The Trial (The Tree House) (20 page)

Immediately
, he locked his wide eyes on me and stared, fear radiating from him like heat from a fire. I’m glad Meyers did all the talking after that because I don’t think my mouth could have formed the words. My hands shook so bad like Jack’s did when he first held a gun in Aly’s apartment.

I don’t remember what Meyers said to him. I don’t remember if he said anything back. I just remember that Meyers then took his gun off
the kid and pointed it at me telling me that I had to be the one to kill him. I remember the way Dylan looked at me as I held the gun to his head. I don’t think he noticed how bad my arm shook or the fact that I could no longer look in his eyes as I pulled the trigger.

After the deed was done, I crumpled to the floor, not really caring that the legs of my pants were slowly soaking in the dead boy’s blood as it pooled around his head. Meyers scoffed in disgust as he pulled out a black cellphone – everything was black with these people. Cars, suits, guns, cellphones, souls – and called someone. Again
, I wasn’t listening to what he was saying. I don’t really even remember leaving the place or getting into the car. But when Meyers turned the key and started the engine, he glanced in his rearview mirror and told me it would get easier.

And it did.

Chapter six

It’s not very hard to memorize this map. The door at the end of the hall opens and I hurry to stuff the map into the toilet bowl. It swirls around a couple times before getting sucked down with the water and I can only hope Ryan has a good memory.

When I get to my window I see that he’s already at his and we both watch as three guys in gray – none of them Zack – push a wheelchair down the hall toward us. I feel my heart pound as I wonder which one of us is going to go with them this time and I’m sure Ryan is thinking the same thing. The three stop in front of his door and tell him to get back and I feel my body relax a little bit in relief. Immediately, my stomach twists with guilt as I realize that I’d rather they take him than Anna. She seems so much more fragile than he does, but that’s still no excuse.

Ryan steps back defeated and a few moments later they’ve drugged him and push him back down the hall and out the door. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until my lungs start to hurt and I have to let it out with a heavy sigh.

Zack brings him back again a while later. Even if he wasn’t drugged up and sluggish, he’d look terrible. As Zack unlocks his cell door, Ryan’s head slumps forward and I see flakey patches of skin where his hair is falling out. Didn’t he just get here? What kind of crap are they pumping into him that could make him deteriorate so quickly?

A few moments later, Zack comes back out of his room with the empty wheelchair.

“
Psst,” I hiss.

He glances at me then at the camera up in the corner. “What?” he murmurs not looking my
way.

“We’re running out of time. When is this plan happening?”

“Give me two more days.”

I shake my head and hit my knuckles against the door. “Ryan and Anna don’t have two more days.”

With narrowed eyes, Zack makes his way over to my cell and stands in front of me. “I already told you, those two are not our concern. You’re our number one priority.”

“Well
, I’m not
my
number one priority. We leave tonight or I’m not going anywhere.”

“We’re not r
eady yet–”

“Well
, get ready,” I interrupt. “I’m leaving tonight with Ryan and Anna or not at all.”

Zack snaps his mouth shut hard and I can see the lines in his jaw stand out as he grinds his teeth together. I bet he’s not used to taking orders from someone half his age.

“Fine,” he grumbles then turns and walks quickly back down the hall and shuts the door behind him.

As soon as he’s gone, I turn and slump down against the door. My head is still pounding from smacking it
on the bedframe. How long ago was that anyway? How long have I been here? Time seems irrelevant in this place. It’s not marked by seconds and minutes but by the growing fear for when they’ll be coming for you again. This place is worse than a nightmare. At least you can wake up from those.

“We have to get out of here,” I mutter under my breath. Anna stirs in her bed and her movement brings me to my feet. “Why won’t you come with us?” I ask leaning my forehead against the bars. They’re soothing on my aching head.

I can hear her raspy breathing. Finally, she lets out a congested sigh. “They came into my house, Ben. These two guys in black suits dragged me out of my bed and down the stairs and made me watch as they killed my family. I’m alone now. At least in here I have a place to sleep and meals three times a day. Even if the food does suck.” Then she lets out a wet, painful sounding cough that has me rubbing at my own throat. “There’s nothing left for me out there.”

“I can take care of you,” I whisper feeling my hands clench into fists. Anna appears in her window and her dull eyes study my face. “There’s a place I can bring you to that’s safe. It has beds and better food and people like us and we’ll be your family.” I need to save her.

“It won’t matter, Ben,” she says shaking her head. “I’m not going to last much longer anyway.”

“It matters to me,” I snap pushing away from the door. My skin is crawling and my legs are tingling and I just need to move. Anna is silent as I pace back and forth in my cell.

How can she not care? How can she want to stay in a place like this? How can she give up so easily?

I remember that day Jack and I were on our way to Logan’s house. He wanted to call it quits and I remember looking at him and feeling so angry
, it took everything in me not to shove him out onto the sidewalk. But I also remember standing outside that house, just knowing deep down that we were going to find everyone dead or gone. Neither was worse than the other because failure is failure.

I get why Jack wanted to give up. I get why he wanted to just stop trying but that didn’t mean we could.  There was going to come a day when we wouldn’t be too late. I
had to tell myself that eventually we would knock on a door, or just kick it down, and someone would be there, alive. They’d be scared out of their mind, but they would be alive. I had to believe that. If I hadn’t, Arie and Melody would be dead.

In London, there was never the possibility of seeing someone make it out alive because I was the one putting a bullet through their brain. But here
, there was a chance – even if it was a small chance – and I had to hold onto that.

“You will make it though, Ben.”

Slowly, I make my way back over to the door to find Anna is still there. A small smile appears on her cracked, pale lips. “What makes you think I’ll survive?” I ask bitterly.

The smile doesn’t leave her face even though my words are coated with rust. “Because you have what I don’t.”

“And what’s that?”

“Hope.”

* * *

I don’t know how long we sit in silence after that but the minutes feel like
millenniums. There’s nothing to do but wait. The map has been destroyed and both Anna and Ryan are worse for wear and need to rest so I’m left alone to my own thoughts. All I can do is wait.

The hum of the florescent light above me is getting really irritating and it definitely doesn’t help one bit when I close my eyes. Maybe if I can just think about something else. My head is still hurting. It feels like someone has gone and stapled my brain to my skull in fifty places.

Anna’s mattress crumples as she turns over on her bed and I immediately begin to think about our conversation. Such a hopeless girl. Alright, so our situation is pretty dire but what’s the point of going on if you don’t have hope? I suppose I would have trouble keeping my chin up too if I had to watch my family get killed over and over in my mind. Why did they do that? Is there something different about some of the patients that makes Eli want to keep them instead of just killing them? Maybe that’s why I’m here instead of dead in that alley. But what’s different about me? Why did Eli choose me specifically to become his lab rat for this new chip he’s developing? Maybe it has something to do with London. Now that I think of it, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Maybe he was always planning to get to me and Chris was just unlucky enough to get caught up in it. I’d never seen a dead body before stumbling into our flat that night in London but I’ve seen more than my fair share since then.

I’m begin
ning to think everything that’s happened has been mapped out since the beginning. From the moment I found Chris, to stepping off the plane in America, to searching for the missing patients, to getting shot and almost killed. Eli called me remarkable. What does that even mean?

“Ben, wake up!”

A fist against my cell door has me scrambling to my feet. My eyes are blurry from having been shut for so long so it takes me a minute to blink everything back into focus. Zack hurries in and starts digging into his pockets.

“Take this,” he says holding out a watch to me. “You only have seven minutes to get through the vent system,” he explains quickly and grabs my shoulders. “If you’re even a minute late, the whole plan is ruined. Got it?” I nod my foggy head and he nods back satisfied. “Once you get to the floor above us, head straight for the elevator. Use this.” He hands me his keycard. “Hold the button for the fourth floor until the doors close. It’ll send you straight there without stopping at any other floor.”

“What about the cameras?” I ask feeling my heart pound as my anxiety grows.

“We have one of our guys in the surveillance room so you don’t have to worry about the cameras. Just try not to
run into anyone on the floor.”

“What do we do once we get there?”

Zack checks his own watch and lets out an impatient grunt. “When you get out of the elevator, turn right and then left. There will be a fire exit that’ll take you out into the alley next to the building. Now, you need to go.”

I glance down at the key
card then back up at Zack. “What about you? Aren’t you going to get in trouble for helping me?”

The side of his mouth twitches as he thinks.
Then he dips his head and his voice. “Hit me.”

“What?”

“We need it to look like you overpowered me. Come on, I know you’ve been wanting to.”

My heart is still pounding in my ears and a cold sweat breaks out on my forehead. “Are you serious?” I ask as I fumble to get the watch on my wrist.

“Come on!” he barks, spit flying into my face. “Hit me, lab rat!”

Well, he asked for it.
Without another thought, I clench my hand tightly into a fist and swing. My knuckles connect with his nose and I hear a loud crack. His head snaps back bringing the rest of his body with it to the floor. He’s out cold. That should be convincing enough.

“Come on, Ben!” Ryan calls from his cell.

Before I leave, I bend down and dig through Zack’s pockets. There’s one of those syringes filled with the quick heal serum and I stuff it into my own pocket before making my way out into the hallway.

I shut and lock my cell door before moving on to Ryan. He’s standing back from his door, bouncing up and down on his toes and when I open his
cell, he stumbles out all too eager to leave this place. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he says with glimmering eyes.

“Not without Anna,” I say and hurry over to her door. The card slides through the slot with a soft beep and I open
the door. “Anna?” At first I don’t see her.

“Ben.” I look down to find her sitting on the floor beside me hugging her knobby knees with thin, fragile arms. She looks so much smaller than I thought. “I told you it’s hopeless,” she whispers.

“It’s okay.” Carefully, I pull her up by her bony shoulders. “I have enough hope for the both of us.”

A small smile stretches Anna’s pale face as she takes me hand and lets me lead her out of her cell. When we get into the hall, she tugs on my arm and I turn to look at her. Before I can react, she stretches up onto her toes and presses her lips against mine. They’re cracked and rough but warm and alive and I find myself kissing her back.

“Alright, you two,” Ryan mutters uncomfortably. “There will be plenty of time for that when we get out of this nightmare.”

Ryan is right. We need to move. I hear Zack groan from in my cell and I quickly glance at the watch on my wrist. We only have five minutes.

I slide the keycard through the slot at the end of the hall and the small box beeps. With one last look up at the camera in the corner, I pull on the door and it opens easily.

There’s no going back now.

The hallway outside the door stretches on like a dark, silent cave. Zack didn’t mention anything about security guards on our floor so I’m guessing we don’t have to worry about them down here. The cameras, he said, are being manned by one of our allies so really we could just make a mad dash for the air duct.