No one even looked at him. Aiden looked to Peter. “I’m going with them,” he challenged, and Peter didn’t back down.
“After you,” Peter said, and fell in line behind Aiden and Neesha.
“Oh, absolutely, one hundred percent fuck this,” Zaza said. “Fuck this, fuck this, fuck this,” he mumbled to himself, walking a wide circle around the clearing before falling into line behind them.
Evan.
“WE’RE PRETTY DEEP,” Zaza announced. It was the fifth time he had quantified their progress. “Are we sure she would go this deep?”
The first hour of walking had been uphill. Evan had to take small steps to scale the uneven terrain, allowing Peter and Aiden to push past him. Now, a mile and a half in, the altitude had flattened and the forest had thickened. Evan had to lift his feet high to step over fallen logs and jagged rock faces, but the group continued on, conversation thinning with their breath, no one complaining other than Zaza.
Every time there was a clearing, Evan rushed back to the front. If they found her tonight, he was going to be the first to see her. Every one hundred yards, he tied yellow strings around the trunks of trees to mark their path. Five people was too many social signals to process at once, so he stayed quiet, ignored questions, and focused on the picture of Emma that hovered just ahead of him in his mind’s eye.
“Definitely never been in this far before,” Aiden said. “Not even for capture the flag.”
“You know a group of kids got killed in here, right?” Peter asked the group from behind, casually. “Just after the school opened, in these very woods—”
“I don’t buy it,” Aiden said.
“I don’t care if you buy it, it happened. It all started seventy years ago—”
“Redemption opened twenty years ago,” Neesha corrected him.
Peter ignored her. “At the time, they hadn’t figured out exactly what kind of a school they were gonna be yet. They were experimenting with a lot of different ideas, teaching all kinds of crazy subjects. Sure, normal stuff, like biology and chemistry, but they also were experimenting with much darker shit. Telekinesis, torture techniques, mind control—”
“You’re making this impossible to believe,” Neesha interrupted again.
“Christ, have none of you ever heard a story before? Just let it breathe.” The leaves crunched under his feet. “As I was about to say, the school knew what they were teaching was bullshit—nobody actually knew how to do mind control—but people believed crazy shit back then. They could recruit gullible plebes to come study. That was, until one student changed everything. We’ll call him . . . Evan.”
Evan felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Evan wasn’t like the other kids. For one thing, he was way taller—seven feet, at least. He was weird, closed off, but superintelligent. Strangest of all, he spent most of his time in the forest, practicing techniques from class. A rumor started to go around school. Maybe Evan isn’t like us; maybe he’s an alien.
“One day in class, his teacher is in the middle of a lesson when she turns around to put some coffee on. She’s talking back over her shoulder, and before she knows it, she’s pouring the hot coffee all over herself. She tries to stop, but she can’t—Evan’s controlling her mind.”
Neesha groaned. “If you’re going to tell a story about mind control, the twist should be way scarier than coffee.”
“What happened then?” Evan asked quietly. He knew it was just a story, but he had no trouble picturing it in the halls and classrooms of Redemption.
“The school starts to run all kinds of tests on Evan. They give him growth hormones to stunt his development, they try to shock it out of him with electricity, but none of it works. The best they can do is put a light in his brain, that starts to blink when he’s controlling someone—”
“A light in his brain?” Neesha asked.
“Dude, this is super off the rails,” Zaza added.
“Shut up, I’m getting there. One day in the middle of mass, one of the female students, this popular Year Four—Emma, we’ll call her—stands up outta nowhere. Everybody’s confused, quiet—until she holds up a brick and starts smashing it against her skull. People freak out, her friends are grabbing her, trying to stop it, but she’s possessed by the force of God. She keeps smashing till her skull falls in, and she dies. And hiding in the back of the church, there’s Evan, controlling her mind.”
Evan glared at Peter. It felt like an accusation, Peter using the names he did. He’d never hurt Emma, even as a fictional character in a made-up story. Still, the pit of his stomach turned as if he had.
“The school realizes they’ve gotta do something about this, but what can they do? They can’t have him bashing kids’ heads in with bricks, but they also can’t kill him, or they’ll have killed the greatest scientific advancement of this century. So the best they can do, they decide, is to contain him. They put an electric shock fence around the school, like a bark collar for dogs, and send him into the forest to live on his own. And they never heard from him again. Or rather, they never saw him.”
A big gust of wind sent a swirl of leaves flying around them. The fog was turning into real moisture. Evan could feel it gathering on the front of his jacket.
“Twenty years later, the school’s thriving. There’s hundreds of kids here, they’re only teaching real science. That’s when this group of Year Ones—the Neeshas—decide to go camping. Nobody’s worried about it, right? Nobody’s been in the woods for years, why would there be anything scary out there?
“As they’re sitting there in their tent, one of them hears something, something big, a huge—” He snapped a thick branch with his hands and all four of them jumped. Everyone was really listening now. “In the distance, she sees a little red light, hovering toward them, fifteen feet off the ground.
“Without warning, she takes an iron rod from their tent and starts attacking her friends. She slugs one of them over the head so hard it knocks her out cold. The other two go sprinting toward the school, but only one makes it onto the back lawn in time. Everybody comes outside; they can hear her screaming, ‘Please, help me, help me!’ but as soon as she hits the clearing—bam. She drops to the ground, writhing in pain. Instructors try to help, but they can’t figure out what’s going wrong. Nothing’s touching her, but she’s being tortured in her mind. The pain gets so intense, her eyes roll back, and just before the color drains from her face, she says it: ‘The light. It’s in his brain.’ And she’s gone. Not a single, physical sign on her body that she’s been hurt, but she’s dead on the ground in front of them.
“After that, there was a ten-year ban, no going out into the forest. It’s been so long now, nobody even believes it anymore. But the instructors, the ones who’ve been here the longest, they swear some nights they can still see a tiny light, blinking deep in the forest.”
It was silent for a moment. The story was impossible. Peter had gotten even basic facts of the school wrong, but it still gave Evan a creeping feeling about being in the woods this late, about all the strange patterns of the school that weren’t explained. Eventually, Neesha couldn’t hold her tongue anymore.
“Yes, okay, spooky, but you’re basically just butchering failed science experiments to make a story. The technique you’re referencing, using light to control neural activity? It’s called optogenetics, and it’s never even worked. We tried in Pharma.”
Peter sighed. “You had to fucking kill it.”
“So, the guy is fifteen feet tall?” Aiden asked.
“Yeah, he’s an alien.”
“Oh, yeah, you didn’t make that very clear.”
Evan froze. The rest of the group stopped behind him. At the farthest reach of his flashlight, the trees stopped.
“I think it’s the timber line,” Neesha suggested. “The end of the forest.”
They started again, slowly, reaching the edge of the forest and emerging into a clearing, nothing but black rock in every direction, as far a
s they could see.
“Are we past the front gate yet?” Aiden asked.
“I think the gate is that way.” Neesha pointed. “So it must be farther.”
“No,” Peter argued. “We’ve gone at least two miles. We should be way past it.”
They stood in silence. With no trees left to block it, the wind whipped their faces and necks. Neesha took another step into the clearing. “I guess we keep going—ahh!”
Her scream rippled across the mountain. When Evan’s flashlight found her, she was terrified, pointing off in the distance. Fifteen feet in the air, a tiny red light was blinking.
Neesha.
THEY STARED AT the light, but it didn’t get any closer, hovering perfectly still.
“I made that up,” Peter said quickly. “It was the best I could remember the story, but I made most of that shit up, including the part about the light.”
She scanned the area. “Look.” She pointed. Fifty feet along a horizontal line, another red light blinked. She checked in the other direction—another light. “It’s a fence,” she said.
She crept forward. The beam of her flashlight landed on stone pillars and chain-link fence in between. She traced the fence upward; it didn’t stop for twenty feet, nearly disappearing into the sky. At the top, there were rows of spikes, angled in both directions to prevent anyone from climbing in, or climbing out. Every twenty feet or so, there were stone pillars, resolute against the mountain, anchoring the fence.
“What the fuck?” Peter whispered. “Who would put a fence out here?”
“They would.” Evan’s flashlight landed on one of the stone pillars. Etched into its stone, covered in debris and surrounded by thick-growing vines, was the Redemption crest, its book of knowledge at the top, shining light into the heavens.
Step by step, they approached it. “We should climb it,” Neesha suggested. When she was a kid, the park near their home was one of the only places her parents would let her go without supervision. She used to spend entire afternoons racing against friends to the tops of the trees and fences.
“No way.” Zaza waved his flashlight at the top. “They’ve got spikes.”
“I’ll climb around them.” She reached for the fence. “I used to do it all the time at this park back home—”
“Hold on.” Zaza stopped her hand. “Why are you even trying to get over it? Then you’re on the other side?”
“To prove it’s possible!” Neesha answered.
“I’m sure it’s possible, but it doesn’t get us any closer to finding her.”
“I don’t think you understand science—”
“I don’t think you understand probability.”
She noticed Evan pulling his journal from his bag and starting to flip through it.
“Why would they even put a fence two miles into the forest?” Peter asked. “If you’re trying to keep animals out, why not make it closer to the school?”
“Maybe it’s somebody else’s fence?” Aiden guessed.
“It doesn’t really matter at this point,” Neesha said. “It’s here. Either Emma got over it, or she didn’t. I’m climbing to the other side—you guys can stay here and have a tea party, I don’t care. I’m finding her.”
“I’m not letting you hurt yourself!” Zaza grabbed for her arm, but she swung wildly, fighting him off and jerking her body away from him. As her arms swung back, her right arm caught inside Evan’s sling, yanking it forward and throwing his journal out of his hands and toward the fence. The leather binding met the chain with a light tap, but as it connected, it began to sizzle. Sparks exploded off the impact and steam released up the fence line. The journal landed on the ground in front of them with a thud.
Neesha leaned over slowly and picked it up by the part that still resembled leather. The other half had melted, warping its shape, and still sizzled with the burn of electricity.
All of them stared at the fence. “That’s . . . a very extreme charge,” Neesha said. Her heart began to beat warm and loud in her ears.
“The whole thing is electrified?” Zaza asked breathlessly.
On top of the fence, bright red and yellow siren lights started to spin.
Part V.
Recruits.
Testimonial: Emmalynn Donahue.
Year 1995–1996. Day 33.
I don’t have a home in this world anymore.
Sinful girl.
I didn’t know my mother was capable of saying something like that about anyone. I guess I was twelve the last time we were in the same room. I probably know the censored version of her. The version that was trying to raise a gentle daughter.
I wonder what the last four years have been for her. I wonder who she talks to, if not to me. I wonder if my dad gives her any support. I can understand how she thinks I’ve abandoned her, but this.
Sinful girl.
Wicked girl.
Abandoned her family for a life of excess.
She says it to a video camera. That’s the worst part; someone offers her a chance to record an opinion of her daughter, and this is how she responds. I left her behind; I did it to her. I don’t love her and that’s for the better, because she doesn’t need me anyway.
She’s drinking. I can tell she’s been drinking even if she isn’t holding anything in the video. My dad isn’t in the video. Maybe he’s the one recording, but I doubt it. He’s probably laid up in bed.
For four years I was able to swim, knowing that no matter how far out I got, there was always a shore to return to. But at an exact point between them, the Atlantic becomes the Pacific, which means you could enter an entirely new ocean, and you wouldn’t know until you came up to look for shore.
I knew we talked less and less. I wanted to tell her more, but I knew it was painful for her to hear what I was doing. I knew we talked about nothing, and eventually there was nothing to talk about.
I had the money. That’s the worst part; we always said we didn’t talk because we couldn’t afford it, but for three months, I’ve been rich. I could have called her whenever. I could have saved our relationship but I didn’t.
Wicked girl.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Understand her needs. She needs to be comfortable where she is. She needs to be okay with her life. She needs to take care of my dad.
I control where I stand. I can forgive her. I can care for her.
But how can I care for her if I can’t come home.
Might as well not come home. Like she wanted me to hear it.
She did want me to hear it. That’s why she’s talking to a camera. This is her telling me. I don’t have a home in this world anymore.
emma donahue investigation.
ahmad galbia—year 4.
transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.
YANIS (School Administration) _ Please speak your full name aloud.
AHMAD GALBIA (Student) _ Ahmad Galbia.
Y _ Zaza right.
AG _ Right.
Y _ Okay Zaza. Simple question. Why did you go into the woods last night.
AG _ Honestly. I have no idea.
emma donahue investigation.
neesha shah—year 4.
transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.
NS _ We were on a walk.
Y _ Two and a half miles into the forest. Why.
NS _ I was looking for my missing friend.
Y _ Emma.
NS _ Are other people missing.
Y _ Why did you want to find her.
NS _ Are you serious . . . because somebody has to.
Y _ She is your friend.
NS _ Yes.
Y _ You were nervous about your friend so you went to check the woods for her.
NS _ Okay.
Y _ And you thought the best moment for that was midnight. Why didn’t you ask us about this.
NS _ Yeah right.
Y _ I am serious. Why sneak off instead of asking for help.
NS _ Because this school is insane a
bout the rules.
Y _ But I’m not the school.
NS _ You’re not.
Y _ No. I’m the person they put in charge of finding your friend. If you would have asked. First I could have told you that we’ve swept those woods twice a day every day since Thursday and haven’t found anything . . . and second you wouldn’t have to face a mandatory punishment hearing from a school that is. As you say. Insane about rules . . . do you understand.
NS _ Punishment.
Y _ I’ve been told they are considering explosion. Not explosion. Explosion. No. Expulsion. There. Got it that time.
emma donahue investigation.
ahmad galbia—year 4.
transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.
AG _ Can I ask you a question.
Y _ Okay.
AG _ Why is there a twenty foot electric fence two miles into the woods.
emma donahue investigation.
aiden mallet—year 4.
transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.
Y _ The night before this big basketball game. You decide to stay out all night. Going into the woods.
AM _ Am I going to get in trouble.
Y _ Don’t worry about that right now. I’m trying to understand what would make you think this is a good idea . . . Aiden.
AM _ I need to find her.
Y _ I understand. But you are willing to risk your basketball career for it.
AM _ Am I going to get in trouble.
Y _ Of course not. You have a game today. I just don’t understand what felt so urgent. Why last night. Why the night before a game.
AM _ Can I go.
Y _ Is there anything you’re not telling me.
AM _ No.
Y _ Okay. Then you’re free to go.
emma donahue investigation.
evan andrews—year 2.
transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.
Y _ How did you come to be in the woods with Neesha.
Redemption Prep Page 15
