A Vault of Sins (11 page)

“Because you never subjected me to
your
naked body?”

“Oh,
fuck you.
” As I rinse out my mouth, I conjure a plan. He’s still standing outside the shower, and I spin around, trying to act as though his form isn’t affecting me at all. I can’t help but study him, the weight he’s gained back since his injury, the muscle defined by physical labor and not some overtly complex gym workout. Casey is someone who doesn’t care how he looks, as long as his body is able.

His body is able to do a hell of a lot of things.

He crosses his arms haughtily. Enough of this.

“Why didn’t you tell me that I was your first?”

He acts as though the question doesn’t faze him. He must have been expecting this when he saw that his conversation with Valerie was highlighted on the Reprise site.

He shrugs. “What would that have changed? Would you have not done it?”

“Maybe I would have done it better.”

He smirks. “Were you not trying, or something?”

My answer comes as a surprise even to me. “Why would I try? I had nothing to prove to you.”

“And not telling you that I was a virgin meant I had nothing to prove to you either.”

My throat tightens. My plan is unraveling—this wasn’t supposed to make me feel vulnerable. “So I’m it, then?”

He nods.

“Why?”

Now I’m in sensitive territory. Now I’ve cut through that smug exterior. The moment his face falls, he turns and steps into the shower, shutting the glass door behind him. I listen to his movements beneath the jet of the water, and I lean against the door, pressing my temple to the hot glass. “Talk to me.”

He doesn’t.

“Was it just because you thought that you were going to die?”
Was I only your end of the world screw?

The shower door opens, and Casey leans against the frame, naked and dripping wet. I can’t focus on anything other than the droplets of water sliding down the ridges of his body, not even when he says, “You know that’s not true.”

Snap out of it, dipshit
.

I lick my bottom lip slowly, trying on my best pair of bedroom eyes. “You gonna let me in, or what?”

He rolls around the answer in his mouth like he’s been waiting to say it all day. “Nope.” The door shuts in my face and steams up until he’s nothing more than a blur, the glass vibrating against the tip of my nose.

Okay. I surrender. He wins. Casey’s proved his willpower, and I’ll tell him that as soon as I dive into a snowbank outside. Racing out of the bathroom, I catch sight of the blustery flakes from the window at the end of the hall. Perfect. I’ll let it spray me until I’m shivering. Just as effective as a cold shower.

But I never make it outside. Trampling down the stairs, I’m distracted by a feed on the wall, and I skid to a halt. My blood freezes over without the help of the snow.

Maliyah turns to me, her face a collection of distraught lines. “Evalyn, I’m so sorry.”

Thread: Valerie Crane’s Sentence

Posted By DreamsnIllusions:
I am so heartbroken for VC and everything she has already been through.

Is there any way the sentence can be reversed? Anything the public can do to stop this?

TimtheTheorist:
There are already protests. But, if you remember, they didn’t do much for previous Compass Rooms.

I know you’re attached to the idea of VC being a victim, but just like last time, if she’s moral, than she’ll escape.

DreamsnIllusions:
I’m guessing you believe the CR really was a virtual simulation, then?

TimtheTheorist:
You’re right . . . I do.

VC will make it out of this predicament . . . if she’s supposed to.

I can’t pull my eyes away from the feed.

The deaths I have witnessed were gory, but over in a matter of seconds. All of them.

Now I will watch one of the people I care about most perish over the span of a few months.

“They can’t.” I don’t know how many times I’ve said this phrase. It feels like thousands in the span of the three minutes I’ve been watching the news.

Compass Room Survivor Sentenced to the Prison That Set Her Free

Valerie.

“How could they? After such a controversial trial?” It’s Piper. She’s crying as she tugs on the end of her blue braid, even though she’s never met Valerie. A side effect of having studied her life, no doubt.

“They’re trying to get rid of her.” Valerie, a voice of truth, one of only three who are willing to speak up. And the other two, me and Casey, are hiding.

“They can’t have anyone fighting against this technology,” says Maliyah. “Not if they really are hiding something.”

“What are you saying?” I wipe away the tears streaming down my face. “That they’ll kill her no matter if she’s deemed evil by the Compass Room standards?”

“I don’t know.” Maliyah begins to pace.

Everyone falls silent, watching the feed as the reporter explains Valerie’s story. Arrested moments after the real feed of the Compass Room was leaked, she’ll be serving another thirty days in a CR for her original crime of killing the three boys, being that Compass Room C didn’t develop an accurate enough reading on her prior to the malfunction.

They show a clip of her being escorted through prison in her orange jumpsuit, stoic and tired. The clip’s only ten seconds long, but nothing in her appearance tells me she’s willing to fight. And why would she? After all the hell, she must re-enter. She won’t make it out. She shouldn’t have made it out the first time, and that was before we pissed off Gemma.

Maliyah and Wes’s conversation rises beneath the feed.

“We could speed up our plan. Get an engineer into the room with Valerie and keep her safe,” he says.

“Impossible. You heard what the reporter said. The manifest for Compass Room J is almost filled. Plus, there’d be no way to frame one of our own and move the trial along quickly enough. They’re launching the room in three months.”

“Give me another idea, Maliyah. Let me know how I can fix this.”

“We can’t fix this.”

Casey stands at the bottom of the staircase, catching up on the situation. Our eyes meet.

I finally gain my courage. “Turn the feed off.”

Maliyah complies. Sitting on the floor, I glance around the room. Three of these people have risked being sought out as an enemy of the state solely because of their belief of corruption within the system. They’ve given Casey and me a place to hide and have expected nothing from us in return.

I remember what Val told me.
We’re not supposed to hide
.

I can’t be a hero. I can’t paint a letter on my chest like a superhero and fight for justice, because I don’t even know what justice means. I’ve killed people, I’ve hurt people, I love people who’ve done horrible things. I can’t be an advocate. I can’t be an icon.

But I can save her.

“Send me in.”

There is a deep, quiet breath before the fire erupts.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Casey growls.

“Valerie’s in trouble and I’m proposing a logical answer. It should be easy to secure my spot in that CR, right? Valerie did it. All I would have to do is give myself up.”

Piper is biting her lip so hard I’m sure it’s about to start bleeding. “What if they already filled the Room?”

“They’d make space for Evalyn.” Wes presses his fingers to his temples as he theorizes. “They want her too badly. All they’d have to do is postpone the sentencing for another female criminal already admitted.”

“You can’t be serious.” Casey’s eyes are glued to me. “Evalyn, this isn’t a game.”

Wes doesn’t look nearly as frightened as Casey or Piper, but I can tell he’s thinking hard. “It would be dangerous.” Wes looks to Maliyah. “What if I propose this as a mission for Reprise? Something to further prove our power to the Division of Judicial Technology? Evalyn will give herself up after we’ve implanted her with an engineer chip. She’ll ask to be put in the Compass Room one more time to clear all dues. She finds Valerie, they run to the wall—we have the means of extracting them at that point, Maliyah. You know we—”

“No.” Casey’s voice rises above Wes’s. “The stakes are too high. It isn’t worth the risk.”

“Valerie’s going to die if we do nothing!”

“
You
could die!”

“I’m not even supposed to be alive, Casey.”

“So you’re just going to
sacrifice yourself
?”

“I’ve fucked up!”
The words escape me so loudly and violently that everyone falls silent, even him. I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I keep making the wrong decisions. I keep killing people and hurting people and failing, ever since the shooting. I get that, okay? And I get that this could kill me, but the punishment of not acting is always worse.” I think of Valerie in prison, waiting for them to slaughter her. “I’ve been able to live through all of those wrong decisions, but if Valerie dies in that Compass Room because I chose to do nothing, I will not be able to live with myself.”

Casey gets it. I know he does, because when he understands something he doesn’t necessarily want to understand, he looks like he’s about to cry—like the truth burns him. He turns to Maliyah again, desperate. “You can’t let her do this.”

I don’t give Maliyah a chance to respond. “Don’t you dare turn to her,” I growl, standing. “Look at me, Casey.
Now
.”

It takes him a few seconds of seething, but he finally complies.

“I know the risks. I know what failing means. This is my choice.”

I’m expecting more outrage. But Casey has a way of surprising me. “Fine. If we’re going to be so definitive on choices, then I’m going with you.”

I clench my jaw, trying to mask the fact that I’ve just been completely blindsided. “This mission isn’t going to be about manpower. It’s going to be about precision. One person is all we need.”

“I can protect you.”

“You can die in the line of fire for no fucking reason.”

“So can you.”

The room is silent. I wish I could tear my eyes away from him to see why—it’s like we’re alone.

I don’t think that my blood could pulse through me any harder. Then I’m proven wrong when Maliyah says, “Casey’s right.”

I spin toward her, but she quickly cuts off my argument. “A team will bring morale. Decisions are better made between multiple people. You’ll be safer if Casey goes with you. I’ve seen the feeds. I know what happens to criminals who wander alone in the Compass Room. It’s even dangerous for groups of two.”

This isn’t what I wanted . . . my proposal wasn’t supposed to put Casey in jeopardy.

“I get why you’d want to go alone.” Maliyah gestures to Casey. “And I also get why he’d want to protect you.”

“We go together. We do everything together.” Casey’s not only reminding me of my promise, but of the last time I broke it.

A wicked headache begins to throb in my temples and I want nothing more than a pull of something strong. “Before anything’s set in stone, a plan must be fully formed.”

“Of course,” says Maliyah.

“Including extraction.”

She nods. “The storm isn’t going to allow much of anything, so we’ll contract a plan over the next week. You will have time to rest before training begins.”

Cold sweat trickles down the back of my neck. Rest and conjure a plan . . . doesn’t sound relaxing to me, but I nod anyway. There’s nothing left to discuss or argue, even if this decision went nothing like I’d hoped.

After many silent, awkward moments, Wes says, “How about dinner?”

I don’t want food. I want to drink myself into oblivion, and then maybe sleep for the next five days. I return to my room upstairs. Every step is another weight added to my body. I’m actually impressed with myself that I manage to make it to my bed without collapsing.

Before I can lie down, my door slams and I spin around to Casey.

He holds his hands up defensively. “I get it. I get why you want to do this. But don’t be mad that I won’t let you go alone. You can’t be mad at me.”

I can’t. I want to, but I know I can’t. It would go against
us
and the meaning of fighting together.

“Would it have been better if all of us were left in jail?” I ask. “Rotting away for the rest of our lives?”

He smiles sadly. I know he’s been thinking the same thing. Maybe all ten of us thought it at one point during our CR. “I had only fifteen years.”

“That’s
fifteen years
. Your twenties and half your thirties.”

He shrugs. “I did a pretty shitty thing.”

Thinking about fifteen years in jail sucks the breath from me, and I sit on the bed and stare out the darkening window, the flurries of snow.

The bed shifts beneath me as he sits. “You forget that it was premeditated for me. I knew the consequences. I knew what I was doing. It’s different for you.”

He’s right. Never in my life did I debate what jail would be like until I was there. I didn’t consider my punishment when I was given a gun and marched to the faculty banquet. Did I even debate my future then? No. Not in the banquet hall, not when I found Meghan.

“I didn’t think about my future until they put me in handcuffs and shoved me in the back of the cop car.” The wind picks up, and snowflakes lick the window. “But even then, it didn’t occur to me what I was in for. I thought the truth would come out. I watched too many detective shows with Meghan. There had to be a trail that led to what really happened.”

“And if there was?”

“There’s a good possibility that I wouldn’t be liable for killing someone. If people knew the truth, that Nick forced me to be involved, there’d be a chance I’d end up acquitted. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone else would still be dead.” I shake my head. “It’s strange to think that my involvement in the shooting really affected nothing except for my own damn life.”

“You don’t think the fact that that you survived the shooting changed anyone else’s life?”

I scoff. “How could it have?”

With his finger, he drags my chin away from the window until I’m looking at him. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.”

As he leans in, I shut my eyes and force myself to draw a blank so I experience nothing but his lips for a few brief moments. But it’s not enough.

We skip dinner, and he curls up next to me on my bed. I fall asleep in his arms and dream of the Compass Room.

We miss Compass Room launch and accidentally turn ourselves in too late. Escorted into a room by guards, Gemma stands in front of a whirring silver sphere the size a hot air balloon.

“Stop the Compass Room,” she yells. The whirring ceases. Behind her a door with a knob handle appears in the side of the sphere.

“Sorry we’re late,” I mumble bashfully.

Gemma opens the door, beyond her a meadow sparkling with dew drops and surrounded by wispy pine.

“In you go.”

I duck my head and hurry into the Compass Room. The door shuts with a loud
boom
. I turn, and it’s gone, the meadow endless.

I start to walk, the earth squelching with each step. I realize that this isn’t a meadow but a swamp, except when I draw my boots from the water, crimson drips from them. Something has been left in the grass ahead of me, and I start to run. An arm, severed at the shoulder, tendons like tentacles. And the skin—the skin is inked with brightly colored flowers.

I’m too late.

***

I wake up screaming in Casey’s arms. I guess we’re even now.

***

In the morning, Casey attempts to lighten the mood with a breakfast of omelets and homemade scones. Casey—domestic culinary sensation. I wouldn’t have guessed in a thousand years.

Wes takes his breakfast over by the coffee table, his tech equipment spread out on the surface and illuminated by a high-wattage desk lamp. His tablet records his work and broadcasts it live as a projection in front of him, like a digital magnifying glass.

The chips. Our chips. Two more bits of hardware to be placed inside mine and Casey’s brains.

Casey pushes a plate with an omelet and a scone toward me. “Thank you,” I mutter. He stares at my glass of orange juice. I wonder if he knows what’s in it.

“He’s been working on them for months, but slowly.” Maliyah sips her coffee, and then nods toward Wes. “Now I think he has motivation to finally complete the finishing touches.”

Wes, completely immersed in his work, doesn’t even realize we’re talking about him, or at least doesn’t act like it.

“He was a part of the design team for a lot of the Compass Room elements. All of the engineers were.”

I pick at my scone. Just because he has experience in CR design doesn’t necessarily make me comfortable with something Wes-made inserted into my brain. I have to continuously remind myself that I volunteered for this.

“Stop playing with your food. Eat it,” Casey orders like some overworked parent. I can’t help but smirk. I pop part of the scone into my mouth and it practically melts.
Fucking
Casey.

After breakfast, I do the dishes as Casey moves to the living room love seat, watching Wes and asking him questions. I join them when I’m finished.

“I was a low-level engineer,” Wes says when I’ve sat down. I’ve caught the middle of their conversation. “I had to guess a lot for myself. But in-house, it wasn’t like my superiors tried hard to hide stuff from us. They couldn’t—not when we were the ones running the Compass Room. I wasn’t immediately told about the backbone of the Compass Rooms’ purpose. Most mid- and lower-level engineers weren’t. But I began picking up on clues.”

“What kind of clues?” I ask.

“Demographics, for one. Take your room for example. It’s like the higher-ups thought, ‘Let’s just scatter these four white kids with six evenly-distributed-but-not-wholly-inclusive minorities.’”

Casey and I glance at each other at the same time, and I can see the gears in his head turning. He’s right.