Justice (4 page)
Authors: Jeffrey Salane
‘Well, that guy
was
pretty smart,’ added Merlyn thoughtlessly. Then he caught M’s look. ‘Oh, but, yeah, not in the way you’re referring to.’
‘Who signed off on this trial?’ M asked Keyshawn. ‘Beyond Ben, that is. I want to know who he reports to. I want to know who you all report to.’
‘John Doe,’ declared a new voice from the doorway. M, Merlyn, and Jules all turned, ready to fight. Between the harsh backlighting of the hallway and the dusty darkness of Keyshawn’s lab, they couldn’t make out the newcomer’s face.
‘And don’t be so aggro on Keyshawn,’ the voice continued. ‘He may not be the most personable guy, but he means well. Besides, by now you must have figured out that all facts in the Fulbright Academy come on a need-to-know basis.’
‘Thanks for the straight answer,’ called out M with a cautious edge in her voice. ‘Now, why don’t you come in and join us, friend?’
‘Come on, guys, relax,’ said the figure as he strolled toward them. ‘It’s just little old me.’
And into the light of the room stepped the fourth suit, the mysterious voice from the darkness, none other than Calvin Fence – the Lawless student they had left for dead.
A gray smudge, floating lifelessly in the freezing river current, shoulders slack and sliding against the thick layer of ice that held him underwater – that’s how M remembered Calvin Fence. She wished her most prominent memories of Cal were from their first days at the Lawless School, when he was a goofy, green-eyed, awkward kid. But those memories had been replaced with the sight of Cal in heavy, soaked clothes, arms like dangling ropes cut loose from their moorings, and a body adrift like an unmanned lifeboat discovered in an ocean storm.
Even now as he stood before her alive and well, M knew she would never forget that terrible vision of Cal. She wouldn’t let herself forget it because that underwater dead end had been her fault. She had led Cal to the painting. And while his own mother drove him into the frigid waters, M was the one who’d tried to save him and came up empty-handed.
In fact, just before the ice had cracked open to spit them
back out into the breathable night air, M had let go of herself, too. It was a disturbingly tender experience that she and Cal shared, the letting go. It was a feeling she was determined to never feel again.
‘Cal!’ exclaimed Merlyn. ‘You’re all right!’
‘Better than that,’ said Cal. ‘And I have you to thank for it, M. I’m told that if you hadn’t come after me, I would have been frozen fish food.’
‘We both got lucky,’ M said as she carefully held her arms out and gave Cal a hug. This time she did not miss her mark. ‘The Fulbrights probably would have let us drown if not for my necklace – it was the only thing important enough for them to save.’
‘It was more than the necklace,’ said Cal. ‘Give yourself a little credit. The Fulbrights came back for you later, didn’t they?’
As she pulled away from Cal, M’s hand absently rose to her chest, searching for the phantom necklace that was no longer there. It was a hard habit to break. Again, she was transported back to that fateful night in Hamburg, Germany, when Devon, in full Fulbright gear, had snatched her necklace, and Cal’s unresponsive body had been dragged away like a lifeless bag of bones.
‘What happened to you after Hamburg?’ asked Jules.
‘Switched sides like you, I guess,’ said Cal with a wry smile. ‘Which is to say the Fulbrights brought me here, nursed me back to health, then asked me if I wanted to help them defeat my mother. As you can imagine, I couldn’t resist.’
‘Yeah,’ said Merlyn. ‘I definitely get that. Ms Watts tried to do us in, too, you know.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Cal. ‘She never liked you guys all that much.’
‘The feeling is mutual,’ said Jules. ‘No offense, but your mom is the worst.’
‘Wait,’ interrupted M. ‘If you’re here, did Foley make it, too?’ Cal hadn’t been the only member of M’s crew captured that night. As far as she knew, there had been no sign of Foley, an older Lawless student and Cal’s guardian, since their heist had gone wrong.
Cal frowned and looked toward the ground. ‘He’s here, but he’s under heavy surveillance – like, the locked-up kind. He’s Lawless through and through. Even after he learned what my mom had been up to, there was no breaking through his criminal convictions. As far as he’s concerned, we’re in the belly of the beast. It didn’t matter that the Fulbrights saved him from the fire.’
‘The fire that
they
started,’ said M. ‘That’s mighty caring of them, isn’t it?’
‘Careful,’ Keyshawn piped up from outside the reunion circle. ‘If Ben or Vivian hear you talking like that, they’ll lock you up alongside this friend of yours. Doe doesn’t like bugs in his program, if you catch my drift.’
‘And just who is this John Doe, other than the guy behind the Fulbrights?’ asked M.
‘He’s the
unseen
guy behind the Fulbrights,’ said Cal.
‘And the less we talk about him, the better,’ added Keyshawn.
‘Because if we keep this up, we’ll endanger your suit tests,’ guessed M.
Keyshawn paced nervously through the stacks of books.
‘Yes,’ he said begrudgingly, ‘and no. It’s been my experience that avoiding John Doe makes for a much easier time at the academy. If you do catch his eye, it doesn’t matter if you’re the class pet or the class pest. Either way, you’ll be led down a path best left untraveled.’
‘You do realize that just by having us here,’ said M, ‘just by having us take part in your experiment, that we’re all on John Doe’s radar?’
Keyshawn grumbled and tapped angrily at his tablet.
‘How do you know about John Doe?’ Jules asked Cal.
‘His dad,’ answered M.
‘John Doe is your dad!’ cried Merlyn.
‘No, no,’ said Cal, motioning for everyone to calm down. ‘I’m not related to John Doe. My dad’s a Fulbright. But he never talked to me about his boss – if the guy even exists. I mean, it sounds like an alias to me.
John Doe
is actually the ID that police give to people who are unknown for one reason or another.’
‘Enough!’ snapped Keyshawn. ‘John Doe is not your priority right now. I’ve only got two weeks to get you prepped for the field and if this experiment fails, then
I
fail, and I’ll be —’ Just as quickly as he had raised his voice in frustration, he stopped himself short. ‘And
we’ll
be in a situation we’d all rather avoid.’
M narrowed her eyes. ‘What happens in two weeks?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Keyshawn. ‘But something is in the works. It’s the reason my program was green-lighted. And it’s the reason you’re all here today instead of locked up. So, you’ve got two weeks to learn everything the Fulbrights can teach you, take it or leave it. If you want
out now, say the word and I’ll call Ben to take you away.’
The perspiration beaded on Keyshawn’s forehead. And in this perfectly temperature-controlled environment, M knew that his sweat spoke volumes.
‘Two weeks is plenty of time,’ said M in a calming manner. She was doing her best to channel her father, making her voice jovial, hopeful, and casually reassuring all at once. It worked; Keyshawn let out a sigh of relief.
‘So what’s the first step?’ asked Cal. ‘You guys got a Box hidden around here?’
Keyshawn wiped his brow with a handkerchief and motioned in the direction of the door he’d gone through earlier. ‘The Maze is a good place to start.’
Through the door, the crew entered a long, wide room that seemed as big as a football field, but the tail end of the room was hidden in dark shadows. The ceiling was so uncomfortably low, they could reach up and touch it. The cramped headspace reminded M of her narrow escape from being crushed in the Box, the high-tech training facility at Lawless that Ms Watts had reprogrammed into a deathtrap. There were dim lights recessed throughout the room in key areas, which barely helped shed any real light on what they could expect to happen next.
‘Okay,’ said Jules with a sudden excitement. She was back in her element. Anything that raised her heart rate was a welcome challenge. ‘So what’s the mission?’
‘You just need to escape,’ said Keyshawn.
‘Escape an empty room?’ said Merlyn with a nasal snort. ‘Easy peasy.’
Unfortunately M didn’t share her friend’s confidence.
In her experience there was always more than met the eye to these tests. She felt her suit tighten around her at the thought, but decided that must have been her imagination.
‘Less talkin’, more walkin’,’ said Cal. He shoved Merlyn onto the main floor.
‘Hey!’ yelled Merlyn as he stumbled forward, flinching as if he expected something bad to happen next. But nothing did. Instead he stood, scratching his head, a few steps away from the rest of the group. Smiling nervously, he asked, ‘Is this one of those tests where it’s more important to make the first move than to complete the journey?’
‘No,’ said Keyshawn dryly, and a solid metal wall sprung up from the floor and crunched against the ceiling, trapping Merlyn on the other side. The others jumped at the wall’s sudden, violent appearance.
‘So it really is a maze,’ said M, as she touched the new wall. It felt warm, heavy, and unbreakable. ‘Isn’t that kind of obvious? To name a maze the Maze?’
‘I’m sorry if we don’t have the same flair or swagger that the Lawless School boasts,’ said Keyshawn absently as he watched a dot moving across the screen of his tablet. M realized he was tracking Merlyn’s movements. ‘Here we call it like we see it.’
‘Sounds too simple for my taste,’ said Jules.
‘Oh, we may be straightforward, but you’ll find your training anything but simple,’ replied Keyshawn with a renewed interest in the discussion. Clearly he was satisfied with Merlyn’s progress … or nonprogress. ‘The Maze is trained to play against you. The walls rearrange themselves
constantly based on changing algorithms; there are no defining characteristics to the paths, and what was a dead end one second can lead to an exit the next.’
‘So the object is to confuse the subject and see how quickly they can make key decisions,’ said M.
‘Not how quickly,’ said Keyshawn excitedly. ‘Or not only how quickly, I should say. We’re studying
how
you make decisions. After you run this maze several times, we’ll know how you think – to the point that we could potentially predict your every move. Do you favor the right path or the left? Are you willing to travel backward to move forward? At exactly what point will you give up? It’s fascinating stuff.’
M realized that Keyshawn was giving them more information than what was strictly need-to-know, which was useful to her but perhaps very dangerous for him. He obviously lived for scientific study and wasn’t modest about his achievements, either. But she sensed that he was a loner at this school.
The wall sank open again, but Merlyn was gone and so was the expansive room. In its place was a pitch-dark path that seemed to twist in the gloom. The sound of metal shifting heavily echoed from within.
‘I’ll be the next hamster,’ said Jules with a smile. She leapt full force into the slot and ran into the shadows. The walls closed around her and she disappeared, but M could swear that she heard Jules giggling, giddy at the challenge.
‘Your friend is enthusiastic,’ noted Keyshawn. ‘Always a dangerous reaction to the Maze.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Cal.
‘The Maze plays to your level, doesn’t it?’ said M. ‘The more you attack it, the more it attacks you.’
‘I can see why people are interested in you,’ Keyshawn said as the walls opened up again.
‘Anything else you want me to know before I go?’ M asked. Keyshawn and Cal both remained silent. ‘Okay, then, see you on the other side!’
M entered the Maze and left the Fulbright world behind her. The sterile, well-lit hallways of doors were nowhere to be found in here. It was like being underwater again. The metal chamber was a cold, damp nest of murky shadows, which beckoned her in every direction. Three distinct paths sat before her, each a yawning entrance of emptiness. A small light flickered dimly in the far distance of the middle opening, a sign of life. Or was it a sign of a trap? Before deciding what direction to take, M held herself still and cleared her mind. It was a nearly impossible feat, since every muscle in her body burned with the instinct to run. Her very bones were filled with an unconquerable urgency to escape the Maze at any cost. But M knew this was the Maze at work, so she held her ground.
It wasn’t a long moment, but it was enough so that the Maze reconfigured itself. The changing shadows became a crosshatch of darkness that pulled her back to the memory of the relentless
umbra mortis
as its slow, sucking depths swallowed the Lawless School. M was frozen, trapped in her nightmare scenario.
Keep on moving
, she thought to herself.
If you don’t, the Maze will come for you
. With her first step forward M instantly banged her head against a lower section of the ceiling. ‘Ouch!’ she cried out to herself. ‘Where did that beam come from?’
Ducking down, M felt her way along the beam, letting it guide her in the darkness. The first beam connected to a second beam. They were both hefty and strong, like the support beams from her basement back at home, which definitely wasn’t the cheeriest place, but she couldn’t shake the strange sensation that bumping her head here was no mistake. An obstacle like that was most likely designed to embarrass cadets, surprise and scatter them in another direction. But what if the Maze was working with her?
M closed her eyes and stepped forward again. This time she ran into a low table with her knee. Sure, it smarted, but the bruise would be worthwhile. M knew this table. She knew this entire layout. And she began retracing her basement path from memory. As she moved past the remembered locations of the old, dusty boxes that littered her basement back home, the Maze allowed her to continue unhindered. The walls traveled alongside her, as if she were in a car surrounded by big-rig fourteen wheelers with cargo hauls blocking out the roadside, and the momentum was palpable.
On her left, M heard a low, muffled noise coming from an unseen room behind a dark gray wall. Straining to listen, she realized it was Merlyn talking to himself, logically parsing out his next move. She considered hollering to him, but then changed her mind. If the Maze had become her own basement, that meant everyone’s journey through the Maze was different, and if she tried to help him, she might end up negatively affecting his results. Individual results were what Keyshawn was after, anyway, right? And if they had any hope of finding her
mother and escaping this place to stop Ms Watts, then they had better keep their heads down and at least pretend to follow orders.
