The Trial (The Tree House) (12 page)

The tip of a bat jabbed into my cheek. “Who are you?”

My eyes lifted from the bat and met the narrowed eyes of the girl from the picture in the file. “Keeta Parsons?” My brother asked from behind me.

“Answer my question,” she demanded and rammed the bat into my bruised face again. I pulled back and tried to swat it away. Instead
, one fluid motion, she pushed me flat onto my back and slammed her foot down onto my chest.

“Well aren’t you just a fun filled frikin’ lollipop triple dipped in psycho.” I coughed.

“Answer my question,” she repeated raising her voice angrily and glared down at me with eyes that were only a few shades darker than her skin. A silver hoop gleamed on her bottom lip. Her hair was a mess of dark brown curls. She’d obviously been running.

“We killed those suits for you,” I wheezed as her shoe pressed down hard on my lungs.

“
Who
killed them?” Ben muttered putting his gun away again. Keeta broke eye contact with me to look at my brother. Then she stepped back off my chest. Air rushed into my lungs and I coughed hard as I sat up.

She touched the thick end of the bat to her palm. “What did they want?”

“To kill you,” I croaked. “Good thing we were here or you might be dead right now.”

“I can take care of myself,” Keeta snapped throwing daggers at me with her glare.

A pained smile pulled at the corner of my brother’s mouth. Of course he found this comical. I got to my feet quickly feeling something warm trickling down my cheek. “Was that really necessary?” I muttered wiping the blood from my stinging face.

Keeta shrugged, her eyes shining with amusement. “Hey, I didn’t know what you wanted.” Then she looked at Ben. “Actually
, I still don’t.”

“It’s a long story,” my brother explained. “But if you come with us, you’ll be safer than if you stay here.”

“What about my parents?” she asked.

Ben and I glanced at each other. “Chances are you’ll never see them again,” he said shaking his head. “It’s just something you’re going to have to get used to.” Then he turned and started back down the ladder.

Keeta’s mouth hung open like she wanted to say something but couldn’t quite spit it out. She looked shocked. “Hey, I’m sorry,” I uttered and reached out to touch her arm.

“Don’t,” she snapped jerking away from me. “I don’t need you feeling sorry for me.” Then the girl hefted the bat in her hand and stomped past me disappearing down the ladder after my brother.

I waited until her footsteps faded down the hall before I moved. My cheek was really starting to hurt. Surely, I was going to have another black eye just after my first one had finally faded.

When we got back downstairs, I helped Ben stuff the bodies of the dead suits in the closet while Keeta silently cleaned up the blood. We were beginning to get the hang of this whole disappearing act. We’d learned to recount our steps and get rid of fingerprints. The black backpack I had started carrying had bleach, extra bullets and a few other things Sy had insisted we keep with us. He had also insisted we hide the bodies and then leave. When Ben pointed out that they’d be found quickly
, Sy set us straight. With Eli trying to cover his own butt, there was no way they would let anyone find out about anything that was going on. That included any of his lackeys going missing. Whatever. I didn’t care. He could deal with it.

Once we made it back to t
he Tree House, I showed Keeta around a bit. She kept her mouth clamped shut the entire time and when I showed her all the bedrooms and then hers, she promptly slammed the door in my face.

I wanted to knock on her door, maybe make some unfriendly remark about the fact that she hit me in the face with a bat but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She’d just had the rug ripped out from under her feet. If I’d had access to a bat when I had found out the truth, I probably would have gone looking for someone to smash in the face too.

“Jack.” I stepped away from the door and turned to find David standing on the bottom step to the third floor. “Could you help me with something?”

“Sure,” I said with a sigh then glanced one more time at the door to Keeta’s room before following him up to the main level.

Logan and Root were sitting on one of the couches eating lunch and talking to Arie, one of our few saves, while Melody, another win, carefully bandaged Ben’s leg. The two of them had been our most successful mission. Ben and I had actually managed to beat the suits to Arie’s apartment and walked in to find him sitting at a kitchen table with one arm lying across it while another guy doodled on his forearm with a tattoo gun. Both of them already looked intimidating covered in all that ink but the looks on their faces when we barged in would have had me running out of there if Ben hadn’t been standing in my way. Though I’m sure I wouldn’t have gotten very far anyway. With the way Arie and his pal were eying us like lions watching a couple of baby gazelles, it’s a good thing Melody came in behind us when she did. It was pure luck that we had only been looking for one patient and had actually come across two and it was exceptionally lucky that we made it before the suits did.

Arie and Melody
were an odd pair to say the least. If I’d seen Melody by herself, I never would have thought that such a chill girl would be with a big, tattooed guy like Arie, but as I followed David past the group on the couches and watched them interact and joke around with the others, it wasn’t hard to put the two of them together.

“Hey,” Arie called to me. “What happened to your face, man?” He tapped a finger wi
th the letter L inked onto it against his cheek.

“He got beat up by a girl,” Ben said with a smirk.

I sneered at my brother before following David up the stairs to the top floor.

“So how’ve you been holding up?” I asked him once we reached the roof. “Y
ou know,” I uttered, “about Aly?” David didn’t say anything as he handed me one side of a folded up tarp. I took the corners and stepped back then the two of us unfolded it until it laid flat between us. “She could still be alive,” I said trying to reassure him.

“No she couldn’t,” he said shaking his head. “They wouldn’t let he
r live after what she did for you.”

“You don’t think maybe–”

“No,” David cut me off. His hand jerked just then causing him to drop the tarp and he cursed under his breath.

“Are you alright?” I asked watching as he rubbed his wrist.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just help me cover this hole.” Then he snatched up his side of the tarp again.

The two of us dragged it to cover the hole he and Sy had made as a makeshift chimney. A
wood frame was built around it so there was a space between the roof and the tarp, allowing the smoke from a fire to escape around it and disperse. It made it a lot less noticeable to anyone looking in our direction.

We secured the tarp to the wood frame in silence then David muttered thanks before disappearing down the stairs while still rubbing his wrist. That had b
een an odd jerk. Sy mentioned to Ben and I what had happened to some of the other patients in the first trial; the way they died such violent and painful deaths. Was this how it all started? With just small spasms like that? I couldn’t imagine what was going through David’s mind. Fear? Heck, I’d be terrified. It was only a matter of time before it all started happening to me too. To my brother. To Root and Logan and the others. Even less time until it started on Sy. We were all ticking time bombs just waiting for the day we would explode.

I stayed up on the roof for a while longer after that. The look of horror that had slipped across David’s face for that split second when his hand had jerked terrified me and I could feel heat building up in my gut as I looked out at the city. Somewhere out there was the company that had manufactured this chip and somewhere in that building was the man that had come up with it, probably sitting in some plush office counting his money. The heat in my stomach started burning hotter, rising up my throat and into my head until I could physically feel my ears turning bright red. As long as this man – this crap excuse for a human being – could get his lackeys to hunt us down and wipe us out, his reputation was going to go untarnished and the world was going to continue to think he was bettering their lives like some freaking hero.

I sat down on the ledge and pulled my gun out of my coat pocket. The sun had finally decided to make an appearance after a few weeks of overcast and now it streaked the dark metal with light. This thing had belonged to that first suit that almost killed me and my brother. If Ben hadn’t pulled the trigger first, we’d both just be names on their list of the dead. They would have moved right along, ticking off each name like they were crossing off items on a grocery list. Sure Eli had gotten more than we had but a life saved is still a life saved, right? How many times had we faced near death? How many times had Ben just barely beaten the suits to the trigger?

The door behind me opened with a metal creak and I turned to find my brother hobbling toward me. “What are
you doing out here?”

I looked back down at my gun, rubbing my thumb along the barrel. “How’s your leg?”

Ben shifted to his other foot, a painful grunt escaping his throat. “It hurts,” he muttered from behind me. “I guess I’m lucky it was just my leg.”

The sun glinted off the metal like a spark from a flint. “You’re not always going to be that lucky,” I said watching as my hands quivered with anger. The rage
flowed through my veins like adrenaline.

“Maybe you should start using that thing then,” Ben muttered sarcastically.

I inhaled deeply. “Maybe I should.” Then I stood up and turned to face my brother. “I want you to teach me to shoot.”

Chapter eight

One night, I came down the stairs to the main floor to find Root cutting into a monstrous turkey. He looked up from his work and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his sweaty nose with the back of his hand.

“Happy Thanksgiving, dude,” he said with a smile and dumped a pile of meat onto the plate. I took it from him and gave him a quick smile in response.

“Some Thanksgiving,” Keeta muttered from her spot around the fire. She stabbed a spoon into the glob of mashed potatoes on her plate and bit at the ring in her lip.

Arie turned around in his seat to look at me. “Man, that eye of yours looks like it’s going to rot right out of your face,” he joked with a mouthful of food. Melody elbowed him in the ribs snickering.

He was right. My black eye was in the most colorful stage of the healing process. Almost every color of a nauseating rainbow splotched the side of my face right where Keeta had hit me with the bat.

“Hey,” Melody said straightening up in her seat. “We should all say something we’re thankful for. Since
it’s Thanksgiving and all.”

Groans escaped from most of the mouths in the room but I saw Sy smile amusedly to himself. “Good idea, Mel,” he said dropping his fork on his plate. “I’ll start.”

I felt like I was standing on the set of a fifties sitcom as we went around the room saying what we were thankful for, despite our current situation. When it got to Logan, he quietly said “pass” and shoved a piece of turkey into his mouth. Most everyone mentioned the fact that we were alive and safe, for now.

“Are we just about done
sharing our feelings?” Arie asked letting his head fall against the back of the couch. “I was just about to go get seconds but you all are making me sick.”

Melody nudged him with her elbow. “Well, what are you thankful for,
Arie
?” she asked with a narrow-eyed smirk.

He met her eyes and let out a breath
, causing his cheeks to puff out. “Why, you of course,” he said running a hand through his blond hair.

Root made a sound like a whip
cracking and smiled. “Good boy,” he said causing all of us to laugh.

Arie threw him a death glare then glanced my way. “What about you, Jacky-boy? What are you thankful for?” Surely this was to divert all the attention from himself. It worked. All eyes shifted to me and I froze mid-chew.

“Uh…” I stammered swallowing my mouthful of food. What was I thankful for? “I guess, I’m thankful that we’re all here together, or whatever.”

“Lame,” Arie blurted causing the others to laugh
again. “You can do better than that.”

My eyes shifted to my brother and I gave him a look that said “help me.” He just smirked back at me and put his hands behind his head. Finally
, I sighed. “I guess, I can’t think of anything to be thankful for,” I said with a shrug. The smile on my brother’s face faded and his eyes moved to the fire.

“I know,” Arie said holding up a tattooed hand. “You’re thankful Keeta didn’t try for a homerun.”

The circle erupted with laughter again and I glanced over at Keeta. A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I could have if I wanted to,” she said meeting my glance with glittering eyes. “But I’d like to think I have a little more tact than that.”

“You have about as much tact as a nuclear bomb,” I said pointing my spoon of mashed potatoes at her. Again everyone laughed and Keeta shook her head at me. I think both of us took this as
a resolution.

David continued to get worse over the following week. As the disease progressed, Sy began to panic and pretty soon he had Root and Logan planning our route out of the city. Even with half the patients still out there, he felt it was smarter to leave Seattle and then worry about finding the rest than stay and risk Eli finding our hideout. It was weird seeing him paranoid like this. He even had Root print out a few hard copies of the list and gave them to Melody and Arie to hide in a couple
vacant buildings around the city.

Ben was getting stir crazy and itched to go back out and find more patients
, but Melody, having become more of a motherly figure, refused to even let him off the couch most days. Whenever he did manage to sneak away, usually down to the tree room to climb the branches in hopes of strengthening his leg, she always found him and dragged him back upstairs.

Sy didn’t want me going out by myself – I’m sure Ben had mentioned my reservations about using my gun – and David was too unstable to help
with rescues so I was stuck at the Tree House too while I waited for my brother’s leg to heal. I spent most of my time on the roof either looking out at the city, or practicing shooting invisible suits with my unloaded gun.

I think I was getting pretty good at it. Though it’s kind of hard to tell how good your aim is when you’re not
actually shooting anything. I couldn’t see it physically but I could almost imagine it in my head. I would picture Eli – even though I didn’t know what he looked like – standing on the ledge staring me down. In my mind I pictured him as a short guy. Very short; like half my height, and ugly with eyes that were too small and a nose that was too big and a couple of ridiculously giant front teeth.

Then I’d aim carefully, the whole time staring into the man’s beady black eyes
, and then –
pop
– I’d pull the trigger and those two bathroom tile front teeth would shatter, the shot sending him flying off the ledge and onto the street four stories below. Then a feeling of triumph would wash over me, until I’d look down at the gun in my hand and see how bad I was shaking. In all honesty, I could pretend to shoot invisible bad guys as much as I wanted, but when I thought about actually putting a bullet into someone – actually killing another person – the thought terrified me. Maybe it always would.

It took two weeks for my brother’s leg to heal enough to where he could comfortably walk on it. I figure during that time probably a dozen more patients had been hunted down and killed. There weren’t that many left on the list. We needed to get back out there. We were done waiting.

“This is your next assignment,” Root said handing me a file. I opened it to find a picture of a dark haired kid smiling back at me.

“Ryan Roemer,” I read out loud and held the file out to Ben. “He’s going to school in Nashville.”

Ben took the folder from me and held it out to Root. “We don’t have time to get to Tennessee. Who’s next?”

He took the folder back, pushing his glasses up his nose and studied Ryan’s file. “How did I not notice that?” he muttered to himself then bent back down over his computer. “Logan, you got the next one figured out yet?”

Logan nodded and clicked his mouse several times.
“Yeah, I’m printing it now.” Then the printer hummed to life and spit out a couple pages.

I grabbed the first
one, the warmth seeping into my fingers. “Hailey Roemer,” I read.

“Any relation to Ryan?”
Ben asked snatching the rest of the papers up out of the tray.

My eyes skimmed the page.
“Yeah, his sister.” Then I noticed the picture. She had long dark hair that hung straight down past her collar bone and brown eyes that seemed to lock onto mine through the page. “Hailey,” I whispered to myself noting the mole right below her left eye.

“Well then,” Ben sighed clapping me on the back and causing me to jump
, “let’s get going.”

* * *

Hailey’s college was in the University District a few miles down the freeway from our part of the city, so Ben decided to take one of Dad’s cars for a change. I spent the whole ride watching the traffic around us. I’m sure most of it was people going to work or school, or home from work or school. They all had their own worries. Will I pass my classes? Will I make my deadline? Does so-and-so like me? I wished I could, for even just a second, consider any of those as one of my own worries. Instead I had my own set. Will Hailey be alive when we find her? Will I spend the rest of my life
fearing
for my life? Are my brother and I going to survive to see tomorrow? Next month? Next year? Are our parents still alive?

Suddenly
, this car felt like it was getting smaller. Like the ceiling was lowering and I had to scrunch down in my seat to get away. I didn’t want to think about it all anymore. “So, how’s your leg doing?” I asked trying to distract myself.

Ben pushed his feet against the floor and stretched until his head was brushing the
ceiling. “It’s doing alright,” he said exhaling heavily. “Still sore but I can manage.”

What did a bullet wound feel like? “Did it hurt when you got shot?” I asked.

He let out one barking laugh. “Did it hurt? Are you kidding me? Would it hurt if I rammed a hot ball of lead into your skin?”

I smiled at my o
wn stupid question. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” I muttered and settled back in my seat again. My brother continued to chuckle to himself even after we’d pulled off the freeway and onto the off ramp leading into the University District.

* * *

“Ever been in a college dorm?” Ben asked nudging my ribs with his elbow as we walked down the hall.

I shook my head. “I’m a little disappointed,” I
joked. “I thought girls just walked around half naked here.” A couple students brushed past us carrying their books close to their chests. They disappeared into a room and the hall was silent again. “Yeah, I’m definitely disappointed.”

My brother smiled and started down the hall toward Hailey’s
room. It didn’t take long to reach the right door but Ben didn’t knock right away.

“What are you waiting for?” I hissed impatiently.

Ben turned to me. “This just seems too easy.”

“Easy?” I repeated. “You think it’ll be easy getting her to come with us after we explain what’s going on?”

“Good point,” he said then hit his knuckles against the door.

I could feel my heart begin to pound. Why was I so nervous? We’d done this a million times. A few silent moments passed and no sound of movement came from in the dorm room. “What if we’re too late?” I whispered then added “like always” mentally.

“Don’t you think this place would be a little more chaotic if a couple suits had come in and kidnapped someone?” I shut my mouth. He had a point. Ben slowly put his ear to the door, his hand hovering over his gun. “Hello?” he called in. Still no answer. Then he turned to me. “Alright, you stay here.”

I narrowed my eyes at my brother. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Someone needs to stay here and keep watch.”

“Alright then,” I said. “You guard the door and I’ll go into the beautiful girl’s dorm room.”

Ben pressed his mouth into a thin line. “She’s a patient, Jack,” he said through his teeth. “Not a dating prospect.”

I could feel my heart hammering as I stared my brother down. “Well
, why do you always get to be Batman?”

Ben’s expression changed instantly. “What?” he asked obviously caught off guard.

“It’s starting to feel like you’re always Batman and I’m Robin,” I said scratching the back of my neck. “I don’t want to be Robin all the time.”

Ben’s mouth was still hanging open as he stared at me completely confused. “We aren’t Batman or Robin any of the time.” Then he shook his head. “Just watch the door.”

“Fine,” I muttered and leaned back against the wall.

I chewed on my lip and glared at the other end of the hallway as Ben slowly opened the door so it didn’t make a sound. Then he slipped in silently. As I stuffed my hands into my jacket pocket
s, one of them closed around Hailey’s file. Pulling it out and unfolding the paper, I studied her picture wondering what her story could be. Her skin was lighter so she was probably from somewhere in Europe. Maybe her parents had told her what country she was from. Or maybe she didn’t even know she and her brother were adopted. No, she had to know. Especially with Ryan having darker skin like me. Maybe he and I were from the same place. Maybe our birth moms had known each other. We could have been born in the same hospital.

A scream
erupted from behind the door causing me to jump. Without another second to think, I rushed into the room reaching for my gun, and crashed right into Ben. I looked past him to find a girl, that wasn’t Hailey, with a towel wrapped around her body.

“Who are you?” she screamed clutching at the towel. “What are you doing in my room?”

Ben held his hands out in front of him and opened his mouth to talk.

“This is the girls’
dorm,” she continued loudly. “Are you guys perverts or something?”

“Okay, okay. We’ll leave,” Ben finally blurted. “We were just looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“Hailey
Roemer,” I said. “And we’re not perverts.”

The girl hugged the towel tighter and crossed her arms over her chest as she
eyed the two of us suspiciously. “She left a couple days ago for winter break,” she said, the volume of her voice finally lowering. Surely her screaming had drawn some sort of attention. I turned around and peeked out the door to find several girls standing outside their doors, craning their necks to see into the room.