The Executioner at the Institute for Contaminated Children (18 page)

I nodded towards the latter half of the deck. Donna split them again and said, “Consonant or vowel?” Her confidence hadn’t waned, but luckily her attention was on judging whether my answers were correct, far less aware that the chiseled rock behind me grated the plastic tuff-tie which bound my wrists together. The motion of my arms had to be minimal so she didn’t notice, yet rough enough to wear the plastic, so I’d shift positions every now and then as if I were uncomfortable. Which, no kidding, I was.

I nodded towards the consonant half on her right. She placed the vowels aside and began to lay out the cards on the rock. As she turned her back to me to sort the cards, I took the advantage to grind the tuff with more aggression, but not loud enough for her to hear. I was in luck. If the rock was any smoother, I’d be in these things for the rest of the night. Yet the ridges seemed to work away at the thick plastic better than I’d expected.

Just as Donna turned around, I stopped my motion, and hoped she would dismiss the sweat accumulated at my brow as moisture from the waterfall.

“So which is it?” she said. My foot pointed to the T. Oh, if Todd could see me now. He’d probably call me a ballerina in bondage. Yeah, that would have been funny…in other circumstances.

“Are we still on consonants?” she said. I nodded. “Second half again?” I shook my head. She sighed and gathered the cards to lay out the first half. Perfect. With her back turned again, I went at the tuffs a second time, and this time they broke free! Hell yes!

I stared at my bloody wrists with a gut-wrenched feeling, but it was worth it. Maybe this way I could prove to her I was earnest.

When she turned around, paralyzed, I held my hands up in surrender. The bandana still restrained my mouth. For a second, we sat immobile, her eyes round and mine pleading. She then jumped up and immediately made a run for it. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her back to me. She fought back and yelled, “Let me go, LET ME GO!” I only put my arms around her and held her tight to me. She pushed and tried to wiggle out. I held her tighter. There had to be a way I could tell her without using my voice. She feared my voice, so I couldn’t say anything out loud. After a few minutes, she finally ceased struggling, but it wasn’t over. She wanted me to think it was okay to let her go, so she’d knee me and run for it. Plenty of guys would have probably been tricked by the innocent lamb routine; I grew up with Lenora. No chance in hell.

Then I thought of the only thing I could. I dared to pull back one hand and made sure to tighten my hold on her with the other. At some point in middle school, we were taught so much as the alphabet in sign language. I could only bet she knew it too. Even if she didn’t, with her abilities, she’d figure it out.

My hand formed I-M-S-O-R-R-Y. I-W-O-N-T-H-U-R-T-U. D-O-N-T-R-U-N. I-W-O-N-T-T-A-K-E-O-F-F-T-H-E-B-A-N-D-A-N-A. P-L-E-A-S-E.

I may have messed up a few times, but hopefully she got the message. If not, all I could do was repeat it, yet my arm had grown sore from holding it in that awkward position. I let it fall and Donna relaxed in my arms. While she had gone motionless before, she had been tense. Now, she felt so soft. Her hand stirred at her side and then moved slowly to rest on my chest and peel herself away from me. She stared me in the eyes and I tried to read her. Mindreading wasn’t my ability. I could only tell her eyes were serious, and narrowed slightly for an instant before they relaxed. With my restraint still on her, her hands moved up around my neck to blindly loosen the tie around my mouth. My nose filled with the scent of her hair. Her fingers then tugged it from the sides and traveled around my face to remove it from my mouth.

Her eyes stared at my mouth and mine stared at hers. The rush of water hushed our breaths. I imagined our lips grazing each other. My tongue tasting hers, our breaths on hold. My hand would touch the side of her face and stroke back the damp hair that clung to it, only to make her shiver. I’d kiss her more desperately and her hand would cling to my neck. It wouldn’t be a confession or even passion, but comfort. She saw me hurting, and she hurt as well. And for that tiny instant in the screwed up mess of our lives, we would feel relief. Although that didn’t explain why my stomach danced some weird Polish dance when our mouths hovered together. But then her fingernails dug into the back of my skull and she pulled back sharply, as startled as if a deer had almost made out with a wolf. She pushed me in my chest with a full blast from both hands, which, I may say, is an effective defense technique that pretty much knocks the wind out of you. Kind of like if a cat jumped on your chest from the second story. She turned away from me, her face red with a hand over her mouth like she might puke.

I rolled my eyes while I rubbed my aching chest. My hands then clipped to my hips as my tongue ran over my dry mouth. For an instant, she must have forgotten I killed someone.

That could’ve gone better. But the fun was over. Now it was time to piece together the truth. And nothing but the truth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE—Reality

“O
h God…I can’t believe I almost…” Donna stood horrified, talking to herself in the corner of the cave. A second wave of nausea hit her and she gulped it down.

I took a step to approach her but then stopped. If I said anything command-like, she might get scared and run again. I sighed and sat on the edge. My hands intertwined on my lap and I stared at them. The blood had dried, but the flesh still looked raw. I had no choice. If I was to speak at all, I had to tell her everything, from the beginning.

“A week ago, I was…told I’d be the next Executioner.” Donna froze outside my field of vision. I could tell every fiber of her being stilled to listen. “See, they, um…they hold a threat. The switch to the bombs planted on these grounds, buried deep beneath the earth. The grounds of every Institute for Extraordinary Children.”

“They?” she said in a small, shaken voice. “Who are you talking about? Terrorists?” She took a step towards me.

“No. The people who owned the plant that exploded and led to all the contamination. They’re the ones behind this.”

“Why?” she said accusingly. Another step forward.

“Because there’s something to gain.” I looked at her with a cynical gaze. “Why else?”

“What do they gain from all this? It’s just destruction and killing and…” Her voice sounded mangled.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, my tone dull. “Welcome to humanity. If I didn’t tell him to jump in the lake, they would have blown up the school. It’d be a huge loss for them, but…they’d do it.”

Her lip quivered. She shook her head and swallowed, looking away. “That’s why you were so angry. Why you pushed everyone away.” I nodded solemnly. “This can’t be…”

“They call it ‘necessary sacrifice.’”

“For
what
? I can’t even think of a reason…”

“Neither can I. That’s the hardest part. I’ve tried. Listed everything, from experiments to cloning, to secret missions. None of it aligns. What could they do with a bunch of contaminated kids? I mean, we’re not even allowed to leave the country.”

Donna’s eyes locked on mine, clueless.

“Didn’t you know? The day we’re confirmed as contaminated, they mark our passports with a big fat C.”

She looked stricken. It brought me back to when I first found out. That horrible, ill feeling in my gut, like nothing in the world was right, and I was tangled in the root of evil. Worse yet, I helped it grow. “I’m sorry, Donna,” I said sincerely, all my breath in those words. I really meant it. “If I could… If I could change all this—!” My speech grew fiery, but what did it matter? No matter how I felt or what I said, what could I do? I had to have her on my side.

She sat next to me, though at a distance, and took me aback.

She licked her lips, her eyes busy with thought. “They’re herding us, like animals. Like lab rats. We can do something about this…right?”

“I wish it were that easy. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Donna looked down. “I think I do…” Her head then shot toward me, her features ignited. “We should team up. Use our resources. Tell others. There’s gotta be strength in numbers!”

“No!”

She flinched and looked frightened. I calmed down.

“We can’t. If I tell anyone…what am I, what I’ve done, or helped do…they’ll kill me, and find a new Executioner.”

Her mouth went dry. “Th…They can’t…but then…you told
me
… No.” Her eyes filled with tears and she shot up. “No, they can’t kill you because I forced you to tell me!”

“Shhh!” I said. “Relax. Sit back down.” I breathed out. “They’re not gonna kill me because they don’t know I’ve told you. That’s why no one can know about this. If they ask what we were doing, just say we were…you know…not that we weren’t about to…” I made an obvious gesture of the eyes and she reddened and slumped down beside me.

“You tell anyone about that and
I’ll
kill you,” she said and I laughed.

“Fair enough. But we can’t tell a soul the truth. It’s just you and me, compadre.” My head rolled towards her and she looked absolutely miserable, but offered a small smile. I watched her with curiosity and then said, “Why, though?”

“Hmm?”

“What changed your mind about me?”

She smiled in reminiscence. “My mom once said, ‘Although a guilty man will always run, he will not fight for his freedom as hard as an innocent man.’”

My brow pinched. “Sounds smart.”

“She’s a law professor.” Her voice sounded distant, her eyes cast into some kind of void.

“Ah. Now I know where you get it from.” I wagged my finger.

“Get what?”

I grinned. “Your interrogation technique.”

She snorted through her lips and we both laughed. 

She then sighed and turned serious. “Too bad I have no idea what happened to her.”

“What?”

Her voice rose. “She came up here. To LeJeune. She just never made it.”

“You serious?”

Donna breathed in a raspy breath. “I just want to know what’s going on. What happened to her, to Eva. What’s going to happen to us.”

She looked into my eyes, her own broken, and in them I found my resolve.

I clutched her hand tight, rested on the rock beside her, and said through a rigid jaw, “We’ll find her. I swear on my life. We’ll find them all. And we’ll be okay.”

Her hand pulled out of mine. I didn’t mean anything by it other than a reaffirming gesture, but she clearly didn’t want it to mean a thing more. And I was okay with that. This wasn’t a time to get distracted. This was a time to act. I got up and said, “Come on, it’s almost sundown. We gotta head back. We’ll probably come back here again…you know, to talk.”

She nodded and we left the refuge of the waterfall.

Yet as we walked on the beach back to the Institute, I kept sneaking glances in her direction, to the upside-down teardrop silhouette of her hair against the twilit sky, only to look away when she’d catch me staring, or pretend I was looking at the lake, which happened almost every time.

I just had to ask myself one question: If the chance of a kiss was gone, how come I was still so intrigued?

CHAPTER FORTY—Sneak Attack

“W
here’ve
you
two been?” said a kid I didn’t know with a red buzz-cut the minute we stepped foot back inside LeJeune. He sounded like an annoying hall monitor. I stepped in front of Donna, who raised an eyebrow. It really pissed me off when people couldn’t mind their own business, especially when they just wanted to spread rumors.

“We’re partners, jackass. We were out training,” I said. My voice lowered to almost a hush as I stood face to face with him, his expression stone, but slightly intimidated. “So back off.”

“Fine,” he spat and walked off. I exchanged a what-was-that-about look with Donna, who shrugged, until her face fell and she stared straight ahead. I followed her gaze to a bold-print notice. My eyes widened and I walked up to it to confirm I didn’t hallucinate. I ripped it clean off the wall. It read:

Anyone who reports a student for misconduct according to the rule book will be awarded 1,000 points. Please report to any of the student judges or to a teacher. You will remain anonymous.

I snarled and crushed the paper in my hands. This couldn’t have been just the decision of the “student court”; I’m sure Lenora had a talk with them.

“Calm down, Dan,” Donna said in a whisper. “They probably did that to make sure there didn’t have to be untrialed…‘deaths.’”

I shook off my frustration. “Yeah, I know. But we gotta do something and fast. Otherwise they’ll box us in before we know it.”

Donna nodded with seriousness. At that moment, I caught sight of Verity walking down the stairs. Perfect. “Hold that thought.”

I ran up to him, casual as I could. “Hey, Verity, got a sec?” He nearly jumped in his skin, a nervous kid. I actually had no idea how to talk to him. I looked to Donna and nodded her over with my eyes. She might have better luck getting in tune with his geekyness. As she approached, I laced a hand around his neck and said, “We need to talk. You’ve got time, right?”

“Uh…sure?”

I smiled and pat his shoulder. “Good.” My head turned to Donna. “You remember Donna, doncha?”

He blushed slightly and nodded. I groaned on the inside. Gimme a break.

“She’s got a couple of questions for you.”

“I do?” she said and I shot her a glare. “I mean, yeah, I do.”

“Wh-What about?”

“You’ll find out soon as we’re out of earshot,” I said and he gulped.

Outside, we found a picnic table. Donna sat next to Verity and I across from them.

“What’s this about?” His eyes shifted between the two of us. “You guys don’t think I broke the rules, do you? Cuz I swear I haven’t been out of my room since yesterday.”

I folded my arms and leaned on the table. “Keep your voice down, and tell us how we can send a letter from the institute that can pass the inspection, especially if we include a message we don’t want to be read.” I exchanged a look with Donna and her eyes widened in comprehension.

This time, his head turned back and forth between us sporadically. “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t do that.”