straight. She appeared to be keeping her composure, but M knew that there was a quiet pride behind Vivian’s steely eyes. And pride can be a dangerous thing when bruised, as her father used to tell her.
‘The Maze,’ responded Vivian, ‘is the Keyshawn Noles show, a carnival ride that’s virtually untested. He found it in a pile of other scrapped projects built by some Fulbright old-timer. Since he fixed it up, only a few recruits have been asked to run the course, and I wasn’t chosen for the program.’
‘But you put in for it, didn’t you?’ asked M with a smile.
‘Of course I did.’ Vivian yawned as if the conversation were boring her to sleep. ‘Even though Keyshawn is a divisive person at the academy, I like to try every test available to push me.’
‘Push you to what?’
‘To be the best.’
‘Wait, you’re telling me that Keyshawn, little old dorky Keyshawn, is divisive here?’ asked M. ‘He’s just a science nerd.’
‘There’s a saying around here,’ said Vivian. ‘Keyshawn Noles everything or Keyshawn Noles nothing. And only time will tell.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked M.
‘It means that your lab partner has some crazy ideas about how science works and he’s been given a short leash to prove his theories,’ said Vivian. ‘When his concepts work, they’re brilliant.’
‘And when they don’t?’
‘When they don’t,’ admitted Vivian, ‘bad things happen.’
‘And that’s why he’s on a short leash,’ concluded M. ‘And that’s one of the reasons we’re working with him now. Beta testing.’
‘It’s not for me to involve myself in your issues,’ Vivian told M coldly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, it’s been a long day.’ Then, like flipping a switch, Vivian laid her head down and fell instantly asleep.
She’s like a robot powering down, thought M as she watched her roommate slumber. Lying back in her own bed, M ran through her Fulbright experience so far, processing this new information. The thoughts scrambled in her head as she tried putting everything together, but the big picture was elusive.
She remembered her father’s video. It had been so strange to see him again, to hear him say her name one last time. She smiled at how nice it made her feel even though he was warning her. But what specifically was he trying to warn her about? Was he honestly telling her that the Fulbrights needed her help, or was that a ploy to get them to show her the video? Maybe he’d planted another message in the film somehow. She shut her eyes and replayed her father’s words and images over and over again.
Two things stood out immediately. The first was the other voice outside of the booth, but that felt too random, too unrehearsed, and too out of her father’s control to have been a coded message. But one thing every filmmaker controls is the camera. So why did the video begin with her father out of the frame? Perhaps because he was showing her the bench … the bench covered with initials! Then M remembered her father’s closing words: Always remember that you are greater than the sum of the parts your mother and I gave you. It didn’t sound like something he would say at all. It was too clunky and more than a little hokey. M culled together all the initials from memory, which were linked with plus signs, then added up the sum … and decoded her father’s true statement.
Do as they say, not as they do.
Tracing the slight bump on her left wrist, where her tracker was buried inside her, M realized that she was already following her father’s secret instructions. She was playing along with the Fulbrights but hadn’t believed for a moment that she was one of them.
Periodically through the night, M got out of bed and paced around the room, looking for any sign that her activity was waking up sleeping beauty, but Vivian remained recklessly asleep. It was a small victory. Her roommate was confident in the power of the tracker and the suit, and that reliance was something M could exploit once Merlyn found a way to rewire their outfits. But where would they go once they had their freedom? M crawled back into bed and riffled through every fact and fable she had ever learned about the Fulbright Academy. And somehow, at some late hour, amid a swarm of schemes, M finally dozed off, too.
The next morning M climbed back into her suit and followed Vivian to a cafeteria that buzzed quietly with scripted activity. The students moved in concert, like honeybees diligently building their hive. The lines to receive food were straight and orderly, and there might as well have been assigned seating – once each student had his meal, he walked single file to the next open seat without hesitation. The calmness of it gave M the creeps. Mealtime at Lawless had been a free-for-all, so this well-behaved performance felt forced and unnatural. But what really gave her the creeps were the dagger stares that each Fulbright aimed directly at her and her friends.
Seated at their own table, Merlyn, Jules, and M were castaways on an abandoned island. An island surrounded by molten lava that wanted nothing more than to destroy that island and everything it stood for. Clearly they were not welcome here.
‘I feel like a gazelle locked in a lion’s cage,’ said Jules.
‘Ignore them,’ said Merlyn, pushing a fork through the gelatinous substance on his tray. ‘Pretend they’re jealous of our delicious-looking food.’
Their trays sat in front of them with a tidy smattering of unearthly-looking grub. On M’s tray, bright red pudding stayed firmly in its assigned section alongside a black-and-white-striped cake and green, licoricelike cords.
‘It’s not that the food is bad,’ continued Merlyn, ‘but the presentation is just bizarre! I mean, if you wanted to make the food of the future, can’t you just make it into a pill that we take with water?’
Shrugging, M crunched into the green cords, which turned out to be an incredibly rich version of pesto bacon. The cake was a buttery marble-rye French toast with a honey glaze, and the red pudding was apple-fried grits with melted cheese.
‘Ugh,’ muttered Jules in frustration. ‘I hate that this ugly stuff is so delicious. I can’t get used to my eyes and my taste buds disagreeing.’
‘Where’s Cal?’ asked Merlyn with a mouthful of cake.
‘Yeah, he’d have a lot to say about this stuff,’ added Jules, absently stirring her yellow pudding.
‘Guys,’ said M in a hushed voice, ‘we need to talk about yesterday.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Jules sternly. ‘Not my shining moment in the Maze.’
‘I’m not talking about the Maze,’ said M. ‘I’m talking about our suits. While you guys were still in there, I ran a quick recon, but Vivian was able to track me down. Not only that, she used the suit against me, just like we thought they would. She completely shut me down with the touch of a button.’
‘Geez,’ said Merlyn. ‘Keyshawn certainly didn’t intend for the suits to be used that way.’
‘Didn’t he, Merlyn?’ asked M. ‘Listen, yes, Keyshawn is a brainiac, but you need to pull him down off whatever pedestal you’ve put him on, because he’s not on our side – the same as all these cadets around us now that have an urge to arrest us. We need to outsmart his design or else we’re walking around in handcuffs for the rest of our lives.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Merlyn reluctantly. ‘I took a closer look at my suit last night. This stuff is beyond my expertise, to be honest. It’s less of a computer and more like a spaceship.’
‘Merlyn, I have faith in you,’ said M. ‘Even spaceships run on computer programs, right? And you’ve never met a computer program you couldn’t hack. I guarantee there’s a back door for you to exploit somewhere. Keep looking.’ She gazed around the cafeteria at the silent eaters, almost taking their bites in unison. ‘Before we end up like them.’
As breakfast ended, the students placed their empty trays on a conveyor belt and left the cafeteria as spotless as it had been before they arrived. The Lawless crew stayed seated and waited for their summons to Keyshawn’s lab, which didn’t happen until every last Fulbright had exited. We’re on display, thought M. They want us to be seen, to prove that the Lawless School is nothing but a bunch of kids. To prove that the Lawless School can be tamed.
When they finally reached Keyshawn’s lab, Cal was already there, but Keyshawn was missing. Cal answered M’s curious look by motioning to the door across from the Maze entrance. It was halfway open and M could hear Keyshawn muttering to himself on the other side.
‘I don’t think we’re doing the Maze today,’ said Cal. ‘He’s been in that room since I got here and he’s showing no signs of coming up for air.’
A poor choice of words, thought M. ‘So, seriously, why did it take you all so long to get out of that Maze?’
‘The better question is why did it not take you so long?’ quipped Jules, whose ego was obviously bruised.
‘Jules is just mad because she actually didn’t finish the course,’ said Cal.
‘You didn’t?’ M was dumbfounded. For Jules to not finish a physical task was just plain unthinkable.
‘Ex-tract-ed,’ said Cal, slowly stressing each syllable of the word, which must have felt like the twisting of a knife in Jules’s back. ‘She had to be extracted from the Maze after a panic attack.’
‘Seriously, M, how’d you do it?’ continued Jules, paying no attention to Cal’s comments.
‘I wish I knew,’ said M. ‘I followed a random path that popped into my head. Just sort of pretended I was in my basement back home. I mean, it was a place I never really went, but for some reason, it made sense … up to a point.’
‘What do you mean, up to a point?’ Merlyn chimed in.
‘I mean,’ recalled M, ‘the layout seemed familiar to me, but it led to a dead end. I couldn’t go any farther. Then the walls closed in around me, so I broke through the floor.’
‘Sounds like dumb luck to me,’ said Jules with a hint of relief in her voice. ‘Like, if we did it again, you’d probably be as lost as we were.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ admitted M.
‘But you’re not going to find out today,’ announced Keyshawn, who had silently slipped back into the lab. ‘No, today we have a group project for you. I wouldn’t want to rush back into anything too stressful too soon.’ His eyes flicked over to Jules. ‘Follow me.’
Keyshawn walked through the mysterious third door in his lab, opposite from the Maze entrance. On the other side was a room with an exceptionally high ceiling – perhaps no ceiling at all, as far as M could tell. Looking up at the space, she could see that there was a lone rope, which hung from the deep darkness above. Whatever was beyond that point was a mystery. But it wasn’t the lack of ceiling that had M brimming with an awkward energy. It was the Fulbright mask that Keyshawn held in his hands. ‘This, I assume, you have all seen before, but I doubt you ever imagined wearing one.’
He tossed them each a mask. It was soft to the touch, like a well-worn T-shirt but with a sturdiness to it at the same time. M flipped the mask over in her hands and marveled at the circuitry. Wires spired, spiraled, and laced in and out of every inch of the mask, creating a gaunt silhouette that didn’t seem like it should be solid to the touch. She was reminded of Peter Pan’s shadow, lost until Wendy stitched it back onto the ever-young boy. The mask folded delicately over her hands and through her fingers like some fine silk fabric. Even the lifeless green-tone goggles were so paper thin, they seemed to ripple as she bent the mask back and forth. True, she’d held an empty mask in her hands before, but this mask was different.
This mask was hers.
‘Okay, everybody,’ said Keyshawn with a smile. ‘Try them on!’
M slowly slid the mask over her head, adjusting the goggles slightly to fit along the bridge of her nose, and that’s when she felt it: an easy snap – once again, like magnets gently pulling together to create an invisible seam when the mask latched on to her suit. Then it powered up. A humming droned around M’s face as the mask settled into position. She felt the ear cups cover her ears as gently as a butterfly landing on a leaf. The goggles repositioned themselves again, this time automatically, wrapping around her face to the perfect fit. Through the lenses, everything and everyone in the room became visibly … well, more visible. It was like M had graduated to 30/30 vision. Instantly the others’ voices were audible in her head as well, as Merlyn let out a ‘Holy smokes, Batman!’
Looking at her friends, M saw a red glow pulsing through their masks.
‘The masks,’ she began. ‘The ones I’ve seen before, they glowed bright green, but these are red.’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Keyshawn. ‘Good observation. That is exactly right.’
‘Are we color coordinating or something?’ asked Cal as he stared at his hands.
‘Remember, your masks, your entire uniforms are totally different,’ answered Keyshawn with pride. ‘Over time, we’ve learned a thing or two from the Lawless School, believe it or not. And one of the more baffling technologies has been your gas.’
‘My what?’ laughed Cal.
‘Gas, chemical agent, whatever you call it,’ responded Keyshawn, flustered. ‘The mind-altering substance that Lawless uses.’ He probably hated not knowing the official name of something scientific. M had noticed a pattern throughout her science class studies growing up at home. Newton’s laws, Darwinism, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the Higgs boson, and even new elements like flerovium – scientists loved to name things.
