A Vault of Sins (23 page)

From RNC News Blog:

The death toll of Compass Room J has been released.

Only one prisoner survived the thirty-day simulation. Ryan McCadden, convicted of shooting a college peer, has emerged from the CR as a free man.

Among those who died are two of America’s most hotly debated criminals, Valerie Crane and Evalyn Ibarra, the only two criminals in Compass Room history to experience the simulation twice. Both gained re-entry after the mishap within Compass Room C and the early extraction, and were promised freedom if they made it through J’s simulation.

Both women had been executed by the end of day two.

Gemma Branam will make a statement later this week.

Five weeks. I am alone with Job for five weeks. He protects me like a sacred treasure. While I’m not allowed to venture out into the woods alone or help him hunt, I pass my time by cleaning his dirty cabin that’s in desperate need of a scrub brush. I patch the leaky roof and wash the linens. When I’m not working, I watch the feed.

Job was right. The world really does think I’m dead.

My infiltration of the Vault—the true reason why I would have technically died—has been hidden by the Compass Room engineers.

The world believes that Evalyn was finally taken down, like she should have been months ago.

I nearly died. No one would ever learn the truth. There would be no possibility of redemption for me.

Is redemption really necessary?

My redemption is so interlaced with revenge that its execution would almost be too sweet. Death-by-chocolate sweet.

The only other option is for me to go out like a candle. At least, I think it is. But I soon find out that I’m wrong, because there’s some sick kind of swampy middle ground that exists. I come to terms with this when I realize what I had “dreamt” during the month of my recovery.

I think about mentioning this on the day of my initiation into Job’s lifestyle, my first time helping him with gutting an animal. He allows me outside to do so, the deer hung on a post near the cabin.

“Why do you think Gemma’s lying to the public about me and Valerie, instead of letting the media know that we—or at least she—has escaped? What if we come back?”

“I think she’s willin’ to risk it,” he says. “You escape her for the third time and she’ll have government agents watchin’ her like a hawk. It’s better just to say you’re dead and hope you’ll stay that way.”

“You think I destroyed the Vault?”

He shrugs. “They still ain’t sayin’ nothin’ on the news. We might never find out.”

All of that data . . . gone. I don’t know if it will help or hinder Reprise. But I’m aware of the sick sense of victory it gives me, knowing that precious data could be unusable to further the technology.

I slice the animal’s skin apart, right down the belly, but this is all that I can handle. A couple of years ago, if asked, I would have been down for an opportunity like this, joking and faux gagging the entire time.

You gotta try everything once, right?

Now, the image of the guts tumbling from the deer like spaghetti is too much, and I have to step away as saliva floods my mouth. I press the back of my hand to my nose.

A conversation with Casey arises in my mind.
I thought you would have become numb to tragedy by now.

It doesn’t seem that way. Every step toward darkness is a crack in my emotional wall. I should become number. Stronger. But it’s as though my growth is unraveling.

“Can’t stomach it?” Job asks.

“I can’t stomach anything.”

Or maybe it’s a sign from the universe that I shouldn’t be outside, because when I walk back into the shack, Job’s feed is beeping with a message. I run back out and scream for him to answer.

It’s Maliyah.

“It’s alright, girl,” Job says before he hits the accept button. “I think it’s time for you to be in the picture.”

I’m surprised when Maliyah’s expression doesn’t waver for a fraction of a section when she sees me on the other side of the feed. “I knew it,” she says flatly. “I knew it, and that’s why I called today.”

“Hi,” I say awkwardly.

She crosses her arms and purses her lips, studying me, like she’s still trying to figure out if I’m real or not. Very flatly, she says, “So how’s mountain life treating you?”

“Been living it since I moved out on my own. Nothing’s changed.”

“And how’s being dead treating you?”

My lip twitches. “I’m tired of it.”

“But afraid to come back to the land of the living?”

I study my nails like the stakes really aren’t that high. “Yeah, kind of.”

When Valerie pops into the picture, my eyes immediately begin to well up. She smirks. “Good to see you too.”

“Where’s Casey?” I say immediately.

“Want me to grab him?”

“No,” I quickly say. “Not yet. Don’t tell him.” I take a deep breath to calm the ache, the desire to see his face. “I don’t want him to know until I’m home.”

***

I’m familiar with the passing over the border ritual. I do not know how the hackers do it. I should ask, I should question. I should be concerned that I drink a potion that knocks me out and magically transports me to Canada.

But I don’t.

I have to force myself to trust. I have to force myself to be okay with it. And that’s alright. I need to begin trusting more often.

I’m woken up in the back of a rusty old pickup truck. Like usual, it takes me about an hour to come through, and Job is patient with me the whole time, slowly coaxing me back to life. We’re in the middle of a forest, him and me. I recognize it as being the one right outside of the safe house.

“You approach him alone, darlin’,” says Job when we near the lodge. “Just you. I’ll wait here.”

I can only nod, because my insides are filled with so many raw nerve endings—it’s like I’m passing through the Vault again.

Leaves crunch beneath my feet as I step through the forest, toward the noise of wood chopping. Still buried deep within the trees, I watch him closely. His jeans are slung low and every time he lifts the axe above his head, his thermal rises to reveal his scar-marred torso.

I want to drown in him.

He looks so normal. I could slink away now. I could slink away now and send a feed to Maliyah and Valerie and beg them to forget that I’ve come back from the dead.

He stiffens. He knows I’m watching.

His face goes still when his eyes catch mine. Dropping the axe, he walks around his stump, sits on it, and stares at me.

This reaction, I wasn’t expecting. So cold, so calculated. Like he can’t trust that I’m really here.

Twigs and dry grass and leaves snap beneath my feet. The earth has never been so loud. Crumpling his hands into fists, he presses them to his stomach and leans forward.

We’re at a standstill.

I want to run to him, to jump into his arms, but it’s not yet right for this moment.

The screen door slams, and Piper cries,
“Evalyn?”

She’s broken the moment.

Suddenly there is so much grief and confusion and shock in Casey’s expression. Because if Piper can see me, that means I’m not a vicious figment of Casey’s imagination. He isn’t going crazy.

A tear trickles down his cheek. I can’t begin to pick up the pieces of him, because he still has yet to collapse.

He falls onto his knees in the dirt. When I reach him, he wraps his arms around my thighs and presses his forehead to my hip. I’ve heard him cry before. I’ve heard him cry more times in the past year than some people hear their partners cry in a lifetime.

But not like this.

I steady myself on his shoulders as he releases the sobs into my jeans. My hands make fists around his flannel. Maybe I’m keeping him steady, maybe I’m keeping myself sane, because if I let go at all, I’ll never return. I’ll be an emotional mess for the rest of eternity.

“I’ve been so wicked to you.” As I speak, tears trickle past my lips and into his hair. “Destroying you over and over.” I drop to him and he consumes me. My mouth finds his and when I taste him, the light of the universe fizzles out and pretends that neither of us are here.

That is the way it must stay.

***

“You’re distant,” says Maliyah.

It takes a ridiculous amount of willpower to tear myself away from the living room window. She stands next to me, and we’re both leaning against the kitchen counter.

I don’t refocus on her. Instead, I stare at the black liquid steaming inside the cup in my hands.

“Casey’s waiting for you. He keeps glancing inside.”

That’s right. I was supposed to grab coffee and return to him and Valerie on the porch. And now they’re both staring through the window, waiting for me as they lean against the railing. He says something to her. She responds with a weak smile and a wince as she shifts her body.

She’s still healing.

“I’m stalling,” I say.

“I figured.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “I don’t want to press you even though I’m dying to.”

I nod. “I’ve been trying to figure out the right words for the promise you need to make me.” I finally have the courage to look at her. She frowns. “I need you to promise that what I’m about to tell you stays between you and necessary members of Reprise. The public can’t find out. Valerie and Casey—they can’t find out because it would destroy them. I don’t want to cause anyone unnecessary pain until we know for certain.”

Eager intrigue dances across her eyes. “Yes. Of course.”

“I saw something.”

I can tell she’s trying not to freak out. She ceases gnawing on her bottom lip to say, “Go on.”

“When I passed through the Vault, I must have absorbed bits of information. A video feed of some sort.”

“A video feed from the Compass Room?”

I shake my head. “Not the Compass Room.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Vault processes information in a mysterious way that can’t be used as evidence, right?”

“Yes,” she agrees. “That’s why its information is so untouchable.”

And why the sins of the CR engineers stay buried deep within the earth. Literally.

“Even what I saw is confusing. But the weeks I had alone in the mountains . . .” Breaking my stream of thought, I sigh. This is it. “The logic behind how they kill people in the Compass Rooms is impossible to follow. Why would engineers choose to kill inmates in such brutal, horrifying ways?”

“It’s part of the system,” says Maliyah. “That’s how Wes explained it to me. Living inmates need to see the gruesome deaths in order for their vulnerability to be revealed.”

“But we saw many things that weren’t real. People rose from the dead in that Compass Room. But it wasn’t real. Why would engineers create such a gory mess if they could simply allude to it? Simply create an illusion of it?”

Keeping her eyes trained on me, Maliyah sets her cup on the counter. “What are you saying?”

“The only information I retrieved from the Vault were fragments of experiments. Experiments conducted on inmates who should have been killed by the Bots.”

Maliyah sags with the weight of the news, pressing her hands flat against the marble. “Are you . . . are you saying that they’re still alive?”

When I return my gaze to Valerie is when I break. I wish I didn’t. I’ve been carefully planning these words for weeks. All I want to do is release them, not struggle with them behind a mask of tears.

“I don’t think so.” I suck in a breath, biting down on my sob before saying. “I hope to God they’re not alive.”

“They were tortured. Evalyn?” She grasps my shoulders in the same way Casey does when he’s trying to get my attention. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Not just tortured.” I shake my head rapidly. “Emotionally bled to death.” I gain my ground enough to formulate my thoughts, even though I can’t stop crying. “Which makes sense, right? Why kill off your prime subjects in an experiment? Why not make the world believe they’re dead so you can have the freedom to kill them as slowly as possible, documenting every second? It’s the perfect crime. The evidence—the research—all documented within a device that makes the information unattainable to anyone without a chip. I’ve seen it, but I can’t prove it. I can’t prove anything.”

“It’s okay.” She pulls me into a hug, and I collapse.

“It’s not okay. It will never be okay.”

“You’ve done an amazing thing—something unfathomably heroic. This is only the first step to exposing them.” She pulls away from me. “You know that, right?”

“Please,” I beg. “You can’t say anything. Especially to Valerie. The truth . . .”

“Will destroy her,” Maliyah finishes. “Evalyn? Look at me.”

When I do, I am overwhelmed by peace. An assurance. It gives me the courage to tell her the rest of the news. “The Bots were Wes’s babies. He had to have known that they weren’t lethal, right?” I think of the horrible ways that some of us were killed inside of the Compass Room. Erity—Stella. “Where is he?”

The color drains from Maliyah’s face as she comprehends my words. Has Wes been lying to her the entire time? “He left after returning Valerie.”

“Something isn’t adding up.”

“I’ll see if I can track him down. It has to be a misunderstanding.”

“I hope so.”

A calmness crosses her face. She nods toward the window. “Let me handle this. It isn’t your problem. Nothing is.” And then again, she tells me, “Go.”

***

Our future here is blanketed by the unknown.

On the porch, the three of us sit at the rickety wrought iron patio table. I scrape off the rust on my chair with my fingernail as the sun begins to set. I can’t see it—the sun. Not tonight. Dense, black clouds hover across the sky, weightless. The light tried with all of its might to break through, but the muteness is impenetrable.

To my right sits Casey. He holds my hand, our arms swinging gently back and forth between our chairs. His eyes are still rimmed with red. Piper completed the surgery on his hip weeks ago. He’s healed fine.

I was absent for all of it.

My time with Job still contains fibers of reality, but my day in the Compass Room with Valerie is nothing more than a dream. The only way I hang onto the truth of what we experienced is through her body, the stretched and angry patches of skin that now mar her flesh. My burns and stab wounds—even my cracked ribs—are nothing compared to them.

“New tattoos,” she says calmly, the wind toying with her grown out hair—still short, but now a dull, dirty blonde instead of the platinum. She traces a pattern across her jacket, on top of the scars beneath. “Nothing is different. I grow old and my skin fills up.”

“Someone should write fan-fiction on that statement,” I say.

“A threesome.”

“Of course.”

“Will Casey’s penis still be massive?”

Against all odds, my gorgeous boy manages to put aside his exhaustion to chuckle and blush all at once. “I read that one.”