The Mod Code

by Heidi Tankersley

  Jack stared at me, his blue eyes impenetrable, revealing nothing—no feeling, no recognition of agreement. Without another word, he ducked his head and dropped into the darkness of the duct.

  I leaned my forehead against the concrete wall, knowing he could still hear me.

  “They’re never going to stop, Jack,” I whispered.

  I kept the tears trapped inside my throat until I knew he was far enough away not to hear me cry.

  *

  Once I got control of myself, I walked back down the hall. Finn still lay unconscious. I passed through the room, hoping that by the time I finished with all the cages downstairs, I’d have time to come up here again before lunch and somehow figure out a way to tell Finn about Mom.

  Beckett had disappeared. He went back to his dad, then? What would he say to Dr. Adamson now that he’d seen Finn? Was it true what Beckett said? That the only reason he was here was to get Finn and me off the island?

  The thoughts swam around in my head as I pulled the earbud from my waistband and shoved it deep into my ear. At the bottom of the stairwell, I pushed open the door. My mind only had a second to take in the sight of a gurney directly in front of me, covered in a white sheet.

  “Sage, lookout!” Beckett yelled, his hands were cuffed behind him. Two guards shoved him through the lobby door.

  The dart jabbed into my neck at the same time I smelled the lemon.

  Hands grabbed me from my left. Dr. Adamson’s voice weaved through the fog on my right. “Just relax,” he said.

  From one of the cells down the hall, a modwrog squealed at the commotion. Guards rushed up the stairs behind me. I felt my mind and body slipping away.

  48

  BECKETT

  I sat in the desk chair next to a bunk bed, rubbing the skin at my wrists where the handcuffs had been. I glared at my father standing in the doorway, my mind consumed with Finn’s disfigured face and all those other people in those cells that my dad had messed with …

  “Dr. Cunningham and his daughter have run out of time,” Dad said, crossing his arms across his lab coat. “If you know anything, now’s your chance to say it.” The two guards behind him in the hall remained silent.

  So this was the conversation he planned to have with me. Still holding out that I knew some secret bit of information that would give him the upper hand. I knew it didn’t matter what I told him at this point. I saw them stab Sage with that drug. I saw the gurney. And I’d seen that look in Dad’s eyes back in the lab room.

  It didn’t matter now that I knew nothing. Whatever they’d found in Sage’s blood had pushed Dad over the edge. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was.

  If the code was in her, we’d be able to see her heightened skills like Jack’s. Beyond that, the options were endless. Sage’s father was Dr. Cunningham—the world’s foremost expert regarding human genetics. Anything was possible.

  “Where did your brother go?” Dad asked when he realized I wasn’t going to say a word.

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. You think he’d talk to me? You’ve effectively gotten us to hate each other, Father. Congratulations. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  I hoped the lie carried enough truth that he believed me.

  He straightened. “If you see him, will you give him a message? Unless he comes back from wherever he disappeared to and turns himself in, the girl will die.”

  I shot up, the chair clattered to the floor behind me. “You will not touch her.” One of the guards stepped into the doorway behind my dad.

  He waved the guard back. “Just deliver the message.”

  “Find him and give him the message yourself.”

  My dad’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve always been on the same team, Beckett. Don’t forget that.”

  “I’ve never been on your team.”

  “I’m sure you’ll come to your senses soon enough. For now, you’ll stay here.” My dad slipped out.

  I dove for the door, but it closed on my fingers. I shouted and yanked my hand back. The door clicked shut.

  I waited twenty seconds before hissing into the earbud. “Jack!”

  When no response came I pulled out the tiny device, inspecting it, trying to find if there was a way to turn it off and on. There was no obvious button, nothing on the irregular shape that looked able to be manipulated, so I shoved it in and tried again.

  “Jack! Sage!”

  An unknown voice came over the other end of the line. “He’s in the woods already. His ear bud is out of range. Sage is currently unconscious. But I think she does have the ear bud in. I hear her breathing.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Caesar. I’m a friend of Jack’s.”

  “Where is she?”

  “They’ve taken her to a lab room. They’re planning an injection to get a response from Dr. Cunningham.”

  “An injection like what he did to Finn?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got to get to her.”

  “From what I’ve gathered it doesn’t matter. Your dad is fibbing. Whatever he saw in her blood work will keep him from injecting her. He’s just testing Dr. Cunningham to see his response. That’s what he told Dr. Tappit, anyway. I heard the conversation through Sage’s earbud.”

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you know, but you don’t know my father. Everything is a game to him. Every life is expendable. We need to get to her now.”

  “Dude, you don’t know me, I get it. But trust me when I say, your dad does not want to kill her. Not at the moment, anyway.”

  I sunk to the lower mattress on the bunk bed and rubbed my face. “When will Jack be back?”

  “I’m not sure. A few hours, maybe? Keep your ear bud in. He’ll check in as soon as he’s in range. We can tell him what’s going on then.”

  I leaned back on the mattress. This Caesar guy better know what he’s talking about. If the same thing that happened to Finn happened to Sage … I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about what it would do to me to see her like that ….

  She hated me right now. I’ll never forget her expression in the lab room when I said her mom was dead. She wouldn’t even look at me. She honestly might never forgive me. And now with Jack ….

  The way Jack had been holding her while she cried—it’s the way I’d wanted to hold her.

  Jack had gotten to her. I could tell. Everywhere we’d ever gone, Jack always got the girl, even though he never really cared. It’s like girls were blinded. They never saw that Jack was too obsessed with finding the code to notice anything else.

  Even when the perfect girl was standing right in front of his face.

  My hands squeezed into fists, the mattress sheet twisted up inside them. Sage deserved better than that. I could give her better than that. If we got out of here—no, when—when we got out of here, I would try to show her somehow.

  I would get her out. I would patch all this up.

  But then I pictured her face again—how she’d looked at me after the news of her mom—and the way she’d gone down that hall to Jack after our fight.

  The Sage from the farm felt so very far away that I wondered if it was too late to patch anything up at all.

  49

  SAGE

  I’d been moved to a lab room. My arms and legs were contained within straps, just like when I’d first arrived. Four guards were stationed just outside the lab room door.

  A clock on the wall to my right ticked softly. A video camera was set up on a tripod in the corner. A surgical table rested next to my gurney, items displayed on top—a syringe, a bottle of neon yellow liquid, a few gauze pads, scissors.

  My entire body stiffened as my mind flashed back to the video of Finn. The yellow bottle. The way he’d looked before, and the way he’d looked after.

  My blood ran cold. So was this it, then? Dr. Adamson was moving faster than planned?

  “Sage.” I jumped at the voice in my ear. The voice sighed in relief. “You’re awake.” />
  “Caesar,” I said. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Still in the woods. You’ve only been out for ten minutes. Listen. This is an act for your dad. Whenever they come in, whatever they say they’re going to do, I think it’s an act. Dr. Adamson doesn’t want to inject you because they’ve found something in your blood, although at the moment, I don’t know quite what.”

  “You think it’s an act? Or you’re sure?” I said, lifting my head, scanning the room for some way out of here.

  “I think I’m sure.”

  “Well that’s reassuring,” I said, dropping my head back to the mattress.

  “Where’s Beckett?”

  “Here.” His voice came soft over the line, and, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, my muscles relaxed a little at the familiar sound.

  I bit my lip. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.”

  No one said anything else. Caesar cleared his throat, obviously aware of the tension on the line. “Alright then, well, I’m just going to check out here for a little bit. I’ll let you know if I see Jack’s bud come back online.”

  Neither Beckett nor I responded, but we both knew what Caesar was doing for us—giving us privacy. I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful or not. Again, silence hung on the line.

  “Sage.” Beckett’s voice cracked as he finally said my name. “I’m sorry. About Finn. I should have said something sooner. We should have warned your mom.”

  I shook my head, my voice drained of energy, wishing I could see his face and that he could see mine.

  “This wasn’t your fault, Beck.”

  But whose fault was it? There were too many players in the game to name even one. The series of events that played out to get me to this place, here on this gurney—it had involved too many people to count. I only knew the root source at the beginning of it all, nineteen years ago. Jack and Beckett’s dad, my dad.

  Beckett sucked in a breath. “If you could be anywhere in the world right now? Where would you be?”

  The question was so unexpected, I huffed. The idea felt preposterous. I was strapped down on a gurney in the middle of a medical lab somewhere in the Pacific. My brother was dying in the west wing. I couldn’t even think of an answer.

  “Want to hear mine?” I heard the smile in his voice. “You. And me. A warm evening after a hard day of work. We’re forking hay in the barn.” I closed my eyes, fighting the urge not to break down. “I take the pitchfork from your hands. I pull you up into the loft. We open the barn window. We lie back in the hay. We watch the sun set and count the stars as they come out.”

  This. This was the Beckett I remembered. And the Beckett I missed.

  I pictured it. I tried to feel the itch of the hay beneath me, the strength of Beckett’s body next to mine. Then I tried to picture the sky, because nothing is more beautiful than a clear, starry night above an expanse of Kansas wheat fields.

  I was glad Beckett couldn’t see me, because, with my arms tied, I was unable to wipe away the tear that trickled down my cheek.

  “I’m still that same person, you know,” he added quietly. “That guy you saw, the one you knew on the farm, that’s me, the real me. I know I didn’t tell you the truth about my dad and Jack. But I made as much truth as possible, as much as they’d let me. I tried to show you the real me. The only other thing I wasn’t honest with you about, the only other thing I could never say, is … I loved you.”

  He paused. “I still do, Sage.”

  My heart cracked. I knew what he said was true. I’d felt it, every day for the last three years. And I would never forget how I’d felt about him. And maybe there was a part of me—the part of me willing to accept all he’d just said, the part of me that believed I had known the real Beckett—that still loved him, too. I just wasn’t sure. There were too many other raw emotions clouded around my feelings. In this moment, I couldn’t step away from all the other factors to clearly gauge what I felt for him now.

  “Sage, listen to me.” Beckett’s voice tensed, like he was desperate to say whatever words were coming next, like we didn’t have much time—which maybe we didn’t.

  “You’re the most important person in my entire life. No matter what happens. I will never love someone else as much as I love you. No matter if I die. No matter who you pick if we get out of here. Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you.”

  No matter if he dies? No matter who I pick?

  “Beck, don’t talk like this. No one’s dying. We are getting out of here, alright?”

  Beckett’s voice fell. “Well, it’s true, either way.”

  Had he wanted a different reply from me? I couldn’t give him anything else right now. Still, I wanted to reach out through the ear bud and take his hand. If Caesar was wrong about this injection, and these really were my last moments, then it was Beckett’s voice I’m grateful for.

  Beckett was still my friend, no matter what.

  I didn’t have time to think about any of it a second longer. Dr. Adamson pushed through the lab room door, followed by another doctor.

  50

  SAGE

  I sucked in a breath.

  The white-haired doctor moved to the counter near a video camera. He refused to make eye contact with me. Dr. Adamson propped the door open with his foot, talking to the guards who remained in the hallway.

  Why hadn’t Caesar interrupted us to say that the doctors were coming in? Perhaps the moment felt too intimate? And now, even though I knew Caesar could see me, and Beckett and C were both on the other end of the line, I couldn’t talk to either of them without giving us all away.

  Which meant, at this moment, I was on my own.

  Eventually, Dr. Adamson closed the door and moved to my bed, surveying me as a potter would survey his lump of clay. Something to play with, to do with as he wished.

  “We’ve found some interesting things in the blood work that Dr. Fitzgerald drew from you a while ago, which has motivated a change of plans. If your father doesn’t respond within the next few minutes, we’re proceeding with your injection.”

  “It won’t matter,” I said. “He’ll never tell you where he’s hidden the code. My dad doesn’t even know me. Why do you think he hasn’t responded yet? He doesn’t care.”

  I hoped Dr. Adamson didn’t see through my lie. My dad had responded, just not to him.

  The doctor smiled, completely calm, suggesting he knew something I didn’t.

  “I guess we’ll just have to see.”

  The white-haired doctor moved around the bed to the side table. He pulled on a pair of sea green surgical gloves, and started assembling the syringe. His golden nametag on the breast pocket of his lab coat read Dr. Charles Tappit. He still refused to make eye contact with me.

  I fought anger rising up in me. My dad could have stopped all this. He could have stopped everything, even before Finn was injected. Even before we were taken. He’d had the ability to end it all. He could give the Corporation what they wanted at any time.

  My jaw clenched together as I eyed the needle in Dr. Tappit’s hands. I wouldn’t give Dr. Adamson the pleasure of hearing me beg, regardless of what may come.

  Now that I’d seen the look on Dr. Adamson’s face, my confidence in Caesar’s assurance diminished. I had no doubt that Dr. Adamson might choose to inject me just for the fun of it.

  Where was Jack?

  Dr. Adamson moved to the corner. He cleared his throat and pressed a button on the camera. The red light blinked on.

  Dr. Adamson stepped in front of the camera.

  “Hello Robert. I know you can hear me, so let’s stop pretending you can’t. You’ve already watched one of your children get turned. Do you want to see the results of another? You have a chance to stop this. You have five minutes to respond and tell us where you have stored the code, or else we will inject her body with the serum. The direct line to this very room is +689-40-608 373. Call us within five minutes, or else she will be altered. Your time starts now.”

 
Dr. Adamson lifted his wrist and clicked a button on his watch. He addressed the white-haired doctor. “Charles, ready the syringe.”

  Dr. Tappit cleared his throat. He inserted the needle into the bottle and sucked the yellow liquid into the syringe.

  I knew my dad wouldn’t call. This wasn’t the plan. If he intended to help outside of providing a helicopter, he would have done it long before now.

  Five minutes stood between me and the moment when that yellow liquid would enter my body. Caesar’s words felt like a thing of the past. Would I remember who I was after I’d changed? And where were the boys now? Why weren’t they talking? Were they afraid the doctors might hear?

  Dr. Tappit lifted the syringe, squeezed a little of the yellow liquid from the tip, and then lowered his hand to rest on the surgical side table next to my arm. My hands squeezed into fists.

  Fear racked my body at the idea of Finn alone without my help. His body breaking down, his cells slowly ceasing to support him, no one to love him, no one to touch him, no one to hold him as he took his final breaths. I thought of Beckett. How would he handle seeing me? It would tear him completely apart, I knew it would. And Jack? This would validate the belief that he should kill himself, that he was responsible for yet another death. How would he ever learn that he deserved to live?

  The clock ticked in the corner. I didn’t need the long, red secondhand to help me count the seconds. But I watched it so I wouldn’t have to stare at Dr. Tappit’s face.

  143 seconds passed. Neither Dr. Adamson nor Dr. Tappit moved. I didn’t dare flinch, the needle already propped precariously above my skin. Silence hung in the air, a palpable tension. Could my dad really see me this very minute? Was he watching me gnaw at my lip? Could he see sweat forming at my hairline? Would he watch while I changed?

  “Two minutes,” Dr. Adamson said into the camera.