It’s like the algorithms Amazon uses, except instead of using your search history to predict if you’re in the market for frilly tops and laundry detergent, Wylie-Stanton will predict if you’re up for some murder and arson.
If you’re a sweet little old lady who’d never so much as jaywalk, you’ll be ranked as the lowest class, Class D. If you’re capable of killing another person, you’ll get moved a couple rungs up the ladder to Class B. The very top of the classification system, the Class As, are the .001 percentile, human-shark, super-manipulative, criminal genius maniacs. Charles Manson, for example.
And me.
“I didn’t kill Rose. I was framed,” I told Dave. I’d said those words so many times, to so many people who didn’t believe me, they’d begun to feel like lies.
“Well, what your file says,” Dave indicated the manila file in front of him, “is that you were found in a woodshed with Rose Rowan’s body in your lap, her murder weapon in your hand, and no evidence of a third party in the shed. And your only defense is you have no memory of the night she died.” He studied my face carefully. “And worse than any of that, on conviction you tested Class A.”
“I plan on appealing.”
“Let me save you some time with that one.” Dave gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I guess you don’t get newspapers in Diagnostics, but it passed the Senate last month: appeals from Class As will no longer be heard in court. Class As are no longer eligible for parole.”
I curled forward a little, as though I could brace myself after impact.
“Class As can’t be fixed. Can’t be rehabilitated. Heck, you don’t even feel remorse, do you?” He opened my folder, and rifled through evidence photos from my trial until he found my official Wylie-Stanton classification paper, tilting the large glossy crime scene prints toward me as though trying to shove them in my face.
I looked away fast, but not fast enough. A flash of Rose’s red mouth and strands of her dark hair floating in a halo of blood burned into my brain even after I squeezed my eyes closed.
“That’s what the public thinks, anyway. So I can promise you will serve every last minute of your eighty-year sentence.” He rapped on the desk between us and I opened my eyes to see he’d swept away the photos and placed a contract in front of me. “Or you can join this little program we’re starting.”
“What kind of program?”
* * *
Click click, click click.
Nobody’s cuffs rattle as she rocks. The bus creaks and sways. We’re pulling into another prison yard, the facility the Gen Pop girls are going to. It seems huge from the outside, a vast concrete warehouse for bodies; but I’m sure that, like Bellwood, inside it’s as cramped and airless as a submarine. My gray cell was barely wide enough for me to stretch both arms out. I had no window, just a strip of fluorescent light they kept on twenty-four hours a day. I got good at sleeping with a blanket over my head.
Officer Heather is on her feet, rapping out directives before we’ve come to a complete stop. As she’s unbuckling the girls closest to us I call, “How much longer?” but she doesn’t respond. I doubt she knows anything about the program we’re going to anyway, given what Dave said about it.
“We want to use Class As’ skills in a … productive way. For the last two months, I’ve been going to major juvenile institutions like Bellwood around the country and collecting all the Class As under eighteen.”
“There are other Class As?” Part of me had wondered, deep down, if Charles Manson and I were the only ones.
“Of course. There’s another Class A at Bellwood. She’s already signed on.”
He slid a pen toward me.
“This is your last chance to leave this place outside of a body bag, Miss Deere.”
I stared down at all the lines of fine print, trying to make sense of the legalese. My pen tip hovered over the signature line as I read.
“We’ll be leaving within the hour,” Dave pushed. A glance at the clock told me the hour would be up in fifteen minutes. Not enough time to read before I signed.
“What do you want us for?”
“That’s classified.”
“How am I supposed to agree to it if I don’t know what it is?” I set the pen down. “What, you want to run tests on us, is that it?”
Dave stood up, then went to the two-way mirror, cupped one hand against the glass and tilted his head back. Satisfied no one was looking in on us, he turned back around and said with a shrug:
“We’ll be training you to kill people.”
* * *
Click click, click click.
Nobody’s cuffs again. I glance over at her scarred wrists and see what’s really been making that piercing click: a straightened paper clip. Just like the one that had been on the copy of Dave’s contract I’d signed.
Click click.
She digs it into the lock of her handcuffs, one hand already free, one long arm she can swing out to do anything she pleases with.
Click click.
Her cuffs spring open and fall to the floor.
Nobody’s cold blue eyes lock with mine through the strands of her white blonde hair for just a nanosecond. Then she springs into the aisle.
“Behind you!” I yell, but she’s already shot past Dave and Officer Heather and pounced on the driver, her long scarred arm swinging back wide before driving the straightened paper clip into the side of his neck. Jagged screams tear from his throat as we go flying into the oncoming lane.
Chapter Two
Welcome to Camp
My head cracks against the window as an electric sputter echoes through the bus and Nobody springs backward, her long body rippling with convulsions from Officer Heather’s taser. Dave catches Nobody before she hits the floor, yelling at Officer Heather to stop, all of them bobbing and swaying as the panicked driver wildly overcorrects, sending the back of the bus fishtailing out in front of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.
As the tall chrome grill of the truck’s cab plows toward my window, time stops. I understand with perfect clarity that I am shackled to my seat by my cuffs as several tons of metal fly toward me and there is no escape, though I saw the cuffs back and forth with all my strength. The gaping mouth of the bellowing truck driver racing toward me will be the last thing I ever see. Will I feel it when the speeding metal meets with my body in between, will I hear my bones popping, will my brain be able to register my skull collapsing in around it, or will I get lucky and die instantly?
Still better than what Rose got.
“Hold on hold on hold on!” the driver screams.
The brakes shriek and I tumble across my seat, the truck’s horn chasing us off the highway and onto the soft shoulder of the road as the bus careens to a stop. I lean against the seat in front of me, forehead slick with sweat, my heart pounding so hard my vision pulses.
The bus door swings open with a sigh and the driver flees, his blue collared shirt purple with blood.
“Okay. I’m calling a van to take them back to Bellwood right now,” Officer Heather gasps at Dave, who still holds Nobody in his arms.
“Don’t.” Dave wearily lays the limp, unconscious Nobody across the first bus bench. “Call for a medic, have the ambulance take you and the driver to a local hospital.”