The Wicked We Have Done (2 page)

Two more CRs are running in simulation with ours, one for those aged twenty-six to forty, and another for forty years and older. It’s why there were so many protestors at the prison today. The CRs have never run simultaneously before, and their existence is still relatively new. People always fight against new ethical technology. Perhaps the hype will die down in a few years when they start to realize that their tax dollars won’t be going toward feeding those who should be dead anyway.

But maybe not.

A chime sounds in my ear, and my eyes flutter open. On the TV screen, a smiling woman with rimmed glasses has replaced the Flight Train logo.

“Good morning, Compass Room candidates.”

A few prisoners sneer in disgust, including Casey. All for good reason. It’s like we’re in line at a theme park, our cabin a waiting room for some science-fiction ride with lasers and flying ships.

“Allow me to verbally prepare you before your simulation begins. The moment we left the station, your one-month sentence began.”

My heart speeds up.

“All of you have passed your mandated exam and signed your contract. You each have a monitor that will calculate your emotion and hormones. It cannot invade any other aspect of your chemistry.”

The back of my neck prickles when I think of the chip burrowing deeper and deeper into my brain matter.

“How nice of them,” Valerie spits, her eyes glued to the screen.

“Also, a reminder: you will be on constant watch by CR staff at all times within your simulation, even if it may not be evident to you. Your physical choices and interaction with other inmates will be matched with your internal calculations to determine your morality status.”

Every action we make—under the radar.

“Your train will arrive at your destination in approximately one-point-seven hours.”

And with that, she disappears. But she isn’t replaced by the Flight Train logo. Instead, a documentary rolls.

A documentary of us.

There is no narrative, simply a series of news coverage clips starting with Casey’s crime. A boy who buried his father alive.

Reporters detail the night of the murder, Casey’s mug shot, and his trial. Casey himself pled guilty to the crime while his mother, his aunt, and his closest friends claimed he was being blackmailed. The evidence was nonexistent, the murder weapon—a shovel—never found.

Casey’s true moral compass remains a mystery.

I peel myself away from the television to study him. Fists clenched, he stares at the screen with hooded eyes. Gordon’s beside himself with wicked amusement. Valerie, after watching for a bit, rolls her head toward the cabin wall.

“Why are they doing this?” the kid with the Dahmer glasses whispers, loud enough for me and maybe the boy next to him to hear. “What’s the purpose of this footage?”

I glance at him. He can’t possibly be older than eighteen. Hell, if I didn’t know the Compass Room had an age minimum, I’d guess he was fourteen. His glasses are sliding down his nose. He juts his chin upward until they fall back into place.

I don’t know if he’s actually expecting an answer, but I respond anyway. “Either to shame us, or to bring us up to date since we’re going to be interacting.”

He scoffs. “Well,
obviously
. But why footage of our trials?”

“To increase tension. Make us skeptical of each other.”

He wiggles his nose around. “Dammit, I have an itch.”

“I’d offer to scratch it with my teeth, but—”

“Nice try, Ibarra. I don’t need footage to be skeptical of you.” He smiles and flicks his head up to swipe the bangs from his face.

I learn his name from the documentary. Tanner—tried as an adult for pushing a boy off a riverside cliff.

The footage spans everyone. Erity, the girl with almond-shaped eyes and black, pin-straight hair, convicted of “sacrificing” four girls in the name of witchcraft. Stella, the girl with the golden curls, burned her ex-boyfriend’s house to the ground with his whole family inside. Blaise, a lanky boy on the other end of my row, shot two guys at a college party when he was drunk. Salem, the boy who frighteningly looks like he could be my brother, raped several women. And finally, Jacinda, who killed a family during a car-crash-suicide attempt.

Of course, they saved the best for last. The date of the graphic flashing across the screen is today. This clip played this morning.

“Evalyn Ibarra, the most infamous of the younger candidates, has been at the center of practically every national news discussion for the past few months,” says a platinum blonde at a morning news round table. A graphic materializes on the screen behind her. “Our polls show that eighteen percent of Americans think that the Compass Room will find Ibarra innocent, sixty-five percent think that the Compass Room will find her guilty, and seventeen percent are unsure. How about those statistics, Gary?”

The camera pans out.

“Well,” Gary says, “I’m going to have to agree with national opinion on this one, Katherine. The case is no stranger to anyone who turns on the television for more than five minutes. And you know how I think the jury would have leaned if the trial had continued and Ibarra
hadn’t
chosen the CR option.”

“That Ibarra would have been found guilty.”

“Exactly.”

“How long do you think she’ll last in the Compass Room?”

“If we study those who’ve committed crimes of her magnitude and have also been sentenced to CRs, and take what we know of their experience, I’d give her two days.”

“Two days? You’re only giving her two days?”

“Look at Anton Freesan and Janice Grey. Neither of them lasted longer than forty-eight hours, which we found out in the minimal documentation released after their CR was finished. Their crimes were very similar to Ibarra’s.”

“But Ibarra is young. Don’t you think the CR has been engineered to take that into consideration?”

“CRs are designed to terminate the morally corrupt. Think of them as the ultimate lie-detector test. The moral nature of a human doesn’t truly change with age, which was discovered a few years ago by a team of psychoanalysts in Philadelphia, if you remember.”

“I do.”

“Ibarra has the same moral arrow as she will when she’s thirty, and if she’s evil, the CR will recognize that.”

Feeling the eyes of every candidate on me, I glance down. Most are scornful—hate-filled. Even though they committed crimes, I am the queen of darkness.

They have nothing to worry about. If I’m really
evil
, the CR will make sure that by day two, my heart isn’t beating.

The footage of my crime rolls. Crying families outside Roosevelt College. Students and professors wailing,
screaming
. FBI, police, bomb squad.

All storming the school to catch one of the shooters who initiated fifty-six deaths.

All storming the school to catch me.

More footage rolls from a prime-time documentary of my crime. I was one of eight who shot up a faculty banquet at the college, the only one who didn’t kill myself—psychologists figure because I chickened out at the last minute.

They also mention Nick, another shooter, and the fact that we met through Meghan. I was her best friend, he her boyfriend. When we decided to take our lives, we made sure she came with us.

I hold my breath and wait, wait for the footage to end, wait for everyone in the cabin to tear themselves from me.

One boy refuses.

You’re dead,
Casey mouths.

A little door slides open right behind his head, a robotic syringe jutting forward.

The needle stabs Casey in the neck. He jerks. “The
hell
?”

His eyes roll to the back of his head.

My neck stings, my jaw goes numb, and the inside of the train blurs to nothing.

March 2, Last Year

Riverview Apartments

At eight thirty in the morning, the sun filtered into my room, leaves creating geometrical shapes across the sheets and Liam’s bare chest. I rolled to my stomach and brushed the hair from his closed eyes. His chest rose and fell as he slept.

Waking up to Liam in the morning was a reawakening to my good luck. I always knew that high school sweethearts were a thing of fantasy. Somehow, I had managed to keep mine. Our five-year anniversary was only a few months away.

I crawled over him. The feeling of my bare skin gliding over his somehow never got old. It didn’t for him either; his skin erupted in goose bumps. He blinked a few times, focusing on me.

“There is something so sexy about watching you wake up,” I told him. “I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of it.”

He rolled me over and slid on top of me, his lips finding the stretch of sensitive skin above my collarbone. It was the place he kissed and touched when he was trying to be romantic, because he knew too well that I’d melt beneath him. My hands explored his waist to bring him closer.

He kissed my jaw and said, “Even when I snore all night?”

I grinned. “I’m getting used to it.”

A crash sounded from the kitchen, followed by the ting of a metal bowl rolling across the linoleum.

“Okay, since you now know that I’m awake, you should come out. If you aren’t screwing, that is,” Meghan hollered. “I made you two breakfast.”

“Thought I smelled bacon.” Liam rolled off of me, sitting up.

“Why is she cooking breakfast? She never cooks me breakfast.” I’d given her the keys to my car last night. Liam and I ended up drinking too much and had to take a cab home. She probably crashed into something and was now trying to make up for it, I thought.

I was the crazy junior who had not only clung to my high school boyfriend, but my childhood best friend as well. So many students I met since I started college thought I was insane. College was a time to break free from childhood—a time for students to experiment and sleep with people they didn’t even like and join sororities where the members, for a few fleeting years, would be as close to them as sisters until they graduated and never saw them again.

The three of us could have gone somewhere other than Phoenix for school. But Phoenix was only an hour away from home, and in Phoenix, we’d have each other.

And had them I did. I’d been living with Meghan for three years. Liam had his own apartment with a roommate, but he was practically living with us as well.
Our third wheel
, Meghan liked to call him.

Liam leaned over me and kissed my neck, his languid tongue rolling over my collarbone. I gasped as his fingers traced the inside of my thigh. “I love you,” he whispered. “Meghan’s probably just excited. She knows what’s waiting for you.”

“A quickie before class?”

“Funny.” His voice rumbled in my ear. “I meant out on the patio.”

He had piqued my curiosity. But his eyes that were lighter than the sun-washed sky outside weren’t giving me a clue as to what he was getting at.

“That was your cue to get your ass out of bed.”

“Thanks for that.” I smacked him playfully and sat, locating my pajamas scattered across the floor. I dressed and tied my hair up. As I walked out to the living room, I hoped Meghan had made an excessive amount of bacon.

I looked toward the sliding glass door. On the balcony sat a full-sized wooden easel. I squealed and ran outside. Liam followed.

“Why?” I asked.

“What do you mean, why?”

I spun to him. “What’s the occasion?”

“I’m tired of seeing you ‘working’ with colored pencils and printer paper.”

I didn’t have any decent art supplies. It wasn’t like I’d been an artist all my life. I never took any art classes prior to college, but I knew I could draw. I knew I could conceptualize images and create them.

Then one day, during my freshman year, I decided to change my major to art. Because being a business major was unfulfilling.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter what you get your degree in. People just want to think it does.

I didn’t tell Mom until the summer before my sophomore year. Safe to say she was still bitter.

“You didn’t have to,” I said, even though I was so ecstatic that I couldn’t stop shaking.

Meghan sauntered outside. She wore an apron from the coffee shop she used to work at. “You know what this means?” She waved a dirty spatula in the air.

“We can get our blog up and running.” I bounced on my toes.

“We can get our effing blog up and running.”

Meghan and I liked the concept of teamwork, and an organic fan base. We had this brilliant idea not long before. Meghan was a photography major and damn good photographer. We’d been best friends ever since high school, and even then, she was obsessed with her work. We wanted to play around with perception—how a photograph could transform into a painting. It could be the same image and yet entirely different.

But this was only theory.

“Art-supply shop this afternoon?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Damn, eggs are burning.” Meghan ran inside.

Liam pushed his sandy hair back. “I gotta take a shower and get to the library. Even on Saturdays I can’t relax. College blows.”

“I love you.”

He shot me that perfect, lopsided grin of his. “Because I buy you easels?”

“Because you know me. You know that a wooden easel means more than the world to me.”

He took my hand and dragged me to him, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I love you too. More than you know.”

2

I have the worst hangover imaginable. I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth and swallow away the bile in my throat. Water. I need water, now.

I open my eyes to clean, bright light and groan, covering my head with a flat, itchy pillow.

Some party last night.

I stiffen. There was no party last night. There hasn’t been a party for ten months. I’ve been in
jail
.

Yanking my head from beneath the pillow, I blink until my vision focuses.

Pine panels cover the walls and floor. Shelves scattered with knickknacks sit above a whitewashed vanity. Light trickles in from a French-paned window on the wall farthest from the door.

Someone snores beneath me.

As I sit, I bite back the urge to groan. I’m still wearing a hoodie and cargo pants. My boots are by the door.

The Compass Room.

I try to remember when I was last awake, rubbing my wrists where they should be cuffed. Did I enter the simulation? Did I escape alive?

All I can remember is the train, and the other criminals. The needle that went into my neck.

My gaze locks on a navy backpack at the end of my bed.
EVALYN
is stamped on the front.

I don’t remember ever owning this pack. I take a moment to contemplate what could possibly be inside, then zip it open.

A T-shirt, cotton underwear, a canteen, a lighter, socks, a toothbrush, and at the very bottom, a blanket. Survival gear.

I don’t know why this belongs to me now. I don’t even know where I am. The one thing engrained into me since entering the prison system is that I should follow orders: when to leave my cell, when to change my clothes, when to see my visitors, when to eat.

Where is the guard who’s supposed to tell me what to do?

I shake out my ponytail and run my fingers through my tangled waves, secure it up, and swing my feet off the bed. Taking my bag with me, I step down the ladder to learn the identity of my bunkmate.

The bag propped up at the bottom of the bed reads
JACINDA
, and the girl with dimples lies on her back, an arm flung over her face.

She’s the suicide girl—took out a family in the process and lived to reap the punishment. She had been crying before we left prison. I wonder if it was because she still wants to die, or because she might not get out of here alive.

I tear myself away from her and walk to the window. Before me, a hill covered in pine rolls downward. The sun sits at a slant in the sky—it will be dark soon. I’ve been out for either a day or a handful of hours.

Nothing but forest. No buildings, no roads. Just a thick blanket of green all the way to the jagged mountains in the distance.

“Where the hell are we?” I mutter to myself.

“Is this the Compass Room?”

I spin to Jacinda, who has propped herself up on her elbows. Her expression shifts as she registers who I am, unfocused eyes darting around the room, like she’s trying to figure out if we’re alone.

She’s afraid of me. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

“I don’t know,” I say.

When she spots the backpack at the foot of her bed, she crawls to it, her fingers tracing the letters. “Jacinda,” she murmurs, retracting her hand like the fabric bit her. “No one calls me that.”

“What do they call you?”

“Jace,” she says warily. She studies me up and down, mindlessly clutching the strap of her backpack and wringing it.

An awkward silence fills the air between us before I say, “Okay, Jace. I’m gonna take a look around. See if I can figure out where we are.”

“The door isn’t locked?”

I didn’t even think of that. Simple stained wood, the door is so unlike the bars I’m used to staring at for hours on end. I walk toward it, place my hand on the brass handle, and turn. With a click, the door creaks open.

“Not locked.” I peer into the hall.

The dry air smells of cedar and dust. Light streaks across the floor from the sole window to my left. Six doors line the hall, two of them open. At the right end, a staircase leads downward and toward the trickling of voices.

“I’ll be back.”

“Please”—Jace clutches her bag to her chest—“don’t leave me here alone.”

The way she begs me makes no sense. A moment before, she had seemed frightened of me. Maybe Jace is afraid of everything. And she’s supposed to be a morally tarnished criminal.
Are you kidding me?

I’d rather not have anyone tagging along, but she’s too pathetic to say no to.

“Come on, then.”

She hurries to me, holding her pack close. Once in the hall, I fling my own onto my shoulders and adjust the straps until it’s tight against my back. Jace and I walk side by side to the staircase.

Erity stands in the center of the living room, gazing at the stone-lined fireplace, the huge leather sofas, the overhanging chandelier made entirely out of deer antlers. She wears a pack too.

In the kitchen, Stella opens and closes each cabinet. “There’s food! And liquor. Lots and lots of liquor.”

A small squeak escapes Jace’s throat.

“Holy shit.”

Valerie has snuck up on us. She stares over my shoulder.

We’ve woken up in a mountain resort with food and tons of booze. It’s like the government’s secret evil plan is to reward us for our bad behavior.

Salem enters from the deck. That’s six of us. Four still sleep. “Is there anyone here?” I ask. “Anyone besides us?”

“Not that I can tell,” Salem says.

“No guards?”

“Nope.” He harbors a fevered glint. “Looks like they left us all alone.”

A chill runs up my back. Stuck here with this bastard—a boy who raped thirteen girls—isn’t exactly what I’d call a vacation.

“He won’t touch you,” Valerie murmurs, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. “You know what I do to fuckers who can’t keep their hands to themselves.”

I do know. Not just from her crime, but from her infamy in our prison wing.

“Did we ever talk?” I ask. “In the H Wing?”

“I didn’t talk. I kicked the shit out of people.” She shrugs. “And you . . . you got the shit kicked out of you enough. Picking on you wouldn’t have been satisfying.”

“Oh, thanks,” I respond dryly.

A wry smile twists her lips. “Maybe we should have
talked
. You know . . . been prison BFFs or something.”

“You would’ve gotten bored real quick. I’m far too vanilla for your tastes.”

“What’s vanilla?” Jace whispers. She gapes at us with owl eyes.

Valerie’s mouth twitches like she’s itching to laugh. When she reaches out and pats Jace’s shoulder, Jace flinches. Without answering her, Valerie turns back to me. “Too vanilla as a friend or a fuck buddy?”

I narrow my eyes. “Both.”

She sighs dramatically. “Yeah, you’re right. I probably would have gotten bored of you real fast.” She steps forward, leaning against the balcony. “You were a good little prison inmate, letting all those girls beat the snot out of you without a fight. But here . . . we have some freedom now. I better keep an eye on you, Ibarra.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You afraid of me?”

She bursts into laughter and makes her way down the stairs.

“I don’t get it,” Jace says when Valerie’s out of reach. “Was she flirting with you?”

“I don’t think so. I think we made an alliance.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, and then asks, “Can I be in on the alliance?”

I grin inwardly and nod. “Sure.”

In prison, alliances are created so inmates can watch each other’s backs for potential attackers. But I don’t know what an alliance here means.

I study Salem and the space between us, vacant of bars or chains or glass. Vacant of any form of protection.

Maybe here, you need people watching your back too.

***

Other than a huge deck overlooking the forest, there isn’t much else to explore in the stone-crusted lodge. The air outside is clean and cool, dense with the scent of evergreen and soil.

We’ve been dropped in the middle of nowhere.

The rest have woken. Casey wears a grimace like he’s ready to beat the living hell out of someone. I’m starting to wonder if he always looks like a vicious dog.

Stella walks into the kitchen. She unzips her backpack and rummages through cupboards, collecting various cans of food and tossing them into her bag.

“It’s a bad idea,” Casey calls from the living room.

“What is?” I ask.

“I’m leaving,” Stella says. She flips back her blonde hair and zips up her pack, tossing it over her shoulder.

“Leaving? To where?”

“They knocked us out, dumped us here, and gave us survival gear. So I’m going away. To anywhere.”

“So you’re going to wander into the wilderness?” Valerie chuckles sarcastically. She leans back against the marble of the kitchen island. “Great plan, dipshit.”

Stella’s fingers grip the straps of her backpack so tightly that her knuckles are white. “They gave us provisions, and there’s no way in hell I’m sticking around here with you creeps.”

“You have no idea what’s out there,” Casey says.

Stella barks a laugh. “You honestly think I’m safer here? With a bunch of killers and a rapist?”

“I’ll only show you a good time, sweetheart,” says Salem as he rummages through cabinets on the other side of the kitchen. It’s such a half-assed comment, like he’s making his presence known because he can.

“Point taken,” says Casey. “But if they gave us provisions, outside must be where our tests are.”

“Oh, stop pretending you care what happens to me. You’re as bad as Salem. All of you are.”

Casey tenses. “You don’t know me.”

“And
you
don’t know me,” says Stella. “I’m not afraid of those tests because I shouldn’t even be here.”

Valerie scoffs. “Oh yeah, I’m sure you were totally justified in burning alive your boyfriend and his whole family.”

Stella winces. “Fuck you,” she hisses before crossing the living room and heaving open the front door.

“Good riddance,” Casey says when she’s gone.

The tension after Stella leaves is awkward and volatile. Her departure brings the realization that not only do we not know where we are, but we can’t trust anyone we’re stuck with. We’ve been given provisions, so it’s obvious that, if this is the Compass Room, we are meant to head out. It’s either that or stay in a house full of psychopaths.

While Valerie and Jace sit out on the deck, Salem and Gordon speak quietly to each other in the kitchen. Casey’s retreated upstairs, and I’m left in the living room with Tanner, Erity, and Blaise.

I haven’t heard Blaise speak once. Dark and tall, he lies on the couch, his limbs dangling over the sides. He clutches a leather-bound book to his chest that he must have picked up from the shelves in the living room. It looks like a Bible.

Tanner sits in the armchair next to mine. His gaze is fixed on Blaise, intent.

Soon, the silence is so thick in the living room, so hot and itchy and unbearable, that I have to say something.

“Do you think Stella is telling the truth?” My voice is so quiet that I’m not even sure Tanner heard until he breaks from Blaise.

“Her trial suggests otherwise.” He pushes his glasses up with his forefinger.

I stare at him blankly.

“Please tell me that you know of her trial.”

I glance around at a lifeless Blaise, at Erity, caught up in a book and not paying us an ounce of attention, and then at Gordon and Salem, both of whom are invested in a certain kitchen cupboard.

“I’ve kind of been in jail.”

“We all have
kind of been in jail
. I’m pretty sure I’ve
kind of
been in jail
longer than you have.”

I lean back in my chair. “Does that mean you’ve studied up on us?”

“All of you, but not as thoroughly as I’ve studied the Compass Room itself.” He narrows his eyes.

“What?” I say defensively. “No, I didn’t research Compass Rooms after my sentence. Nor did I go out of my way to research any of you.” I hug my torso, as if that will make the next words out of my mouth any more comforting. “It’s pointless research if you’re going to die anyway.”

“I guess if that’s the way you see it.” He shakes the bangs away from his face. “Or your plan all along was to harass another criminal to explain everything to you.”

I scoff. “Looks like you’ve figured me out.”

“To answer your question, Stella is one of the harder reads. Evidence of her crime is pretty inarguable. The fire was started by a cigarette and a photograph. She was outside the house sobbing when the fire department arrived, and she hadn’t called 911. Nicotine residue was found on her fingers.”

“Yet she believes she’s going to survive this.”

“Yeah, but you have to remember, just because you’re guilty doesn’t mean the Compass Room is going to kill you.”

“How could she have possibly believed her intentions were good?”

Tanner shrugs. “Could have been an accident. That’s what her lawyers were trying to prove in court.”

Damn . . . this kid has even done his research on our trials.

I nod toward Gordon. He and Salem have stumbled upon the ample amount of liquor and are currently lining up the bottles on the kitchen counter.

“Guilty as sin itself. I think everyone knows it. The evidence was overbearing. And it’s not like you can accidentally torture people.”

I nod toward Blaise. Tanner furrows his eyebrows.

“You don’t know.”

“He’ll make it out.”

“But you’re speculating,” I say.

“I’m observing. Killed two people when he was blackout drunk, and now he’s clutching a Bible to his chest.”

“And me?”

He hesitates for a moment, like he thinks I’m trying to trick him. But then he answers safely by saying, “You already said you’re going to die here.”

I pull my knees up to my chest. “I guess I did.”

“Even considering your minimal research on your own morality test.”

I can’t help but give a slight smile. Somehow, this kid’s cheekiness is comforting. Maybe it’s because he actually cares what I have to say.

I’m not used to that.

“The one thing I do know about the Compass Room is that this test is supposed to see who you truly are, despite your research. Despite good acting or the lies you tell yourself.”