Dr. Masterson’s serum did not give them indefinite power. In order to retain their abilities, they needed regular injections, some more frequently than others. The timing simply depended on how well the individual’s body retained the foreign genetic material.
“Let Cressa and me try,” Daphne called, grabbing Cressa’s hand and dragging her forward. “We both advanced recently, so our telekinetic powers were just boosted.”
Daphne pressed her palm to the wall as Hartley and Jacob had done. When Cressa hesitated to do the same, Daphne shot her a pointed look.
“What are you waiting for?” she hissed.
Cressa really didn’t want to visit the farm, whatever it was, but she also didn’t want the others to think her childish or scared. And wasn’t this what she wanted? To uncover the Institute’s grisly secrets?
With a heavy sigh, Cressa complied, positioning her hand beside Daphne’s on the stone.
“On my count,” Daphne instructed, and then began counting down from three.
Part of Cressa hoped they wouldn’t be successful. That way, she could feign disappointment right along with the others, and then move on.
No such luck. The girls’ combined efforts made the door fly open as though someone had greased the tracks.
“Nice one,” Hartley said, clapping Cressa on the back. He slid past her through the opening. The 2P boy smiled down at her as he went, though the friendly expression didn’t quite reach his eyes.
I’d be worried, too, Cressa thought.
Since she knew absolutely nothing about Hartley, Cressa wasn’t sure how long he’d been a 2P, or how he rated power-wise among his classmates. Nonetheless, an obvious deterioration in ability strength was never a good sign.
The Jacobs followed Hartley. The twins and Daphne were only steps behind, just as eager to see the farm as the boys were to show it to them. Ritchie hesitated in front of the entrance, indecision playing across her expression. After several long beats, she finally darted through the opening.
“Holy bananas! You have to see this, Cressa.” Daphne’s voice echoed on the other side of the wall.
Even before she crossed the threshold, Cressa knew this passage was different from the other tunnels they’d been in so far. For starters, it was over double the width, allowing Hartley, the Jacobs, Daphne, the twins, and Ritchie to stand in a straight line across it. The ceiling was much higher, too—thirty or forty feet, by Cressa’s estimation.
But the most notable difference was the floor-to-ceiling glass panes on either side of the tunnel. Not quite ready to see whatever was on the other side of the windows, Cressa kept her eyes focused straight ahead. Over the heads of her classmates, she saw a winding metal staircase that stretched three-quarters of the way towards the rounded ceiling. Three walkways were attached to the staircase, each one extending farther down the tunnel than Cressa could see.
“They’re so cute,” Daphne cooed, breaking away from the others to press her face against the glass on the left side of the tunnel.
With that, Cressa dared to look. If Daphne thought whatever was on the other side of the window was cute, it couldn’t be anything too bizarre.
It wasn’t. There actually were dozens of cows, llamas, and horses roaming around in, if Cressa’s eyes weren’t deceiving her, a pasture. Except, that wasn’t possible, since they were underground.
Joining Daphne, Cressa studied the pasture that seemed to stretch for acres. A thick carpet of bright-green grass covered the ground. There were even apple trees dotting the landscape, and a bright yellow sun shining down from a cloudless sky.
So it really is a farm, Cressa thought, relieved. This wasn’t scary in the least. In fact, the animals really were sort of cute, just like Daphne said.
She was still confused, though.
“How far down did we go? Are we still above ground?” Cressa asked the boys.
“Nope,” Hartley answered with a mischievous smile.
“Is this an e-screen?” Cressa asked no one in particular. She tapped the glass with her fingernail. A cow grazing nearby cocked its head to one side.
“Nope, it’s a simulated environment,” Hartley replied knowledgeably.
Cressa recalled learning about simulated environments in her eighth grade history class. They’d been popular after the Great Contamination.
With the world’s water supply contaminated by the nuclear waste, farmers had been unable to breed and raise livestock that was deemed safe for human consumption. Some genius had created indoor farms as an alternative, with hydroponic systems, heat lamps, and expensive filtration devices.
“I didn’t know those still existed,” Cressa commented.
“Me neither. This is the first one I’ve ever seen with my own eyes.” Hartley shrugged. “It’s probably left over from back in the day. If what Daphne says is true, this farm might have been part of the original school.” He squeezed Cressa’s shoulder. “If you think this is cool, just wait until you see the rest. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Hartley started up the staircase, turned at the halfway mark, grinned at the entire group, and tipped an invisible cap. “My name is Hartley, and I will be your tour guide on tonight’s adventure.” Pretending to be a conductor, he mimed tooting a train horn with one hand, going so far as to use sound effects. “Next stop, observation deck one, the frog pond.”
The twins, giggling maddeningly, raced to join Hartley as he resumed climbing the stairs. Both Jacobs followed, shaking the metal staircase and making the twins squeal with delight.
“Oh, a frog pond!” Daphne exclaimed. “That sounds neat.” She hurried to join the others.
Ritchie had one hand on the metal handrail, but paused before advancing beyond the first step. She turned to Cressa.
“Do you think it’s really a pond?” she asked uncertainly.
Cressa had been pondering that very same question.
The farm was real, maybe the pond would be, too, she thought optimistically.
Ignoring the niggling sensation telling her to run, Cressa blew out a long breath. “Only one way to find out, right?”
“I suppose,” Ritchie responded, and then began climbing the staircase.
By the time the two girls reached the first observation deck, the twins and Daphne were stunned and speechless. That did not bode well. In the brief time Cressa had known the other girls, the three chatterboxes had yet to come across a topic they couldn’t discuss at length.
Steeling her nerves, Cressa walked over to the railing on the right side of the observation deck and peered over. Glowing blue tubes running from the floor to the ceiling caught her attention immediately, distracting Cressa from the bigger picture.
“What are those tubes?” Shyla asked.
“Electric cages,” Hartley explained, sidling up next to Cressa. “If the PDs touch one, they get zapped. I’ve seen it happen—not a pretty sight.”
“Electric cages?” Cressa repeated weakly.
That was when she noticed that the tubes were arranged in square patterns. While there were only about two inches between each tube, there were larger gaps every six feet or so. And on closer inspection, Cressa was able to make out green-clad figures lying inside of each cage.
Gasping, Cressa swayed back and forth, stumbling back from the viewing window. Hartley rushed to catch her before she fell on her butt.
“Are those the dismissed cadets?” she whispered as Hartley steadied her.
“Far as I know. I recognize some, but I haven’t been at the Institute long enough to know many PDs,” Hartley replied.
“What’s a PD?” Daphne wanted to know.
At the same time, Lyla turned an accusing glare on the boys. “That room looks nothing like a pond.”
One of the Jacobs chuckled. “Nah, it’s just what we call it, because the uniforms are green. You know, like frogs.”
“Yeah, and they’re our pool of PDs,” the other Jacob added. He directed his next words to Daphne. “That stands for practice dummies
. 7 and 8Ps can sign one out to practice telepathy and manipulation on. Pretty cool, huh?”
No, Cressa thought, bile rising in her throat. Not cool. Not cool, at all.
Cressa wanted to turn away. The sight was beyond her worst imaginings. Even though she’d heard the rumors, and seen Damon Bizon, she wasn’t prepared for this.
How could the Dame keep people locked in electric cells? How could she keep them locked in cells at all? It was beyond cruel.
“I like feeding time,” one of the Jacobs said. “The PDs are much more active then.” He screwed his face up like he was about to cry, and when he spoke, his voice was high-pitched and whiny. “Please, let me out. I want to go home. Don’t let them hurt me.” He laughed. “Stupid prats. They can’t seem to get it through their thick skulls that the Dame’s society only has two types of people: the Privileged, and everyone else. They couldn’t hack it as Privileged, so they’re getting a taste of how the other half will live once we take over.”
“You won’t be saying that when it’s you down there,” Ritchie shot back.
“What are you talking about? I’m well on my way to being Privileged,” Jacob snarled. “I take my light manipulation exam in two days.
“Yeah? You think so? Not if your power keeps fading, Jacob. You and Hartley couldn’t open that door. If I were you, I’d have a little more empathy for the people you call frogs.” Ritchie crossed her arms over her chest and stared daggers at the group. “I’ve seen enough. I’m going back.” With that, she stomped noisily down the staircase and disappeared through the doorway.
Cressa considered following Ritchie. She’d seen more than she could stomach, far more than she’d bargained for. And yet, she’d only just begun snooping around the Institute. There were still two more observation decks above this one, and a part of her did want to know what was on the other side of those viewing windows.
Knowledge is power, she reminded herself. You need to see more.
“You guys want to see the source stables?” Hartley asked, as though reading her mind. His tone was different, though, no longer quite so smug or exuberant. Apparently, Ritchie’s comments about him becoming one of the PDs—that couldn’t possibly be their official name—had hit home.
“I don’t know, Hartley,” Lyla began, exchanging uneasy glances with her twin. “Maybe we should just head to med bay now. The procedure has probably already started, we don’t want to miss it.”
“Yeah,” Shyla agreed, nodding jerkily. “We definitely don’t want to miss it.”
“Oh, come on, we’re already here. You at least need to see the stables,” Jacob protested.
“Look, guys, I get it,” Hartley interjected. “Seeing the PDs is disturbing the first time. We come down here a lot, so we’re used to it. These goons,” he cocked a thumb towards the Jacobs, “forget they both had nightmares after our first journey down in the tombs. The PDs were once us. And yeah, we could become them. That’s scary. But the sources, they’re traitors to our kind. They were born with abilities, yet they refuse to join the Dame’s cause. They’re naive enough to believe that peaceful coexistence is a good thing. They don’t understand that they were born superior to the norms, and they’re wasting their gifts by not using them to help Privileged-rule happen.”
“Stupid gits,” one of the Jacobs muttered.
“Their stupidity is our salvation,” Hartley said pointedly. “They are undeserving of their talents, which is why the Dame transfers their abilities to us—the worthy.”
At the start of Hartley’s speech, Cressa had started to like the boy a little bit more; he at least seemed to appreciate how unnerving this all was for newbies. Hartley’s last comment, however, made Cressa reevaluate her stance. It wasn’t that Hartley’s beliefs were all that fantastical. In fact, they were in line with the Institute’s manifesto. The issue for Cressa was hearing the Dame’s objectives spelled out in such black-and-white terms.
Or, maybe I’m just finally realizing the scope of what the Dame is doing, she thought miserably. What I’m doing.
Turning on that frigging light had truly been an eye-opening experience for Cressa. Part of her wished that she had failed her exam and was still a 1P, allowing her to remain both ignorant and innocent just a little while longer.
“I want to see this source stable,” Daphne was saying when Cressa tuned back in to the conversation. “Gracia will be in surgery for hours. The mods she needs will take all night. We have plenty of time. Besides, I’m more interested in the final product.”
Lyla and Shyla rolled identical big brown eyes.
“Whatever,” they chorused in unison.
With the majority of the group in agreement, no one asked Cressa’s opinion. And when the group started for the second observation deck, she followed without comment.
It can’t be worse than those electric cages, Cressa told herself, shuddering.
As she climbed the stairs, Cressa gave the frog pond one last sorrowful look, her thoughts and prayers with Damon Bizon. Since the PDs were all asleep, and therefore lying on the thin cots inside their cages, she was unable to differentiate one from the next. Still, Cressa knew Damon was in there somewhere, likely sobbing into his pillow and dreaming of a home that was lost to him.
At the second landing, Hartley stopped and spun to face the group, causing a mini backup on the staircase.
“Just remember, the sources are traitors,” he warned. “I know their situation seems dire, but they deserve much worse. If the Dame didn’t need them, they’d be dead. So don’t feel bad for them.”
Why did he have to say that? Cressa wondered, her imagination immediately going into overdrive.
But nothing she envisioned was worse than the reality Cressa soon faced.
There were no cages inside the source stables. Instead, row after row of men and women on hover gurneys filled the room above the frog pond. There were dozens and dozens of them, all lined up with little space between the gurneys, save a few wider walkways. Each source had tubes protruding from his or her mouth, nose, and arms, making them look more like misshapen insects than humans. Many of them had their eyes open, staring vacantly at the ceiling above. Doctors navigated the rows of gurneys, stopping at each one to check the source’s vitals on the monitor and make adjustments accordingly.
Bile rose again in the back of Cressa’s throat, this time making it all the way to her mouth. There were no words to describe her absolute and total revulsion. The frog pond paled in comparison to the source stables. Cressa wanted nothing more than to run back to her room and hide beneath her covers, like when she was little and had bad dreams about the boogeyman hiding in her closest.
By the age of seven, Cressa understood the boogeyman was a fabrication of her overzealous imagination. But this nightmare was utterly real. Looking at the people—yes, people, not sources—hooked up to machines that stole their blood while they lay in a medically-induced state of sedation, neither sleeping nor awake, Cressa believed the boogeyman was very real. She even had a name: the Dame.
“What’s on level three?” Cressa asked, shocked by her own ability to form a coherent sentence. Her voice didn’t even shake when she spoke—another tremendous feat, given the roiling in her belly.
The other girls were silent. Lyla’s skin had turned a sickly shade of green, while her twin was white as a ghost. Even Daphne, who’d been so insistent on seeing the source stables, was fighting disgust.
Hartley, despite his speech about the sources being traitors and unworthy of their natural talents, wore a deeply troubled expression. Evidently he’d been playing up the part of the Dame’s loyal disciple, but he wasn’t actually so far down the rabbit hole that he’d lost all sense of human decency.
The Jacobs were a different story. As where everyone else was outwardly disturbed by the scene, they were invigorated by the spectacle. They kept laughing and pointing at certain individuals, making asinine comments about the females’ bodies and rating their beauty on a scale from toad to superm
odel.
Hartley cleared his throat loudly. “Um, what? Level three? Oh, it’s…honestly, I’m not actually sure what it is. There’s just a room up there with a really big incubation chamber.” He shook his head dismissively. “It’s always empty, don’t know what it’s used for.”
“I want to see it,” Cressa replied calmly.
A switch had flipped inside of her, turning off Cressa’s emotions. She felt hollow and detached. While the sensation was weird, it was preferable to the chest-tightening, panic-inducing horror she’d been experiencing.
“Yeah, sure. If you want.” Hartley waved her forward. “Come on.”
Her face a blank mask, Cressa followed Hartley up the third and final staircase.
“We’re going to stay here,” one of the Jacobs called after them. “I like to watch the redhead. She’s got killer curves.”
This was one derisive quip too many for Lyla, and she snapped. Rounding on the Jacobs, Lyla launched in to a tirade with enough four-letter words to make a nun flee.
“Sorry about them,” Hartley told Cressa sheepishly. “The Jacobs really aren't that bright.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out. But I thought you didn’t care about those people?” Cressa baited.
“I believe in the Dame’s vision, that’s how I rationalize all of this.” Hartley made a sweeping gesture meant to encompass the entire cavern. “I really do believe those people down there are traitors. I mean, they were born Talented. They are so lucky, and they don’t even realize or appreciate it. But us, you and me, we have to jump through a million hoops just to be able to do the same things they could do as children. It’s not fair.”
“So you’re jealous—that’s what you’re telling me?”
Hartley laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. Oh, hey, looks like we have some action going on inside the chamber.”
They’d reached the third-story landing, and Hartley was pointing towards the viewing window. In the middle of a bright white room was the largest incubation chamber Cressa had ever seen. People in white, puffy suits stood around the chamber, pushing buttons and adjusting knobs, while robotic arms with laser fingers swung continuously around the person inside.