by Tim Floreen
He staggered backward and banged against the lockers, his big shoulders slumped. I couldn’t tell where the bullet had hit him. Franklin, on his back ten feet away, couldn’t seem to tell either. He hesitated, the gun sagging a little, like he wanted to see what Tor would do.
Tor did this: he released an animal roar through the duct tape covering his mouth and lunged forward again. His eyes bugged with rage. He vaulted over one of the benches bolted to the floor. Another gunshot slammed through the room. Tor spun around a full turn but stayed standing.
By then, though, I’d had time to remember I was a human being with legs and a brain and the ability to do something. Before Franklin had a chance to pull the trigger a third time, before Tor had a chance to make a third suicide charge, I rushed forward, shoving into Tor, pushing him behind a freestanding bank of lockers, out of range of Franklin and his guns. Once we were in the clear, I kept right on sprinting for the exit, hoping Tor had the strength to follow me. It sounded like he did. We raced toward the door that led to the playing fields and freedom.
And stopped.
If we’d had our hands free, getting out would’ve been a simple matter of turning the lock and twisting the knob. But we could do neither of those things. And behind us, Franklin had just staggered around the bank of lockers with a gun in each hand.
Not far away, the door that led to the basement stood open, the bulb over the landing still lighting the way down. Tor and I scrambled toward it. Franklin let off one more gunshot. The two of us sailed through the narrow doorway, Tor’s foot hooked on something, and together we tumbled down the stairs.
As much as it would’ve hurt to fall down those stairs under normal circumstances, it hurt ten times more doing it with our hands tied behind our backs. No hands to slow down our fall. No hands to protect our heads. The concrete steps kept rearing up to punch us over and over, and there was nothing we could do about it. By the time we reached the basement, we’d built up so much momentum we catapulted directly onto the narrower wood staircase leading to the steam tunnels and kept on falling.
We landed in a heap at the foot of the steps. Every inch of my body hurt. My shoulder screamed like I’d broken it, or maybe popped my arm bone out of its socket. A sharp shard of tooth floated inside my mouth, but with my lips taped shut I couldn’t spit it out. The still-lit electric bulb above our heads swayed, making the shadows slant this way and that. Some scuffling sounds came from two flights above us.
Below me, Tor didn’t move.
At first I thought maybe the fall or the gunshots or both had finished him, but then his chest expanded, and from his taped-up mouth came a weak moan.
The noises above grew louder. I glimpsed a shadow moving around all the way at the top of the second flight of stairs. I made a sound, sort of an urgent groan, hoping it would rouse Tor, but he didn’t respond.
I rolled off him. Ignoring the pain, I pressed my back against the concrete wall and, shoving my feet into the floor, slid myself to a standing position. Tor still hadn’t budged. In the locker room doorway, Franklin appeared, the Berettas in his hands. He looked weak from Tor’s kick, though, and propped his shoulder against the doorframe as if unable to stand on his own.
I gave Tor a push with my sneaker and made another noise.
He rolled onto his back, but his eyes stayed closed. Blood smeared his bare chest and engulfed the pizza stains on his shorts. It looked like one of the bullets had torn through his thigh and the other had grazed his rib cage just below the armpit. So he might live, but only if he could get up in the next few seconds, before Franklin could pump a third bullet into him.
Franklin staggered down a couple steps. He raised the gun. I jerked back, behind the wall at the base of the staircase, out of his line of fire. From my protected position, I kicked Tor one more time. If he didn’t get up, I’d have to leave him.
Tor’s eyes shot open, wide and crazy like they’d been up in the locker room. He rolled away from the foot of the staircase just as Franklin let off another gunshot. The bullet plowed into the concrete floor. Tor put his back against the wall like I had and started to lever himself to his feet.
Franklin’s shoes smacked against the stairs as he made his way down. His footfalls sounded unsteady. Even so, the second I saw Tor was upright, I turned and pelted back the way we’d come, following the path of illuminated lightbulbs. Tor fell in behind me. But when another BANG filled the tunnel, I realized keeping to the lit corridors only made us easy targets. I dodged to the side, down a pitch-black passageway. With one shoulder pressed against the wall for guidance, I barreled into the darkness.
Tor stayed close behind me. I could feel his hot breath on my neck. My pulse pounded in my temples so hard I thought the pressure might crack my skull. A few times my body glanced against a searing pipe, but the pain only made me go faster. The adrenaline coursing through my body almost made me feel like I was playing Son of War again.
But no, that wasn’t it at all. Franklin was the one playing the game. I was just a target now. Pixels on a screen.
I kept going, making turns at random. The darkness was absolute, like someone had painted everything velvet black. I tripped on the uneven concrete and staggered whenever we reached a corner. Tor’s sluggish footfalls sounded behind me. I strained to hear Franklin, but aside from my own grunts and footsteps and Tor’s, I couldn’t make out a thing.
After a while, the pain started to overpower the adrenaline. My shoulder throbbed. My legs felt heavy. I had no idea how long we’d been running or how far we’d gone. I’d hoped I’d stumble across a staircase that might lead us out of this maze, but so far I hadn’t. And even if I did, how would we unlock the door at the top with our wrists tied? Tor’s breathing behind me had grown more ragged. I wondered how much farther either of us could go on.
Not very far at all, it turned out. I smacked face-first into solid concrete a second later, and when I turned and traced my shoulder along that wall, I ran into another. After a few seconds of feeling around, I figured out we’d blundered into a dead end. I started leading Tor back the way we’d come.
Then I lurched to a halt.
I finally heard footsteps, headed this way.
I stumbled backward, elbowing Tor to move back too. We hit the dead end again. I slid down to sit on the floor, and as I did, my forearm scraped against a bolt sticking out of the wall. I sucked in my breath and then prayed Franklin hadn’t heard.
His footsteps sounded closer now. Steadier too. He’d recovered from Tor’s kick.
I leaned forward, lifted my hands behind me as much as I could, and dragged the duct tape binding my wrists across the protruding bolt’s sharp, jagged end. Moving my arms hurt, but with all the pain pulsing through the rest of my body, I barely noticed. I kept at it. The sawing seemed to work. I could feel the duct tape give way little by little. I was making some noise, but with luck, the mask covering Franklin’s ears would muffle the sound.
The footsteps continued, slow but rhythmic.
Now I had to stop. I hadn’t freed myself yet, but I feared Franklin had come close enough to hear my movements, even through the mask. I got very still and hoped Tor would keep quiet too. Maybe if we pressed ourselves close to the wall, Franklin would feel the dead end but miss us and go back down the corridor.
The footsteps had almost reached us. I focused on keeping my body absolutely motionless even though every part of it screamed. On drawing in slow, quiet breaths even though my lungs were starving for air. I squeezed the sharp fragment of tooth between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Next to me, Tor made no sound. With every step Franklin took I could hear the rubber soles of his sneakers make gritty contact with the rough concrete.
Then the sound stopped. Had he touched the wall above us? Did he realize he’d reached a dead end? I waited for the squeak of his sneakers heading back in the other direction, but that didn’t come either. It was like he’d vanished entirely, though I knew he hadn’t. My eyes strained to dig through the da
rkness, searching for the flash of his mask’s goggles in the velvet black.
Nothing. And still no sound, either.
Until Franklin spoke, his mouth inches away from my ear. “Did you forget? My mask has infrared goggles, just like the one in Son of War does.” Something cold pressed against my left temple. “I can see you, Rem. I could see you all along.”
The sensation of the gun barrel against my skin disappeared. Franklin took a few steps back, his sneakers crunching against the floor. I squeezed the tooth in my mouth so tight it cut my tongue. I should’ve realized before. Of course he could see in the dark. Why else would he have followed us without bothering to turn on the lights?
With a pop, light flooded the corridor. I squinted against it. As I eased my eyes open again, Franklin appeared above me, a dark figure next to the swinging lightbulb, the mask still covering his face, the two guns still in his hands, one aimed at Tor, one aimed at me.
Next to me Tor made a weak grunt but didn’t move. A puddle of blood had formed underneath his wounded thigh.
“I have to do this right,” Franklin said. “Both of you get up and come back to the locker room with me, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.”
At that moment something came over me. I exploded to my feet like the floor was electrified. Wrenched my wrists apart, tearing away the partially sawed-through duct tape like tissue paper. Tackled Franklin, sending us both crashing to the floor. Wrestled one of the guns from his hand. It was like I’d just turned into Jim Colby, with one of the world’s top-ranked players at the controls. My body thrummed. My eyes bugged the same way Tor’s had up in the locker room. I could see them mirrored in the mask’s trapezoid-shaped goggles.
I didn’t fire the gun, though. Instead I tore away the tape covering my mouth and pinned Franklin’s shoulders to the concrete floor.
“ ‘The brain is just the weight of God, For, lift them, pound for pound, And they will differ, if they do, As syllable from sound.’ ”
I waited, breathing hard, staring into the mirrored lenses, searching for some sign of what was happening behind them. I couldn’t find one. There was only the heaving of Franklin’s chest and the muffled, raspy sound of his panting.
Then from inside Franklin’s mask came a roar. He twisted to the side and bucked me off him. My head and shoulders slammed against the wall behind me. I still managed to keep my grip on the gun, though. Scrambling to my feet, I wheeled the barrel around to point it at Franklin.
But Franklin had pushed himself up too. The two of us stood there, each with a Beretta aimed at the other. Here it was, finally: my chance to do what my brother couldn’t. Like this, Ethan. Like this. Like this.
Except how could I know which Franklin I’d be killing? That was what stopped me. Would it be the Franklin who’d killed two of my best friends? The one I’d spent the last year hating? The one who haunted my nightmares? Or the one I’d kissed? He hadn’t put down his gun, but he hadn’t fired, either. The mask continued to give away nothing.
I should pull the trigger. I knew that. If I fired right now, no one would blame me.
“Franklin?”
He didn’t answer. He held his gun with a steady grip.
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sandpaper. “Franklin, we don’t have to do this.” I put up my hands, pointing the Beretta at the ceiling. “I’m not going to do this.”
I eased the gun down and set it on the floor.
The Beretta in his hand still didn’t budge.
“You should know something,” I said. “A year ago my mom injected experimental nanodrones into your brain. She thought they’d just monitor your brain activity, but they actually disrupted it. They made you shoot Pete, Franklin. It wasn’t really you. And now the capsule’s been messing with your brain again. Inhibiting your empathy, the same way the nanodrones did. But I just switched it back. At least I hope I did. See, that poem I recited, it’s a fail-safe. There’s a mike built into the capsule. If someone speaks the first stanza of the poem, like I did by accident the other night when we were in the gazebo, the capsule switches over to interfering with the empathy centers in your brain. If someone speaks the last stanza, the one you just heard, the capsule goes back to stimulating your empathy centers.”
I stopped talking and waited for him to say something. Tor panted softly, waiting too. I shifted the piece of tooth to the inside of my cheek. The metallic taste of blood spread through my mouth from where I’d cut my tongue.
“So they’ve been playing me like a video game.” Franklin pumped the gun handle a few times, tightening and relaxing his grip, but he didn’t lower it.
“You told me a few days ago you could handle anything as long as I still believed in you. I still believe in you, Franklin. I still believe you have the ability to care about other people.”
Even as I said it, though, I understood it didn’t make any real difference how much I believed in Franklin. I knew there was good inside him. I’d seen it. I knew there was evil. I’d seen that too. But in the end, what mattered was which way his capsule happened to be switched. For better or worse, science had reduced the whole huge question of good and evil to a matter of electric impulses.
Or maybe it had always been like that, and science had just finally allowed us to see it.
I waited.
Little by little, the gun sagged in Franklin’s hand. Then it clattered on the concrete.
The muscles in my body unclenched. I slumped backward against the wall and slid all the way down to the floor. A warm, dizzy feeling flowed through my head as my lungs started working again.
Franklin pulled off the Son of War mask. There it was, finally: his strange, beautiful face, with its sharp angles and twisty nose. His eyes, red and wet, met mine. With the mask gone, the illusion of the Son of War supersoldier had vanished. His shaved head and jutting cheekbones and skinny neck made him look more like a starved and tortured prisoner of war.
“How am I supposed to figure out who I am if people keep flipping switches in my brain?”
“I’m sorry, Franklin. It’s not fair what they’ve done to you. But listen to me: one thing you’re not is a killer.”
“Yes, I am.”
“The electronics in your head, they killed Callie and Pete, not you.”
“I pulled the trigger, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
“So I’m a killer. I have to take responsibility for my actions.”
“Not if someone else was controlling your brain. It wasn’t your fault.”
“There’s no way to know if the nanodrones and the capsule made me kill. I was pretty screwed up before your mom went anywhere near my head. And what if I’d never even had any devices put in my brain? What if we knew for sure I was just born a sociopath? I guess you could say that wouldn’t be my fault either. But I’d still have to take responsibility for killing, wouldn’t I?”
Still lying there on the floor, I turned my head to the side to stare up at the concrete ceiling. “I don’t know. The whole concept of responsibility . . . I’m not even sure I know what it means anymore.”
“It has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose. Look, you’re not a killer today, then.”
Franklin shook his head. His eyes filled. He threw the mask to the side, fell to his knees, and hunched forward, his spine making the same curve Sam Durham’s had. “I’m a killer today, too. I killed those mice at your house.”
He slid his hand into an inside pocket of his black coat and pulled out the two mice he’d stowed there earlier. He peered into his cupped palms.
“Are they alive?” I asked.
He nodded. His thumb brushed their fur. He set them on the floor, and they skittered off.
“See?” I said. “You’re not a killer right now.”
The reassurance seemed insufficient. Idiotic even. Once the little creatures had rounded the corner and disappeared, I shifted my position on the floor, and pain stabbed through me. A gasp j
umped out of my mouth. I’d felt no pain when I’d wrenched my wrists apart a few minutes ago, but now I could tell it had made my injured shoulder even worse.
“What’s wrong?” Franklin spun around and crouched next to me.
“I’ll be okay.”
Little by little, the pain receded to a tolerable throb. He watched, his hands hovering near me like he wanted to help but didn’t know how.
I shot a glance at Tor. He’d finally passed out, maybe from blood loss. The puddle under his leg had grown. We needed to get him out of here. “Your capsule’s working the right way again, Franklin. I can tell. You told me you’d rather be like this, remember? You said it was hard, but it also made you happy.”
He sat back on his heels, his spine settling into an even deeper slump. “Maybe I liked being this way because I was this way. When I was the other way—out for blood—I wanted to stay like that, too.” He pulled his glasses from a pocket and slid them on. “That night in the gazebo, after you recited the poem, I could tell something had changed. My head started filling up with all these angry thoughts. I really was going to go back to the lab, like we talked about, but then the idea came into my head to stop by school and check if anyone had found the stuff I’d stashed in the tunnels. When I got down here, everything was still where I’d left it. I put the mask on and just kept feeling angrier and angrier. I decided now that I was free I needed to finish the game. So I went to Callie’s house.”
I flinched. Looked away. Almost put my hands over my ears.
“By the time it was over,” he said, “it was getting late. So I went back to the lab and used the iPod to sneak into my room. Then I hacked into the program that monitors my capsule to see if I could figure out what had happened to it. Right away I could tell there was more to your mom’s project than she and the other scientists were letting on. For some reason they’d given the capsule two settings, and it looked like some kind of auxiliary subroutine had gotten tripped and caused the capsule to switch to the other setting while I was out.
