The Mod Code

by Heidi Tankersley

  “Jack, what are you saying?”

  I couldn’t stand the thought of Beckett being a part of that list, because if I had to add him to it, I had no one left. I lifted my arm and pointed toward the window, shaking.

  “Please don’t tell me you know him.” The room began to spin. “Are you saying you know him?”

  Jack looked down into the vent. “I’ve known him since the day we were born.” And then he dropped into the darkness of the tunnel and disappeared.

  Jack left me standing there, stunned and alone, his words spinning in my head. I slid down the wall, clinging to denial, because it was the only thing that kept the feelings of abandonment—on all levels and from so many people—from completely stopping my heart.

  41

  SAGE

  I only had a few people left in my life I thought I could trust.

  Finn. Who may or may not know I exist.

  My mom. At least in all things outside the Corporation and my father.

  Jack. Minus this one giant secret he forgot to mention—that his brother had lived with me for the past three years.

  And then there was Peg, Jeff, and Beckett. The three beautiful people who I thought were outside this vicious web. The three humans offering a haven of normalcy that I thought I’d have once I got out of here. My “calm” amidst this storm—people I thought I could return to, their arms open wide.

  The illusion shattered in front of me, my body going numb against the wall.

  I couldn’t accept it. Beckett was a piece of home, he was my family. He represented everything good to me. Good and innocent and trustworthy. If what Jack said was true—if they were twins—Beckett had lied to me the entire time I’d known him. My best friend had lied to me about his entire life.

  This was not possible. I knew Beck. I knew him.

  The pain felt too great to bear.

  Luckily, other thoughts began flooding my mind at the same time, overpowering the betrayal threatening to wash me away. Did Beckett know if my mom was alive? And what about Peg and Jeff? Who—I realized with a start—weren’t really his parents. Unless Peg was Jack’s mom and his mom wasn’t really dead after all? What did that make Jeff? Peg’s brother? An uncle? A friend? My mind swirled. Who to trust? What stories to believe? I thought I’d felt alone before, when Finn’s rational mind left me. But even then, I still clung to the hope of Finn returning. And I’d clung to the idea of going back to Beckett and his family.

  Now, now I felt completely alone.

  Beckett wouldn’t lie to me. He wouldn’t. There had to be a logical explanation.

  I needed to see him. I needed to talk to Beckett right now. The urge overwhelmed all other thoughts in my brain.

  I stood up and ran.

  Finn’s head snapped up when I burst through the door. The dart had worn off. He growled and loped to the front of his cage, grabbing the bars.

  “I’ll be back!” I shouted.

  Finn growled. “I’m okay!” The stairwell door slammed, my words echoing against the concrete.

  But I wasn’t okay. Nothing about seeing Beckett here was okay, and it was almost as if Finn could tell something had gone terribly wrong.

  I pushed into the foyer, shrieks rising from the modwrog hall. I sprinted through the lobby and ran toward the north wing.

  Three halls down, I passed the young guard who delivered me to the west wing in the mornings. He was headed in the opposite direction, and he grabbed my arm.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he said.

  “I can’t breathe,” I said. “My heart, I need a doctor.” Which was true. I couldn’t breathe, and my heart pounded in a wild way I’d never felt before.

  He glanced nervously behind me, toward the west wing. “What happened in there? Did one of them bite you?”

  I couldn’t formulate a reply, but I must have looked bad, because he released my arm. I started running again, and he jogged beside me. Ninety-nine seconds later, I rounded the final corner toward the medical lab.

  My feet skidded to a stop when I caught view of Beckett through the clear glass window at the end of the hall. He sat on a table, back facing me, legs dangling off the side. My heart leapt at the sight of him this close, despite the betrayal I felt. The idea of him here, in this place, twisted all the emotions inside me. He was talking, flinging his arms around in the air like he did when he got upset.

  The guard stopped next to me, keeping his distance, his tranquilizer gun raised and aimed at me.

  “What’s she doing here?” A doctor—the tall, thin one with chocolate-colored haired—walked up beside us typing on a tablet. He paused, surveying me.

  The guard glanced at the doctor. “I think she needs help. Something about her heart. She’s been cleaning modwrog cages this morning, I think she got bitten. Her breathing ….”

  The doctor looked at me. My chest was heaving. I didn’t feel like I could catch a breath.

  The doctor waited for some response from me, but I couldn’t peel my eyes away from Beckett. I willed my feet to move forward, to cry out to Beck, something. But I couldn’t. I felt numb.

  “Hmm. She does seem slightly dazed. Fine. Bring her in.” The doctor motioned to the door across the hall from Beckett. “I’ll have a look.”

  “Wait,” I cried. “Wait.” I raised my hand and pointed. “I know that boy. I need to talk to him.”

  “That boy?” The doctor nodded toward Beckett. “I’m sorry, right now that’s not possible.”

  Just then, a guard exited the lab where Beckett was, and Beckett’s familiar voice flooded the hall.

  “Answer me! Where is she? I know you brought her here.” My heart stopped. He knew I was here? “Fine,” Beckett continued, “Nobody’s going to talk? Let’s see if she hears me then.” He inhaled deeply. “SAAAAAAAAAAG—” The word cut-off abruptly when the door closed, but it didn’t stop the echo of my name.

  His voice bounced through the hall, the sound reverberating through my body.

  Air caught in my throat. I couldn’t breathe, my breath felt shallow …

  He knew I was here. The reality sunk deep into my bones. He. Knew. I. Was. HERE.

  I took a step back shaking my head, the walls caving in around me. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  “Nevermind, I’m confused,” I mumbled. “It’s the … I’m fine. I need to go.” But before I could take another step, my knees buckled and everything went black.

  42

  JACK

  I hardly felt the tingling in my leg bone as I crawled through the vent toward the lab. I wanted to hear what Beckett was saying to the doctors. After I could listen for a while, I would know better what to do next. So maybe I could figure out why in the hell my brother was here. And how Sage knew him.

  The last time I’d seen Beck, he’d been red-faced and screaming from the back of Uncle Jeff’s car. Did he help get Sage here? What would I do if Beckett wasn’t so innocent anymore? I’d never even thought of the possibility.

  Seeing Beckett after three years opened up a gaping hole inside me. Memories crashed through my mind.

  Me and Beck sitting on Mom’s lap.

  Me and Beck climbing up the slide at the park.

  Me and Beck playing catch with a football.

  Me and Beck driving Dad’s Bentley.

  Me, getting tested. Beck, sleeping on the couch in Dad’s office, waiting.

  I never told Beckett about the way Mom deteriorated, the way she died a long, slow, painful death over the course of three years, all because of me.

  I never shared the time Mom hit Dad with a kitchen chair when we were two years old. Dad was trying to take me to get tested—he was entertaining of idea of “sharing” me with a corporation called Vasterias. I never told Beckett how swinging that chair had taken so much out of Mom that she’d collapsed on the kitchen floor, right next to our father, who lay unconscious.

  I never told Beckett how Mom looked right before she died, lying there in her bedroom with sallow, sunken
cheeks, skin yellowed, body a skeleton. I didn’t tell Beckett what her groans sounded like in the final hour of her life.

  And I would never tell Beckett why I actually helped Dad shove him into that car. It was because of my own nightmares of that year at Vasterias headquarters. All that testing.

  I’d rather Beck hate me for the rest of my life than run the risk of having him trapped within the walls of the Corporation like I had been.

  And now, Beckett was here.

  43

  BECKETT

  I sat on the examining room table, trying to figure out how to get to Sage, or if she was even here for sure. Two guys in fatigues stood by the lab door, disinterested. No one would answer my questions, even after I’d shouted. The Corp might have been lying to me all along.

  The lab door opened, a doctor entered with his head bent over a computer tablet. When he looked up, my lungs stopped moving. The entire world stopped moving.

  “Dad?” I said.

  My father turned to the two men by the door. “Can you please leave us for a few minutes?” The guards hesitated. “I’ll be fine. He’s my son.”

  After another glance at me, the two exited and posted themselves outside the door.

  Dad turned back to me. “How was your flight?” The words hurt. I hadn’t seen my father in three years. The last time I’d glimpsed Dad’s face, it was out the back of a car window. My father’s expression on that day was similar to how it looked now: indifferent.

  I bristled. “Where are they? Where are Sage and Finn?”

  Dad hesitated, lowering the computer tablet to his side. “They’re here.”

  “Are they alive?”

  Again, Dad didn’t respond right away. “Yes.”

  Relief flooded me. “And Jack?”

  He paused, then shook his head. I wasn’t sure what this meant so I stared at him, waiting for him to say something more. He brought a metal tray over, set it next to me on the table, and fiddled with a needle.

  “You’ve gone through puberty since the last time I saw you. Let’s check your cells, just for fun, shall we?”

  I snorted. Unbelievable. “So that’s it then? You ignore my questions, and I’m just another science experiment to you now?”

  “What would you like me to say?”

  I stiffened, but I let him swab my arm with alcohol. That old familiar lemon scent encircled me, the smell so entwined with memories of my father that the two were impossible to separate.

  “I think, Dad, maybe you could say ‘Hey Beckett, how was Canta? What have you been up to for the last three years? How was learning to farm with your aunt and uncle?” I shook my head, glaring at him in disgust. “At least Jeff was a good father to me.”

  Dad took hold of my arm with his left hand, the needle in his right. If the insult affected him, he didn’t show it. That’s all I had been trying to do—get some reaction out of him.

  A hallowness rose up in my chest with the realization—I wasn’t going to get anything else from my father.

  I gritted my teeth. “You promised you weren’t going to take them in. We held up our end of the bargain. We never said a word.”

  Dad slid the needle into my arm.

  “Plans changed. The recruits were sterile. You know this.” My blood filled the vial. Dad pulled out the needle.

  “So you knew it was happening?” I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  He sat the needle back on the tray. “I’m the one who sent the order.”

  White anger rolled over me. “You bastard!” I lunged for him, catching him off-guard and knocking him to the ground. I grabbed the lapels of his lab coat and shoved my fists into his chest. “You had them killed! Her mom is dead! Peg and Jeff—”

  “I didn’t order anyone killed, Beckett.” Dad’s face remained calm, but the flash of confusion in his eyes told me it could be true.

  It didn’t matter. I shoved my fists into his chest again. “Mom never would have wanted it this way,” I said, pulling up. “She wouldn’t even recognize you.” The guards had come in, and they pushed me back.

  “Your mom is dead.” Dad spoke in a cold tone, but for the first time since I could remember, I saw real emotion flash in his eyes.

  “Where is she?” I said. “Where is Sage? Where is Finn?”

  Dad stood, brushing off his lab coat. “You really want to see them? Then tell me, Beckett, what information did you refuse to share with Dr. Dallamore? Do you even have any to offer?”

  “I won’t tell you anything until I see that Sage and Finn are alive.”

  “You want to see her? Be my guest. She’s right across the hall.”

  44

  BECKETT

  Without thinking, I moved to the door and strode out of the lab room.

  There, across the hall, I saw her. Alone. Sitting on the examining table. Relief. I only felt relief.

  I pressed down on the handle and slipped inside.

  Sage looked over at me but didn’t say anything. It had only been a few days, and yet, in that moment, with that look on her face, it felt like so much longer. I knew I didn’t have permission to come any closer. Something pressed down on my chest, crushing me.

  “Sage, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Her face contorted into a look far beyond hurt. “Why?”

  “I couldn’t Sage, your mom, my aunt and uncle…”

  “Your aunt and uncle?” Her voice rose. “You mean your parents?”

  This isn’t how I wanted this conversation to go. “I’m sorry. They—”

  Sage shook her head, interrupting.

  “I thought we meant more to each other.” She glanced away, her eyes laced with tears. “If it was me, I would have told you.”

  My heart plummeted. I didn’t know what to say, because I knew it was true. If the roles were reversed, and everything was the same, she would have told me.

  I thought about saying what I’d always planned. That my father threatened us with Jack’s life if we ever spoke the truth of Vasterias. That her mom, even though she hadn’t known the full truth about why we had come, had still refused to let us say anything, unless we wanted to be sent away. But none of that was enough. Not here. Not now. Not with that look in her eyes. It would all sound like excuses. They were all excuses.

  I was losing her. Why had I listened to Jeff and Peg? Why had I been so afraid of the rules? It was worse, to have felt the possibility of a life with Sage, only to see the look on her face now. I should have told her the truth the day I met her. Then everything would be different. We’d be far away from here. She’d be safe.

  She cleared her throat, as if gathering strength. Her voice was hard when she spoke.

  “My mother?”

  My chest ripped in half. I didn’t want to tell her this way. I wanted to reach out for her, to wrap my arms around her. I needed time for explanations, to grieve with her, to tell her where I’d buried her mom. To tell her I was sorry.

  But she sat there, looking at me, closed off and shutting me out, regardless of what we’d been to each other.

  She read my eyes. I could tell when she understood, because an incomprehensible amount of pain flickered across her face. It felt as if the ground disappeared below me. I was falling into a dark, black hole.

  “Sage…” I didn’t know what I would say, but I would say something. Anything to make this better; to make our pain somehow go away.

  She was about to cry—I could see it in her eyes, across her face.

  The far corner door opened, and another doctor, tall and thin, stepped into the lab room, freezing when he saw me. The doctor’s eyes flickered from me to Sage, assessing the two of us. When neither of us moved, he cautiously made his way toward the table next to Sage, eyeing me.

  This was so far from anything I had wanted.

  Slowly, I pushed down on the door handle, then backed away, out into the hall.

  She didn’t look at me again.

  *

  Numbness. That’s all I felt. Numb.
r />   Dad was waiting for me across the hall in the other lab room, murmuring something to the two guards.

  “Now you’ve seen her,” he said to me. “Care to share the information?”

  “I need to see Finn,” I said, hollow.

  My dad crossed his arms, assessing me. “Fine, I can have someone take you to the west wing to see him. I’m beginning to doubt that you have any information anyway. Dallamore is still the lazy pushover he always was.”

  The door pressed open, and the doctor from Sage’s room stepped inside. He hesitated, seeing me in the room.

  “What is it?” Dad said.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “I’ve sent the girl on her way, but something interesting appeared in her bloodwork. Thought you might want to come have a look.”

  My dad furrowed his brow, but a look flickered across his face. I’d seen it many times: curiosity, an interest in the inner workings of someone else’s body.

  The look made me sick to my stomach.

  Dad addressed one of the guards. “Take him to the west wing to see the boy.” He turned to me. “Then, Beckett, we’re going to have a nice long chat.”

  45

  SAGE

  Dead.

  Dead.

  Finn, Mom is dead.

  The doctor said he didn’t find anything wrong with my heart, and that I should go back to the west wing and finish my work. He was incorrect, obviously, since my heart was shattered into millions of pieces and floating somewhere outside my body.

  I walked up the stairs toward Finn, incoherent.

  Dead.

  Finn, our mom is dead.

  How would I tell him? How would I say those words out loud? Would he even understand me when I did? Somewhere, deep inside, could he still remember who he was? Did he remember our mom?