A Vault of Sins (10 page)

“Why him?”

I pause, feeling Nick’s presence as he hovers over my shoulder.

“Why him? Why not her? Why not another table?”

“He’s the closest,” I reply matter-of-factly.

Jason looks up at me, and suddenly I’m consumed by everything he is, like I’m looking through a microscope at the clean, healthy fibers of his soul.

As if I’ve spoken out loud, Nick says, “We don’t have souls. We’re flesh and bone and blood and tissue. We’re energy and nothing more.”

Jason stares at me, concerned, but he doesn’t make a move to protect himself or shout for help.

“How can you say that?” My focus remains trained on Jason, my hands trembling. “If we’re nothing more than matter, there’s no reason for you to want to kill all of these people.”

Unless you’re upset that we’re nothing more than blood and bone
.

“Why him?” Nick repeats.

“He’s closest.”

He points to the woman next to Jason. “If you were to kill her, who knows? A small shift in your decision could change your entire life.” Nick grasps onto my hand with the gun and repositions it until I’m aiming at the woman. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

“
No.
”

“Shoot the gun, Evalyn.” His index finger clamps on top of mine. “It’s all butterflies’ wings. Meghan dies either way, and so does everyone in this room.”

***

I’ve been at the lodge for less than twenty-four hours and I’m already a frequent guest of the liquor cabinet. In the morning, I mix the vodka into my orange juice and no one says a word.

Casey frowns as he watches me. I want to say something about last night and the way I acted, but before I can, sharp white light illuminates the common room.

Wes places a black cube on the coffee table. An iridescent image hovers above it. Although I’ve never seen it before, I know exactly what it is.

“The Compass Room.” I sit on the couch next to Wes, the three-dimensional map entrancing me. In the very center, the ground slopes upward, and on top of the hill rests the lodge we woke up in, before the fire destroyed it. To the right is the lake, and a wall surrounds the entire section of forest in the shape of a poorly-drawn oval.

“Giving you bad flashbacks?” Wes asks me.

“A little,” I mumble, gaping at the map.

“You remember the knives you all had—the ones that disintegrated when they were against human flesh?”

“Or were supposed to.”

“Well, yes.” From the side table, Wes picks up a blade that looks identical to the ones we had in the Compass Room. He hands it to me. “Go ahead.”

I run my finger along the blade, and when I reach the tip, I push. The metal creases.

“Harder. Make the blade disappear.”

I drive the knife into the flesh of my palm, and the blade disintegrates before my eyes. Soon, nothing’s left other than the hilt resting against my hand.

Wes nods toward the hilt. “What if I told you that the entire Compass Room—well,
most
of the Compass Room—was made up of that same nanotechnology?”

“I’d say you were fucking insane.”

When Wes grins, my stomach twists, and I down the rest of my screwdriver. I swallow and say, “Are you trying to tell me that we weren’t actually in the woods?”

He brings his hands together and pulls them apart rapidly, and the map zooms out, showing not only the Compass Room, but the forest surrounding it. “Technically, you were in the woods.” He points to a part of the forest outside of the wall. “This land is all California experimental wilderness.”

“Real trees and dirt and shit.”

He laughs, even though I’m not trying to be funny. “Real trees and dirt and shit.”

I ball my clammy hands into fists. “And inside the Compass Room?”

“Everything’s controlled. Most of what you saw were nanos at work, replicating the forest and buildings and such. Of course, not everything was made up of the nanotechnology. The water in the Compass Room was real. And vines, rope—some parts were animatronic, but last I heard, they were trying to phase those out . . .”

I tune him out as the gravity of the truth settles in. The forest of the Compass Room wasn’t a forest at all. I gape at the knife in my hand, cutting off whatever sentence Wes was in the middle of. “Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why go through all of that trouble? Why not just fence us in somewhere
real
?”

Wes holds out his hand, and I rest the hilt of the knife in his upturned palm. Like insects, the tiny particles crawl back into place, and the knife reforms.

“Control.” He holds the knife up. “Everything in the Compass Room is controlled by us. Created by us. We were the gods within your little world. Your camp demolished, stumbling onto your cabin right when you needed it, swimming up and into the cave right when you were about to run out of breath—none of those things were by chance. Every circumstance was created, whether it was physical or a figment of your imagination.”

Sweat prickles on the back of my neck, and although I’m on the verge of passing out, I try desperately to make sense of how our little hell worked. Casey sits across from us with a cup of coffee in his hand.

“You know all this?” I ask him.

He nods solemnly. “Told me when I got up here.”

“Think of it as four separate parts.” Wes swipes his hands. We zoom in toward a section of Compass Room land. The trees, brush, and ground glow yellow. “The landscape is made up of nanotechnology. This is the base layer. While we control it, we never allowed you to see the changes we made.”

“We’d always come upon them.” I think of the cabin Casey and I stumbled upon.

“Exactly. Now the second part is composed of Bots.” Within the image of the forest, a noose slithers across the ground, and I suppress a shudder. “They would be the animatronic pieces that interacted with you, or the illusion spheres.” Wes snaps his fingers, and the silver sphere he was tinkering with the day before chirps to life on the mantle, humming softly as it begins to rise.

Casey starts. “Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.” Wes waves his hand and the Bot dies.

“But what we saw was a product of the chip in our heads, right?”

He nods. “The purpose of the illusion sphere was to help triangulate the location of the illusion if more than one person could see it, and then to kill if necessary.”

I stare at the Bot on the mantle.
The Bots can project a thousand different senses, and kill in a thousand different ways
. I wonder how it chose to end each of us—if that was decided by an engineer, or if a little game show wheel existed inside each of the spheres, spinning when the illusion proved we were immoral.
Oh look, Erity isn’t sad about being a murdering witch. Looks like we’ll tear her body into a million pieces!

“Third layer is everything real. Food, water, supplies, etc.”

“And the fourth?”

The map zooms out again. A blue ball of light glows beneath the hill of the Compass Room lodge. “Every Compass Room has what we call a Vault—a room of energy beneath the ground right in the center of the CR. After the engineers are finished computing the data from the room, it’s stored in the Vault. The only people who then have access to the Vault and a way to retrieve that information are high-level engineers such as Gemma Branam.

“But the technology of the Vault is impossible to hack. If the Division of Judicial Technology is hiding something about the Compass Rooms, it would be there.”

The Vault. I stare at that glowing blue ball beneath the lodge—at the center of the Compass Room. A brain. All Compass Room data is stored within, accessed only by the most elite CR engineers. “So the engineers are stationed within their little room behind the sky . . .”

“Beneath the ground,” he corrects.

“Beneath the ground, and sit behind their epically massive control panel, and as they watch the waves in our brains rise and fall to levels dangerously resembling psychopaths, they press their buttons and watch us dance.”

When he smiles, a hint of sadness rests behind his eyes. It’s the first time he’s seemed even slightly remorseful. “Dance.” He hums, like he’s meditating on the word.

I continue. “Whatever data collected on us is then stored in the Vault, and can only be accessed by high-level engineers. Am I getting everything right?”

“Very close. You’re wrong about only one thing.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Our control panel?” He taps on his head. “It’s all up in here.”

Posted by DreamsnIllusions:
Hi! I’m a new member and haven’t really done a lot of reading through old threads, so pardon me if this is a double post.

I was just wondering if there was a kind of support group for grievers. I followed the Compass Room trial closely to the point of becoming obsessed with it, and have always rooted for the freedom of EI, CH, and VC.

I have to say that, after the feed was leaked, I was emotionally devastated by the contents—the romances, the gore, and the tragedy alike. As silly as it may sound, I’m so invested in this case that I’d love some kind of emotional support system—people who are praying that EI and CH stay hidden, and also those who are closely watching VC’s trial form.

Posted by Nine Lives:
DreamsnIllusions, here is a [link] to a group. I’ll message you the password. They value privacy above anything else, so please, no sharing.

Members of Reprise come and go throughout the day. Stomping the snow off their boots, they peel away their layers and inhale the warm air. Often they’ll rub the chill from their hands by the fire before Maliyah offers them a cup of hot, black coffee, and joins them in a hushed discussion over the dining table.

Casey and I sit next to each other on the loveseat facing a set of ceiling-high windows. They meet each other at an angle pointing out into the valley. It’s as though we sit at the translucent bow of a ship, waiting to set sail right over the tops of those trees and to the mountains lining the horizon. It’s beautiful, even though the endlessness of the forest creates a sinking stone in my gut—a weight tethering me down to the wild.

My hand rests on top of my thigh, and he traces it lightly with his fingers. The touch says so much, more than thousands of words strung together. I know we’re on the brink of mending.

“We should probably talk about a lot of things.”

“Probably.” I reach for my brandy-laced cider. Talking about anything only reminds me of the conversation with Wes I just emerged from.

The engineers have chips. All of them. They communicate with the Compass Room like we do, except while we are the ones controlled, they are the ones controlling.

The engineer chips are the key to the Compass Room sabotage that Reprise wants. The plan is pretty straight forward, albeit not easy: get a member of Reprise into the Compass Room. If Wes can replicate the chip in his head and inject it into the brain of another member, Reprise can find a way to frame that member for a crime horrible enough to receive a Compass Room sentence. With the power of an engineer, they will literally be able to move the earth to get to the Vault, exposing anything that the Division of Judicial Technology may be hiding.

“You think it’ll work?” I ask as Casey draws patterns on my hand. “Do you think Reprise can pull off that big of a stunt?”

“Yeah, I think they can. The question is whether or not they’ll find the conspiracy they’re looking for.”

Conspiracy. It’s such a fat, ugly word, but Reprise has already exposed so much the Division of Judicial Technology was trying to hide. First, the fact that the Compass Room malfunctioned. Then, the real feeds chronicling everything that really happened in Compass Room C.

To the left of us, Piper projects from her tablet images onto the blank wall in front of her. She moves them around with her hands like they’re a corkboard, stopping every once in a while to scratch her chin and tug on her cotton-candy-blue braid.

Casey leans in close. “You know what her job is?”

With his warm breath tickling my ear, it’s nearly impossible to respond. “Hmm?”

“Piper is the living, breathing Bible of us. She studies all of the criminals, collecting and filing data on our pasts, our crimes, and our actions in the Compass Room.”

Suddenly her being my
fan
makes a lot more sense. I chuckle. “I assume she even files away our fan-fiction, then?”

Casey furrows his eyebrows. “Fan-fiction?”

I bite my lip, thinking of all the naughty stories of us on the Internet. “People like to . . . well . . . imagine us in certain scenarios—particularly sexual ones—and then write about it.”

He frowns. “People write about us fucking? You and me?”

“You and me, me and Valerie, you and Valerie, you, me and Valerie. Stop looking at me like that—your eyes are going to pop out of your head.”

He realizes the face he’s making and relaxes.

“Anyway, that’s not even including everyone else inside Compass Room C.”

“That’s a little . . .”

“Fucked?”

To my surprise, the corner of his mouth twitches up in a smile. “And the sex between us?”

“I’m usually the one cruelly manipulating you.”

“Cruel manipulator, huh?” He pivots his body toward me, and suddenly my chest is pressed against his. God, I’ve missed him.

“Playing with your heart before smashing it, lying to you, cheating on you.” He dips his head so his lips are less than an inch from mine. “You have an online fan club, Casey. A lot of girls swooning over you, wanting to protect you from the wicked Evalyn Ibarra.”

Light dances across the mottled green and brown of his irises. The pad of his thumb brushes against my lower lip. “You are pretty wicked.”

My eyes flutter shut, but before either of us can move, Maliyah calls his name and asks him to start dinner. We break apart quickly, like we’re school kids caught making out behind the bus.

“Let me help you.” I stand and follow him into the kitchen.

He scoffs. “You help me? You always burned the potatoes.”

He’s referring to the campfire. The Compass Room. For the first time, my mind reverts back to our camp without my heart clenching in terror.

I slide onto a barstool, resting my elbows on the counter overlooking the stove. “I can watch you, at least.”

Watching Casey in the kitchen is seeing the formation of art. There’s no recipe involved. Everything is estimated, taste tested. Pinches and shakes, tiny pours and slow simmers. It’s like I’m not even here, and it isn’t until the aroma of the mushroom sauce he’s crafting wafts through the air does he finally turn to me, his hand cupped beneath an overflowing spoon. I slurp, and he laughs. His concoction is perfect, creamy with notes of garlic and thyme. A string of expletives leave my mouth and he laughs harder. The mending is beginning, Casey and I, tucked safely away where no one will find us.

It would be heaven, if it weren’t for the thought of Valerie lingering at the back of my mind. Valerie locked away. Valerie, taking the heat for everything we should be dealing with together.

And me not being with her is a sin I can’t shake, no matter how safe I feel in the hands of Reprise.

***

Casey screams in my dream.

Except I’m not dreaming about Casey. I’m dreaming about Valerie stuck in prison, getting pummeled by some psycho-bitch in an orange jumpsuit. The image of her dissipates, and I’m back in my bedroom at the Reprise base.

I’m awake, but the screaming hasn’t stopped.

My body reacts before my mind really grasps what’s happening, and my feet hit the floor. I race through a dark hallway and up a flight of stairs, running into walls as I try to find my way to his bedroom.

I jump onto the bed. He thrashes in his sleep, and I grasp his shoulders, using every ounce of my strength to shake him awake.

“It’s okay,” I repeat, over and over. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It isn’t real.”

His eyes finally open, focusing on me. He sits up, his hands roaming my body, as though to make sure I’m real, and then he takes me into his arms and holds me, breathing, “shit, shit, shit,” into my neck.

How many times has he screamed in his sleep? Once a week? Every night since we were extracted?

“You were dead.”

“I’m not dead.”

“I watched you bleed out and couldn’t stop it.”

“It’s okay. I’m here.” Straddling him, I rest my forehead against his clammy one. I should have been there to wake him up. I should have always been there to wake him up.

I press my palm to his chest and wait for his heartbeat to slow. I’m about to speak, to tell him again that I screwed up, that I’ll never live down running away, but I don’t get the chance.

He kisses me, a violent reminder of the feel and taste of him. He grips my shoulder blades and I wrap my arms around his neck, surrendering everything to him. I haven’t told him enough how sorry I am, but he won’t let me speak, flipping me onto my back, holding me down as he hungrily makes up for two months of absent kisses. He finally slows, and I open my mouth, my tongue lazily flicking against his.

We have time.

The Compass Room gave us a handful of hours. Rushed kisses and dirty sex in between fearing for our lives. We made what we could out of it, because we had to.

After the trial wasn’t much better. Hasty moments in the courthouse bathroom, hotel visits in the middle of the night. Minutes, hours, nothing more.

How did we fall in love so fast?
I had asked Valerie. I think I understand now. In a handful of days of knowing Casey, I saw him at his most vulnerable. His weakest. Outside the CR, it would have taken months, years, to unfold a lover like that, and maybe not even then. Inside of the Compass Room, the rules were different. We worked with what we had. We fell for each other on the brink of losing our lives.

But now we have time.
Now
proves that we weren’t just desperate after all.

By the way he teases me, I know he’s thinking of our time too. His teeth drag across my lip as he leaves my mouth, nipping my jaw as he makes his way to my earlobe. The words leave my mouth slurred as I make the point about the luxury of time. How we haven’t had it until now.

His tongue flicks against my ear. “You shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Why?” I breathe.

He pulls away. He’s faux-serious, sexy in the way he stares down at me, like he’s about to punish me for something.

Except I’m not expecting the kind of punishment that Casey dishes.

“Something you don’t know about me, is that I can be very, very patient when I want to be.”

I scoff. “Bullshit.” I’ve seen him lose his temper on more than one occasion.

Even with the lack of light, I watch his eyebrow rise. “I think you’re challenging me.”

I bite down hard on my lip, wondering how big of a mistake I just made. Unfortunately for me, I soon find out.

I’ve never been afraid of sex. I’ve never been afraid of wanting it or having it. But tonight, I feel like I’m a schoolgirl who has made a promise of abstinence. A schoolgirl with a wickedly charming, seductive boyfriend.

Casey begins his tease. Rolling to the side of me, he drags his tongue over the hollow of my throat as his thumb rubs circles against the inside of my thigh. I ran out of my room without thinking about my attire—underwear and a cami. His fingers climb, tracing the hem of my panties. I wait for them to slip beneath the fabric, but they never do.

“Please,” I groan.

When he chuckles against my skin, I realize the seriousness of our game.

I only fall asleep when I’m exhausted from being so turned on and frustrated. Casey cradles me in his arms like we had actually finished something when in reality, his only accomplishment was leaving me soaking wet.

The next two weeks consist of Casey proving to me his patience, and he has all the time in the world. As Reprise works mechanically on Project Valerie and Project sabotage, there’s nothing for me to do other than paint and drink and wait for Casey’s advances. In the morning, he feeds me fruit from the breakfast spread with his fingers until I realize he’s doing it just to frustrate me further. Every single touch adds fuel to the escalating fire, and he does it so casually—a chaste kiss, the pad of his thumb against my lower lip, his hot breath grazing my ear. I’m so knotted with lust—so
fucking
horny
—that I take to painting him again, seeking refuge in my room to map out the scars on his torso.

He sneaks up behind me, hands slinking around my waist. Caught red-handed glorifying his body. My face flushes with heat as his fingers dip beneath my shirt and sweep across my right hip bone.

“Missed the one right there.”

I wait until he leaves before I chuck my paintbrush against the window and cuss him out.

For two weeks, it’s him against me. Often, I think about taking to begging. If I pleaded with him to rip my clothes off, would he say no? I could crawl into his bed naked . . .

The way he plays me, it’s like he’s waiting for me to crack. I have too much pride for him to win, so by the end of the two weeks, I’m returning his chaste kisses, allowing his lips and fingers to graze over my body as I clench my thighs together and pretend he isn’t affecting me. It is a silent war if I ever felt one.

On the day the storm is supposed to roll in, I realize I haven’t done his body justice. I watch him from my bedroom window as he chops wood down by the service road. It can’t be more than forty degrees out. His movements are so natural, I can imagine him having done that his entire life—a Southern boy getting chores done for his mother because his father is too big of a fuck-up to get the labor done himself.

I watch the muscles in his arms and torso stretch as he heaves the axe up over his head and lets it fall, the log splitting in two.

I swish the brandy in my hand, my breath escaping me in small pants until I realize he’s turning me into an animal and I snap my jaw shut. Like he heard me, he drops his axe, glances up, and grins.

What an ass.

I back away from the window and wait, listening closely until I hear the front door open and shut. As he climbs the stairs to his room, I make an effort to meet him in the hall. Which was probably a mistake concerning my self-control. Dressed only in his jeans and glistening with sweat, he saunters toward me. I cross my arms over my chest and wait. He walks up to me and stops, eyes boring down on me. I cock my head, but it’s nearly impossible to keep up the indifferent façade. The smell of his sweat sparks something raw and feral inside of me, and I want to rake my fingers down his chest and claw the buttons off his pants. He leans in, brushes his lips against mine, and slips past me.

He’s going to kill me.

It’s my stupid mistake for thinking the worst is over for the night.

I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth. He walks in with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. “Here.” He points to his chest. “This is the one you missed.”

“Oh, well thank you for your clarification,” I mumble sarcastically around my toothbrush.

He drops the towel. A blob of spit and paste dribbles down my chin as I drop my head to avoid looking at him, ungracefully spatting what’s left in my mouth into the sink.

“Do you mind?” I cry into the basin.

He turns the shower on. “You were taking too long.”

I grit my teeth. I think of how important my strong will really is when all I want to do is slip into the shower with him and memorize all of his scars.

Heat builds between my thighs. I release a quiet groan. “I don’t appreciate you subjecting me to your naked body.”