Lab 6 (2 page)

They were both so intent on opening the door, they didn’t see him.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” Mrs. Hughes scolded. “I told you he’s too sensitive.”

“My mistake,” Sam’s dad answered as he inserted the card in the slot. “I’ll take care of it.”

They pushed the door open and disappeared inside.

Sam slowly emerged from his hiding place and walked closer.

“He’s too sensitive”?

Mr. Hughes’s voice came from inside the room, muffled and soft: “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” answered the voice that Sam had heard crying for help.

It sounded young. Like someone his own age.

Sam leaned forward. The voices were hard to hear.

“What happened?” Mrs. Hughes asked.

“Someone … tried to get in … the window,” the person answered.

I know that voice.

“No one’s at the window now,” said Mr. Hughes.

Mrs. Hughes sighed. “Probably a squirrel. This has happened before.”

“I guess I should silence him, huh?”

Sam froze.

“I told you that a long time ago,” Mrs. Hughes scolded. “But you never listen.”

“Fine. I’ll fix everything. He won’t make another sound, until we need him.”

What?

Sam curled down lower, into a ball.

He felt dizzy and scared.

It wasn’t the headache or the pain from the bump.

It was the sound of cold, hollow tapping.

And the total silence that followed as his mom and dad left the room.

They’ve succeeded. After all this time.

Not quite.

So why must prepare?

Because when they do, you must leave us.

I don’t want to leave!

You’re still human.

And you will forget — unless you do as we say …

A
PRISONER.

Mom and Dad have a prisoner in there.

Had.

HAVE. Be positive. He must be alive, right?

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

Sam stayed hidden, listening.

They were walking away now, back down the hall, arguing in hushed voices.

Sam’s head pulsed angrily. He struggled to focus.

What did Dad mean by
fix?

Silence. Heal. Straighten out.

Kill.

They’re scientists. He’s a spy.

He’s a political prisoner.

That’s their “special government project.”

No.

It was impossible. It didn’t make sense.

Mom and Dad were good people, basically. They had their flaws, yes. They worked too late and ignored their son. Mom was quiet and hard to read. Dad was forgetful and eccentric; before the Turing-Douglas project, he hadn’t been able to hold a job. But that was it — no malice, no evil deeds. They had kind and caring spirits.

That’s what you always hear in the news whenever they catch some murderer. “We never suspected it. Such a normal, caring, kind person …”

Sam blocked the thought. Mom and Dad were
scientists.
All they knew was Artificial Intelligence.

AI.

Sam thought of Bart as an eight-year-old, lurching across the Hugheses’ front lawn like Frankenstein’s monster, screaming “AIIIII!” That was Bart’s idea of clever wordplay.

But everyone else shared the same stereotype. To all the kids at school, AI meant cyborgs and robots and —

What was it that Jamie used to talk about? Morbid Jamie, who’d kill off her Barbies in “tragic accidents” and then hold funerals for them?

Humans made of spare parts, locked in dark underground lairs — that was HER idea of what happened at Turing-Douglas.

Ridiculous.

Or was it?

Sam moved into the hallway. Silently. Slowly, too, because his head couldn’t withstand sudden motion.

The door to Lab 6 was shut tight. He grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it — just in case Dad forgot to lock it. Which would be just like him.

It held fast.

Sam rapped on the door — quietly first, then louder.

“Hey,” he whispered, “anyone in there?”

No response.

He leaned his shoulder against the door and pushed.

Yeow.

The pain was excruciating. In his jaw.

And in his head.

He couldn’t try again. One more jolt and his brain would keep going. It would crash through the door, leaving his body to fall in a heap.

Go. Get out of here.

And do what? Get help? Tell someone? “Officer, my parents are working on an experiment with a person locked in a lab?”

Just go.

Sam ran. Down the hall. Back upstairs. Outside. He held in the pain. He knew that if he allowed the slightest sound to escape, just the slightest —

Hold …

It …

Sam.

Then he couldn’t take it, he was yelling, the screams ripping through him like a buzz saw — one word, over and over and over — he didn’t know what it was and didn’t care, because it was like expelling a poison, as if the volume of sound would stop the agony that blinded him as he ran through empty, unforgiving streets, away from the building, away away—

He rounded a corner and plunged into a dark alleyway
(home, just get me on the road to home),
his feet splashing in a rivulet of unidentifiable liquid, when he heard the other footsteps
(where?)
coming closer and tried to stop short, tried to get a grip, but he was moving too fast, and he emerged from the alley into a pale circle of street-lamp light when he collided with a dark figure.

Quickly. Begin imprinting process.

But I’m feeling stronger.

Pay attention.

Please. I belong here.

“A
AAAAGGHHHH!”

Sam bounced back. In the dim light, he saw the gaunt, severe face of his attacker.

“Jamie?”

“You made me drop my backpack!” Jamie shouted, picking up her black leather sack. “What are you yelling about?”

“You scared me.”

“You were yelling
before
you saw me.”

“My head …”

“What happened, Bart smacked you? Good. Did he get any teeth? Maybe he knocked some sense into you.”

“I — I have to go,” Sam sputtered, walking away.

“That’s what you think.” Jamie fell in step with him. Lit from above, her cheeks seemed to have sunk inward.

A skull.

During the day she
worked
to look like that, laying on the gothic makeup — jet-black lips and eyebrows, white base.

Tonight she didn’t need any of it.

“Please — ” Sam began.

“Really, really stupid review,” Jamie said. “Do you understand the word
style,
Sam? Or
edge?
Have you ever listened to any music after, like, the Beatles?”

“Not now, Jamie. This is not the time.”

“And then you dump on my brother. So it’s, like, war on the Richter family? What next? Destroy my mom’s business?”

“JAMIE, WILL YOU KNOCK IT OFF? I DON’T CARE!” Sam propped himself against a wall. Yelling was bad. Yelling hurt. “Just … go away, okay?”

Jamie drew closer, eyeing him warily.

“You’re not lying about that headache, are you?”

Sam shook his head.

Jamie pulled him away from the wall.

Sam flinched. “Look, if you’re going to take me to Bart — ”

“He’s probably home already. He has the attention span of a fruit fly. I can’t believe he actually hurt you so bad. You must have gotten him really mad. Come on.”

They began to walk away from Turing-Douglas. “It wasn’t just Bart,” Sam said. “I hit my head. Hiding behind the lab.”

“What were you doing
there
?”

“My parents work there. Remember?”

“So? I thought you never went near there. Guess I was wrong. No wonder your brain is warped.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know. The germs.”

“What
germs?”

“Uh, I can’t believe you don’t
know
this, or maybe you’re just in
denial
— but that place is, like,
full
of mutant forms and whatever. Everyone knows that. The people who work there pass all the weird stuff to their kids. In the genes.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“So what happened to Kevin?”

“Kevin who?”

“Uh, hel-lo? The guy whose name you were just yelling?”

Sam gave her a blank look. “I don’t know anybody by that name.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Maybe you heard something else. I didn’t say Kevin.”

Jamie rolled her eyes. “I’m losing my hearing, right? That’s what happens when you’re in a rock band, right? ’Cause it’s all just noise, anyway — ”

“I never said
that
— ”

“You’re just like my dad. He doesn’t
get
it, either. Are you sure you’re not, like, forty-five years old?”

Sam took a deep breath. He caught the sweet, smoky scent of a burning fireplace from a house on Ravensburg Avenue. He and Jamie were leaving the industrial park now; the surrounding landscape was a familiar suburban silhouette.

She’s helping you. Even after what you did to her.

Cut her some slack.

“Okay, I don’t
know
for sure what I said,” Sam confessed. “It wasn’t just a headache. It was more than that — a migraine or something. Worse. Like temporary insanity. I was hearing things.”

“Hearing things?” Jamie’s face brightened. “Like what?”

“Voices. You know.”

“Like a moaning?”

“Sort of.”

“A cry for help?”

“Well … yeah. How — ?”

“I’ve heard of this,” Jamie said excitedly “They’re doing human experimentation down there. Growing mutants in test tubes. Cutting people apart and pasting the pieces together — ”

“Jamie, that’s ridiculous.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t you think my parents would tell me — ?”

“Uh, excuse me? Wake up to the twenty-first century, Sam. It’s all top secret. Government projects.” Jamie pulled her backpack around, reached in, and yanked out a dogeared magazine. “Look at this.”

She paused under a street lamp. Sam caught a glimpse of the title page:

As Jamie leafed through, Sam saw page after page of lurid, bizarre photos
— THE THREE-YEAR-OLD WITH A REAL BEARD!!!! … MEET MR. SPEX, A
REAL
FOUR EYES!!! SAVE THIS GRAY WOLF — WAIT, IT’S A MAN!!! … FROM THIS PLANET? YOUR CALL!!
— with sinister-looking graphics and hysterical text to match the screaming headlines.

Sam groaned. “Oh, please.”

“Wait! Skip the first half. It’s all stupid stuff. But look in the back — this chapter here: ‘Real Scientific Phenomena Too Disturbing for the Mass Media.’ It’s totally necessary to
know
this. It’s the future of our world. And — I’m telling you this so you’ll understand, and if you laugh I’ll kill you — it’s also what my songs are about. It’s the whole inspiration for Inhuman Phenomena.”

“
This
stuff is? Circus freaks?”

“Government conspiracies. Mind control. Just read it.
Then
talk to me.”

She folded up the magazine and shoved it into Sam’s back pocket.

The magazine was stupid. Embarrassing.

Government conspiracies.

That was always the excuse for things people couldn’t explain. Alien abductions. Epidemics. UFOs.

If in doubt, blame the government.

But you were doing it, too, Sam.

Back in the basement at Turing-Douglas. You were imagining spies and political prisoners.

Sam inhaled the smoky autumnal air. He was farther away from the lab now. He could be more rational.

No more hysteria, Sam. When you think it through, you’ll realize there must be an explanation.

Epidemics are random. Weather balloons look like flying saucers. The water supply does not contain mind control drugs. And the Turing-Douglas basement doesn’t have any mutant prisoners.

“You know, most of this stuff can be explained,” Sam said.

“Then why is it so secret?” Jamie persisted. “Why can’t your parents tell you what they do?”

“They do — well, some of it. They’re working on an electronic copy of a human brain.”

“See?
That’s why they have the corpses and stuff down there.”

“No, Jamie. It’s boring and mechanical. Something about
switches.
The brain has these nerve endings that are like on-off switches? When you think—when you feel — electricity flashes across billions of these switches in a complicated pattern. So if you re-create the patterns — ”

“You make a brain.”

“So that’s what my parents are doing. Working on a map. Of switches.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what else? They have to be working on something else. To explain the screaming voices — ”

“Jamie — ”

“Sam, don’t play dumb. What you just described — the switches — everybody knows that. I’ve read about it in
Professor Phlingus.
Your mom and dad haven’t told you the
secret
part. They’re not
allowed
to. You’re not seeing the obvious.”