Pass/Fail (2012) (22 page)

He smiled and shook his head and wondered if a dumb joke would be the last thing she ever said to him.

A white line had been painted at the start of the tire-run to mark the starting position. Jake stepped towards it slowly, shaking out his legs and his arms, trying to loosen himself up for the run ahead of him. He felt stiff as a board. He was still stretching when he noticed another Proctor coming toward him. It seemed unlikely that this new Proctor was just late for the test—they were always punctual. As he came closer, Jake saw that the newcomer’s suit was rumpled and one sleeve was torn so that it almost hung free at the shoulder. There was something wrong with the Proctor’s mask, as well. As the Proctor came still closer Jake saw a bad scratch down the front of the mask—no, it was a crack, as if the mask had been torn in half and then glued back together.

The new Proctor had something in his hand. Not a pistol, exactly.

Jake turned to look at the Proctor who was stationed to time the laps. He wanted to ask what this late arrival meant—was it some nasty twist to a test that was already deadly enough? Maybe he didn’t want to know.

The new Proctor kept striding toward him with total determination. But its posture was wrong—not straight enough. And then it was lifting its arm, holding up its weapon. Jake shied back at the last second before he was impaled on it.

He wasn’t the ragged Proctor’s target, though. The sort-of gun jabbed into the blue serge suit of the timing Proctor, who collapsed without a sound to the green grass. He lay there twitching as if he’d received a massive electric shock.

“It’s called a stun gun,” the Proctor with the broken mask said to Jake, holding up its weapon. Its voice was something like the familiar buzzing drone but a lot more emotional than Jake had expected. He could definitely hear a sneer in that voice. “I promise it’s not lethal, if you care. I’ll explain everything later—right now we don’t have time. In a few seconds the idiots over there,” the newcomer went on, gesturing at the Proctors holding pistols at the far side of the field, “are going to realize something’s wrong. They’ve been trained never to question what another Proctor does. That’s why I’m wearing this mask. If I took it off they would shoot me on sight. This way we have a chance to get away before they start wondering.” The masked newcomer bent down and started going through the fallen Proctor’s pockets. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Jake asked. He didn’t like this at all. It didn’t make any sense.

“Well, first we’re going to escape. After that, you can choose for yourself.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Megan came running after Jake as he started to follow the newcomer. “What’s going on? Who is he?”

“I think I’m walking away from the test,” Jake said, having trouble believing it himself. If he didn’t run the obstacle course he would receive a FAIL for the test—which meant certain death.

But maybe that didn’t matter anymore. Maybe there was a new option available to him.

As for who the masked man was, Jake had a pretty good idea.

The three of them headed around the side of the school and back toward the ruins. Once they were around a corner of the building the stranger peeled off his mask. He looked to be college aged, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. He had a good coating of stubble on his cheeks and his face was dirty, but Megan stopped in her tracks and gasped when she got a good look at him.

“But he—he looks just like—”

The stranger’s face was lined and his eyes were old. He was thinner than Jake, and his hair was unevenly cut. They might have been brothers. They might have been identical twins, except that one was older than the other. Jake held out a hand. “You must be Jake McCartney,” Jake said.

“No.” The stranger shoved the mask in a pocket of his suit and peeled off his scuffed leather gloves. “That’s not my name and it never was. It’s not yours, either. Just call me D, alright?”

“Okay. Do you want to call me H, then?” Jake asked.

D didn’t reply. He reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small iron pry bar. Kneeling down in the sand in the middle of the ruins he started jabbing the bar into the ground, again and again, until one time it made a clunking sound that suggested it had hit something solid and wooden underneath the sand. “There’s not a lot of time to talk right now. We’re on a tight schedule. Tell her to go away.”

“What?” Megan demanded. “Oh, no. Not as long as Jake’s in danger.”

“I trust her,” Jake said.

D looked up at him with squinting eyes. “You got my message, right? ‘Don’t trust anyone over seventeen?’ I’ve found out since—you can’t trust anyone seventeen or younger, either. Maybe little kids. Like, six year-olds. No, the only person you can really trust is yourself. Which means you and me.”

“I won’t go anywhere without her,” Jake insisted.

D shrugged. “If she’s a spy for Zuraw—”

“She’s not!”

“Fine,” D said. “But if she is, she’s going to wish she stayed behind. Help me with this.” Together they shoved sand away from the trap door that led into the maze of death under the school. Soon they had the door clear, a grimy square of wood with metal-reinforced corners.

“I tried getting it open again myself but it was sealed shut,” Jake said.

D’s response was to jam his pry bar into one edge of the door. Grunting, he heaved back until the wood splintered and cracked. Then he shoved his fingers into the hole he’d made and pulled upward with all his strength. The door groaned open, revealing the white staircase leading down and inside.

D was in a lot better shape than Jake, it seemed.

The three of them hurried inside. Jake started to pull the trap door closed behind him but D told him not to bother. “By the time they realize what we’re up to, we need to be done and on our way out of here. We have maybe half an hour. It all depends on whether Zuraw is paying close attention. How far apart are your tests? A couple days?”

“I’m in some kind of lightning round,” Jake said.

“Crap.” D looked scared for the first time. “I’m so sorry. I would have come sooner but I had to get everything ready, first. We only get one chance at this.”

“Who is this guy?” Megan asked.

They both turned to look at her. Jake licked his lips. “This is my fellow clone, D,” he said. “He was part of the Curriculum a while ago—I don’t know how long ago. He’s the only one who didn’t fail and who wasn’t executed. Instead he got a grade of INCOMPLETE instead. That’s what it said in Mr. Zuraw’s computer, anyway.” He looked at D. “How do you get an INCOMPLETE?”

“Well, you fight your way out. Then you run away,” D said.

“I thought of trying that, but I’m only seventeen. There’s no way I could get a job or rent an apartment on my own, and the police would always be looking for me—”

“Not up in the mountains.” D grimaced. “Nobody ever goes up there. There aren’t any roads. I nearly starved to death my first week, but now I do okay. If I ever see a human being I hide and wait for them to leave. I have a little cabin I built for myself, camouflaged from the air so passing planes can’t see it. Mostly I hunt and fish for the food I need.”

“That sounds horrible,” Megan said. “You must be so lonely.”

“I’m alive,” D said. “That’s more than I can say for E, F, or G.”

Jake felt his blood running cold. “They were—”

“Murdered. Yeah,” D said. “I sneak down to watch it happen every time. I felt like I owed it to them, to be there when it happened. I always knew I would come back when I was ready and save one of us. Looks like it might be you, H. But only if we move fast, right now.” He stepped up to the door at the end of the stairway and tapped it with his fingers. When it didn’t open he took a step back, then ran at it and smashed through it with his shoulder. It was made of light wood and it collapsed easily under his weight.

“Now, come on. We have work to do.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked. “What’s your plan?”

“I’m going to make sure there is no I or J or K. I’m going to shut he Curriculum down, permanently. You in?”

The phone in Jake’s pocket chose that moment to start vibrating.

Chapter Fifty

Jake pulled the phone out of his pocket. D stared at it as if Jake was holding a live hand grenade. “Have you seen these?” he asked D. “I don’t know how they work, but—”

“They’re called cell phones,” D told him. “I know they must seem pretty cool to you, but out there, in the real world, everybody has them. Even kids these days. Who’s calling you?”

“Mr. Zuraw. Should I answer it?”

D nodded tensely.

“Hello, Jake,” the guidance counselor said. “Everything alright? It looks like you might be late for a test. I don’t need to tell you how unfortunate that would be.”

Jake swallowed the lump in his throat. “Things are… fine,” he said. He looked at Megan and D but they both just shrugged. They didn’t know what to do, either. “I’m here on the soccer field,” Jake went on, improvising, “waiting for a test to begin. It looks like there’s a problem.”

“Oh? Really?” Mr. Zuraw asked, sounding no more than curious.

“One of the Proctors had a fit. Or something. Maybe a seizure.”

“I see. Well,” Mr. Zuraw said with a sigh, “I suppose I’ll have to come down there personally and investigate, hmm? See you soon.”

Jake clicked the phone shut.

“Okay,” D said. “Good work. It’ll take him a while to figure out what happened.”

“Can’t he just look at the cameras?” Megan asked.

D frowned. “What cameras?”

Jake explained, “He’s always one step ahead of me. We assumed he must have cameras everywhere, and microphones too.”

“Nope.” D shook his head. “He keeps track of you through spies—people close to you, people you’re likely to trust.”

Jake forced himself not to glance at Megan. She couldn’t be a spy. It was impossible. “My mom was one,” he said. “Our mom, I guess.”

“Yeah. I know. Both of you, come with me, and hurry.” He headed down the white corridor and busted through another door. Inside lay a shiny and immaculately clean machine shop, with tools hanging on the wall and stacks of wood and sheet metal piled under a waist-high table. D went to a closet and took out a number of small items which he placed on the table. He started assembling some kind of electronic device from the pieces, and kept talking while he did it.

“There are some things you should know,” he told Jake. “Things I’ve found out by hacking Zuraw’s computer system.”

“You know about the computers, too?” Megan asked. “Let me guess. Outside of Fulton everybody has one of those as well. Even the kids.”

“Especially the kids. They kept cell phones and computers out of Fulton to limit your contact with the outside world. Listen, if any of us survive to get out of here, we can do questions and answers then. For now, just let me talk.” He plugged a wire into a small black box and a screen on its side lit up, showing the numbers 00:00. “I don’t know why they’re doing this to you. I’ve never been able to learn what they hope to accomplish with all this testing—you have to pass the Curriculum to find out, and nobody ever has. But I know some history, about how this got started.”

With deft hands he loaded batteries into another small box, then sealed it by wrapping it numerous times with electrical tape.

“It began as a kind of nation-wide gifted program, administered by a group called the Youth Steering Committee, about thirty years ago. There was a competition. A written test that every high school student in America took. Every year the winner with the top score came here to Fulton to take additional tests, on a Pass/Fail basis, with a prize going to anyone who could pass the full Curriculum. The tests weren’t anything like they are now. Most of them were just word problems or complicated math equations. They were looking for the smartest kid who ever lived, basically. But there was a problem. Nobody could ever pass the complete round of tests. One kid got pretty close—close enough that when he grew up they actually asked him to take over running the Curriculum. You would recognize him if you saw a picture of him. You would call him Jake McCartney, the original Jake McCartney, though that wasn’t his actual name.”

On the table D laid out several lengths of insulated wires. He stripped their ends and twisted the exposed copper fibers into tight braids.

“McCartney’s job was to get at least one kid to pass the full series of tests. He hired the best teachers, child psychologists, biologists money could buy and brought them here to create the perfect learning environment. A lot of them still live here. He tried everything they could think of—he brought whole families out here so the Curriculum students wouldn’t get homesick, he offered cash and prizes for anyone who could solve some of the especially thorny tests. He even tried giving them drugs to enhance their problem-solving abilities. Nothing really helped. The tests were just too hard. The YSC still needed somebody who could pass them all, though. So McCartney told them he had another idea, one which they might not like. If incentives weren’t enough to get people to pass, he would try disincentives. He would threaten the students. If they failed too many tests, he would punish them. The YSC agreed—they didn’t like it at all. To prove he was right, McCartney put himself through the tests again. He hired teachers to intimidate him and even give him severe electric shocks if he couldn’t solve the tests. These teachers were his employees, and he worried he might fire them if they were hard on him, so he made them wear masks so he could never see who it was who was torturing him. He made the masks reflective so that when he looked at his tormentors, he would see his own face and remember he was doing this to himself.”

D took a pronged object out of a carton full of them and hooked it up to the box of batteries. Sparks jumped between the prongs. He unhooked the wires from the batteries and the pronged device and then wired the timer inbetween them.

“It turned out McCartney was right. He got closer to solving the tests then anybody ever had before. A lot closer. It turned out he had a very special quality. Most people freeze up when they’re scared or hurt. Their brains shut down and their reflexes take over. But some rare people actually think better when they’re under stress. McCartney was one of those people. He was much too old for the purposes of the YSC—they wanted a high school senior—but he had a solution to that, too. This was back in the late 90s. About the time scientists first managed to clone a healthy mammal—it was a sheep, if I recall correctly. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before somebody cloned a human being. McCartney decided to be the first. Can you see where this story is going?”