Adrenaline Rush

by Cindy M. Hogan

  Now he was playing with my mind. I took a few bites of the chocolate chip pancakes. I had to admit, they were perfect. Sterling ate with gusto, and I noticed his gold fork. I’d have to try to steal it if I wanted to win Adam’s trust. I wondered if I’d get the opportunity today.

  Finally, I’d had enough of eating in silence. I decided to start right in with my questions. Maybe since I’d been forthright with him, he’d return the favor. “Why eighteen-year-olds? We’re really only children.”

  “Exactly. You are old enough and still young enough.”

  “Why not just advertise and get people who want this life? Really want it.”

  “I believe,” Sterling said, “that sometimes people need some guidance to go in the right direction. In truth, there is something here for everyone. For some, being an assassin is the right thing, but for others, assassination is not their thing, and they join a different part of the necessary elements of this place. Or they join groups, such as our grounds crew, tech crew, something better suited for them. Everyone wants to help the cause once they understand it.”

  He was such a narcissist.

  “All of the people here came from high schools?”

  “Let’s not talk about dreary business. Let’s talk about you. I, of course, did my due diligence and had someone retrieve your files from the school. I think you’ve had quite the interesting life. You’ve moved around so much, never let roots grow anywhere.”

  “I loved moving. The adventure of it was great, and I’ve always enjoyed meeting new people and making friends.” I figured an adrenaline junkie would love the unknown associated with moving. It was bound to be an adventure.

  He pulled out pictures of me with Madness and the Avengers at Roseburg High. Some were in the lunchroom, others outside the school or at school functions. I noticed Ian wasn’t in any of them. Had he taken them?

  “You took pictures of me?” What had he seen?

  “Of course I didn’t. I had someone do it. It’s not easy picking the most amazing eight students from a school. Pictures are critical. Color tells so much about a person.”

  I wanted him to continue talking about color and why he’d chosen the Avengers and not Madness. “I looked so cute in that outfit.” I pretended to muse and wish I had that outfit on right then. “But I really loved my hair.” I wanted him to tell me the deal with the hair. I had to let him say it without asking directly or I’d give myself away.

  “Indeed you did,” he said. “Would you rather wear the jumpsuit or my outfit?” He ran his hands down his muscular, tall, yet aging body.

  I swallowed a bit of throw-up that rushed into my mouth. “While your outfit is fun,” I managed to choke out, “I’d rather wear the jumpsuit. But what I’d really like to do is wear what I’d like to wear. Keep my hair the color I like it.” I dug into the eggs on my plate, mashing them up in some ketchup before taking a bite, pretending we were just chatting.

  “Hair,” he said.

  He’d taken the bait.

  “It tells us so much about a person, doesn’t it?” He ran his fingers through his hair, which was slicked back, showing his widow’s peak. “I like to have a rainbow of hair color fly into this compound for each selection. Do you realize, I go through great pains to always ensure I have a rainbow? I don’t take just anybody in, like I said. I make sure I have a girl and a boy with each natural hair color. You were one of the blondies from your selection.”

  My eyes widened. He picked from natural hair color, not the dyed color.

  “Lunden was the other blondie. Let’s hope he continues to heal. I have a special love of blondies. But you know, by doing this, I can guarantee I will have representatives from all the natural hair colors when the selections make it to purification. It’s quite the marvelous sight to see all the Whities together in a gathering. It is like the story of Noah’s Ark. The selections come in twos to this compound and with my help they can become purified. Just as the earth was purified by water, those who complete their missions become pure. The rainbow in their case comes from their natural hair color. It’s beautiful really.”

  I wanted to say that four hair colors didn’t a rainbow make, but I was sure this madman would try to make me believe it.

  He turned pensive and then said, “You have your own style. I like that. So, let’s talk shop now. Let’s see if you can keep up with my amazing mind.”

  My left eye twitched at the same time his did. I hoped he didn’t notice.

  “I’m going to tell you about my latest assassinations. I want you to get in the spirit of things before we work on the one I’m hoping to prepare you for.”

  I nodded and pressed my lips together, bracing my elbows on my knees.

  “Last Tuesday we had to take out a talk show host. I couldn’t allow him to fill the airwaves with his smut any longer. He tried to make deviant behavior acceptable. He put people on his show who would, without exception, fight, scream, and divulge intimate, private information. He gave these people their ten minutes of fame and destroyed them instead of giving them hope.”

  I could think of several such TV hosts. Why had he chosen the one he did?

  “So, I put some of my men on it, and we dug up some of his juiciest secrets. We called him into his own studio on the day everyone was off. We tied him to one of the chairs his guests always sat in and trained the camera on him. Marty, a great actor here, acted as the TV host and forced him to confess to all his own deviant behavior and then talk about his most intimate secrets in front of the people they involved. At least he thought they were those people. In reality, they were actors, dressed up exactly like them. They sat in the front row of audience seats, so he never got a good look.

  “In the end, they beat him to death, throwing chairs, shoes, and whatever else they could get their hands on at him. We, of course, did not include the portion of the tape where the actors beat the man, but the rest, we put up on YouTube and sent it to several sensational magazines. It was a beautifully poetic death.” He paused, obviously waiting for me to say something.

  I said the first thing that came to my mind. “I can see you put a lot of thought into your assassinations, but I still don’t know if I agree.”

  “Thank you for recognizing that. This next assassination was prepared just as thoughtfully as the other.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted to hear.

  “There was this certain senator who couldn’t seem to make up his mind on gun control. A friend of mine contacted me with the problem and asked me to take action. I’m not a political man, Misha, but he was my friend, and I told him I’d look into it. If I deemed this senator was violating our mission statement, I’d have to take action. Lo and behold, he was actually violating two of the four. Not only was he being indecisive, he was also being greedy.

  “While he wouldn’t allow guns in his home, he voted three times to end several gun control laws. Then, he voted three times to strengthen them. Why? Greed. Cold hard cash. He was being paid under the table by lobbyists to vote one way or the other. As you can see, he had to go. My friend was right to tell me about it.”

  That answered my question from yesterday. Some of these assassinations were indeed initiated by people other than Sterling.

  His phone rang, and he answered it. “Yes,” he said. Then he paused for about a minute, listening. “Marvelous. I’m so glad it went without a hitch. How’s the video?” Another pause. “Send it over now, could you?”

  “Misha, you are one lucky girl. You are about to watch an assassination that just occurred minutes ago. Fresh and perfect.”

  “Yay,” I said, trying to be enthusiastic, but failing miserably. At least I’d get out of the gory details of the senator’s death.

  He opened a drawer in the table and punched some buttons. The screens above us lit up, and the assassination filled the screen.

  A guy was sitting, watching TV in his living room. He wore a jacket with a skull and crossbones on the front right corner. His head was shaved, and
a large tattoo of skull and crossbones was on his forehead. Above it, I could just make out the words, The Skulls.

  A voice echoed through the room, “Bones. Bones?”

  The man stood up, grabbed a gun from the side table and said, “Who’s there?” He cocked the gun and spun around in a circle.

  “No one’s there, but we’re here.”

  “Who’s here?” Bones asked, the gun in his hand shaking slightly.

  “You think it’s alright to kill innocent people and then get off on a technicality?”

  “It’s time for you to stand trial for your crimes.” The sound of air escaping something inflated, like a raft or blow-up bed, filled my ears. The man fell on his face. The video cut out. When it came back on, Bones was in a witness seat in a real courtroom. How had Sterling managed that?

  There was a judge, a prosecutor, and an audience, but no defense attorney. The prosecutor laid out his many crimes, and the judge handed down the verdict of guilty on all charges. Then the sentence was announced, death by hanging.

  Then they shot both of his feet, his knees, and his hands, before hanging him from the courtroom rafters—all things he liked to do to his victims. I felt weak after watching it. Completely sick in my soul. It was so twisted, demented. He wanted me to think the same way. I didn’t know if I could.

  Sterling clapped and clapped after the video ended. “So completely beautiful. We cannot stand back and let injustices like that happen, now can we?”

  “I don’t know, yet.”

  “You’re still not convinced? All the good ones are hard to convince. I know you’ll come around. And once you do, you will be the best.”

  “I don’t understand why you would say that. You know nothing about me.”

  “I’m a good judge of character, Misha. I see beyond what others see. Let’s keep meeting, shall we? I think I’d like to keep a close eye on your progress. We’ll have breakfast together every Monday.”

  It wasn’t an invitation, and it seemed he didn’t expect a response from me.

  There was a good two-minute awkward pause. My tablet beeped, telling me it was time to head for class.

  “What I want to know is,” Sterling said, “what would you do in the following circumstance?” He stared right at me. His eyes intense.

  “Sir,” I said, interrupting him, hoping he wouldn’t make me stay and miss class. “It’s time for me to get to class. My alarm just went off.”

  “Class?” He seemed to look off into nowhere.

  “You know, sir, the classes that will make me an amazing assassin?” What was wrong with him?

  “Oh, yeah, class. An assassin…” He trailed off, still looking off to my left not focusing.

  “I’ll see you next Monday then,” I said, standing and heading out the door. He didn’t respond, so I hurried out, not wanting to be late to class.

  Things had gone well, I thought. I’d been subjected to Sterling’s mad thinking, and his behavior at the end had been even more bizarre than I’d seen. But I knew all this was bringing me closer to my end goal.

  Plus, I reminded myself cheerfully, regular Monday meetings with Sterling means more chances to steal his fork and get in good with the subversives.

  Since it was Monday, I had class work. The classes were sure to be informative. It was taxing to pretend to go through the information slowly. I was still going much faster than anyone else, but only a tenth the speed I normally would. I couldn’t tip my hand, however. My true abilities would have to remain hidden.

  At lunch I noticed a group of kids sitting at a table, laughing and pointing at something I couldn’t quite see. I made my way over, casually, to check out what they were doing. They were drawing anime and comics on some brown paper. It looked like the paper from the dispensers in the bathrooms. I wondered where they got the pencils and colors for their work.

  From my momentary glances, the pictures looked amazing. They’d found a way to continue to do what they loved right under Sterling’s nose. A piece of happiness in this crazy place. They were subversive in their own right, but I couldn’t figure out a use for their talent in my escape at this point. I would try to befriend them, however.

  I circled around a few other tables and then walked right up to them and said, “Great pictures. How’d you find pencils? I’d love to draw on good old fashioned paper.”

  They all threw their arms out, attempting to cover their work. I’d already seen it, and they couldn’t hide it from me. A superhero was blasting Sterling in one of them.

  I blinked my eyes several times and then said, “What’s the big deal?”

  “You better not tell Sterling what you saw,” a boy with blue hair said.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “We know you had breakfast with him this morning. You’re his nark.”

  “I did have breakfast with him this morning,” I said, wondering how they knew. “But I’m not his nark. I don’t even like him. What kind of powers does the superhero you’ve chosen to save us have?” I sat down on a seat and leaned in, hoping they’d open up. “It seems to me, he’d have to be pretty ingenious to beat this guy.”

  The guy hiding the picture with the superhero pushed it my way and started telling me how he was Electroman and defeated Sterling with electricity. Maybe they would be a good source of unique information. Getting rid of power to this compound would go far in hurting Sterling.

  They had made their own colors using plants from the gardens. It was super cool. It was one example of a need causing ingenuity. They’d teamed up with the people they called the chemists and the gardeners to make them. A complete social structure had arisen right under Sterling’s nose. Maybe if we all banded together we could find a way to beat Sterling. I would have to find all the other groups. He couldn’t know about it and let it happen could he?

  I didn’t find any other groups the rest of the week, and I spent the weekend running around the compound and making notes in my mind about the layout and security of this place.

  It seemed impenetrable, but it couldn’t be. I’d find the weakness.

  Whenever I wasn’t out doing surveillance, I hung out with Zoey, Frankie, and Duncan. We’d go outside or in the mess hall and talk about how crazy everything here was. I thought it interesting that Zoey was the only Blackie from our selection who hung out with us. The others only did the minimum and didn’t even try to befriend Frankie, Duncan, or Houston. She was the exception.

  The next Monday I met with Sterling again. He didn’t bring up anything he needed help with. He just tried to bring me around to his way of thinking. He asked me to think of the politician who wanted to tax us to death. The bully at the school. The bully at work. The polluters. Rapists. Murderers. Abusers. Parents who locked their children in closets, ruining them. The terrorists targeting certain races or countries. He made sure I knew he took care of these people. He felt it was his duty to rid the earth of them. He wanted me to catch the spirit of his goodness. He showed me lots and lots of videos. Videos of people who had done very bad things and even admitted it and yet were free on technicalities or were never caught.

  I’d decided we had to be in the U.S. All the footage was in English and in our courthouses.

  “The way we operate, everyone receives justice,” he said. “He who is guilty is just that—guilty. He will receive quick punishment.” He then flipped through five video stories about some of his latest kills. I didn’t even feel queasy anymore. I learned to look but think of other things so that I really didn’t see.

  “I can see you’re considering what I’m saying. Let the seed grow. You’ll find that I’m right. We satisfy the demands of justice.”

  I’d finished off my orange juice and wheat toast. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with him. Certainly, guilty people should be punished. However, we were not the judge, jury, and executioners. The justice system had flaws and needed to be overhauled, but this was not the way to do it. Unfortunately, the justice system was made up of human beings, and h
uman beings made mistakes. That would never change.

  Somehow there needed to be a way to increase its accuracy. The people needed to rise up and force the changes to up the efficiency so that the truly guilty got punished and the innocent went free.

  “It will be fun to see you become a believer. I’ll bring you along as slowly as I need to. You’ll see, and we will be a force to be reckoned with. Of course you could choose not to be with me, but that would be tantamount to suicide. Give it a chance.”

  I told him I would. It was a lie.

  Leaving Sterling’s dining room that morning, I found a path that led out to a beautiful garden I hadn’t noticed before. Several gazebos were sprinkled about, and the place was alive with all kinds of flowers and shrubbery. A few girls and boys were sitting on the benches. I wondered if they were spouting poetry or talking about endangered plant and animal species. A few girls and boys holding hands wove their way on the path that wound through the garden. I walked to the end, and I found I could either double back or go out. I chose out. I ran into the wide strip of grass next to the electrified fence and cement wall. I turned away from it and explored other sections of the grounds.

  When I reached a boundary, it looked the same. I took note of the location of the tower and the guard in it. I’d found eighteen towers and thirty-two guards so far.

  That night, Zoey, Frankie, Duncan, and I ran into the tunnelers. Their workplace wasn’t exactly secret. They worked out in the open. They laughed loudly as they worked, pulling out dirt from their ever-growing tunnel to create a mountain nearby.

  “They tunnel until they get to the boundary,” Zoey said. “And then one of them goes and tells Sterling. He comes and congratulates them on a job well done. A week or so later, they find a new spot to dig. This is the third I’ve seen them work on.”

  So it took about a year to complete one of their tunnels. That was a very long time. I would not be using the tunnelers’ main dig for a possibility of escape. Maybe I could recruit several to dig a secret tunnel, one that started closer to the cement walls. It would have to be in the forested areas somewhere. But would it be worth it?