The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children (10 page)

Still red in the face, I screamed into my palms, covering my face with both hands. How irritating! And embarrassing. I slumped down on my bed again. What was his deal, anyway? Stupid “prom king.”

I sighed at my distorted reflection in the silver tray, cut the steak, and munched on the savory meat with disheartenment. It tasted so good I quickly forgot about Dan’s visit.

Until I saw the corner of a note sticking out from under the plate. I removed the plate and unfolded the note. Then my heart fell, because I instantly knew it wasn’t from Eva, and there was a catch.

Hello Donalie,

I hope you enjoyed your meal. Or, at least, started to. I know about your little venture into the woods, and the phone call you made home. Now read carefully. If you tell anyone there is service off campus, I will unfortunately have to charge you the worth of this dining plate, which is roughly 500 points. I could easily deduct it from either you or Eva. Think about that. Otherwise, it’s on me. Oh, and if you do make another phone call, you’ll receive another dining plate, probably one a bit more expensive, and that
will
be automatically charged to you. Have a pleasant day.

Lenora

I gulped down the last of the steak in my mouth. It might take a few days for me to earn 500 points, but likely a week for Eva. And she couldn’t live off others’ leftovers for that long. Suddenly, I didn’t feel very hungry anymore. I pushed the tray aside and slumped back into my pillows. Dan’s shampoo lingered and I cringed. This stupid school sucked.

Eva carried in a tower of towels.

“Oh, you’re out already,” she said. “Sorry, I thought I’d get these a lot faster. I lost my way. But they’re nice and warm! Uh…are you all right?”

I pouted and crumpled the letter in my hand. “Yeah. Thanks.” I moved the tray in her direction. “Here, you can have the rest.”

CHAPTER TWENTY—Scramble

“S
o you’re saying no one else knows there’s service off campus?”

I shrugged while Eva lowered Lenora’s wrinkled note, which she had read several times over in disbelief. “Maybe everyone does. Maybe…most students have received a dining plate at some point. It seems like a perfect way to enforce a rule they don’t want broken.”

“I wonder what else they enforce,” said Eva and we both stared down. I shivered slightly and wrapped my arms around myself. How could anyone be so manipulative?

Thoughts of whatever secrets this school tried to hide kept me up that night, and many nights to come. The more I trained, the more my abilities sharpened. And the more it felt like I lived in a haunted mansion.

After today’s training, I could finally get a point monitor watch. Dan said it was best to earn at least 1,000 points before you spent any on accessories so you had plenty to go around for the necessities.

“Having a watch doesn’t just make you one of us,” he said. “It also lets you train in other groups and help out with the training of new students multiple times throughout the day, since you don’t have to worry about keeping track of your points. Many competitive groups won’t let you participate unless you have one. Not to mention, you can also help out in Hailie and Todd’s training.”

“What about yours?” I said with a scowl.

“I don’t train anymore. My abilities have saturated.”

“What, you mean they don’t grow any better?”

“Yeah. Abilities differ. Some wane if you don’t practice them enough. Others wax to a certain point and then stop. Then you just use them when you can, but you don’t need to train anymore.”

“Oh. So…what
is
your ability?”

An evanescent smile flashed across his face. “Sorry you have to ask. I’ll let you earn your points for taking a guess on that one.”

I scrunched my reddened face. It’s not like he gave many clues. And wouldn’t it be to our advantage at this point to know each other’s abilities? 

We walked into a gigantic ballroom, the floor of which was paved with cards flipped on their faces. My face fell. I pointed to the floor with a limp finger and said, “Lemme guess, you want me to guess what all these cards are, right?”

“Hey, you
are
getting better at this!”

My expression didn’t change at his sarcasm as he walked past me and took a seat in one of the chairs around the perimeter of the sea of cards.

With a sigh, I went to stand at the middle of the ballroom and got down on my knees. This seemed more like an exhausting game than a fun one. “How many points per card?” I yelled.

“Half,” he shouted back. I quickly did the calculation. If there were at least a thousand cards in here…holy crap! I’d hit the jackpot. I couldn’t believe I was even thinking it, but thank you, Dan! Probably the cleverest training session yet. If I could get even half of these cards right, I’d score 250 points!

My eyes honed in on my first target in the pile and I concentrated. Okay, think, there are 54 cards in a deck, or was it 52?… I paused and shook my head. No rational thinking. That wouldn’t help my abilities at all. I had to rely on pure instinct. Besides, who said these were regular playing cards? They could be tarot, baseball, or, in the worst case, even Pokémon cards. I shuddered. Hopefully Dan wasn’t making fun of me.

This might be harder than I thought. A test of my “vision” to see if I could paint the guess in my mind into an image.

I took another deep breath and concentrated on the card again. But what I saw wasn’t an image. A letter. Specifically, “I.”

I announced the letter and then flipped the card over. No surprise there, I was right.

Excited, I began to call out the other letters and flip them over, correct every time.

“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Dan called out, “Unless you can unscramble what the letters mean, none of the points count.”

The card I held dropped, and so did my jaw. I could be doing all this for nothing. I felt like slapping myself. Should’ve known Dan the sadist would pull something like this. I could only hope my deducting powers were strong enough to let it pay off. No way I wouldn’t get that watch today. Unless I was sure I could afford another dining plate, I wouldn’t be able to call Torrey and find out what happened to Mom. She hadn’t arrived yet…

I didn’t care if it was a million word scramble. Bring it on!

But by the nine-hundredth-ninety-ninth card, not only was I tired and irritated, my head was also splitting like mad, as though someone had gone at it with a saw. This guessing thing wasn’t without bite. It seriously used up a lot of focus and concentration, which meant I had little of it left to unscramble the thousand words. I groaned as I flipped the last card over and collapsed into the pile.

Dan’s shadow fell over me and he gave me a scrutinizing glare. “Don’t tell me you’re finished,” he said.

I groaned again. “Wish I could. I’m exhausted.”

He shrugged and walked off. “Suit yourself.”

“Hey!” I lay there, my eyes shut, and flinched at my headache, hands on my forehead. I whimpered a little, knowing he was probably long gone. This sucked. I thought I was doing so well, and now I didn’t even have an ounce of energy left for the most important part.

I felt something cold against my forehead and my eyes shot open. They traveled up to see the cold water bottle Dan held to my forehead. “Get up,” he said.

I took it in my hands in surprise.

“I can’t, I’m done,” I replied.

He sighed and crouched down. “D’you know the purpose of this exercise?”

“Mmmm…not really.”

“Come on, think.”

I breathed out and said, “I guess…well, for one, I didn’t know I could wear out my guessing ability. And…the more I use it, the more I need to be careful what I use it for, especially in a short period of time.”

“Exactly,” said Dan and I brightened. “Cuz guess what you’ll be doing in an event?”

“Oh…” My grin waned a bit. Would I even last in an event if I had to constantly rely on my guessing ability? I’d gotten so used to it, though. “So…how do you do it, then?”

He looked like such a know-it-all in that moment, I hated to have asked.

“You have to find ways to limit yourself. Don’t let it become your crutch. Use your abilities only when you absolutely need to. Other times, rely on the other things you learned in training. Your senses, your physical ability, and your intelligence, if there’s any of that to go around.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Like when you touched my face,” he said, and I immediately felt heat creep up my neck. “That was a good move. Instead of using up your guess, you used a substitute. That kind of thinking will help you win an event.”

I turned my face away slightly, a bit abashed, but my flushed pale skin would still give me away.

“Yeah…thanks,” I said.

He offered me a hand up. I hesitated but finally took it.

“Feel better?”

I thought about it. “A bit, yeah. Not sure I can still take on the scramble, but…maybe if I don’t use my guessing so much this time.”

“It’ll be a challenge, and it’ll probably take you a lot longer. You sure you’re up to it?”

I bit my cheek and then nodded.

He smirked. “Good. Cuz I’m off to lunch. See ya!”

I scoffed in exasperation, my face incredulous as he walked off without a look back. I kicked the cards in his wake, yet got down on my knees and began to organize them, by vowels and consonants first. I didn’t look up again, so maybe I only imagined it, but a twinge in my gut told me Dan glanced back just before he left, and smiled.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—Charmed

E
va and I rushed to the counter downstairs. It had taken me all day to decrypt that stupid message—something about predator-prey relationships and evolution—and I only had a few minutes left before they closed for the night. Sure, I
could
get it tomorrow morning, but that would mean one more day not knowing what had happened to Mom.

“Oh no!” They were already putting up the barricade. Eva ran faster.

“Wait, please—my friend just wants to get her first monitor watch. She’s been eager to get it all day.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to come tomorrow,” said the cashier, probably a Sophomore.

“But it would mean so much to me if you could help out my friend.” Eva’s hands intertwined and she stared him in the eyes with desperation. I just caught up to her and looked at the exchange in question. Something had come over him, as though he had been sprayed in the face with a hallucinogen.

He smiled in a creepy way. I shuddered. “You know, I’d really like to help you out. Hold on a second. Is it for your friend here?” He grinned at me as if I wasn’t even there.

“Yes, please,” said Eva, her smile still plastered on her face.

“Just a minute.” He walked off and left the barricade open.

I stared between him and her. Eva’s smile fell as soon as he turned his back.

“How’d you just do that?” I asked.

“Oho, did you really think I was that helpless? Apparently, since my body’s hormones are out of whack, I can also emit some kind of pheromone that entrances men. Part of my abilities.”

“No way. So you can charm them to do what you want?”

“Sort of. I still haven’t figured out how to control the levels. Like how far they’d go.”

Needless to say, I was impressed. I beamed. Maybe I didn’t have to worry so much about Eva after all.

The student came back and handed me the watch. “Here you go,” he said. He didn’t finish speaking before the watch was in my grasp. I immediately began to press all the buttons, trying to figure out how it worked. Just like a game controller.

“Um…it comes with a manual,” he said.

Eva looked at him and scoffed. “Trust me, she doesn’t need it.”

He looked confused, but Eva was right. My fingers worked the buttons as though they knew which were the right ones to press. My abilities had definitely heightened. Maybe I could even take Todd up on a dare of who could figure out how to power a jet ski faster. My guess is he’d still win.

The watch had several modes. The offset displayed the points after you entered your name and identification number. My face lit up. I had 1300 points! That’s amazing. Now I could definitely afford to call home. The other modes listed a few special cases, like how many points had been spent on food, clothing, laundry, toiletries, entertainment, training equipment, etc.

The one that intrigued me the most listed a set of actions that could and could not be performed with the watch and/or your points. It read:

Point donation: Not allowed

Point acceptance: Not allowed

Maximum negative points: -10000

Maximum positive points: 10000000

Next event in: 10 days, 4 hours, 32 minutes

Even participant: Y/N

“I guess you sign up for the event with your watch,” I told Eva.

“Precisely,” said the boy.

He’s still here?
I thought.

“Events are sort of like examinations, only you get to choose whether you participate in them or not. You are, however, required to participate in at least one per semes—”

“That will be all, thank you,” said Eva with the same forced smile. He returned a small smile and we walked off. I glanced back once we were a ways away to see him a bit dazed, as though he wasn’t quite sure what just happened. I chuckled. Served him right.

“Say,” said Eva, slightly abashed, “would you mind doing a night watch with me?” My eyes widened. “I’d kinda like to get a watch too, but I’m not sure I could catch up with the training I’ve been doing. Actually, I don’t even know where I stand since I’ve bounced around from group to group. It’s been more effective for my squad to work separately since our abilities are hard to train.”

I grabbed her hand and swung it back and forth. “What are friends for? Course I will!”

She grinned back. “Thanks, Donna.” After we made our way up to our dorm, she asked, “So when are you gonna call your little brother again? Torrey, right?”