Controllers (Book 1)

  Ace looks at me for a minute, then he lowers his pistol. "You're not even going to fight back?" he asks in disgust.

  "Why? The game is rigged," I say.

  I wince as the words leave my mouth. It's stupid to talk to him so honestly. He has more power than Benny, perhaps even Honey. And I have no idea how he'll react to my honesty. Watching him train the others has given me no insight into his personality at all. He's a closed book, quite deliberately.

  His lips twitch with a smile. "Rigged?"

  "If I win, I still lose," I say.

  "How so?" he asks.

  "You're the master, I'm the slave. The slave does not show the master up. It just isn't done. Punishment always follows. And my life means nothing to you. It's one of the first things I learned here."

  "You're not a slave," he says very seriously.

  "I'm certainly not free," I reply. "Beating you at this game is an act of rebellion, and I've already been branded as a rebel. Taking you out will just add to people's misconceptions of me. I don't need the trouble."

  He stares at me for a minute. New emotion is in his eyes. It looks a lot like anger. I don't know what makes me look him in the eyes, as one person to another would, but I do. I am no longer thinking soft thoughts. I'm thinking about the way my life has been ripped to pieces. The anger presses against my chest.

  "You can beat me, can't you?" he asks quietly. "You can beat everyone in this game."

  I don't reply. His question is a trap. Too, he's really not asking. There's a thoughtful pause as he looks me over.

  "The others have started taking each other out," Ace adds. "They think that if they have no competition, I will be easier to beat. They fight each other first. But not you. You hide your friend and then let her escape by sacrificing yourself."

  "Was that the point of this?" I ask him. "You want to judge our reactions?"

  "Everything is a test," he tells me.

  I look up and around. I'm trying to see the cameras I feel on me. I don't understand why he's telling me the truth. It feels like another test, one I'm not capable of beating. I don't know enough about the situation to outthink it.

  "No one is watching," he says. "They don't watch this phase of the game. They watch later...when it matters. This is all just groundwork."

  "Groundwork for what?" I ask.

  He doesn't reply immediately. He turns and shoots twice, almost casually. Josh and another boy disappear. I hadn't noticed them. The conversation has distracted me from the fight.

  "For the final stage of your training," he says. "You need to be careful, Bree."

  My name sounds strange coming from him. I've never heard it spoken in such a calm way before. He's the first person from the facility to use my name. It's almost like taking a deep breath after being under water for too long. I'm not an animal or a thing to him. I have a name, and someone other than my friends has spoken it.

  "Of what?" I ask.

  "Everything," he says. His grin returns to his face. The flush of heat it causes in my body is unexpected and swift. "You had the shot before I noticed you, didn't you?" he asks.

  "Yes," I admit.

  "You should have taken it."

  He raises his pistol and fires. The forest disappears. I pull my vest off and throw it to the ground before I walk outside. I'm angry. I don't like that he warns me to hide what I'm capable of one minute, then gets mad when I do. I don't like that he stopped the fight to have a conversation with me. His words feel like a manipulation. He was trying to get a read on me and figure out something that only matters to him. I remember that he was there when I was hypnotized. I can't remember his words, but a feeling of dread is around my heart when I think about it.

  I walk right into Benny on the other side of the door. "Careful, dreg," he says. "I might take that as an attack."

  I step away from him and work to control my temper. Benny senses the emotion. He's eager to take advantage of it. The fact that I've not fought back once since he has turned me into a target has made his hate of me grow. He's looking for any excuse to shoot me. I don't know why he holds back. With another surge of anger, I wonder if it has something to do with Ace. His words on the first day might have been taken as a warning for Benny not to kill me. There seems to be a lot of subtext to people's actions in the facility. I don't like the idea of Ace protecting me, even if it's unintentional.

  "I've been noticing that friend of yours lately," Benny adds. "She's got quite the figure. I bet she's a virgin. What do you think?"

  I grip my pant leg to keep from hitting him. I want to tell him to stop talking, but I've been down this road several times in the past week. It'll just end up poorly for me. His words mean nothing. They are a tool. They can't hurt me.

  He shakes his head in disgust. "You rebels are all the same," he adds. "You talk a big game, but the second you're outnumbered, you turn into cowards. None of you can hold the line. That's why you lost the war. That's why your leaders were hunted down and killed and your homes torched. If I had it my way, I would burn the whole forest down and kill every last one of you. I wouldn't stop with a few measly missiles."

  His words make me think that more people than Max and me survived. Who else made it? Was it Leslie? Devlin? I knew it wasn't any of the teenagers. They would be with me.

  "If the government didn't need immigrants to help run the city so badly, I would kill you now," he says.

  His words are a half-truth. He's not overly afraid of the government. He's afraid of someone else.

  The door opens behind me. The rest of the class files out. Maria is last. A second later Ace appears. His eyes move to Benny as he silently closes the door. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. His look says plenty. Benny instantly returns to the fighters on the mats, calling them dregs and otherwise being unhelpful to the learning process.

  I keep my eyes on the mat as I work to control my temper. Nathan, Josh, Sam, and Maria join me. Josh and Sam are arguing. Nathan is mediating the fight. He does that a lot. He tries to keep the fighting to a minimum. It's a trait I like. He knows what's important. He knows that the game is silly, and that the lessons we are learning are ridiculous and full of rhetoric.

  Maria is beaming. I don't understand her happiness until she admits that she was the last person hit. No one managed to get a clean shot in. Ace won the game. I'm not surprised.

  Josh and Sam are still arguing as we sit down to eat dinner. My thoughts remain entirely fixed on Ace's words. I don't understand them at all. It feels like he is trying to tell me something he knows he shouldn't. I don't get why he bothers. My thoughts switch to Benny when I realize that I can't puzzle out Ace's meaning. My face fills with color as I hear his words again. I avoid looking at Maria. I'm beginning to think he will kill me before the tests do. He will find a way to make it look like an accident.

  I have to find a way to protect myself.

  Sleep does not come easily to me that night. I can't find peace. I know tomorrow will be torture without it, but Benny and Ace are both in my head. I worry about them more than I do the tests.

  It's after midnight - Maria has taught me to tell time on the clocks - when I hear a boom followed by a rattle. The ceiling shakes, and my bed rocks slightly. I sit up and look at the door. Screaming fills the halls, starting from the lower levels up. People are running past the door. There is another boom followed by screams of rage and confusion. Gunfire erupts in the hall.

  The others wake with the second boom. Maria starts speaking Spanish very rapidly with her fear. I don't understand anything she's saying. A boy pokes his head into our room. It looks like Nathan, but it's hard to tell in the dark.

  "Riot!" he yells. "It's a riot!" He's swept away with the crowd.

  The people around me start whispering to each other in fear. We don't know who's rioting, or why, but we all know it's deadly. The room only has one door. Staying put is a trap. Rioters don't care if they kill the guards or us. Violence matters more than figuring out who's innocent.
>
  I stand and pull my pants on. I don't put on my shoes. I don't want to waste the time. Maria is already dressed. I grab her hand and pull her to the door. The others have crowded around it. They push each other to get outside. Some of them get caught up in the fighting. A girl falls with a yell of pain. The crowd pushes against her and she disappears around a sea of legs. I push my way out into the hall, my hand firmly on Maria's.

  The rioters aren't just focused on the guards. They're attacking everything in sight. I don't recognize the people, but they wear armbands of different colors. They're immigrants, like us. Nothing unites them, save for the sense of madness. Their eyes are full of anger and their faces are impassive. The strangest thing to me is that the anger isn't focused. They need violence; they crave it. It has nothing to do with being oppressed or imprisoned against their will. It's something else, something that cannot be explained.

  The guards are in the middle of the fight. They are severely overwhelmed and outmatched. Despite their training, they have no leadership. Benny and Honey are nowhere to be found. The guards don't know what to do or how to stop the fight. They are self-serving. They just want to survive. They are not interested in protecting us or the facility. We have to get out of the hall, but no room is really safe from the rioters. I remember my surveillance of the other day. I know exactly where Maria and I can hide.

  I push back a rioter with murder in his eyes as he tries to kill me. He stumbles into a guard and they immediately start fighting. Maria whimpers behind me. She's close to panic. I have to take care of her. She can't do it herself. She does not have my training.

  The fighting grows louder. Someone pulls out a grenade. It's a tear gas canister. I put my arm over my eyes and tear off the screen that blocks the air shaft from the hall. Maria starts coughing and crying as the smoke hits us. She keeps speaking rapidly in Spanish. I think she's praying. I help her climb up into the air shaft and then follow her with a small jump up.

  I pull the screen up after us and retreat with her at my side. A large fan twenty feet down the shaft keeps us pinned in. The fan serves another, more welcome, purpose. It blows the tear gas away from us. Some of it has gotten in our eyes and lungs, but the fan keeps the worst of it away.

  Maria is whimpering next to me. I put my arm around her shoulders and watch the opening carefully. I wish I had my rifle or a knife. Anything, really, would be useful in keeping the rioters and guards from killing us.

  The sounds continue for over an hour. Things quiet down very gradually. The fighters don't want to stop. I don't fully trust that it has ended. I don't want to crawl back to the edge and see people on the ground. I don't want to see the dead.

  "I thought you had them contained," Ace says angrily. His voice is low, barely raised with his emotion, but his anger is in every syllable.

  "We did," Honey replies hesitantly. Even she's afraid of him.

  "Not well enough," he says. "I'm taking over security until I know exactly what went wrong."

  "But Benny..." Honey protests.

  "Your son is hopeless," Ace says.

  Benny is her son? No wonder he knows so much about me. She must tell him about us all. My stomach clenches unpleasantly. I should have seen the resemblance.

  "He will never be an officer. And he will definitely never be in the RFA. His failure today, the fact that he didn't even join the fight, is proof of his inability to hack it in a real conflict. The most he will be is a guard for this facility. I will make sure of it," Ace adds coldly.

  "He did his best," Honey says. Though she is angry, her words are careful. She does not want to risk his wrath.

  "That is exactly the problem," Ace says. "This facility is on lockdown until further notice. No one in or out."

  "As you wish," Honey says.

  "That's all," Ace dismisses her.

  Honey walks away, her boots striking on the hall in an irritated staccato. Ace is not done giving commands. "Secure all the rooms and make sure everyone is accounted for," he adds. "We don't need anyone escaping on top of the riot. Go."

  There are more footsteps and a door bangs shut. The hall is now empty. The only person that remains is Ace. I don't know whether to reveal myself to him or not. He sounds so angry, so fierce. The calm does not mask his emotion. Will he think me part of the riot? Why shouldn't he? Everyone thinks I am a rebel. They will blame it on me.

  There is a pause and then the grate is removed from the air shaft. I tense, and Maria whimpers. Ace's face appears at the end of the shaft. He's somber, but he's not looking at me angrily. I take comfort from his expression. It's strange how easily one look removes the knot in my stomach.

  "It's safe now," he tells me. "Come on."

  He holds his hand out and gestures us forward. For some reason, I trust the gesture. I gently push Maria to get her moving. She crawls forward first. He pulls her out of the shaft and then reaches out for me. Before I know what's happening, he has his arm around my waist and is lowering me to the floor. His hand is warm, and I feel like he could easily carry me twice as far.

  "Are you okay?" he asks as he releases me.

  I nod without speaking, not trusting myself to speak after everything I witnessed, and turn to Maria. She has stopped trembling, but she looks like she's going to be sick. I know why. There are bodies in the hall. I count them without thinking. Five, six, seven people are dead. Blood pools around their heads and bodies. Their eyes are open and shocked. The madness is still in the eyes of the dead rioters. One of the dead is a girl from our dorm.

  Ace and I step back as she vomits. It takes her a long time to empty her stomach. When there is nothing left, I walk around the puddle of vomit and put my hand on her back.

  "Deep breaths," I tell her.

  She starts taking deep breaths and puts her face into my shoulder. I rub her back and look at Ace more closely. He is wearing blue jeans, a black shirt, and heavy boots. I get the feeling he was not at the facility when the riot started. He did not have time to put on his uniform. The jeans startle me. It's the first time I've seen him in anything but his uniform or exercise clothes. They make him look more human.

  "What happened?" I ask him.

  "A riot," he explains.

  I roll my eyes at him, then decide that asking him is stupid. He will never tell me what started it. He does not trust me. I'm a dreg. He's a citizen.

  "You should get back to your room," he says. "My officers will not be kind to you if they catch you out in the hall."

  I have one more question. I can't stop myself from asking it. "How did you know we were in the air shaft?" I ask.

  He pauses. He's fighting against the words. Finally, he speaks. "Because it's the smartest place to hide."

  I'm surprised, but he doesn't let the moment linger. He turns away abruptly and walks down the hall. He doesn't see the bodies around him. His focus is inward. I pull Maria closer to me and take her to our room.

  The other girls are in various stages of shock. Some of them are crying. Most have injuries. I don't know if the wounds are from the guards or the rioters. I wonder if Nathan is okay. My heart beats wildly at the thought of something happening to him.

  "They killed her!" a girl in our room wails into her blankets. Her friend rubs her back. I know she means the girl we saw in the hall. They were friends. A wave of sympathy surrounds me. It could have easily been Maria.

  I briefly consider the idea that the riot was a test. Do they think the violence will weed out the rebels? Could it be a way of seeing who will try to escape and who won't? Ace had said everything was a test. I believe him. Maybe I'm being paranoid. It's easy to feel paranoid with so many people watching me all the time.

  Maria lays on her bed and puts her hands over her ears. She's trying to mask the sounds of the screams of the dying. She wants them to go away. I know they won't. She will hear the voices in the silent places of her mind forever. The fight in the forest is still clear to me. The sounds are always close by. I can't believe that it's only been little ove
r a week. It feels like an eternity.

  I sit on my bed and try to clear my head. The madness in the eyes of the rioters frightens me. It makes no sense. The rioters weren't trying to get free. They were trying to kill everything in their way. I understand rioting against the guards. I even understand an escape attempt, but they hadn't been rioting to escape.

  Something else happened to make them riot. I piece together what I know.

  All of the rioters are strangers. We are separated when we pass the two month trial period and held in another part of the building. Something went wrong with the training of our counterparts in that part of the building. I don't understand what brought on the anger in the rioters, but it makes me think that they are not simply making us smart and strong for our own benefit. Something else is going on with the final stage of training, something violent. It's possible they are experimenting on us.

  And I have no idea what to expect next.

  Chapter 15