Defect (6 page)

After a little while, w
e approach a spilt in the path, the left side strips some distance off the run, and it’s smooth and flat. The right side adds an additional loop to catch back up with the main path, and it’s bumpy and uneven. My mind says go to the left, but then at the last second, my body turns onto the more difficult trail on the right.

My pace doesn’t slow as I navigate the dips and
potholes. I side step rocks and stray branches, pushing myself forward. Almost there, I repeat to myself over and over. My lungs are now burning, my feet blindly stumbling over the uneven terrain.

After a few minutes, Will stop
s and presses the button on his watch. I look up – we’re back in front of the door we started from. “An eleven minute mile,” he says, not indicating whether I passed or failed another one of their stupid tests.

I rest my hands on my knees, sucking in deep breaths, trying to slow my heart.
It doesn’t feel healthy to have it pounding so hard. My braid has come loose, and stray hairs stick to my forehead and neck.

When I
straighten up, Will is watching me. He hasn’t even broken a sweat, and his breathing has already returned to normal. My stomach does a little flip; I don’t like being scrutinized by him. Though he’s done nothing yet to make me fearful – he’s a leader here and I’m sure he’s only waiting for me to do or say the wrong thing.

“Why’d you take the harder path?”
he asks.

“Huh?”

He points back sternly to where the paths split, his face a hard mask. “Most people go to the left there – you didn’t. Why?”

I consider my split second choice out on the trail. When my eyes move over the rough terrain on the path I chose, suddenly I know why I
did it. “My mother always said there will be two paths in life.” I push my hair back from my face, gaining confidence as I talk. “The easy, smooth path and the hard, muddy path. She used to say when you take the hard path, you’re building up strength the entire way.”

His eyes narrow, taking in the meaning of my words. And suddenly I’m worried
I’ve said too much. Normal mothers don’t talk like this – they don’t tell their daughters to build up strength – because there should be nothing within the safety of our city that would cause you to need it.

“I mean – I just wanted to see if I could do it,” I say.

He looks me over. This wasn’t the right thing to say either.
Crap
. I press my lips together.

“I’m taking you back
Come on.”

I follow Will back inside, wondering why he and Dr. Nolan seem to have given up on me early today.

Kane is waiting for us, leaning against the wall, like he has all the time in the world to torture me. “O’Donovan says it’s time for her to meet Reggie.” He smiles.

Will clenches his fists, veins
throbbing against his forearms. I can tell he’s not happy, but he can’t do anything to overrule O’Donovan. I have no idea who Reggie is. But I soon learn.

Kane
hauls me by the arm to a room just down the hall. The nameplate on the door reads THE REGULATOR. He opens the door and pushes me toward the exam table that takes up most of the small room.

“Lie down,” he orders.

Will has followed us inside, but as I climb up onto the table, he decides against staying and turns to leave. Once the door closes, leaving Kane and I alone, my heart begins to race.

Kane
fastens a strap across my forehead, pinning my head against the table. Then he slides restraints over my wrists and ankles. I hate how weak I feel, unable to protect myself from him in any way. Reggie turns out to be their pet name for the psychological testing machine he hooks me up to. After attaching electrodes to my temples, he presses a button, and a monitor lowers from the ceiling toward me, stopping about a foot in front of my face.

Kane
clicks on the power, and horrible images blast down on me. Images I don’t even understand, but they make my blood curdle. I twist my head to the side and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to forget. But Kane’s fist in my stomach gets my attention. “Open them,” he barks. I gasp for breath, and the screen assaults my senses again. The images flash so fast, they barely register, but the effect is no less haunting. Close up images of a human body decaying, mounds of snakes curling all over each other, then an up close shot of a man and a woman … I close my eyes again, my cheeks flooding with heat. Kane laughs, but before he can hit me again, I open my eyes. “You liked that last one, didn’t you?” I can hear the twisted smile on his face. I want to punch him in his stupid mouth. The images flash and invade every part of me. I’m held captive by them. I watch until I’m numb and shaking with rage.

As quickly as the images started, the screen goes
black.

“What the fuck?”
Kane says. I look around and notice the whole room has gotten dark. I hear him flip the light switch back and forth, but nothing happens. “Don’t move,” he says to me, before turning to leave. Even he catches the irony in that statement and I hear him chuckle on his way out of the room.

A few seconds later, the door opens, but the footsteps are too
soft to belong to Kane. I’m still shaking with fear, lying strapped to a table in the darkened room. In the fading light from the hallway, someone tall with broad shoulders steps past me. Just as the door shuts, blocking out all light, I think it must be Will, though I didn’t get a good look at him. He doesn’t say anything, he just moves quietly through the room as though he knows just what he’s after. He passes the table and I crane my head to see what he’s doing. He stoops down near the data terminal. I hear something snap. He leaves just as quietly as he entered.

A second later, the lights flick back on. Then
Kane is back, grinning at me like a damn fool. “Little technical difficulty. But now, back to the show.” He cues up the video again, but the machine grunts and ejects the card. “What the hell?” Kane picks up the scan card. He’s holding it in two pieces. He looks from me – still strapped down on the table – to the data terminal, trying to figure out how in the world this happened. My face gives nothing away. 

Life does not put things in front of you that you are unable to handle.

– Unknown

I’m awoken in the night to a needle in my arm. I get the same rush of being forced into consciousness – a shot of adrenaline – just like after the mindscan. I gasp for breath and sit up in the bed, trying to see who’s there. It’s O’Donovan and one of the night nurses. She unshackles me, and he hauls me to my feet.

I
hurry behind him, though I have no idea what’s going on. My arms ache from all the recent shots. Shades of purple and green decorate the crooks of my elbows.

After winding through the hallways, h
e leads me outside to the open area where I ran with Will yesterday. When my eyes adjust to the moonlight, I see a group of guards-in-training standing in the field. I recognize a few faces from the bunker, including Sam’s. Kane’s there, too. And though I scan the crowd for Will, I don’t see him.

The
field has been set up with a series of obstacles, and people mill around nervously, as if waiting for something to begin. There’s a thirty-foot rope wall to scale at the start, then log hurdles, deep mud bogs in the center of the field and a trench where flames leap up into the air. My eyes can’t make out the whole course in the darkness, but I do take note of a space squared off with ropes at the end and wonder what it’s for.

“You’ve done well in your tests this week I’
m told.” O’Donovan watches my expression as I take in my surroundings. “So I thought it was time to try you at something a little more …
advanced
.” He smirks around the word advanced. He means brutal. “You’ll join our soldiers at the starting line and complete the obstacle course.” 

My first
impulse is to not cooperate. If I resist, they can’t use me as a pawn in their games. I know I have something they want and – though I don’t know what it is – I have the sense to guard it.

Kane
steps from the shadows, and that’s all the motivation I need. I involuntarily move toward the starting line, just wanting to be away from him. He smiles a sick, sardonic smile, proud of the fear he’s instilled in me.

I line up with the
others and spot Sam near the back. “What are you doing here?” She looks worried, like I have no chance of surviving this course.

I shrug. “Any tips?”

She digs one toe into the dirt behind her, ready to spring forward when we hear the gun blast. Looking straight ahead, she says, “Pace yourself. Don’t get swept up by the crowd. And in the ring – keep your hands up – protect your face.”

The gun fires
, and the group springs forward, breaking into a sprint. They’re scrambling over logs, splashing through the mud, shoving each other aside to get ahead. I realize we’re being timed and there’s some unknown incentive to do well. I jog after them, trying to remember Sam’s words. I don’t want to push myself too hard at the beginning, it’s a long race with lots of obstacles, and I’ll need my strength to make it through. I get to the first mud pit, and without thinking, I clamber through it.

The mud engulfs my feet, and I sink up to my ankles, making each step difficult as I pull
myself free from the suction the mud creates. It gets deeper and deeper as I wade across. I sink up to my thighs, my chest. It’s cold and thick, but strangely refreshing and helps to wake me up to what I’m actually doing. I quickly learn it’s best to go as fast as you can through the mud so you don’t have the chance to sink. I abandon my strategy of going slow to pace myself. I pick my feet up and jog faster through the mud before it has the chance to pull me under.

I reach the rope wall and without hesitating
, I step into the first hold and begin pulling myself up. My arms quiver, and I look from the ground and then up to the top, trying to judge if I’ll have the strength to actually do this. I worry that I’ll fall to the ground and venture a glance down, but then squeeze my eyes shut.
No.
I push aside the thought and keep moving. After a few more feet of climbing, I’m nearly at the top. I cross one leg over, then the other, while I balance precariously at the beam on the top. I begin to climb down the other side and drop to my feet when I’m close to the ground.

People push past me, and I follow, stumbling with one wet, heavy foot in front of the other. The faces around me are black with mud. There are guys
– big guys – who sprint past me into another mud bog. This time, we have to get low and crawl on our bellies under crisscrossing ropes. I drop to my knees in the mud, get low and crawl on my elbows under the ropes. The girl ahead of me kicks her feet, splashing mud into my eyes. I blink away the muck and keep crawling. Sticks and gravel cut into my arms as I pull myself through the mud, but I keep moving.

The shot of adrenaline they’ve given me is starting to wear off
, and I’m almost out of energy, but I know the course is nowhere near done. And I don’t even want to think about what’s waiting for me at the end. Surely, they won’t make me fight anyone.

Most of the crowd quickly makes their way
ahead of me, which is fine with me. For the next hour, I crawl through dirt, swim through mud puddles, run up and down hills, hurdle logs, and climb ropes and makeshift walls until my fingers are sore and bleeding, my legs are trembling, and I’m covered from head to toe in mud. I even taste it in my mouth.

All
of the others are much faster than me, and I soon find myself so far back behind the pack that I’m confused about which obstacle comes next and which direction I’m supposed to go. I see a girl up ahead of me and keep my sights locked on her. Where she turns, I turn; where she jumps, I jump. I think of nothing else and propel myself after her. If I can just keep following her, I hope I’ll reach the end soon.

Somehow, I
reach the end of the course. We are the last two to finish. The girl stops at the ring, ducks under the rope to get inside and waits, looking at me. The others are gathered around the ring, drenched in mud and bloody, to watch the fights that happen at the end of the race. They’re grinning like this is the highlight of the night. O’Donovan, Kane and Will are all at the front of the ring, judging the fights, I presume.

“Eve – get in there,” Will says
, motioning me toward the ring.

I swallow and wipe the mud from my face with the inside of
my shirt. It does nothing to clear my eyes. I part the ropes as I saw the girl do and stand to face her. I size her up. She’s several inches taller than me and much bulkier. Plus, it’s clear she’s done this before. She cracks her knuckles and smiles at me.

“
Wait,” O’Donovan says. “Bryce, switch with her,” he calls to a guy standing on the sidelines. I breathe a sigh of relief and head to the ropes to get out of the ring. O’Donovan laughs. “No – you stay put, Sterling.”

The girl scrambles out of the
ring, and a guy twice my size maneuvers his body nimbly between the ropes. He flexes his large hands open and closed. There’s blood on his knuckles. It’s clear he’s already been in one fight tonight. He takes a step closer to me, and his eyes harden.