The Wicked We Have Done

10

This has to be a test.

One can hit us at any time—of course I wouldn’t be safe here. Valerie had been dragged right from our campsite.

The shadow yelps and stumbles back. “Jeez, Evalyn, cover your tits!”

Startled, I yank the sheet up to my neck.

“Tanner?” Casey’s awake. “Tanner?”

My vision has adjusted, and I can see him now, one hand covering his chest. “Had no idea you guys were here. Scared me shitless.”

Casey wraps a blanket around his waist. I tie a makeshift dress out of my sheet and stand. I want to run forward and hug him, but I don’t think he’d like that too much in the state I’m in. “How did you get here? Are you all right? Where are Valerie and Jace?”

“Slow down,” he gasps. “Gimme a sec, let my heart restart itself.”

I wait anxiously for Tanner to catch his breath, sitting back down on the bed as I wring my sheet in my hands. Casey leaves the bed and pats Tanner roughly on the shoulder. “We were worried about you guys.”

“Guys is just me,” he says.

I turn ice-cold. Jace and Valerie. If he’s alone, then—

“I lost Jace and Valerie the same day I lost the two of you.”

I blow a sigh of relief through my lips.

They could still be alive. They could be okay.

“Curiosity got the best of me,” Tanner continues. “I figured the mailbox was the beginning of the test, and the more I thought about it, the more I had the sick desire to see what was beyond it. Valerie and Jace didn’t want to, for obvious reasons. The tunnel led me straight to the bottom of the hill, and the hedges began to fold in on themselves.”

“Like the Compass Room didn’t want you to go back.” I rummage the cupboards and scrounge up the rest of the crackers and canned fish, thrusting it into his hands. “Eat.”

“I’m fine. I’m not that hungry.”

“Dammit, Tanner. Eat before I make you eat.”

He sighs and sits on the bed, laying the food out in front of him. “That’s what I thought too—that the Compass Room didn’t want me to go back. Anyway, been wandering by myself since I lost everyone. I . . . uhh . . .” He crinkles the cracker package in his fist. “I was tested.”

“How’d it go?” The way Casey says it sounds like he’s asking about a ball game, and some sick part of me wants to laugh. I backhand him in the shoulder instead.

“Not too bad,” Tanner says. “Not dead, am I?”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” I say.

He spreads fish paste on a grainy cracker. “Had been walking for quite a while. Was trying to resituate myself, searching for the lake so I could get water. I ended up finding my trigger object out in the woods.”

“Trigger object?” I ask.

“A fishing pole. The thing that triggered my test. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and after your stories, and Valerie’s test with the baby doll, I thought back even further, to our first night here.”

“When Salem and Erity died,” Casey cuts in.

“Yeah. And although vague, I remember Salem saying something about a particular liquor bottle in the cabinet, how it brought back ‘good times and bad karma.’ Obviously it reminded him of his crime.”

“And Erity?” Casey asks.

“The knife,” I answer. “Remember? Jace said she recognized it as her own.”

“Anyway, I had two tests.”

“Two?”

Tanner nods. “Same trigger object. I was an idiot and ran into it a second time. The illusion was slightly different—just as terrifying, though. But I made it. I survived.”

Casey hands me my clothes, and Tanner looks away as I put them on, although I don’t really care. I think out loud. “So these tests, these—uhh, experiences of our—crimes, I guess, start off with an object. An object linked to our crime. And they trigger the illusions?”

“How would they trigger them?” Casey asks.

“How should I know?” I say bluntly. “Why do dead people show up who can’t really be with us?”

“Illusions,” Tanner says.

“Illusions that can hurl a shovel around,” adds Casey.

Illusions that can kill.

“But these things can’t be in our minds,” I say. “If we were hallucinating, then others wouldn’t be able to see them.”

Tanner pushes up his glasses. “I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you. So, long story short, I’m alive. Barely—thought I was going to pass out from hunger before a backpack full of dry food literally fell from the trees.”

It’s only then do I notice the straps on his shoulders. Casey and I happened to stumble upon shelter right when we were feeling hopeless.

It’s like this place knows.

“How’d you find this cottage?” Casey asks.

“My best friend led me here. Crazy, huh?”

“It was Casey’s mom for us,” I say. “This prison isn’t so heartless.”

“At least it shows you where to go when it doesn’t want you dead.”

“Or when it’s done with you,” Casey says.

Which reminds me. “Stella’s dead.”

Tanner’s expression is similar to when we told him about Blaise.

“I guess she wasn’t so innocent after all,” I add, because saying anything else will remind me of too much that I’m desperate to forget.

He shakes his head, but says nothing. He’s thinking hard about what I’ve told him.

We leave the conversation at that. Light peeks over the horizon, so Casey and I give up our bed and let Tanner sleep. We curl up on the porch, a blanket around our shoulders. The rolling hills illuminate.

It isn’t some trick of my mind that I saw Meghan dying in front of me. Or that Casey’s father came back to life. Are these tests essentially some form of punishment?

It’s fair that each one of us is put through this torture.

Even those of us who are morally good at heart need to be reminded that what we’ve done is still, at its core, unforgivable. The only people who could ever forgive me completely are those here, in the Compass Room, because they are asking for the same forgiveness.

I rest my head on Casey’s shoulder, and he kisses my hair. Then, after a few moments, he says, “I’m seeing things again.”

“Aren’t we all,” I say.

He straightens. “Oh shit.”

Dancing on the hills, at the very crest, is a strange shimmer. A rippling reflection of the sun. When I squint, I notice all the trees on the hill bending forward with weight.

Water. Water flowing over the hills.

Not rain water. Not storm water that causes a mudslide after several hours. This is an immediate flood, a lethargic tsunami. I curse under my breath as it glides to the bottom of the hills and collects at the base, stretching toward us and our small cottage, refusing to slow.

I jump to my feet. “Where is it coming from?”

“The lake?” He stands. “That’s the largest water source we’ve seen and it’s in that direction. But how?”

It’s like the entire lake has taken a life of its own—the water within it suddenly crawling toward us.

We’re in a basin, and a narrow one at that, though the hills behind us aren’t as high. The water won’t keep moving down into the valley.

It’ll fill up right over the cottage.

Sheets flow in steady layers, water collecting dirt and grass and twigs as it rolls toward us. Within seconds, it’s washing over my feet. Smacking the porch steps. The entire cottage groans with a warning. I turn back and hobble toward Casey, who grabs my hand.

“We need to get out of here, now!” Casey yells.

I hurl myself toward the door. Tanner’s standing by the bed and staring deliriously at the window, as though he isn’t sure if this is a nightmare or not.

“Water,” I explain. “It’s going to flood the whole basin!”

We’re going to have to swim out.

He doesn’t need any more explanation, grabbing his glasses and backpack from the bed.

Water splashes the porch when we race back outside, slipping over the land mutely. It’s as if I’ve been here before when I was asleep, the pressure of danger coming from somewhere, even though it’s so beautiful, gliding toward us so softly. I link my arm through Tanner’s and grab Casey’s hand, boots sloshing through two feet of cold as I trudge off the porch. Casey drags me on.

The flow is slow. The immediate danger never reaches us, like this is scripted. We go as fast as our burdened legs will carry us, the water never rising past our knees. We haul ourselves through the field and to the northern hills, and when we ascend, the water stays right on our heels, even when Tanner becomes tangled in underbrush and we have to stop and tear him free.

Like the flood is slowing for us.

We reach the top. I fall to my knees. The water has stopped trickling from the adjacent hills, and the new lake sits tranquil, cottage completely submerged. As if it had never been there.

“Illusion or real?” Casey gasps.

“I don’t know,” Tanner wheezes. “The water. Didn’t seem. Real.”

Tanner is right. The way the water glided toward us was surreal and dreamlike, as though the entire lake decided to slide over to the basin because of us. The water felt cold and wet, but still unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Like it was trying to scare us, and not kill us.

Afraid the flood will continue to rise, we hurry down the hill, the air occupied only by the sound of our trampling feet. We’re nearing our destroyed camp. We called it home for a handful of days, but at least I felt like I belonged somewhere.

Now I’m not sure if Valerie and Jace are alive.

The pine thickens around us, and I squeeze my arm tighter to my side, pinning Tanner’s elbow.

Every one of my muscles shudders on its own, begging me to stop, but I can’t—the boys keep me on my feet, keep me moving. Tanner is wheezing and gasping, and I pray to God that he isn’t about to keel over.

Casey skids to a halt, and I soon follow.

A shovel.

That shovel, propped up against a tree.

“Fuck,” Casey gasps.

Keep running! I want to scream at him. Why are you stopping? But I can’t. I’m chained by fear.

One moment, the space between two silhouetted trees is vacant, and the next, it’s filled by the shadow of a man. Denim shirt and scruffy face. Casey’s father is back.

All I can think about is that shovel in his hands, the way he heaved it over his shoulder and down as Casey lay there. Maybe he’s out for revenge, because he wasn’t supposed to fail in the first place.

He was supposed to kill.

He takes one step forward, stretching out his hand and grasping the shovel’s handle.

“Thought you finished me off, didn’t you?” He takes another step forward, head cocked.

“Please,” I beg. “We need to get out of here.”

“He’ll only chase us,” Casey responds. “You know that.”

I turn to Tanner, but he is entranced by Casey’s dad. I want to shake him, to get him to help me convince Casey that we’re insane to wait, but there’s no time.

From the grove behind Casey’s father, Meghan appears.

“What the hell?” Casey cries.

She stuns me. I can’t say anything, even when Tanner whispers, “Who’s that?”

Blood from the bullet wound drips down her temple. How can she be here if my desk is nowhere in sight?

“What would we do, Ev?” she asks. “We’d sink that son of a bitch if he weren’t such a pussy and killed himself. Look what he did to me. Look!”

Casey’s father lifts the shovel and lunges at Meghan, bringing it down on top of her head. She falls. He beats her to a pulp, sprays of blood showering the grass.

I can’t help it. I know it’s not real, but I can’t handle her dying all over again right in front of me. My knees, even with all of the strength I will into them, give out.

I scream so loudly, I hear nothing but myself.

Casey scoops me up and I fight against him, even though I know I can’t save her.

Her corpse is a mess, skull crushed, eyes soaked in crimson.

The sky flashes green. The whole sky, like a sheet of green lightning. A voice booms.

Module seventeen, disengaging.

Meghan and Casey’s dad evaporate.

In their place floats a little silver sphere. Can’t be more than the size of a softball. It hovers in the air for a moment, and then soundlessly zips away from us, through the trees, and out of sight.

“What,” Tanner gasps, “was that?”

I sniff and wipe my nose with my hand. “I don’t know.”

“Half a test for me, and half a test for you?” Casey asks me.

“Pieces of both of your pasts?” Tanner says.

“The girl . . . The girl was Evalyn’s. The man was mine. But what was that ball thing?”

“I think it glitched,” Tanner says. “The light, the voice from the sky. What did it say?”

“Module seventeen, disengaging.”

“Evalyn.” Tanner’s fingers find my wrist. He squeezes tight, but he isn’t staring at me. He’s staring at the space where Meghan and Casey’s dad evaporated. “When was the first time you saw that green light?”

“When the little girl who Jace killed walked into camp.”

“The girl who magically appeared out of nowhere.”

“Don’t they all appear out of nowhere?” Casey asks.

“No, usually there’s an object that seems to trigger them. Did you see the light any other time, Evalyn?”

Slowly, I understand where Tanner is going with this. What he’s suggesting doesn’t have to do with the fear of watching my own best friend die over and over.

“Stella,” I whisper. “Green flashed through the house, and Stella began to burn. You can’t possibly think . . .”

I can’t finish my thought. I bend at the waist and rest my palms on my knees as the ground wavers beneath me, like it’s still covered in water. We saw a green light flash through the sky the first night we were here too.

Around the time Blaise probably died.

“Evalyn,” Casey rests his hand on my shoulder. “Talk to me.”

I swallow the thick spit in my mouth before responding. “If the Compass Room has been glitching, you don’t think that the glitches are substantial enough to affect the outcome of who lives and dies, do you?”

Tanner sits on a nearby log rubs his temples. “I don’t know. Any speculation is just guessing. We have to remember that. Maybe what we saw wasn’t a glitch. Maybe the green light means something completely different.”

“Stella burned alive with nothing touching her. All of the other executed inmates were killed by something, at least the ones that we’ve witnessed.”

“But we’ve only witnessed two others,” Tanner argues.

“Who’s to say that Blaise’s death wasn’t a glitch too?”

“That’s right,” Casey says. “Evalyn and I saw a flash the first night we were here. What if we were close to Blaise?”

My chest tightens. My hands shake so badly that they keep slipping off my knees. When I stand up straight, I rest my head on Casey’s chest.

This is me overreacting. Glitches that kill people can’t be possible in here. This is a certified death penalty. It’s been tested. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t accurate, right?

“Maybe we’re thinking too much into this,” Casey suggests. “We should get out of here.”

“Where?” I step away from him. “Where could we possibly go and not run into more bullshit?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to fucking do. I want to be safe. I want you to be safe, and no matter what, that will never happen. Not in here!” His brow scrunches up like he’s ready to cry, and then he sits on the log with Tanner, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

There’s enough of a calm break for me to notice the shovel is gone.

The shovel is gone.

We’re in a cove in the woods, a shelter where trees curl in on us and the light shines through the leaves, sending a sparkling assortment of shapes across the ground. It’s beautiful, morbidly beautiful. I’m wondering what would happen if I lie down here and fall asleep.

If I gave up.

Would I be dragged from my slumber like Valerie was from camp? Would the trees surrounding me unfold like petals and place me face-to-face with Nick? Would the ground beneath me collapse and send me plummeting back into the cave?

“Sleep,” I say. “Let’s sleep here.”

Casey’s eyes flutter shut in defeat.

“There is nothing we can do to stop it. No place to run. And it’s nice here.”

“You’re delusional,” Casey remarks.

“You know she’s right,” Tanner says.

Casey huffs. “Fine, but we’re building a fire. And I’m eating your food.”

Tanner manages a grin before he falls back into thought.

“I’ll help find firewood,” I offer.

Casey stands and I take his hand. “We’ll go together.”

“I’m not leaving you until I’m dead,” I say, and I mean it.

“Please,” he begs. “You aren’t dying before me. I won’t let it happen.”

He can’t make that promise, not here, but I don’t say anything. With his determination, it would be pointless.

My fingers laced in his, we head out together, finding wood to build a decent fire. Our lighters were some of the things we managed to salvage from the wreck of camp. I build a fire as Casey and Tanner go through the food left over in Tanner’s bag and decide on a meal of canned applesauce and sardines. When we finish, the breeze picks up and Casey slides behind me, his legs resting on my hips, arms slinking around my stomach.

I soak in the luxury of his warmth. Tanner watches us closely.

“You were with Casey when he had his test—when he saw his father the first time,” he muses.

“Yes,” I say.

“Were you emotionally affected by it?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, but to what degree?”

I think for a moment. I acted out because I cared for Casey. I killed again for him, even though it was a man who should have already been dead. “Very much so.”

“Do you think you had the same emotional connection during his test as you did with your own test? Your own crime?”

“I’m not sure.” The question is too difficult, and I’m exhausted.

“Were the emotions you felt reminiscent of your own crime?”

Casey squeezes me gently. The wood crackles and shoots orange sparks into the twilight.

“Possibly.”

“Interesting,” he says.

“What?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“No, there’s something here,” I challenge. “What are you thinking about?”

Seamlessly he changes the subject. “Did you read through our entire contract? The one we had to sign before we entered the prison?”

“I skimmed it.” I memorized it.

“Same,” Casey says.

“Why?” I ask.

“There’s a clause stating that if the Compass Room glitches, all remaining candidates would be removed from the premises and be retried using whatever accurate information that had been gathered by the CR.”

“I remember,” I say. “So, are you suggesting that the Compass Room can’t be malfunctioning because we haven’t been removed yet?”

“Unless the engineers are still trying to determine whether or not the CR is malfunctioning, like we are.”

“Which means that it might only be a matter of time before this Room is shut down.”

I muse on the possibilities of what we’ve uncovered. A couple of weeks ago, the thought of a retrial was worse than the thought of death.

Casey kisses me, warm lips against the hollow above my collarbone.

I can’t say that I still feel the same way.

Our Time Outside Was Monitored.

Just like everything we did when we weren’t in our cells. The system could only afford to give us an hour a week. No one was comfortable allowing us more time in the sun, even with the fences and bars and alarms that separated us from the outside world. They never wanted us in groups of more than fifteen to keep the chaos at a minimum. The mess hall was enough.

A week before I was sent to the Compass Room, I spent my time lying on the concrete. The basketball from the near court pinged against the ground with every bounce, the asphalt beneath my head quaking.

I was in nirvana—a moment where I could have all the heat and the sun beating down on me and be so utterly safe, even if some other inmate took advantage of my vulnerable position and decided they wanted to beat the shit out of me. I was safe because I chose to be. This would be the last moment I could force myself away from fear, away from the knowing that I was going to die very soon.

I couldn’t keep my head clear for long. I had trained myself in this prison to obsess over Nick any time my mind wasn’t consumed with other thoughts. So up he popped, my entire Nick database, which was nothing more than a name and the sparse moments I had spent with him.

I obsessed about how little I knew of him—if his online absence was purposeful because he’d been planning an epic crime his whole life, and the person he’d pin his crime on would forever be doomed if there was nothing to solidify how truly fucked up he was.

No online records, no therapy visits, no prescription drugs. Just a meek mother who claimed her son had always been “a bit off.”

A bit off proved nothing.

All I had was Liam’s and Nick’s conversation on chaos theory. My mind continued to return to it, picking apart everything within that night as if there were some secret hiding in my memory I could decode.

Chaos theory simply noted the existence of disorder within an obedient system. It justified Nick’s innate hunger to cause destruction. Why no one—his mother, a teacher, a friend, a school counselor—sensed his hunger prior to his crime, I’d never know. And this aspect was simply part of the chaos.

I was part of the chaos too. The Compass Room would do its best to make sense of my criminal urges, and if it couldn’t, then the law would do what it needed to do.

It would permanently eliminate the disorder.