Fear University

by Meg Collett

  “What happened to you?” he asked after a long moment of silence.

  “What didn’t?” I tried to joke, but my laugh sounded brittle, and the words hung in the air between us.

  “Ollie—”

  I heard the pity in his voice and I shut it down. “No. It wasn’t bad. Well, it was, but I’m glad it happened to me. All of it. Even the . . .” I stopped myself. Not going there. Luke didn’t need to know that.

  “You shouldn’t be happy it happened to you.” Luke tried to shift away from me so he could look me in the eyes, but I hunkered down and kept my cheek pressed tightly against his chest.

  “I am,” I whispered fiercely. I was. “I’m happy for all of it, because it made me a killer. And I like being a killer.”

  Luke tried to shift away from me again, but I held on tightly. I didn’t know if he was afraid of me, disgusted, or just wanted to reassure me, but I couldn’t handle any of it. Eventually, he gave up and said, his voice defeated, “That’s not who you have to be anymore.”

  “Don’t be naive,” I snapped.

  Quietly, Luke resumed his path along my back, but his fingers dug into my skin with a little more pressure. It might have hurt if I knew what that felt like. Maybe he was trying to pull me back to the world. But I was lost to the past.

  “When did you go into foster care?”

  “I was ten. They found me in my mom’s house nearly dead from starvation and cold.” I lifted his shirt and skimmed my fingers down his muscles until his skin danced. “She told me to hide. To not come out no matter what. She was coming back for me. She would be right back. She didn’t come back. But I waited, because I loved her and obeyed her. I stayed in the closet for nearly a week and a half. No food. No water but the bottle of Coke I found on a shelf. When the social workers came, because the neighbors had heard me crying, I was sitting in my own mess, half dead. But I didn’t know I was half dead. I felt none of it but the waiting, the wanting her to come back. So I didn’t understand why they took me away, and I cried harder.

  “After that, it was foster care. Lots of homes. My condition didn’t work well for most families. Or worked too well for some.” Luke tensed beneath me at those words. I heard him open his mouth, felt the humming growl in his chest, but I went on before he could say what I expected him to say. “After the Tabers, I had to leave. I was sixteen.”

  “That’s—”

  “The past,” I said, fixing his response so that it didn’t piss me off. “I can’t change it now, and besides, I like who those years made me into. I wouldn’t want to be anything but tough and fearless. I like not feeling pain. I like it all.”

  At my words, Luke stopped rubbing my back. Like I’d held him to me a moment ago, he clenched me against his chest. I knew he thought my past was bad; I sensed the horrible pity and, even worse, the anger that radiated off of him in thick, hot waves. But he didn’t say anything. And best of all, he didn’t call me out on my lie, though I knew he’d heard it when I said I liked who I was.

  * * *

  The next day was a blur of classes. Final prep had started for exams, and teachers were cramming in as much as they could last minute. When it was time for lunch, my hand ached from taking notes, and my eyes were sore from squinting at the tiny letters scrawled across the chalk boards. By the time I crawled into the cafeteria and got my lunch, Sunny was already sitting at the table waiting for me.

  “Ollie!” she squealed, pulling me into a tight hug. I balanced my tray in one hand and patted her awkwardly on the back while I waited out the bouncing, gleeful tirade of her excitement. I bore her touch because it was Sunny, and I would allow her anything.

  When she finally released me, I said, “Hey, Sunny. Did you have a good break?”

  She launched into her monologue about fall break, telling me everything from what she wore to what she ate to who she saw. I nodded and chimed in with the right words at the right times, but my thoughts kept circling around the attack. I wanted nothing more than to interrupt her and scream to the cafeteria and all the students in it that we’d been attacked, that we weren’t safe, that nothing was okay. But I listened and ate, nodded and smiled, waiting until I could hide myself away from all the smiling, happy students who didn’t have a clue, not one, about the real truth lurking beyond the fences.

  I knew I needed to stop letting this bother me so much. The lying was a part of this world. On some level, I understood why they did it. If every young teenager knew the truth about the ’swangs, no one would want to come to Fear University. And the war would be in an even worse state than it already was.

  Though I understood the reasoning to an extent, I couldn’t justify it. Bad things happened when people lied. Maybe it was because it was so fresh in my mind from telling Luke, but the image of me sitting in my own filth, my hands quaking with a hunger I didn’t feel, while I waited on my mother to come back filled my head. She’d lied. She’d told the worst lie ever. My mother was a liar, and she’d abandoned me to a life where I had to kill and run to stay alive.

  Other memories threatened to surface too. I saw the glimmer of it before I shoved it away. A little blonde girl so similar to me. Another orphan from a lying parent. She was tied to a chair in a basement. Her screams. Her blood splattering my face. Oh god. So much blood. She feels the pain. She screams. I have to watch. Watch and don’t look away or she’s cut again. Do you feel the pain yet, Ollie? Tell the truth. Never lie. Do you feel it yet? What if I cut her here—

  “Ollie?” Sunny’s voice jolted me from the memory. “Are you okay? You’re really pale.”

  “Um,” I stuttered.

  No. No, I’m not okay. I’m not okay and you’re not okay and everyone in this place is not okay. The words clanged against the back of my teeth.

  No, that was vomit. I slapped a hand over my mouth and surged up from the table. Everyone stared as I ran from the cafeteria, steering toward the first restroom I came to.

  I barely had time to make it through the door and to the sink before my lunch and breakfast splattered all across the porcelain. For a moment, I saw blood but then I blinked and it was gone. My hands trembled against the faucet as I tried to turn on the water. It took a couple tries, but eventually the water sputtered on and I splashed some across my face and in my mouth. I glanced up at my reflection and saw terror in my eyes. Sweat slicked across my brow. My entire body shuddered, convulsing. I dry-heaved again and again.

  I was about to smash my fist into the glass mirror to make the scared girl in the reflection go away when the bathroom door opened and Sunny slipped in. Her eyes were wide and extremely worried, but she came straight to me and pulled my hair away from my sticky face. She didn’t say anything as I heaved some more, her hand dipping into the stream of water and dropping cold drops on the back of my neck.

  I needed to explain myself. Make the situation sound better. Hide my weakness under the rug. Lie. “I—”

  “I understand,” Sunny interrupted, still dropping water on the back of my neck. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  I stared into the bottom of the sink. She knew I was weak. She’d already seen too much. “How?” I asked; I thought I’d shown nothing.

  “I’m your best friend, Ollie. You haven’t told me everything, but I can read between the lines. And I don’t need to know. I’m here for you, okay?”

  I looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. She really didn’t need to know, but she knew already. I straightened off the sink and turned around. Sunny wet a few paper towels and handed them to me. As I pressed them against my cheek, I wanted nothing more than to tell her. To tell her everything.

  How I was a party trick, a cool thing to show friends. Break Ollie and she won’t scream. I wanted to tell her about all the bad that had made me this way. About the Tabers. About the little girl who was buried in that basement. How I’d dug her grave, repeating over and over that I felt her pain. That I was a dead girl like her. Then I’d dug my grave too. And slept in it until the house fell q
uiet. How I’d crept up the stairs, broke the door handle with my hands and slipped down the hall. I dented Mr. Taber’s skull with the shovel he’d made me use to dig our graves until blood dripped from my eyelashes and into my eyes, and then I went to Max’s room. But he was gone. Someone had heard Mr. Taber’s screams, and sirens were coming. I debated letting them take me or killing myself too. But I left instead, because I liked it. I liked the feeling of killing him. It made me feel powerful and in control for the first time in my life. Savoring it, I slipped away and started running. Always running. Always lying.

  I wanted to let all my secrets out, let them spill across the floor like black diamonds. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say a word.

  And I swear it nearly killed me.

  * * *

  Every night after the awful day in the restroom, Sunny came to my room and we studied far past lockdown and curfew. I hadn’t had time to return to the library, and I didn’t plan to.

  Studying for finals was my secondary focus. No matter what my future brought, I knew I would need to be strong and ready to fight. So I trained harder—running twice a day and adding an extra hour to my sessions with Thad. I got good enough in the two weeks that passed that I beat Thad regularly, and when I returned to sparring with Luke closer to finals, I almost beat him too. Dean and other hunters stopped by more and more to watch me practicing. Eventually, Luke added in some some small, blunt weapons for me to wield while I worked on my balance with them.

  I was good, and they knew it.

  Saturday was the last delivery day for supplies before winter, and some parents were coming in to see their kids before final exams and Fields. The sun shined bright that Saturday morning when I woke up and headed out for my run. Bush planes were landing and taking off on the airstrip, cars and vans coming and going so frequently that the gate opened and closed almost continuously. As I ran, I heard people laughing and calling to each other. Light snow flurries stuck to my face and hair, but it felt nice and brought everyone outside. It was a good day so far, and I almost forgot my problems.

  Until the day turned bloody.

  F I F T E E N

  After my run, I went looking for Sunny. People inside the main building rushed to and fro, carrying supplies from the delivery, which had arrived while I was out racing along the fences. Most of the people were unfamiliar to me—delivery men and such—but I didn’t look too closely at their faces. Once I started down the stairs to the ward, things grew quiet after the hustle and bustle upstairs.

  When I stepped onto the ward’s floor, I glanced around, confused. No one was down here, which was odd. Surely the doctors and nurses needed to unbox the supplies lining the hall. I walked toward the ward’s communal room, thinking maybe they were all in there.

  When I was halfway down the hall, I heard a sound that made my stomach drop.

  Tick tock tick tock

  It was quiet, a whispered threat. But my skin prickled and my blood pulsed straight to my head. My first thought was a ’swang; my second thought was day-form ’swangs didn’t hunt. The human form was a husk for the inner monster, which became weak and useless during the day. I didn’t trust Dean or most of the professors, but Luke had even told me day-form ’swangs weren’t dangerous. If he said they weren’t, then I was safe.

  Tick tock

  But daytime or not, I knew that sound. I crept forward, my footsteps silent across the floor. I passed a pair of work gloves tossed onto the ward’s floor. Then a baseball cap and sunglasses. A pair of coveralls and a thick sweatshirt lay a few feet from the main ward’s door. I stepped over the clothes and paused at the door, listening.

  Tick tock

  I swung through the door, uncertain what I was going to find.

  Peg stretched across a gurney, both arms twisted up behind her like loose dough. Her shirt was lifted, exposing her swollen belly. A man, tall and thin with pale skin, leaned over her with a slender hand clapped across her mouth. He wore only a tattered pair of thin pants hanging from his sharp, pointed hipbones. Staring in horror, I understood his need for the disguise he’d discarded outside. Hair, long and matted, hung down his back, which curved over in a permanent hunch. His other hand sat poised at Peg’s stomach, a jagged, yellow nail that was more like a claw pressing into her tender flesh.

  Peg saw me, her eyes wide, her agonized, terrified scream muffled against the man’s hand. I smelled her fear, saw where she’d wet herself. He was ready to rip her open and eat her.

  Tick

  With a hiss, the man twisted his neck, looking much too far over his shoulder. His eyes met mine.

  My reflection, bright against his black irises, was upside down.

  Peg tried to scream again. The ’swang—in its day-form—smiled at me, his teeth as yellow as his nails. Maybe he’d looked like a normal person once, and I knew day-form ’swangs normally did, but this guy was seriously fucked up.

  Tock

  “Her baby,” the ’swang hissed, his tongue smacking thickly across cracked lips, “has the sweetest smelling bones.”

  So much for being harmless. Peg jolted at the ’swang’s voice, and I knew, at least this time, I wasn’t the only one hearing it. The ’swang looked completely human, and it talked like one too.

  The door behind me was still slapping closed. A fire alarm hung on the wall two paces away. A half-opened box with plastic-wrapped scalpels lay on the table, out of reach. Where was Sunny? The other nurses? If the ’swang had already killed them . . .

  I couldn’t think about that. I had to focus on the fight. I looked back at the ’swang in time to see him lunge for me.

  I dove, hitting the alarm at the same time the ’swang slammed into me, sending us both crashing into the wall. The alarm, rising to a screaming wail, dug into my back. I gave the creature a satisfied flash of teeth before I slammed my forehead into his nose, a nasty little move Thad had taught me. He stumbled back a few inches and gave me enough room to slap the box of scalpels off the counter. It hit the ground and broke apart, sending little razors in pristine packets scattering over the floor.

  The ’swang slashed his claws, catching me in the abdomen. Almost immediately, my blood seeped, hot and river-like, down my stomach. A deep cut, then. Likely more scars. No problem.

  “You will be nice to eat too, pretty girl.”

  I punched him in the mouth, my knuckles breaking against jagged teeth. As I twisted away, dodging the ’swang’s reach as he bellowed in pain, I swiped out with my foot, catching his ankle and sending him stumbling into the wall. I dove around the creature and snatched a handful of scalpels. From the corner of my eye, I saw Peg pushing herself off the gurney and crawling toward a surgical room, where she could lock herself inside.

  The ’swang didn’t notice. He came at me full tilt, hitting me with enough impact to send my teeth clacking in my skull and our bodies into the other wall. The sheetrock dented and crumbled behind me, sending bits of plaster tumbling off the ceiling and into my hair. We fell to the floor, the ’swang landing on top of me. I pummeled my handful of scalpels into the side of the ’swang’s face. A few blades made their way through the plastic and lodged into the side of his head. The rest cut and dug into my hand, slicing my palm apart.

  He bellowed his agony into my ear and heaved my back up off the floor. Before I got my leg between us, the ’swang slammed me down, my head cracking off the concrete floor with enough force to blur my vision and send a swell of metallic blood into my mouth. With a horrible roar that sent spit flying across my face, he buried his teeth into my shoulder, biting the tender flesh between my neck and shoulder.

  Almost instantly, the ’swang raised his head, blinking dully at me. “You taste of ’swang,” he said, astonished, with blood—my blood—trickling out of his mouth. Faster than a blink, he was back at my shoulder, yellow teeth locking around my collarbone, more frenzied than before.

  I screamed, furious.

  My thumbs found his eyes. I gripped his head with all my might, crushing his ey
eballs until I felt them explode with a moist pop that sent fluids and thick mucus streaming down my arms. Sucking up my blood, blinded and screaming into my vein, the ’swang hefted me up again and slammed my head into the concrete. He didn’t have as much force as the first time, but the hit was enough to send my vision scattering again with fireworks of dizzying light behind my eyelids.

  Behind the ’swang, something ripped to life, a buzzing, chainsaw sound filling the room. Around the ’swang’s body, Peg descended with a bone saw. Its whirring, flashing blades spun in a crisp, deadly blur inches from my face as she stabbed it into the back of the ’swang’s head. Instantly, his bite on me released, and his body flailed. Blood and bone and thick drops of brain splattered back on Peg and down onto me, hitting the walls and floor and ceiling around us until all I saw was red. Even when the ’swang stilled on top of me, Peg screamed, cutting farther through the dead ’swang’s skull.

  The fire alarm turned off, leaving a silence more deafening than the wailing or Peg’s screams when she finally stopped. She staggered back, hand to her belly, and dropped the still-buzzing saw. I heaved the ’swang off of me, his skull split down the middle, and slid across the floor, my traction lost with all the blood and brains.

  The ward’s door swung open and hunters and professors spilled in and came to a crashing halt at the scene in front of them. From their drawn weapons and vests, I knew instantly they’d known a ’swang was in the prison. Yet the only alarm that had sounded was the fire alarm I’d turned on. The thought clicked in my brain, but I didn’t feel anything about it yet, because I had bigger problems.

  My shoulder, where the ’swang had bitten me, was burning like Hell itself.

  Burning as in pain.

  As in I was feeling pain.

  As in, what the fuck?

  Horrible, searing flashes of white-hot blasts pulsed up my neck and into my spine, feeding through my entire body to alight every cell with crushing, brutal agony. Stunned, I stared down at my shoulder. It hurt so badly that my fingers on my right hand cramped and my eyes burned.