The Mod Code

by Heidi Tankersley

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “Mechanical chase,” Jack replied. “Let’s move.”

  I slid myself out until my feet dangled below. I rested on my elbows, unsure of how to drop without slicing my arms on the vent. Jack reached up, wrapped his hands around my waist and lowered me down, the heat of his touch coursing through me. His hands didn’t linger.

  He glanced up at Imogen.

  “Oh please,” she said. “Move out of the way.”

  My eyes adjusted to the dim light as I heard Imogen land nimbly on her feet. Mechanical wires snaked along the walls, congregating at giant metal boxes that hung every ten yards. Further down the chase, a single light bulb burned weakly.

  “Someone just went to the lab.” Caesar spoke into our ears. “They saw the guards. They know she’s gone. Get going.”

  “The exit is at the end of this hall.” Jack motioned everyone down the chase.

  We jogged thirty feet before I skidded to a stop. “Wait!” I cried. “What about Finn? When do we get Finn?” Through the fog, I hadn’t been thinking clearly. Still, I felt ashamed for not thinking of Finn before this moment.

  Jack and Beckett shared a look that told me they’d been waiting for me to ask.

  “We’ve run out of time,” Jack said. “We couldn’t get a pill to him in time. He’s not sedated. If we try to take him with us, we run the risk of aggression. Or him not moving fast enough. We’ll come back for him, Sage. I promise.”

  “No,” I said immediately. “You know I’m not leaving without him.”

  “We don’t have time.” Imogen rallied behind Jack’s words. “And we can’t predict how he’ll respond.”

  My eyes settled on Jack. “I’m not leaving without him. You promised me.”

  “Sage …” Beckett said.

  “I’m not leaving him,” I repeated, unwilling to move my feet from where I’d planted them on the catwalk.

  Jack shook his head. “Do you want my dad to find you?”

  “I won’t go,” I said softly. “I’m sorry, but I won’t.”

  Jack’s shoulders dropped, and he stared at me for a long moment. Beckett stayed quiet. I wasn’t giving in. I didn’t care if I died. I’d never forgive myself if I left Finn behind. And I told Jack as much.

  He nodded, as if his mind was made up. “Imogen, Beckett, meet us at the tree line. Head west if you get there first. Sage and I will exit from the modwrog hall.”

  “Jack,” Caesar interjected over the ear bud for the first time, “you know this means that—”

  “Yes, I know.”

  For a moment, the four of us simply stood there, staring at each other, knowing that by remaining silent, they’d all just agreed to a riskier plan.

  “Thank you,” I said to all of them.

  The sound of our feet moving down the catwalk was their reply.

  Twenty yards ahead, Jack stopped and grabbed my arm. “Here.” He nodded to the metal duct work. “This takes us up.” He turned to Beckett, who’d moved in next to me. “Go with Imogen. We’ll be right behind you.”

  “I’m going with Sage,” Beckett replied.

  Jack shook his head. “You’ve got to go with Imogen.”

  “No. I’m coming.”

  “Please.” Jack’s voice sounded as close to begging as I’d ever heard it. The brothers held each other’s gaze, exchanging another look. Whatever was said, or whatever had already been said and replayed now, it changed Beckett’s mind.

  Beckett reached out and squeezed my arm, a tormented look on his face.

  “I love you,” he said. Then he turned and ran, Imogen leading the way.

  55

  SAGE

  “Let’s go.” Jack lifted me upward, toward the hole, as if I were as light as a toddler. This hole was smaller than the other, and I guided myself halfway in. Jack took hold of my feet and pressed them up, giving me leverage to scoot all the way inside.

  I scrambled out of the way, and in the next instant, Jack was right by me, the heat between us as strong as ever. Without speaking, he slid past me and crawled ten feet down the vent where he stood up in a vertical tunnel. “We go up again. You have to straddle it. Use your feet and hands to push off. Move quickly.”

  Jack pushed his way into the vent, and I started climbing right behind him. Above me, Jack reached the top, and I heard the vent grate open. Light shined in from the room above.

  “Come on,” Jack urged.

  Finally, I reached the top and climbed out into the old medical wing where we’d watched Beckett arrive. Was that only earlier today? It felt like lifetimes ago.

  Jack helped me to standing. We sprinted across the room and down the hall into the room with Finn’s cage.

  “Can you hear anyone?” I said as we ran.

  “Yes,” Jack said.

  “How much time?”

  “Thirty seconds. Maybe.”

  Jack flung the door open, and Finn jolted to sitting. I could tell he’d been hard asleep. I’d expected this to be different. I needed more time. We weren’t supposed to be so rushed. My throat tightened.

  Finn rubbed his eyes and yawned. In that moment, I knew without a doubt that leaving him would have been wrong.

  Jack moved to the button that would open Finn’s cage as he pulled the dart gun from his belt.

  “Do what you can,” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Open it. We don’t have time to try to calm him down or anything else.”

  I strode up to the cage as the door slid open, the time for caution long gone. “Finn, we’ve got to go—they’re coming, we need to hurry, get up, get up—”

  “They’re in the lobby,” Jack said.

  “How many?”

  “A lot.”

  My heart dropped to the floor. I reached for a cage bar, the fog in my head swelling up. “You knew we weren’t going to make it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s our backup plan?”

  “You leave with me right now and maybe we make it out the same way as Imogen and Beckett. They’re waiting for us in the woods …”

  “You know that’s not happening. What’s your other backup plan?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Then why’d you let me come?”

  Something softened in Jack’s face. “I didn’t know I had a choice.”

  A half-smile pulled at my lips. “I guess you didn’t.”

  Finn stretched his arms overhead.

  “They’re in the modwrog hall,” Jack said.

  Jack’s words snapped me to my senses. “Jack, go! They can’t find you. Go!” I heard the stairwell door open below and the corresponding shouts. Jack tensed.

  “Come with me,” he pleaded again. “Beckett’s waiting for you … and Imogen.”

  I shook my head. “You know I won’t. I can’t. And if you don’t go now, you won’t be able to save me later.”

  Jack clenched his jaw and held my gaze for one more tormented moment.

  “Go,” I ordered.

  Jack ducked into the hall as the stairwell door burst open, and the room flooded with six guards.

  Two immediately went to the door where Jack had just disappeared. If he’d planned on turning around and coming back, there was no chance for that now. Guards spread across the room.

  Sirens began to wail. Beckett and Imogen must have exited the building.

  I pushed away from the bars, feeling Finn tense behind me. Close his cage door.

  But I couldn’t react in time. Finn leapt from his cell and loped toward the guards.

  Shouts erupted. One of the guards in the front lifted his dart gun and shot. Finn kept coming. Three more darts hit him, but he was almost across the room now, almost to the guards.

  “Finn!” I shouted.

  And then, over the sound of the wailing sirens, a blast echoed through the room. In slow motion, I watched Finn sink to the ground.

  A real bullet.

  “Nooooo!” I
screamed.

  They’d shot him. In the arm, I think, by the way Finn grabbed it and howled. I watched as blood pooled over his sleeve. My brain went numb. I moved to help him but stopped short when the guards trained their guns on me. Real guns.

  A strange ringing noise poured into my ears from somewhere inside my own head. The ringing muted out the rest of the world, even the wailing sirens. The guards shouted words I couldn’t hear, my hands lifted into the air in surrender. I remained frozen in place, too afraid, too shocked to move at all.

  I watched the scene unfold like a silent movie. Either Finn was dead or the tranquilizers did their work. He no longer moved. One of the guards tied a cloth just above the wound in his arm, shouting orders to some of the others. Another guard yelled at me. The dull ringing in my ears drowned him out.

  I’d done this. It was my fault Finn was shot. He’d be safe in his cell right now if it weren’t for me. This was my fault.

  They dragged Finn down the stairs. A trail of blood streaked across the floor behind him. I began to shake. Someone took my arm and shoved me toward the stairwell. I stumbled down them to the main floor.

  The trail of Finn’s blood traced to the end of the modwrog hall, to an empty cell, the last in the row. They pushed me into a cell eight doors down from Finn, into one of the other two open cages.

  The guard yelled at me, pointing at my ears. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I stared at him. He shoved his fingers in my ears, and then I knew what he was doing. By the time he’d pulled out my ear bud, it was too late. But what could I have done anyway?

  The guard stepped out of the cage. The door slid shut behind him.

  A group of guards ran out the exit at the end of the modwrog hall. I slumped against the back concrete wall. A sharp, metal taste coated my mouth. I licked my lips, tasting blood, not knowing how it got there. The sirens still blared, thrumming throughout the concrete cells. I felt it in the walls, in the floor.

  Across the hall, a modwrog—Billy—sat in the corner and pounded his head over and over against the concrete wall. Madness. I felt it, too. Something about the way he hit his skull made sense. Like it fit.

  Eventually, the ringing in my ears faded. The wailing sirens stopped. Complete silence followed.

  Billy stopped hammering his head.

  I curled into a ball and dropped my head to my knees.

  56

  SAGE

  Within minutes, shouting came from the exit door at the end of the hall. I scrambled to my feet and peered out the front of my cell. Beckett struggled at the doorway, shoving against two guards who tried to drag him into the hall.

  Once Beck saw me, he stopped fighting. The guards relaxed a little, and before they could respond, Beckett tore from their grip, running toward me. He’d almost reached my bars when one of the guards tackled him to the ground. As he fell, Beckett spit something out. It skittered across the floor into my cell.

  An earbud.

  Beck looked at me with knowing eyes.

  I picked it up and backed into the shadows, clenching the bud in my palm.

  Beckett tried to push the guards off of him, although it looked more like disgust than an attempt to escape. The second guard shot Beckett in the shoulder with a dart.

  “Get him in the cage.” The guard holstered his gun. “Frisk him. And check his ears and mouth. I think he has the thing hidden in his mouth.”

  As the two guards were pulling Beckett to the cage, the lobby door opened and I heard footsteps moving across the foyer. Dr. Adamson. He watched as his son half-stumbled, was half-dragged to a cage diagonal from mine.

  “Where’s your ear piece?” he said to Beckett.

  “Lost in the woods …” Beckett’s voice faded out, his eyelids drooping, his mind already slipping away.

  Dr. Adamson watched his son slide into unconsciousness. “I don’t believe him. Search him. And turn off the electric in this hall. Until we find Jack, I don’t want these cages to open with anything besides a set of my keys.”

  The guard patted Beckett down, checked his ears, squeezed open his mouth.

  “Nothing,” he called out.

  Dr. Adamson’s eyes flickered toward me, and I immediately slid back out of sight. Too late.

  His footsteps moved toward my cage. I tucked the earbud into my waistband. When Dr. Adamson came into view, he only smiled, as if he drew satisfaction simply at observing my face. Then he turned and left.

  Beckett remained face down at the front of his cell. The bars slid shut.

  The two guards walked toward the lobby with Dr. Adamson.

  “Find the girl,” Dr. Adamson said as the lobby door shut behind them.

  I waited another twenty seconds until I was sure no one was coming back.

  “Jack!” I hissed, wiping off the ear bud, fumbling with it as I shoved it in. “Jack! Are you there?”

  Two excruciating seconds passed.

  “Here,” his voice came solid across the line.

  I sighed and dropped back against the wall. “We’re locked in the cells. They took my ear bud. I have Beckett’s. He’s here.”

  “We know,” Caesar said. “I saw it all. I’ve already keyed your ear bud off. They’re still searching for Imogen. She’s out of range.”

  Tears welled in my eyes. “Finn’s been shot,” I whispered.

  “It’s the arm. He’s going to be okay,” Caesar said.

  “I should have come back,” Jack said.

  “No,” I said softly.

  “She’s right,” Caesar said. “Where would we be now? They still would have shot him, Jack, you couldn’t have stopped that. And they probably would have shot you, too.”

  “Sage,” Jack said, “C says only a handful of guards are in the west wing, congregated in the lobby. They have a pack out looking for Imogen. I’m coming for you right now.” Jack spoke solidly.

  Silence hung on the line. The boys knew what I was thinking. Finn.

  Jack’s voice was controlled. “Sage. You can’t stay here. We have to get you out. We need to leave him behind.”

  My throat swelled, a wave of nausea running through me.

  “We’ll come back for him. Once we talk to your dad. We’ll send in a special helicopter. I’ll come myself. We just have to get you out.” Jack waited for a response. I couldn’t talk. “You’re no good to Finn dead.”

  I nodded, trying to clear my throat. “Yes,” I finally got out.

  “Ok,” Jack’s voice sounded bolstered by my agreement. “I’m coming. I made a stop for extra guns.”

  “There’s a problem,” I said. “Your dad just told someone to shut off the mainframe for the cages. Key entry only. Until they find you.”

  Jack cursed.

  “When?” Caesar said, clearly panicked.

  As if in response, I heard something release throughout the hallway, the flow of electricity cutting off. Modwrogs squealed. The overhead lights blinked off, and after a moment, several backups flickered on, separate from the main row of lighting, offering only a half-lit view of the hall.

  “Now,” I said.

  Silence across the line while the boys processed the news.

  “I know where he keeps another copy in his office. C, I need the keypad code.”

  “Give me a minute.” I heard Caesar typing away. “Okay, assuming your dad didn’t change the password within the last six days, it’s 5645-8932-1990.”

  “Going there now,” Jack said.

  57

  SAGE

  Both Caesar and I were murmuring our assent for the new plan when shouts burst through the ear bud.

  “Hands up! Put your hands up!”

  “I’m out, guys, I’m out,” Caesar whispered into the microphone, then groaned. There was more shouting in the background, scuffling, and a crunching sound.

  “Caesar!” I cried.

  “C. . .” Jack paused between breaths. “Caesar, come in.”

  No answer.

  Jack cursed. “He smashed his ear bu
d.”

  This wasn’t happening. Caesar was our lifeline. And what would Dr. Adamson do to him?

  “Sage.” Jack’s voice was calm, even.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m here.”

  “I’m dropping out of the vents so I can move faster. I’m still going for the keys. Stay with me.”

  “You need to go get him!” I said. “Get to him, Jack!”

  “I will. But I need the keys first. We can’t get to you and Beckett unless I have those. Keys. Then Caesar. Then you guys. Stay with me, understand?”

  The words from Jack felt like an order to stop the spinning that had started back up in my head. “Yes,” I said.

  Minutes passed where we said nothing. I didn’t talk, just listened to Jack’s breathing and let it center me. Twice, my airflow stopped while I listened to Jack scuffle with someone on the other end of the line. Both times resulted in Jack’s even breathing, reassuring me that he was still on his way.

  Finally, he came across the line with the words I’d been waiting to hear. “I’m at his office door. The hall is clear.”

  “5645-8932-1990,” I said.

  “I remembered it,” he said, but his voice sounded like he smiled.

  I heard the shuffling of papers, drawers opening, then a jingle, like Jack had picked up the keys.

  “Next, Caesar. Then I’m headed your way,” he said.

  58

  SAGE

  In the next second, the lobby door swung open. I pulled out the earbud and tucked it into my waistband.

  It wasn’t until the group moved down the hall that I saw Dr. Adamson and three guards, two of which held Caesar. I bit my lip to contain a cry. Caesar was handcuffed and bleeding, his head drooping forward toward his chest. The four of them stopped at the cage next to mine—Max’s cell. My head pressed against the cold metal cell bars to see what was going on.

  A guard released a dart into the cell. Max roared, then, after twelve seconds, I heard the sound of his body hitting the ground.