Joan the Made (Throwbacks Series Book 1)

by Kristen Pham

  He steeples his bony fingers, and the sight of his familiar tic makes my fists clench. “What Rob did is wrong, and he’s going to face punishment for it. But justice can still be delivered tonight.”

  Harriet nods in agreement, and we try to make sense of the control panel in front of us. Eventually, I find the tablet that is displaying Blake’s vid, and I connect to the Chrysalis from that tablet.

  A message appears on my phone from Crew to all four of us.

  We are connected and in control of the video feed from here. Lock down the theater.

  An emergency door slams closed behind Harriet and me, and we both jump.

  “It’s Nic. He’s sealing us in so no one can stop the vid until it’s complete,” I say aloud, as much to remind myself as to reassure Harriet.

  The screens displaying To Each, His Place flicker and then go dark. Then a message appears in stark white letters.

  To Each, His Place is a lie. What you are about to witness is the truth. Remain seated, and no harm will come to you this day.

  Screams erupt from the audience as the emergency gates at every one of the theater’s exits come crashing down. Nic has successfully sealed us all inside the Showbox by accessing a security protocol put in place in case of riots in the street, presumably from the Throwback rabble. The theater is in lockdown for the next twenty minutes, and no one is getting in or out.

  The screens that were displaying the promo begin a new vid, one that I know well. Marie, Sun, Harriet, and I crafted it with the evidence we found on the headmaster’s laptop.

  Our vid is short because we have only twenty minutes to show the evidence against all of the Strand executives and the headmaster before the doors can be opened externally by the Evolved police. It starts with a statement.

  Meet Julius Hunter. By day, he is the headmaster of Seattle Secondary. By night, he pimps out his students, blackmailing the ones who resist.

  A vid shows the headmaster escorting girls down the streets of Seattle into exclusive Evolved clubs. The vid is interspersed with clips of scantily clad girls with gold in their vacant eyes, all students at Seattle Secondary, speaking into a camera and giving their consent to be sold in return for favors and money. Next is the most damning evidence, vids that the headmaster kept on his hard drive of the girls in private rooms with their “clients.”

  There are brief flashes of a girl resisting a man and getting hit, two passed out as their clients take advantage of them, and another crying next to an unconscious man. The clips are hard to watch, even after seeing them so many times when I helped create the vid.

  Last is a clip of Sparkle.

  In the background, the headmaster’s voice says, “State your name.”

  “Sparkle Mol.”

  “You agree to comply with all demands that my clients require of you of your own free will?”

  Sparkle gives a humorless laugh, and a tear streaks down her perfect cheek. “Sure, Headmaster Hunter. I’ll comply.”

  On screen, the final words of our vid appear.

  On August 3, Sparkle Mol hung herself. Her suffering at the hands of Dr. Julius Hunter is over. But for twenty-three other girls, the pain continues.

  The screen fades to black, and my eyes turn to the monitors showing the audience. Tears stream down the faces of dozens of the Evolved men and women, and others wear expressions of openmouthed shock.

  Headmaster Hunter rises from his seat. He’s shouting something. Even from where we are deep underground, Harriet and I can hear the audience as their shock turns to rage. Headmaster Hunter yells back, his face red.

  “I hope they mob him and beat him to death,” I say, and for a second, I mean it.

  The yelling of the audience quiets as the next vid begins, presenting evidence against Strand’s Chief Financial Officer Trenton Gallo, who is guilty of participating in a Throwback fighting ring. After the evidence is shown, the vid switches to a live stream of a team of three members of our rebellion—Joseph, Sal, and Mary—knocking on the door of a tall, elegant house in a wealthy suburb of Seattle.

  They are there to make a citizen’s arrest of Trenton and haul him to jail. Joseph carries a camera, and we watch as they barge into the home, opening bedroom doors. In one, a child is sleeping, and she wails at the sight of three strangers in her home. I wince at the fear in her eyes.

  The rebels open the door to the master bedroom. Trenton is pulling on his pants, and the rebels grab him. Now, they are supposed to present him with the charges he’ll be facing for his crimes, but they don’t. Instead, Sal pulls out a knife.

  “He isn’t resisting,” Harriet says, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why would they—”

  Her words are cut off as Sal plunges his knife into Trenton’s right eye. Behind him, Trenton’s wife screams as her husband drops to the ground, a pool of blood slowly forming beneath his head.

  The screen fades to black before my mind can wrap itself around what I witnessed. Then words appear on the screen.

  Every year, more than ten thousand Throwback citizens are “retired” for crimes as petty as shoplifting, while those who have “Evolved” into monsters go unpunished.

  The next vid starts, presenting evidence against another Strand executive.

  “What’s happening?” Harriet asks, her voice shaking.

  “We have to stop this. Something has gone wrong!” I shout.

  I try to send a message to Crew, then Marie and Dennis, but there are no replies to my texts or the holographic chat window I have open on my tablet.

  Harriet is banging on the exit to the control room, but it’s still sealed. I message Nic, and he doesn’t reply, either. Almost against my will, my eyes return to the center screens. A team comprised of rebels from Nic’s class is in charge of the live feed when they confront the Strand’s senior director of research and development. Sloan, I think her name is. Sloan opens the door herself, and a rebel steps forward and beats her with a laser whip until she collapses. When she’s unconscious, one of the rebels slits her throat, and I gag as blood pours out of the wound.

  Harriet stands next to me, and we stop fighting to get out of this room. Instead, we grip each other’s hands. Right now she’s the only stable thing on a planet spinning out of control. Neither of us cries as executive after executive is confronted and murdered by the rebellion that we planned, supported, and helped execute.

  The cameras trained on the audience show people breaking down, crying, screaming, and attempting to get out of the theater. A group of people use a chair as a battering ram, trying to force their way out. Every time another person is killed on screen, the pitch of the screaming becomes more frantic.

  At last, the doors of the control room open. The emergency lockdown is over. On screen, police pour into the theater, trying to control the chaotic mess of a hysterical mob.

  “We have to run,” Harriet says, snapping me out of my trance. “Do we bring Rob?”

  “No,” I reply, ignoring his unconscious body on the ground.

  I know this decision is tantamount to a death sentence for him, because after what everyone saw tonight, anyone involved will be executed. But I won’t risk Harriet’s life to drag a murderer out of here, either.

  Crew told us we would have a minute and a half before anyone would make it from the theater to the control room once all of the doors were open.

  He was wrong. The headmaster is standing in the hallway with a laser whip in his hand and murder in his eyes.

  Pushing Harriet behind me is a reflex. Then I launch myself at him with every ounce of rage and adrenaline inside me. His whip cracks against my chest before we both tumble to the ground. There is no pain. All I feel is relief to be doing something, after twenty torturous minutes of watching my world, my ideals, crumble before me.

  The headmaster’s whip is knocked out of his hand and skitters across the ground. He punches me in the face, and my vision briefly goes black. I don’t wait for my sight to return before throwing all of my power into an el
bow to his chin and a knee to his groin.

  He curls up, groaning, and I press the button on my Taser to render him unconscious.

  Blood sprays on my shirt, my face, my hair, and I shriek. I used Rob’s laser weapon on the headmaster instead of the Taser. I’ve killed him.

  Chapter 47

  Somewhere far away, Harriet is yelling at me, tugging on my arm, and dragging me down the hall. All of the sounds around me blend together in a hum. The headmaster’s empty eyes stare at me. I’m a murderer.

  “Joan, please!” This voice is new, and it calls to a place inside of me that hasn’t gone dark.

  “Justus?” I whisper, registering the panic in his kaleidoscope eyes. “I killed him. I killed him.”

  He’s shoving a blue uniform at me. “You have to leave. There will be no justice for you if you’re caught, Joan. Only retirement.”

  Robotically, I follow Harriet’s lead and put the uniform that Justus has given me on over my clothes. He shoves a dented tablet and a cart filled with cleaning supplies in my direction. A flimsy disguise.

  “Go,” he says. “I’ll delay the police. My dad and his friends will help you get out.”

  The part of my mind not frozen by the horrible thing I’ve done notices the seven Throwbacks on Aft’s team who are in place to escort Harriet and me out of the Showbox through a garage used to transport shipments of food and goods to the theater. We ditch the props Justus gave us before leaving.

  One of Aft’s team, a Dean clone type with long hair, comes with us as we take off into the darkness. He takes us on a serpentine route through Seattle to throw off anyone who might be following us.

  After an hour of jogging, he stops on a dark corner. “There is a safe house—”

  “That isn’t necessary,” Harriet says. I’m grateful for her command of the situation because my mind is mush. “We have somewhere we can go.”

  The Dean nods. “Aft will be in touch with you when things settle down.”

  Harriet tugs me toward an entrance to the Lab. As I follow her, my limbs begin to shake. First it’s my hands, then my knees, and finally, my chest. I collapse on the ground, heaving dry, racking sobs.

  Harriet cradles me, making soothing noises. “Bow beneath your burden. Do not break.”

  Harriet takes me to a part of the Lab I’ve never seen before. It’s in worse shape than the other tunnels, and there are cave-ins in more than one area. Harriet goes through a doorway that is barely visible against the gray wall.

  It’s completely dark inside, until she lights real candles that are in nooks all over the walls of the small room. I’ve never seen real firelight before. It’s neat and cozy in here, with a pile of blankets and pillows for sleeping and a stack of books lining one of the walls.

  “I found this room when I got lost in the Lab once,” Harriet says, her voice like a bell in my foggy mind. “I decided to make it my own. I wanted a place to come when I was in danger or needed to get away from the world. Even after I thought my life underground was over, I found myself returning here sometimes.”

  I step closer to one of the flickering candles, letting it hypnotize me. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

  Harriet settles into the blankets. “Right now, you are the only person I trust because I saw your reaction to those horrible murders our rebellion carried out.”

  “Did everyone else know? Marie? Sun? Nic?”

  Harriet is quiet for a long time. “We’ll have to figure out who we can trust.”

  I remember the rambling lectures from Jo that Harriet and I watched and rewatched over the past few weeks on her ancient tablet. I’d been so sure she’d been paranoid about her suspicions that Crew was headed down a destructive path.

  “We have to right the wrongs that happened tonight. I’m going to turn myself in.”

  “That would be the easy thing to do,” Harriet replies. “That’s why I know you won’t do it. The hard thing to do is to take down Crew and his team and somehow rebuild the fractured Throwback rebellion.”

  “No one will trust us after tonight. And they shouldn’t. I’m a murderer.”

  “Let it go, Joan. In war, people die. And this is now war. Maybe it has been for a long time. It’s up to us to fight for what’s right.”

  Harriet’s words are true and heavy, and a weight settles on my shoulders. The time for following the plans and orders of others is over. Now we must lead.

  Even though it’s dangerous, I go to Headmaster Hunter’s funeral two days after Circe Night. I go not because I owe him a formal goodbye, but because I owe his son the truth. Maybe someday, Maverick will forgive me for killing his dad.

  The church where the services are held is swarmed with media. All of the vids played on Circe Night went viral, so the headmaster’s crimes are public knowledge. Everyone believes he was executed by the Throwback rebellion, like the Strand executives.

  So far, no individuals have been pinpointed within Crew’s rebellion, but I know Lexi must suspect me, after finding my camera the night I was up for auction. I watch the shadows, waiting for someone to jump out and arrest me or kill me.

  Harriet and I slip inside the church through the Throwback entrance and choose a pew on the upper level, where Throwbacks are “encouraged” to sit. The church is half-full inside, but the rows reserved for family only have two people in them. Maverick sits next to a woman with a severe bun. At the sight of this pale slip of a boy who has woven himself inside my soul, my heart clenches.

  Crew brushes past me with the other teachers from Seattle Secondary, and I stiffen. His eyes slide past me, as if I’m not here. How can he show up like he’s another mourner?

  I’m distracted by the sight of Nic, whose eyes search for someone. They stop when he sees me. With a tilt of my head, I ask a question that has tormented me more than I expected. Did he know what Crew planned?

  Nic’s face is immobile, but when he comes closer, I can see his eyes are gold. My face falls, and his eyes drop to the ground. He knew Crew’s plan, and he let it happen, let me be a part of something evil. The disappointment and surprise twist my insides.

  I’m so preoccupied with Nic that I miss the entrance of Marie and Sun. They come straight to where Harriet and I sit.

  Sun sits next to me and raises an eyebrow. Did I know? I shake my head. He shakes his head, too, and I read the truth in the serious set of his brow. Marie’s head is pressed into Harriet’s shoulder. The boulder that sits on my chest lightens a little. If Marie and Sun had been a part of this awful deception, the world might be too dark to bear.

  The service begins as a pastor murmurs platitudes about a man whom no one liked. The church is silent. No one wails for the man who loomed so large in our lives until Circe Night.

  Mav’s head is bowed. He’s suffering for my mistake. The headmaster’s ashes are in an urn, and as the pastor carries them outside, the Evolved follow him out. I take a step back when I see Lexi White scanning the Throwback section. Her eyes meet mine, and she gives me a nod of acknowledgment. What does it mean?

  “Joan,” Nic says.

  My eyes meet his briefly, and when I look back, Lexi is gone.

  “Why did you come?” I ask him, my voice flat.

  “Because I hoped you would be here,” he replies. “I want to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. You’re exactly who I thought you were.”

  Even the gold in Nic’s eyes can’t completely mask the anguish in them. Good. Let him drown in it. I turn away and hurry downstairs. I have to catch Mav before he leaves, so I can find out where he’ll be living.

  By the time I make it to the exit, Mav is gone. I burst out of the church, almost colliding with the swarm of media waiting outside.

  “She’s a Throwback!” someone cries.

  “Miss! Miss! Are you a student at Seattle Secondary?” an eager reporter asks.

  “Did Dr. Hunter ever ask you to do any special favors for him?” shouts another.

  I shove past the microphones a
nd bright eyes, searching the crowd for Mav. But all I see are dozens of adult mourners decked in black. I’ve lost him.

  A little hand slides into mine, and my head jerks down. Mav’s wide eyes are full of tears.

  “Take me away from here. Please,” he begs.

  I tug him toward the nearest entrance to the Lab. Once we’re safely underground, his little body relaxes.

  “You saved me,” he says. “I knew you’d find me.”

  “Your family will be looking for you. They’ll be frightened that you disappeared.”

  “Aunt Jenny hates my mom. She helped Daddy take her away. I’ll never live with her,” he says, his tone fierce. “If Mom doesn’t come get me, I’ll stay here, be a Lab rat. You’ll be my friend. Won’t you, Joan?”

  I whisper, so my voice won’t quiver. “As long as you want me to be.”

  “That will be always,” Mav says. His shoulders droop, and he begins to cry. “But you might not want to be my friend anymore because I’m a bad boy.”

  “No, you’re the best kid I know.”

  “I’m not sad Father is gone,” Mav says through hiccups. “I wished and wished he’d disappear forever, and now he’s dead. Maybe it was my wish that killed him.”

  “Mav, that’s not the reason he’s gone.”

  “How do you know?”

  I drop to a knee in front of him. “It was me who killed him. It was an accident, but it was my fault. Not yours. Never yours.”

  Mav’s face freezes. I wait for him to scream at me or hit me. Instead, tears slide out of his red eyes faster. His tears turn to sobs, but instead of moving away from me, he steps closer, resting his head on my shoulder. I bring my arms around his skinny body.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “Mav, you don’t understand—”