Cages (19 page)

"I was afraid," I
sniffed.  "I had never seen...a Beast before.  And the way it
happened...I was just scared."

Dave snorted.  "And
you thought Conyers could save you?"

"I don't know," I
said, miserable.  "No, I guess I knew he couldn't...but I just wanted
someone to tell me that...that I was a good kid, and that...and that something
like that could never happen to me, that I could never become that...that
monster
. 
He did that for me and I did whatever he asked to get him to keep doing
it."

"That's
pathetic!"  Remi said, clenching his teeth.  "We ought to
run you out of here, you sad mother –”

"That's enough,
Remi," Dave said, patting him on the arm.  He knelt down in front of
me, eye-level.  "We all do things we're not proud of.  Jesus,
Remi, you're teaching a fucking class.  As for me...I do whatever's
expected of me, just like Sam did."

Remi shook his head. 
"It's not the same, Dave.  It's not the same at all.  I teach
the class – "

"You teach it because you
like it," Dave said curtly.  "Sam liked having false hope. 
You both betrayed something you once stood for because of it."

Remi looked like he might
protest again, but he stayed quiet. 

"I'm sorry," I said
to Dave, trying to wipe my tears away casually, but everyone could see. 
"I'm really sorry."

"It's al
l
right, Sam," Dave said. 
"But you gotta make amends, you realize that, right?"

I swallowed. 
"H-how?"

Dave grinned.  "By
doing what you do best.  We gotta show 'em there are gonna be consequences
for fucking us over."

Remi shook his head. 
"What?  More banners?  More glue?  What's that gonna
prove?"

"No," I said. 
"I've got a plan.  Everything we've done so far has been jabs, little
shit.  But now we go for a full one-two punch."

"What are we gonna
do?"  We turned in surprise; it was Ben, his eyes alight with
excitement. 

"Two things. 
First," I turned to Remi.  "We build your dirty bomb."

Remi's eyes grew round as
basketballs and I knew I had him.

The chemistry classroom was a
cramped place with gas nozzles at every cold, marble desk.

It smelled like bitter
chemicals and sulfur.  Remi wasn't given access to the keys; he was shoved
into the room at the bell the same as any other student.  But whatever
else Remi was, he was certainly clever.  One day while everyone else had
been poring over a chemistry assignment he made sure was physically impossible,
he had filled the lock with a complex foam he made earlier.  The lock was
built for rigidity, not real security; it was meant to keep Beasts in, not
burglars out, so it was more like an old skeleton-key mechanism than an actual
modern locking device, which were more complicated but delicate.  The
upside to that was that when Remi removed the foam from the lock, it managed to
retain its simple shape.  A wood file and some trial and error later and
Remi had an all-access pass to the chemistry lab.

"
If we just had
some Mentos and Coke we wouldn’t have to skulk around looking for bomb-making
materials
," Remi joked as he
unlatched the door.

It was clear as he walked
around the room that Remi was at home here.  He knew where every compound
was, where to find every measuring implement.  I could only imagine the
room filled with his peers, sneering at him for his obvious intelligence and
enthusiasm for the subject, especially as he had pissed so many of them off at
one point or another.  Remi would just keep talking, not for their sake
but for his, as he opened up his genius and let the Philistine student body
take what they wanted. 

"I need a Phillips head
screwdriver and a soldering gun."  I wasted no time, unzipping my bag
with the calm hurry of someone who wants to look like they know what they're
doing. 

Remi slid a drawer open and
tossed the two items at me, along with a coil of thin solder.  I set these
down on the marble and pulled out the two disposable cameras James had given
me. 

Everyone knows how to make a
stungun out of a disposable camera.  It's as simple as exposing some wires
connected to the flash and snapping a picture.  It's an old trick and not
usually all that dangerous.  But James hadn't sent me to Quarantine with
any old cameras.  These had been specially prepared.  Each concealed
a slim battery pack from a hand-held stungun.  Two pairs of copper tines
sharped to needles were concealed under the plastic of the film cover and I
soldered these to the connection points between the circuitboard and the flash
on each camera. Then I unhooked the tiny batteries the cameras was intended to
have - left connected in case I had to take a picture for some reason - and
soldered in the stungun batteries.  I snapped the plastic closed with
satisfaction and set the flash to charge.  Once the little light indicated
the flash was ready, I clicked the picture button.  Electricity surged
from the beefed-up flash capacitor and danced up the tines, a bright blue arc
forming between the copper needles.  I smiled.  The batteries were
weakened from disuse and I had no idea how many shots I had, but they were
better than nothing.

Caught up in my work I hadn't
noticed Remi.  He had taken a large lab beaker and filled it with a dark
blue liquid flecked with black powder.  In a thick test tube he added a
slimy yellow substance filled only a quarter of the way, then cut a cylinder of
thick plastic with a silver scalpel and packed the tube tight, upending it
several times to make sure none of the yellow liquid could get through. 
Now the test tube was bifurcated by the plastic; yellow liquid on the bottom,
empty on top.  He sat that aside for a moment and turned his attention to
a large cork stopper.  In this he hooked two snipped pieces of clothes
hanger wire, threading it through the cork so that the bent ends were perpendicular
to the rest, which made it seem as if the cork had grown stilt legs made of
cheap brass.  Next he fashioned a loop out of more clothes hanger wire,
making sure the test tube fit snugly inside.  Remi bent the ends of the
cork-wires around the loop with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. 

Remi noticed me watching and
grinned.  "The best way to get a destructive explosion is to heat
something unstable and flammable.  But that would be too difficult for our
purposes today, so instead I've opted for a simple gas-generating agent. 
This blue stuff here is harmless on its own, even with the extra stuff I've put
in there as an accelerant, but when it comes in contact with this yellow stuff,
reactions start and the mixture releases carbon dioxide very quickly.  Now
this,"
he waved a small bottle at me "is industrial
hydrofluoric acid.  Are you ready?  Cause when I put this in there's
only going to be about thirty minutes until happy fun time."

I slid my two makeshift
stunguns in my bag.  "Ready when you are."

"I just hope Dave
is," Remi said, his voice hesitant.  "This is a bad idea. 
This stuff is pretty volitile.  If I guessed wrong, it'll go boom
early."

"Too late for second
thoughts now," I urged.  "We're on a schedule."

He sighed.  "Here we
go."

Remi's hands reminded me of
the old industrial robots you used to see in movies about Detroit, when there
was still a Detroit.  He emptied the hydrofluoric acid into the empty half
of the test tube, where it immediately started to steam.  Gently but quickly
he slid the tube into his metal loop, smeared some goop from a tube onto the
cork and lowered the whole assembly into the beaker.  The test tube
settled to rest with its end partially submerged in blue liquid, the cork flush
with the top.  "Hydrofluoric acid eats glass," he explained as
he worked.  "What I've done is use the acid as a chemical
timer.  The acid will eat the test tube and cause the bottom part with the
yellow liquid to fall into the blue in roughly half an hour.  The acid will
have eaten away at the glass around the plastic, so the little stopper I put in
there will slide out.  Then, reaction.  Pressure will buil
d
until it seeks out the weak point, which
would normally be the cork, except I've applied some really nasty glue to it
that dries super-quick.  Still..." He took out a thin nail and a
piece of copper tubing and slid the nail down it to gently tap the beaker,
creating hairline cracks.  "If I want a uniform burst, I should
create weak points."

"What now?" 
Watching Remi at chemicals was to watch a completely different person.  I
wondered for a moment what he would have been like had he been born to a normal
family in a normal Quarantine Zone.  Would he have realized his genius? Or
would he have wasted it away in lighter pursuits?

Remi looked at me
askance.  "Now we go meet Dave as soon as we fucking can."

After checking the halls to
make sure the guards were still on their normal rounds, we snuck out of Largo's
classroom, Remi balancing the beaker oh-so-tenderly in his hands.  Cameras
recorded our every move, but there were too many cameras throughout the school
to think that Security could watch all of them.  We would get caught
later, but we didn't care about that, even if it meant more time in the Bell.

Dave was waiting for us back
at our dorm cell.  "Jesus, is that it?"

"Do you have it?"
Remi barked, clearly worried about his hommade device.  "We have no
time to waste." 

"Oh, I got it.  One
of the guards saw me with it, so I said it was my lunch."  Dave
laughed and I chuckled along at the joke. 

Remi only glowered. 
"Give it here."

Dave hesitated. 
"Don't you want me to do that, I mean...it is mine..."

Remi shook his head
impatiently.  "This is my bomb.  Give it here."

I shared Dave's grimace as he
handed the paper bag over.  Remi pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and
scooped out what was inside, smearing it on the beaker. 

Yes, we made a shitbomb. 
  

The English Hall was
guarded.  It always was, except late at night when the halls leading to it
were on lockdown.  The barriers at the north end were toppled
Saracen
stones
, manned by two faceless
guards seated on aluminum stools, their guns cradled to their chests. 
I've often marvelled at the resiliency of security guards, the discipline it
must take to sit in abject boredom, both wishing something would happen and
praying that it doesn't.  It must eat at the soul. 

Dave and I approached them
shorty before the dinner bell.  Dave because he seemed trustworthy and me
because, hey, we only had so many options.  The guards tensed as we drew
near.  The one on the right barked "No access until tomorrow. 
Beat it to dinner, now."

"I left my book in
there," Dave whined, pointing past their shoulders into the hall. 
"I gotta read that book by tomorrow or I'm going to fail English
Lit."

"Not my problem kid,"
the guard sneered.  Part of me felt relieved.  Had he been like Biff,
I wasn't sure I could have gone through with it."I guess you fail for not
remembering to get your shit before you leave."

That's when we hit them with
the stun guns.  We had managed to inch ourselves close as Dave waved his
arm down the hall and stabbed them with the makeshift copper needles and
punched the picture button.  Two flashes went off and I saw my guard's
eyes roll back in his head as the other one fought to bring his gun to bear
before eventually falling too.

"Jesus Christ," I
breathed. I was shaking.  "We could have died just then."

Dave half-smiled, not
understanding.  "What?  Everything went fine."

Everything always went fine
for Dave.

Remi joined us as soon as the
first body hit the floor, the beaker-bomb held tight in a cheap plastic
bag.  "Hurry!" he said, gesturing at the guards.

I bent down and pulled one of
the guards' key rings off his belt.  He was still breathing, but every few
second
s
his entire body would
shiver.  "Got it –” I started to say turning back to Remi.

Remi was staring, transfixed
at the MP5 machine gun that had spilled onto the floor by the barrier.  He
knelt down, one hand reaching for it.

"Are you fucking
nuts?" Dave slapped his hand away. 

Remi blinked twice, then shook
his head.  "Fine.  Let's go, hurry!"  He walked
quickly down the hall, bomb still dangling from one hand.

Dave and I shared a look of
horror and followed. 

Mr. Jarvis's classroom seemed
huge when there were no one in it.  The desks sat forlornly in want of
students.  The air stood ready in want of sermons. 

"Do you want to say
anything, Sam?  This is your chance."  Remi peeled the plastic
bag away and set the shitbomb gently on Jarvis's desk.

I thought hard.  Jarvis
seemed to deserve something eloquent, some Monte Cristo monologue, some burning
tirade about trust and betrayal.  He would have liked that.  I
thought about the Literary Society and how comfortable I was there.  I
thought about Kate, arguing with me about literature, Kate defying my theories
with her own, Kate lounging at her desk waiting for class to start.  Kate
staring at me with disgust.