by Sarah Harian
It doesn’t matter who I am. It only matters what I can do.
“It’s the cryptic son of a bitch who led me to you.”
She slides off the counter to hover over my shoulder. “Wow. Tell him that he sounds too corny as fuck for me, thanks.”
“Assuming he’s a guy. Corny as fuck or not, he did know you were going to be at that bar, so he isn’t all full of shit.” I type: The last thing you told me was a lie. I know you wanted to bring me to Val, but you broke your promise on the info that would save my ass. Why should I trust you?
He types, Lie . . . you sure about that? How about you turn on your feed?
“What the hell?” Valerie grabs the tablet from my hands to read for herself.
“Jenna,” I murmur. “Activate news feed.”
The screen illuminates on the wall, and the breaking stories are listed in the news application.
CR Feed Leak Destroys Division of Judicial Technology’s Credibility, Brings Humanity to Inmates
Valerie and I sit on the bed as I play the feed and a pretty female reporter explains everything to us.
***
The real data for Room C was hacked. Footage has been released on a public domain called Reprise.
The hackers are anonymous, the owner of the domain anonymous. Right now, the government is doing everything that they can to find out who they are. At least, that’s what the news is saying.
The footage is comprised of hundreds of hours of us in the real Compass Room. Every single moment up close and personal. Somehow, the technology used to film us even captures the illusions we experienced, like it was interconnected with our experiences—a Bot, chip, and recording triangulation. The cameras must have been microscopic, hiding in trees and rocks and walls. Every second was documented. We run for our lives, make friends, make love, bleed . . . nothing was cut out. Now the entire world knows what it looks like when Evalyn Ibarra shits in the woods.
“We haven’t been able to view all of the footage for ourselves yet,” says an anchor, who sits at an oval table with her colleagues as though she’s in the middle of a debate. “But sources tell us that this footage fully explores the reasons as to why candidates within the Compass Room thought the simulations were glitching, and why they took action to get themselves extracted. These young men and women had grown to care about one another.”
The man sitting across from her chuckles. “I wouldn’t say just caring about each other.”
“What an asshole,” Valerie grumbles.
It’s difficult to comprehend that the man on television made a joke because he saw me having sex. “They . . . watched us.”
“The entire world has seen your tits, Ev. The entire world has seen my tits.”
“Not just our tits.”
“Welp.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “This is awkward.”
The breaking news story details everything they know about the leak. The hackers pulled the “highlights” and important moments to the front of their website, with several scenes showing that both Casey and I and Valerie and Jace were in evolving romantic relationships. They examine our community and the grief we carried over death, and the logic behind our belief that the Compass Room was actually malfunctioning.
“The Division of Judicial Technology has already called a press conference to address concerns about the feed, but word is that at this time, they are claiming this data isn’t a recording of anything taking place in the real world, but of the meta simulation the candidates went through . . .”
“How could anyone believe that bullshit!?” Valerie nearly screams.
By the time the story finishes, my mouth is dry.
“Everything,” she says.
“Everything,” I repeat.
“I don’t want to watch it with you, but I need to see.”
“Come.” I stand and she follows me into the kitchen, where I pour us two shots of tequila. We down them at once and I pour us another round.
“So much for keeping Casey your little secret.” She licks salt from her hand. “I guess running really was all for nothing. Now you seem like an even bigger bitch to the public than you would have if you had stayed with him.”
I inhale the second shot. “Won’t matter if the division can convince the public that this all happened in our heads.”
“Meta-sex is still sex, Evalyn.”
I pour myself a rum and coke. “Except we didn’t have meta-sex. We had real sex.”
“Tell that to the press.” Valerie sits on the couch with her phone and begins to watch the CR feeds for herself. It might be below freezing today, but I can’t stay inside.
Outside, I sit on the porch steps. This will probably be the only time I’ll have to look through these feeds before the government finds a way to take them down. It isn’t hard to find the Reprise site—it must be receiving a ridiculous amount of traffic right now. The main page hosts what the breaking story called the “highlights.”
The highlights are all of the monumental moments. Not just the deaths, but also our moments of vulnerability—when we were terrified, when we were hungry, when we were being seduced. They’re separated by individual, so some feeds are repeated twice. Many under mine and Casey’s names, for example. Many under Valerie’s and Jace’s.
I don’t know what compels me to be brave in this moment, but I click on a clip that overlaps me and Stella. Then I sit, drink my rum, and watch her die all over again.
Her death is more dramatic than I remember. She burns alive, and I scream so loudly in the recording that my speakers crackle. When she’s dead, Casey walks into the picture. He kneels behind me and wraps his arms around me. This is when I lose it, when all of the walls I built up around myself since Meghan’s death come crashing down. I shriek into Casey’s chest, sobbing until I’ve completely worn myself out, until I can hardly talk.
The video is a close-up bird’s-eye view of the death. I start the clip over and watch again, noticing something—someone—that I didn’t see when Stella had died in my arms in the Compass Room. The illusion of the house was blocking him.
Gordon.
He stands against a tree in a near meadow, arms crossed as he watches us, like he’s looking right through the illusion of the house. When Stella finally dies, he slinks into the darkness of the forest, going completely unnoticed by both me and Casey.
What a creep.
I move onto the next clip, watching video after video, instances I didn’t know about, like Valerie’s and Jace’s first kiss. Jace wakes up screaming, and Valerie—maybe in attempt to calm her—silences Jace’s mouth with her own. Jace releases a moan of relief, and I don’t think that it’s because she realizes she was only dreaming. It’s a relief of connection, a kiss after two weeks of fear, and two weeks of wanting her.
I back out of the clip, unable to watch another second. When I realize how ragged my breathing is, I try to control it, shutting my eyes.
But I keep seeing Jace’s face.
The sharp emotion of sheer anguish rips through me. She should be here right now. She should be alive and with Valerie.
I down the rest of my rum and begin opening the clips overlapping me and Tanner. First, the one where he finds our camp and tells the rest of us that Gordon was chasing him. Then, the one of me removing the splinter from his finger. The one of him stabbing Gordon to save me and Casey.
And finally the one where he dies and I kill Gordon.
I wonder what the world thinks of the way I brutally murdered him. Even if everyone believes it’s only a simulation, this clip proves that even after being sentenced to the CR, I was willing to kill again. And now I’m back in the real world instead of rotting in jail.
Tapping on the clip of Casey and me in the cabin, I watch myself run inside after our makeshift bath, dripping wet and very, very naked.
I try to study my own face as Casey and I have sex, and the hesitance that consumes my features. I’d be lying if I said that it was the best sex I’d ever had. It
wasn’t even close. But the fact that we got that far without showering for two weeks in hell said something, right?
Or maybe we were just desperate to find a connection with someone before our lives were over.
Someone for the end of the world.
Casey was my someone for the end of the world.
I watch us as we talk afterward, sweaty and still a little filthy even though we had tried to clean ourselves with soap and water from the outside well. My hair is a rat’s nest, but Casey strokes it like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. I notice something about him now that I didn’t in that moment—that the tension in his face that he’d worn throughout almost all of our time in the Compass Room is completely erased. I can tell, even from my position as a fly on the wall, he’s mulling over every word pouring from my mouth about my past. I wonder what those thoughts consisted of—if he was trying to determine how a girl like me could end up in the Compass Room, if we could somehow have a future if we both made it out alive . . .
Then he calls me a gorgeous catastrophe. The word catastrophe in itself is violent. It’s an interesting choice given his hatred of violence for the sake of violence, but I never asked him what it meant.
I need to.
Whatever passion we left unexplored isn’t something I can brush off. Casey and I watched people die together. We fought to survive together. He saw me kill someone and told me he loved me as I was covered in Gordon’s blood. I need Casey not just because of our connection. I need Casey because I have to understand why we connected in the first place, and it had to have been more than our need to protect.
I’m his gorgeous catastrophe, after all.
I watch one more clip before returning inside, of Casey and Valerie overlapping. I look at the time stamp and do the math. It must have taken place right after our reunion, on the day that the sky turned turquoise. I can’t remember Casey and Valerie ever leaving the group at the same time, but then again, I was distracted by a lot of things that day, particularly the CR malfunctioning and the bottle of booze that Valerie made us act like monkeys for.
Casey’s explaining to Valerie what happened between us. He reaches the part with the cabin.
“You screwed her, didn’t you?”
Casey’s eyes widen, but he says nothing.
Valerie laughs. “You’re kind of easy to read. Like, twenty minutes ago I asked how you ever got laid and you winked at her without thinking twice.”
He smiles at the bundle of wood in his hands, picking away at some of the dry needles.
“Did you tell her?”
Casey stalls. “Tell her what?”
“That she was your first.”
My mouth falls open as a wave of heat washes over me. What?
Casey turns away from Valerie.
“Holy shit, you didn’t.”
To my surprise, Casey laughs. “Of course I didn’t. We were already having sex in a cabin in the center of a death prison. Why would I want to make it more awkward?”
Valerie sighs and crosses her arms. “Well, I’m happy for you.”
“That I finally got laid before I died?”
“That you were able to let go.”
I jump to my feet and hurry into the house. Valerie’s staring at the tablet in her lap with her hands covering her mouth. She hasn’t budged since I left her. Finally, she glances up at me and drops her hands.
“Casey was a virgin?”
Her shoulders sag. “Ev . . .”
I turn from her and walk into the kitchen. She follows me.
I make myself another drink. “Why didn’t he tell me?” I take a sip and turn back to her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She scoffs. “What an awkward thing to bring up. Oh, remember that guy in the Compass Room you screwed and abandoned? Well, you were his first. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW.”
I’m too distraught to find her humorous. I take a huge gulp. Casey . . . a virgin. “He said there had been other girls.”
“Other girls. But what does that even mean? Other girls he liked? Other girls he kissed?”
“He’s gorgeous, Val. He’s nineteen and gorgeous. A gorgeous guy doesn’t get to nineteen without getting laid unless he’s . . . he’s . . .”
“He’s what? Gay and doesn’t know it? A Eunuch? Super religious?”
I bite my lip.
She sighs. “Casey isn’t any of those things, Evalyn. Obviously. He’s just really, really fucked up. More fucked up than I think you realize.”
“How did you know?” That’s my real question. “How did you know and I didn’t?”
She shrugs. “I asked him. I don’t remember. We were at the camp and talking about women and I must have made some dumb sexual quip. I remember he gave me this blank stare and that’s when I figured it out for myself. He was touchy about it.” She points to my drink. “Make me one of those.”
I grab a glass from the cabinet.
“I mean, he was obviously touchy about it. I pried him. Finally, he told me he wasn’t ready.”
“Ready for sex?” I hand her the drink.
“All I know is that it has something to do with his parents.” She sips and makes a face. “This is strong.”
“There’s no reason to drink if it isn’t.”
OOPS!
This forum is receiving an overwhelming amount of traffic, and is currently unavailable.
We should be back up and running shortly.
8
My phone has been blowing up, but I won’t go near it. A million and one missed calls from Mom and Liz. Valerie’s been glued to her phone for the past two hours. I’ve taken God knows how many shots. I lean over the sink, sure I’m going to throw it all up, when Valerie finally pulls herself away from her phone. “Have you called Liz?”
“I don’t want to talk to Liz.”
“They can’t use any of this as evidence, Ev. Even if someone proves that it isn’t a feed of some virtual reality.”
I push myself away from the sink and turn back to the living room, where Valerie sits on my bed. “The hell you talking about?”
“All of it was obtained unconstitutionally, which means the division can’t be retried.”
I groan. “It’s like the universe is screwing with us. The truth can be right in front of everyone’s fucking face and we’ll still lose. We’ll still lose!” My hand fumbles for the bottle of tequila and Valerie slides it out of reach. I don’t even remember when she moved into the kitchen. “They need to stop telling me what I’m thinking. They need to stop telling me what to do.”
“Who?” she asks.
“Everyone.” Everyone. I’m tired of everyone.
“Alright, alright. So what? If no one was telling you what to do right now, than what would you do?”
I blink rapidly, my vision blurring. If I could do anything. . . .
I stand up straight, turn from the sink, and walk toward the kitchen. Picking up my tablet from the couch, I try logging into the forum with no success. It’s crashed. Too many people want to discuss the feed of the Compass Room. . . . The real feed.
My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing against my leg for a goddamn hour. I stand and march toward the door. Fishing in my pocket, I find my phone, open the door, and chuck it into the snow.
When I turn back into the house, Valerie’s staring at me, horrified.
“I can’t think!”
She shrugs and nods toward the feed. “The news can’t think either, it seems. It’s exploding with speculation. Half of it thinks the new footage makes us seem more twisted and the other half is playing it up like we’re saints.”
I moan.
“Stop being dramatic, this is good for you. There are so many ‘Redeemed Ibarra’ headlines that the Internet might break. The world can’t handle you being so glorified.” She raises her hands and dips them, miming a bow in my direction.
We read a few articles. One question rises above the others—how could this be a simulation if what happens in the feed
perfectly mirrors our testimonies? And if the footage is a simulation (which it isn’t), people seem to be empathizing with our inability to distinguish reality.
“They finally humanize us.” I swipe to the next thread.
“All they needed to see was you cowgirl it up on top of Hargrove.”
“Oh my god.” I bury my face in my hands. “I can’t believe you watched that.”
She busts up laughing. “Actually, I didn’t. Lucky guess. But now I know, thanks for the mental image.”
I attempt to hide my humiliation by focusing on my tablet. The forum has exploded to the point where there’s no following it. The only thing I can thread together are that my “believers,” or the people who have thought I’ve been telling the truth this whole time, are rising to the occasion.
Can you believe that the Division of Judicial Technology is still trying to pull off the lie that the Compass Room was a virtual simulation? Do they think we’re idiots?
EI sacrificed herself multiple times for the sake of her fellow candidates. A psychopath wouldn’t do that.
Did you watch the clip where EI explains the shooting in detail to CH. HEARTBREAKING! Only people without souls believe she isn’t telling the truth.
Totally started an Evalyn/Casey fic last night. It’s like I’m psychic or something!
Dear Lord. People are freaking nuts.
“I’m leaving.”
I look up at Val, not understanding. She’s sliding on her jacket, and her duffel is near her feet. I didn’t even notice her pack up.
“I called a car. It’s outside.”
“Why?” My heart sinks. I’m not ready for her to go, especially not now, with the feed release. “I need you.” I feel like crying as I stand. “No one gets it. No one does.”
“Hey, hey.” To my surprise, she hugs me. Valerie hasn’t hugged me since the hospital. I cling to her, burying my face into her shoulder, and she hisses. “Tattoo.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
She takes my face in her hands and looks me directly in the eye. “I’m not leaving because of you. I need to go home. I need to be with my dad and my sister.”
