Authors: Robison Wells
I touched her shoulder again. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t shake me off this time.
Her hand reached up and touched mine. She was ice cold. She turned toward me.
Suddenly her eyes went wide, looking over my shoulder. Her mouth opened in a scream, but it was knocked out of her—something hit me in the back and I smashed forward into Jane, knocking her into the wall.
I stumbled and turned just in time to see Dylan swinging a pipe. I wanted to duck but turned my back to the blow to shield Jane. Pain rocketed through my body, and I collapsed to the ground. I could hear Jane screaming above me, and then she let out a yelp, and I felt her fall next to me.
My lungs weren’t working. I desperately sucked at the air.
“You couldn’t leave well enough alone,” a female voice shrieked. I turned my head just enough to see it was Laura, standing behind Dylan. He was holding the pipe like a bat.
I couldn’t breathe.
I turned to look at Jane. She was dazed but awake, lying against the wall. Her neck and chest were splattered with blood.
“You, Benson,” Laura spat, “think that you’re the big man because you don’t care about the rules. Do you think that Lily would have tried to escape if you hadn’t been goading her on?”
I didn’t even care about arguing. I just wanted to protect Jane. I forced my aching lungs to breathe the word “stop.”
“Stop?” Dylan mocked. “I shouldn’t have stopped last time. I should have finished you off at the wall.” He raised the pipe and there was nothing I could do. He swung it down like an axe, smashing my raised arm and pounding down into Jane’s leg. She groaned, low and soft.
I could barely move, but they were going to kill us, and I couldn’t let them. He took a step back, preparing the heavy pipe again. I started to stand and got up on one knee before Dylan’s swing caught me in the stomach. I reached for something, my fingers dragging across Jane’s bleeding leg, but I couldn’t stay up.
I plummeted down into the deep window well.
Blackness was gathering all around me. Above me, silhouetted against the sky, I saw Dylan raise the pipe and hack it down onto Jane.
I watched him do it again. And again.
I
woke.
Silence. Pitch-black.
I tried to move, and sharp, terrifying pains pierced my body.
There was a patch of gray sky above me. As I stared, I could see specks of light. Stars.
The almost-rectangular sky was interrupted by a small black spot. I tried to focus on it, tried to see it.
It was a hand. A hand reaching over the edge of the well. No—
hanging
over the edge.
Jane.
I pushed myself up, trembling with pain. I remembered what had happened. Laura’s grotesque screaming. Dylan’s swinging pipe. Jane’s silence.
I reached for her hand, and the stretch made me gasp. My ribs were on fire. Tears ran down my face as I touched her fingers with mine. They were cold. She didn’t move.
“Jane!” I shouted, desperately looking around me for some way to climb out. I put my foot on the corrugated metal, and it slipped off.
“Jane!” I yelled again. My voice was hoarse and dry. “Jane, wake up!”
I stretched for the top and discovered that the fingers on my left hand wouldn’t grip. They wouldn’t even respond. I crumpled back down to the bottom of the window well, scorching pain wracking my entire left side.
“Jane! You’ve got to wake up!” I moved to the far end of the well and then tried to run and leap for the top, but the sudden movement seemed to cripple me. I couldn’t force my body to jump.
“Come on, Jane,” I said, spinning in a circle, looking for anything I could find. The ground was thick with dry leaves. I kicked through them.
My foot caught on something and I dug it up—a short two-by-four.
“I’m coming, Jane,” I said through the tears. I jabbed one end of the board into the dirt and leaned it against the side of the well. “I’m coming. Don’t worry.” I stepped up onto the high end, and my head was over the side.
Jane was motionless. She was dead.
I grabbed at the grass with my good hand and scrambled up onto the lawn, panting for air and fighting the pain.
I moved to Jane, brushing her hair from her face. She was bleeding.
No, the blood was dry.
“Jane!” I yelled. “No!” I grabbed her neck, pressing with my fingers, searching for a pulse. There was nothing.
I was crying now. I knelt over her, my face bent down to her lips, trying to feel a breath against my cheek. Nothing.
Blood was everywhere—face, neck, arms, legs.
Gripping my useless left hand with my right, I pressed down onto her chest, over and over. I bent over her lifeless face and breathed into her mouth.
Nothing.
What could I do? Where could I go? We had no 911. No ambulance.
I looked at Jane and touched her face. I touched her hand and touched her dress, ripped at the waist where the rough pipe had smashed against her.
She twitched.
“Jane?” I stared at her arm, wondering whether I’d seen something real.
It twitched again.
“Come on,” I shouted, feeling her neck again for a pulse. My fingers were throbbing so much I couldn’t tell.
Her head moved.
“Jane, can you hear me?”
Her hand lifted and fell.
“Stay there,” I said, struggling to stand. “I’ll get some guys.”
She kept moving, pushing herself up.
“Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond, but moved to her knees. I offered my hand, but she climbed to a standing position without it.
I put my arm around her waist to help. “Come on,” I said. “Can you walk? Let’s get inside.” My body was screaming with pain. Adrenaline must have been keeping me up.
She looked back at me, but her eyes were slightly crossed.
“You’re in shock,” I said, trying to be calm. “Lie down. I’ll go for help.”
But she didn’t listen. She took an unsteady step, and then two more. She was limping severely on her right leg.
“What’s going on, Jane?” I said, trying to hold her up the best I could. “Talk to me.”
She kept walking.
I moved in front, trying to stop her. She was delusional. I grabbed her in a hug, but she didn’t respond.
She took another step in spite of me, and I stumbled and fell. As I hit the ground, daggers of pain stabbed my ribs, hip, arm, and chest. I gasped for breath. Jane kept walking.
“Stop it,” I shouted, trying to get back up. “Jane, just sit down!”
But she kept moving, limping slowly but deliberately around to the back of the building.
I shoved myself up, gritting my teeth against my injuries. She was almost around the corner when I was back on my feet, and I hobbled after her, yelling.
There were no lights close to me. I didn’t know how much time had passed, but the dance must have been long over. Turning back, I could see a dim glow high above me, coming from one window of the girls’ dorm. For a moment I thought I should run there and try to throw a rock, try to get someone’s attention, but Jane was already out of view around the corner and I couldn’t leave her. She would fall at any minute—on the sharp stone steps or down into another window well. She could die.
She might die anyway.
I pushed through the aching and throbbing, running with one leg and trying not to buckle on the other. As I turned the corner I saw her disappear around the back. That was good—she was getting closer to the cafeteria doors. Maybe they’d still be open.
“Jane, wait!”
When I saw her again she was almost in front of the cafeteria, which was now dark. The doors were closed.
The moon was on this side of the building, giving me a little light. Jane was moving awkwardly; I could see now that both her legs were probably injured, not just one. Given my pain, I didn’t know how she was still standing.
I also noticed for the first time that my left hand—the one that wasn’t working—was black with dried blood.
Jane was moving in spurts now, slowing, stopping, taking a few sudden steps, over and over. I was gaining on her.
She ignored the cafeteria and was now limping past the incinerator. I was twenty steps behind her. I called again, but it was like she couldn’t hear me.
Dylan must have hit her in the head. She had a concussion—or worse. I wasn’t going to spend another day in this school—I’d get sent to detention for killing Dylan. And Laura. And I didn’t care.
Jane turned after the incinerator. I followed.
She was heading for the door. The door that no one could open.
I reached her and grabbed her arm, but she shook me off.
“Jane, what are you doing?” I pleaded. “You need to lie down.”
Ignoring me, she stepped in front of the door.
Buzz. Click
.
Her hand, crippled and stained with blood, took the knob and opened it. I grabbed the door behind her, not letting it shut.
She was limping down a cement-walled hallway, like the others in the basement, except that this place smelled cleaner—like ammonia. A dim blue bulb hung from the ceiling, and as Jane passed beneath it her skin looked pale and dead.
The hall opened into a long, narrow room that reminded me of an old hospital. There were cupboards along one wall and empty shelves above them. On the right side was a row of steel floor-to-ceiling cabinets, and on the left was a metal table and a computer.
I had my hand on Jane’s waist, following her helplessly as she walked to the steel table. I tried to help as she climbed up onto it, but she ignored me. Worse than ignored me—she moved as though I wasn’t there at all.
My face was wet, but I didn’t know whether it was tears or blood. Probably both.
“Jane,” I whispered. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
She sat on the table, her legs stretched in front of her. I noticed a huge black bulge in her right leg just above the knee. Her bone was broken, but she’d been walking on it. Her injured hand was tugging at her ear, and her eyes stared blankly ahead.
I held her hand, but she didn’t acknowledge it.
“What is wrong with you?” I shouted. “I’m trying to help!”
She tugged at her ear again, and this time it came off in her hand. There were lights behind it, and metal.
Where her skull should be. Metal and lights.
Jane pulled a cable from the computer and plugged it into her head.
I stumbled backward.
No. No, no, no.
The computer lit up and lines of text began appearing one at a time on the screen.
EMERGENCY DAMAGE REPORT
AUTO RETRIEVE MODE
MODEL: JANE 117C
SEARCHING FOR DAMAGE . . .
DAMAGE CODES:
WA 24584
MG 58348
OC 32111
. . .
The numbers went on and on. Dozens, then hundreds.
I stared at her.
“Jane.” The word was barely audible.
Her lips didn’t move, but she spoke. It wasn’t her voice.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I
ran.
I scrambled back down the hallway, struggling to balance as my hip kept trying to give way. I was terrified that the door wouldn’t unlock for me, but the knob turned without a noise. I threw it open and charged outside, finally collapsing on the grass by the track.
I curled into a ball, the pain of my chest and leg and arm all overwhelming now. But worse was my heart, which felt like it had been ripped from my body and run through a shredder.
Model: Jane 117C
Jane had a model number. She was a . . . I had no idea.
An android? A robot? I thought I was going to throw up.
No. She couldn’t be a robot.
Jane had feelings and she had ideas and she had a personality.
I had kissed her. She had kissed me.
I tried to picture her, the Jane from before—happy, beautiful, alive Jane. But all I could see was her hobbling down the blue hallway, tearing off her ear, plugging into the computer.
There were no more lights on in the building. The school was silent, and no one knew. No one knew, and how was I going to tell them? How could I explain something that I didn’t understand? I needed to get them in that door and show them, but I couldn’t imagine going back in there. I couldn’t see her again, not like that.
She was a computer program. I’d been falling in love with a computer program. When she smiled it was because some algorithm had commanded her to. When she kissed me it was because a complex chain of ones and zeros made her do it. She wasn’t real, and she never had been.
But this was impossible. Computers couldn’t think, and they couldn’t act the way Jane acted. Machines couldn’t look like Jane looked. Her skin felt real. There was life in her eyes.
I closed my eyes as a sharp wave of pain wracked my chest. I needed a doctor, but the infirmary was run by Dylan. And even if he hadn’t been the one who’d beaten me, what could he do? He was a teenager, just like me.
Or was he?
Jane had a model number. And her number was 117C. Were there 116 others? There weren’t even that many students in the school. But with the way people came and went, maybe there had been 116. Maybe the others died, like Jane.
Jane was dead.
No—she was never alive.
Was everyone a robot but me? Maybe they were watching me, testing me. How will Benson Fisher respond if he’s in a fight? Will he try to escape? Will he make friends? Will he fall in love?
Breathing hurt. Lying on the ground hurt, but I couldn’t do anything else.
Jane could have been the only one. She’d been in the school longer than anyone else. Maybe her stories about the fifteen others who had disappeared weren’t true. She was the first, and she was here to watch everyone else.
I suddenly realized that everything else must have been a lie, too. She wasn’t from Baltimore. She hadn’t been homeless. She didn’t want to be a doctor. Her freckles were paint, her hair was dyed.
I yelled, a visceral angry cry. Jane had tried to make me think that I could survive in this place, that I shouldn’t kill myself in a crazy escape. That there were good things in this life. But it was all fake.
Maybe that was why she’d become my friend in the first place. I was getting ready to run, and her programmers wanted me to stay. They knew I needed a reason to keep me here, so they activated some “flirt” command in Jane’s circuitry.
But it couldn’t just be her. There had to be others in there—in that building right now. Why else would people follow all these stupid rules? Isaiah had to be one, running the Society and giving orders to keep everyone in line. But were there others? What about Carrie and Curtis? Maybe one of them was in the same situation as I was—trying to escape and in need of a reason to stay.
What about Mason? Someone to keep an eye on me, since I was the new guy.
Laura and Dylan for sure. They were too concerned about enforcing the rules, too strongly allied to the school. But then why would they attack Jane? It didn’t make sense. Why would a robot kill a robot?
Nausea swept over me.
Becky, I wasn’t sure about. At first I would have thought yes, definitely. She was fake. Too cheerful, too obedient. But there was sadness in her eyes, and loss. Fear.
No. Jane had emotions, too.
Becky’s sadness wasn’t any more telling than Jane’s happiness or mischievousness or rebelliousness.
I rolled onto my back and looked at the school. Anyone could be like Jane. Everyone could be like Jane.
I had to escape. I had no option anymore to try to take someone with me, to try for a mass exodus and hope for strength in numbers. I couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
I struggled to get to my feet, fighting the pain but unable to fight the hopelessness. Jane had become my best friend, and now she was gone. But it was worse than death—she had never existed. I wasn’t a boyfriend mourning for a lost love; I was a dupe, mourning my own blindness.
I limped across the track, heading for the trees. My hip was burning with every step, and I couldn’t breathe. Still, I’d find some way to climb the wall. The paintball flagpole had at least twenty feet of rope—I could cut that and use it for something. Or I could knock down a tree. Or take some of the lumber from a bunker. There had to be a way.
I was light-headed, and I began swaying with every limp. I coughed, and the pain was so bad it nearly knocked me to my knees. And then I coughed again and couldn’t stay up. Blood dripped out of my mouth.
I have to keep going.
I gritted my teeth and stood again. I was almost to the tree line. It would be harder walking in the woods, but I had to do it. I had to get out tonight.
The thought struck me that someone might already be coming. I’d seen what Jane was. There had to be repercussions. Whoever was keeping it a secret would know what I’d seen. They knew I could ruin it all for them.
I was moving so slowly, forcing every step.
The school was wrong, though. I couldn’t ruin everything, even though I’d seen Jane and the metal under her ear. I couldn’t tell anyone because there was no one to trust. And there was nothing I could give as proof.
And tomorrow Laura and Dylan would just finish the job, anyway.
The woods around me were spinning. It was so cold. I stumbled and then fell.