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“So you admit it?”
I opened the next door and stepped inside. Isaiah had to be a robot. He was too strict, too obedient. Was anyone actually like this?
When I reemerged from the room I was looking at him, and he stared back at me. “What if I were to tell you,” I said, dumping the basket, “that Jane was an android?”
Without waiting for his response I went back into the room and set the basket down. I wasn’t worried. If he was an android, part of the school experiment, then he’d already be aware that I knew about Jane. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“What?” he said as I reappeared.
“She was an android,” I said. “A robot. C-3PO. ”
He stared at me. I took another basket and then another.
“There’s no insanity defense here,” he finally said. “You can’t wear a dress and get sent home for being crazy. ”
“Okay,” I said. “But if you ever want to talk about it, you come see me. ”
I opened another door and stepped inside to get the basket.
“I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with here,” Isaiah said, still standing in the hall by the large trash can.
I came out of the room and rammed my finger into his chest. “I’m the only one in the whole damn place who knows what he’s dealing with. ” I tossed the garbage in the bin and then yanked it down to the next room. The last thing I needed right now was to deal with Isaiah and his self-righteous Society. It wasn’t about keeping anyone safe—it was about keeping himself safe. He did what the school wanted so that he’d be fine, not so that other people would be. I picked up a few wadded papers off the floor and stuffed them into the small can before heading back to the hall.
Two other guys were with Isaiah now. I quickly dropped the trash in the large can and went back into the room, trying to think of something to do—some way to get past them or talk my way out of this—but it was too late. They’d followed me in.
“This is what the Society is all about, huh?” I said, as the two thugs walked toward me.
I took a swing at one, missing, and then tried to run past them. But there was no way. In an instant I was on the floor. My good arm was being twisted behind my back and someone’s knee was pressing down on my spine. The more I struggled, the more pain shot through my body.
Isaiah calmly knelt down beside me. I tried to swing at him with my bad arm but the angle prevented anything more than a weak swat.
“If you want to escape,” he whispered, his lips almost touching my ear, “then do it and die already. I keep this school healthy, and you’re a cancer. Jane was a cancer, too. And Lily. Two down, one to go. ”
I threw my head against his, but didn’t have enough power behind it to hurt him and the pain in my own head flared. I struggled against the two on top of me, but it was useless.
Isaiah stood, and in a moment he calmly ordered the two thugs to do the same. “Let him up. ”
“The cameras saw all of this,” I said, trying not to show how much pain I was in. “You’ll be punished. ”
He smirked and moved close to me, his face only inches from mine. His voice was barely a whisper, not loud enough for his guards to hear. “This school has four rules and one punishment—detention. All other rules and all other punishments are dispensed by the Society. The school has learned it can trust us. ”
“What?”
“You can try to tell the others,” he said, “but they won’t believe you. Very few in the Society know. ”
I was stunned. When I could finally find strength to say something I murmured, “I bet the school loves you. ” I looked at the guards. “Did you guys know he’s the one who makes up the punishments?”
His goons’ faces didn’t change at all.
Isaiah walked toward the door.
“The school can still love you, too. Or it can hate you. ”
And with that, he was gone.
I ignored the rest of the garbage on the fourth floor and headed down to the third. I didn’t know what to ask Rosa, if I should ask her anything at all. Maybe I should just forget about trying to find out who was an android. No one would believe me. No one else was trying to get away. Everyone seemed so maddeningly complacent. Granted, they’d been here a lot longer than I had, but if a month of my prodding hadn’t spurred any of them into action, I doubted that another month would, either.
I entered a classroom and saw Rosa kneeling by the radiator, her hands splotched with black grease. She looked up at me.
“Hey, Benson,” she said quietly, and then focused back on the radiator.
“Hey. ” I pulled the trash bag from the room’s small basket. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“Here,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, trying to figure out how to stretch the conversation. “Someone taught you?”
“No. Some directions came with the contract. ”
“But you’re at least mechanically inclined. ” I tossed the bag into the big can.
“I guess. ”
This was going nowhere. It was time to be bold.
“So, if you do a lot of maintenance stuff, have you ever worked on the incinerator?”
Her face was still down, and she was fiddling with a wrench. “Why? Is it broken?”
“No,” I said. “I was just wondering if you knew anything about that door—”
Before I had a chance to finish the sentence she looked up at me.
“You do?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, frozen for a moment. “I—no. No idea. Maybe it’s for groundskeeping?” She looked back down.
What was that? It was definitely a reaction. Was it nervousness? Fear? Surprise?
“So you’ve never gone in there?” I asked.
“No. ” She bent down to get a closer look at the pipe. Or, to make it look like she was too busy to talk.
“You’re one of the oldest here, aren’t you?” I said, trying to draw the conversation out. I slowly unfolded a new garbage bag and placed it in the basket.
“Um, yeah,” she said. “I guess so. I’m eighteen. ”
“So you got here when you were, what, sixteen?”
“Yeah,” Rosa said, turning her head in my direction but not looking directly at me. “Listen, I’ve got to finish this up and then there’s a broken light switch in the girls’ dorm. I need to concentrate. ”
“And you’re sure you’ve never been in that room, not even a long time ago?”
“Very sure. ”
“Okay,” I said. “Good talking to you. ”
“Yeah. ”
I pushed the large garbage can back out into the hallway and headed for the next room.
I needed to take things to the next level.
Chapter Twenty-one
I sat alone at dinner. I ate almost every meal alone now.
I took my plastic dinner tray and sat on the fourth floor, in the common room that no one ever used. It was already dark outside—sunset was earlier and earlier now. I watched as a few people walked past my door. Three Society girls were somewhere down the hall, talking and laughing about something that had happened in class that morning. I still couldn’t fathom it—how could they be so calm? How could they be laughing?