The Mod Code

by Heidi Tankersley

  He stared at the water a long time, and I stared at him, never stopping the numbers. Finally, with the hose in hand, I picked up my tranquilizer gun and walked over to the button on the wall.

  “The square root of twenty-seven is 5.196.” I pressed the button with the end of the gun. “The square root of twenty-eight is 5.291.”

  Unmoving, Finn watched from the corner while his door slid to the side. My heart beat hard in my chest.

  I swallowed. “The square root of twenty-nine equals 5.385.”

  He didn’t move once the cage door opened, nor for the next few minutes while I just stood there, gun up, reciting square roots, watching to see what he would do.

  I made my steps slow and deliberate all the way to the open cage door. I lowered the hose so that the water poured out only inches above the concrete, making no noise at all. Then I waited, reciting. After two minutes, I ran the water across the floor of his cell. Eventually the spray got close enough that some of the water touched his swollen toes before rolling back to the center drain. He flinched, scooting further into the corner. Better than hair pulling, at least.

  More numbers.

  Then I lifted the hose higher. The splattering noise grew.

  “The square root of fifty-five is 7.416.”

  I edged the spray toward him. “Hold out your hand,” I whispered. I stretched out my left hand to show him. The water bounced off my palm, spraying sideways. Finn watched as water covered my hand, and surprisingly, he seemed to relax a little. I moved the hose toward him. He growled.

  “The square root of fifty-one is 7.141. The square root of fifty-two is 7.211.”

  I pulled the hose back toward me. This time, I braced myself and moved the water over my own head. I held out the gun above my head so it wouldn’t get wet, but the cold stream flowed over my hair and down my back, soaking my clothes and shoes.

  “The square root of fifty-three is 7.280.” The words were garbled beneath the flow.

  Finn stared. Maybe he wasn’t scared anymore. Maybe he just thought I was crazy, but the next time I turned the spray toward him, he slowly extended his hand and placed it beneath the flow. I nodded to encourage him, repeating numbers, trying to hide how my heart leaped in my chest.

  Two minutes and seventeen seconds later, Finn’s whole body moved under the spray and the splattering noise disappeared as water flowed over his giant frame. He started scratching at his skin, absorbed for several minutes before finally looking at me again. And then… he smiled.

  He smiled. I could almost see my brother in that moment. It might have been a mistake, a random movement of his facial muscles. But just the idea that the expression may have been intentional—it made me so happy, that I laughed.

  I don’t know why I did it. Nothing was really that funny.

  Regardless, when I laughed, Finn switched.

  He jolted back from the stream of water, his eyes flying wide.

  I rolled out of the cage in time to miss the swipe of his hand. I shot him with two darts before he was out the cage door. I didn’t look back while I sprinted across the room toward the stairwell. At the same time my hand reached the door handle, I heard Finn drop to the ground.

  I didn’t even have time to process my disappointment about Finn before a voice floated toward me from the opposite corner.

  “Looks like he’s not quite tame yet.”

  38

  SAGE

  Jack wore his cut off cargo pants and black fitted shirt and leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed. Nothing remained of the listless body I saw yesterday. His pallor had disappeared. The splint and bandages on his leg were gone. The greenish bruise on his arm was nearly indistinguishable now. His cheeks were flushed. His skin looked damp with sweat, and his sky-blue eyes looked brighter, if that was even possible.

  “Where were you?” I said, looking down at Finn, not sure how to react to Jack watching me. The pull I felt toward him felt even stronger today.

  “Working out in the old medical wing. The next room over.” He nodded to the door across the room from Finn’s cage.

  “So, what? You’ve come here to rescue me from my own brother yet again?” I squeezed the water out of my ponytail, suddenly self-conscious of my clinging clothes. The water from my hair dripped on the concrete near Finn.

  Jack shrugged. “Only if you needed it.”

  I swallowed. Was he flirting? Or just testing the waters?

  I knelt next to Finn, scanning his head for a bruise where he hit the ground.

  “You’re feeling better, then?” I said lightly.

  Jack pushed away from the wall, favoring his uninjured leg as he crossed the room toward us.

  “Better than ever, actually. And my leg’s nearly healed up. Thank you for saving my life, by the way.” Jack leaned down and took one of Finn’s arms, nodding toward the cage, signaling that he would help me get Finn inside.

  “You think you would have died?” I said, looking across Finn’s wide torso at Jack.

  Jack shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  I took Finn’s other arm and we dragged him into the cage, trying to position him in a way that at least looked comfortable enough. I filled up Finn’s bowl with some dried food and brushed back the hair from his face. When I stepped out, Jack pressed the button on the wall to close the door.

  “Come here.” Jack motioned to the middle of the room where he now stood. “I’ll show you a few things you can use to protect yourself if you don’t have a gun on hand the next time you face a modwrog.”

  I stiffened. “That is not a modwrog. He’s my brother.”

  Jack paused. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.” He waved me in toward him. “Come on. It’s a new day. Isn’t that what you said to Finn? It’s a good day to learn something new.”

  I remained near Finn’s cage. “I guess I just don’t like the idea of having to protect myself from my own brother.”

  “Then it doesn’t have to be for him. Just for the rest of them.”

  “I don’t want to kill any of the other mods. They’re people, too, Jack.”

  “What about for protection against the guards? We’re escaping in just a few days. You need a few moves to defend yourself. It can’t hurt to learn at least.”

  Jack didn’t give me the opportunity to respond. “First things first.” He held up a hand, listing words off on his fingers. “Throat,” he said. “Eyes. Nose. Armpits. Genitals. In that order.”

  I felt my face getting red and forced my eyes not to follow the listed path down Jack’s body.

  He smirked as if he could read the discomfort on my face.

  “We’ll start with the throat.” He stepped toward me, enjoying my awkwardness. “You can knock someone unconscious with the press of a finger to the soft spot on their throat. Just below the Adam’s apple. Right here.” He reached out and rested his index finger to my throat, pushing lightly. My breath constricted a bit with the pressure, but more than that, I felt the energy shooting out from the skin of his fingertip across the skin of my neck.

  “It doesn’t matter how strong someone is,” he said, dropping his hand and pressing it to his own throat, “this is still a weak spot. They can’t build muscle here. Did you feel that?”

  I nodded. Yes, I felt it. Of course I felt it. Didn’t you? Every single time you get within thirty feet of me I feel something.

  “Press hard enough,” he said, “and you’ll block off their air supply. You can also use the webbed skin between your index finger and thumb.” Jack held up his hand, and this time, when he touched my neck the sensation increased. Gently, his fingers rested around my neck, the skin between his index finger and thumb at my throat. His hand lingered for a moment. My breath caught. Jack pulled away.

  “If you’re wrapped up close with the person, a single finger is most effective. Got it?”

  He lifted his eyebrows and dropped his chin in question, something that felt so familiar. I pulled back w
hen I realized why: Beckett used to do the exact same thing when he explained things back at the farm.

  Jack continued. “Now, next is the eyes. If and when you go for eyes, you do so with intent to severely damage. So don’t go for an eye otherwise, because you will do damage. If you shove hard enough, you can pop out an eye without much trouble. Shove even harder, to their occipital bone, and you can kill a person.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious.”

  I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to learn how to pop out eyes, or fend for my life, or kill someone. I didn’t want to learn how to kill my brother. My chest started to constrict. I needed to go, to get away from here, away from Jack, somewhere I could hyperventilate without him watching me.

  “You know, I think this is a little much. I’m gonna go clean the cages downstairs now.” I turned to go.

  Jack frowned. “You need to know this stuff, Sage. How else do you expect to survive? I can’t be around every minute, waiting to jump in whenever you need me. I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  I pulled back. “I never asked you to be!” I said sharply. “You’re not responsible for me.”

  I didn’t want to think about Finn like this—having to protect myself from him. Or Jack having to protect me from Finn, either.

  “You need to learn this,” he repeated.

  “I’m not going to pop out my brother’s eye!”

  “That,” Jack pointed to Finn’s cage, his voice steel, “is not your brother. He’s not in there anymore.”

  Anger burned inside me, fighting against Jack’s words.

  His shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  My skin felt hot. I spun on my heel to go. A sharp ache pulsed in my chest because I knew Jack was very close to the truth about Finn. I would never admit it. Never.

  Before I made it three steps, Jack’s hand was around my wrist, pulling me toward him. His chest rose and fell rapidly, from frustration, or the heat of our conversation, I didn’t know. Without talking, he moved his hand to my low back and pulled me in. He made eye contact, gauging my response. When I didn’t fight back, he pulled me in closer, my body only six inches from his. His eyes trailed to my lips, a hungry look in them I’d never seen.

  The muscle in his jawbone twitched, and he paused, as if debating with himself—as if finally realizing the action he’d started. He stared at my lips for a moment longer, then his grip loosened and he closed his eyes, releasing me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The entire time, I hadn’t breathed, hadn’t moved. I drew in a long, silent breath, my heart beating a hundred miles an hour. Jack didn’t flinch. He remained just a few inches from me, the cedar smell of him mixing with his sweat.

  And suddenly, in that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t care who I hurt: myself, or Jack, or Beckett, or anyone. I didn’t care that my actions would shove aside the reality that my brother was slowly dying, minute-by-minute, just a few feet away. I wanted it all to disappear—every fear, every pain, all the anger, all the questions.

  I closed the gap between Jack’s body and my own. He didn’t reach for me this time, didn’t wrap his arm around me, but I stretched up to his lips anyway, and he didn’t step away.

  When our lips first touched, the current flowed. I felt the warmth, the light press of our skin together. The heat grew as it spread throughout my entire body, like a million different light bulbs—a million different cells—turning on all at once. The kiss was hesitant at first, full of reluctance from Jack, and so, too, from me. But the soft press of our mouths grew harder as the heat built between us, and the next thing I felt was Jack’s hand at my low back, pulling me against him.

  When my torso touched his, energy exchanged between us—a tension, a vibration that I’d never felt with anyone else, ever. I was lost in it, floating, no longer grounded to anything stationary, other than Jack’s body connected to mine.

  He pulled away before I was ready, dropping his hand from my back and moving his finger to his ear, leaving me breathless, blood flowing to my cheeks.

  “Go ahead,” he said, pressing his hand more firmly to his ear bud. He glanced into my eyes only briefly before looking away, the emotionless veil already blanketing the sky blue color of his eyes. Jack moved toward the door, our kiss already a thing of the past.

  Disappointment rolled through me, not because of the anti-climactic end to what felt like an incredible and vulnerable connection. The disappointment came because Jack covered his emotions at the end of it, and so I knew he didn’t fully trust me with them. I knew from experience what it meant not to trust people, because I’d lived it my entire life. And ultimately, it meant forcing everyone around you to stay at a distance. And, after that kiss, the idea of staying even arm’s distance from Jack was getting harder and harder to accept.

  39

  JACK

  Caesar cleared his throat directly into my ear. The sound reverberated through my ear drum, drawing me back to the present.

  “Dude, I’m totally sorry to interrupt your moment,” Caesar spoke into the ear bud.

  “Go ahead,” I said, clenching my jaw and pulling away from Sage and our kiss. I moved toward the door so she couldn’t see the frustrated look on my face. The thing was, I’d completely forgotten my ear bud was even in. I forgot about everything when Sage was so close, especially in that moment when she stepped back in for the kiss.

  “I’ve located your brother,” Caesar said. “He wasn’t in Alaska. He actually ended up in the Midwest. I think I’ll let him tell you the details. For now, I thought you should know, he’s on that helicopter you should be able to hear right about now. It’s four miles away.”

  I didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to wonder what it would be like to see Beckett for the first time in three years. I closed my eyes to concentrate and caught the sound of the helicopter, just like Caesar said.

  40

  SAGE

  “No,” I said to Jack, unable to hide the flat tone in my voice. “I can’t hear it.”

  Jack guided me down the hall off the main room and into the old medical wing. I stifled a sigh and moved to the window with him, my eyes scanning the early morning sky. My ears strained, listening.

  The heat between us remained, the energy I felt when kissing him. I wondered if Jack felt it, too. If he did, he didn’t show it. He looked distracted.

  I’d hoped for more. That the kiss would magically unlock a side to Jack that I didn’t currently have access to—a side that clearly no one had access to. Instead, he was more closed off than before.

  Was that even possible?

  “Who’s coming? Another recruit?” I said.

  Jack shook his head, his voice stiff. “No, I don’t think so.”

  It took sixty-seven seconds before I saw the helicopter, still off shore, but undoubtedly heading toward the landing pad. Jack sat on the window sill, tense, not pulling his eyes away from the sky.

  Finally, he cleared his throat.

  “I watched you land, you know,” he said, something soft sliding into his voice. “From right here.” He nodded to the window sill. “I watched you fight against that guard, trying to get back to Finn.”

  You never told me that, I thought.

  Jack continued staring out beyond the glass. “You can tell a lot about someone in moments like that.”

  I wondered if Jack meant for that to be a compliment. I didn’t ask.

  The helicopter lowered down onto the X painted on the concrete, and I realized that I held my breath. Thoughts flooded my mind. Finn, normal. Me, reaching for his hand. The guards jerking me away. The dart in my thigh.

  I shuddered involuntarily. Get a hold of yourself, Sage.

  The helicopter blades started slowing. The door opened and a guard jumped out, behind him, a boy followed. Through the early morning sunlight, I could see he was not handcuffed. A recruit, then? Maybe Jack was wrong.

  The boy
was tall, and had to duck beneath the spinning helicopter blades. I could only see the top of his dirty blond hair. He wore jeans and a gray t-shirt. Once he jogged outside the radius of danger, he stood up straight, and I gasped.

  I tried to take in a breath, but it wouldn’t come.

  Jack’s arms dropped from their crossed position and he lifted from the window sill.

  I knew that boy’s face. I’d seen it up close. The oval shaped, the long lashes and pale green eyes, too far to see from here, but a color I knew nonetheless. I could almost hear his laugh. The easy smile normally on his lips was nowhere to be seen today.

  “Beckett,” I whispered.

  I felt Jack turn and look at me, but my eyes were stuck. Beckett scanned his surroundings, blocking the rising sun from his eyes, orienting himself. He stared at the building, searching the façade. Like he was looking for something.

  Or someone.

  I gasped again, instinctively pulling away from the window. Jack watched a minute longer. When he looked at me, his eyes were stone cold.

  “You know him?”

  I nodded. “Yes, he was my … he …” I couldn’t speak.

  Jack nodded, jaw clenched. He looked angry. Why would he be angry? I stepped forward to look back out at Beckett. One of the guards waved him toward the building. Beckett still looked upward, lingering, scanning, before he followed the guard inside and disappeared from view.

  When I turned back, Jack had already moved across the room and positioned his body at a vent opening. His legs dangled inside. Jack looked back at me, but not in the same way he had a few minutes ago, at the moment of our kiss, before the helicopter arrived. Now, his face was cold.

  My throat would barely work. My mind could hardly form a sentence. “Jack, where are you going? Why are you going into the vents?”

  “You did say Beckett, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Convenient.” Jack clenched his jaw. “He kept his real name.”

  A feeling of dread washed over me. The same feeling I’d had with my mom when she said the name “Hope.” The same feeling I got every time I learned there was someone else in my life who had lied to me.