There was the scuffle of footsteps behind me, and I felt a hand on my arm.
“Benson.” Hector spoke, but he was behind me in the hall and couldn’t have seen her body. It was Mason who entered first.
He inhaled sharply. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “What the hell…?”
I heard more people enter the hallway above us and felt compelled to get to Jane before they did, so we crossed the room to her body.
Jane was lying down now. She wore the same dress, torn and stained with blood. With the exception of the blue lighting that cast a deathly pall on her skin, she looked asleep.
I caught a lingering scent of her perfume—vanilla and roses—and had to turn away.
The other V’s were just coming into the room, and the noise from the hall was getting loud. Mason swore. He’d seen the ear. Maybe the cable was still plugged in. I didn’t want to look.
The crowd was staring and quiet, and as new people came into the room they almost immediately froze.
“This is Jane,” I said, talking through my tears. “Laura and Dylan killed her, like I told you. But she came down here that night.” My chest was tight and I could hardly get air to speak. I gritted my teeth and looked down at the concrete floor, not wanting to see the horror on anyone else’s face.
“Is she dead?” someone asked. I knew what he meant, but I could hardly bring myself to respond. I’d tried to convince myself that this was simple, that I could think about it rationally, not emotionally, but I couldn’t.
“Yes,” I breathed. “And no.” I raised my hand and motioned them over, and the group—probably forty students by now—slowly crossed the room toward her body.
I forced myself to look.
Someone had been there. Half of the skin and hair on Jane’s head had been peeled back revealing a steel skull. Half a dozen cables now ran to the computer, and a tray of tools—scalpels, tweezers, tiny screwdrivers, and others I didn’t recognize—lay on the table next to her head.
I stood there, not moving as they passed around me. One by one I heard the gasps and shrieks as they saw the exposed metal of Jane’s android skull. Whispers bounced through the crowd as the ones at the front passed the news to the back and ones in the back refused to believe.
One of the girls pushed past me and ran up the hallway and out of the building. I wanted to follow her—to run away and never think of this place again—but instead I moved to the back of the room, crouched down, and leaned against the wall. I closed my eyes. Things would be different now.
Chapter Twenty-four
More people were entering the room now, but many had already left. Gabby ran for the door but didn’t quite make it out of the hall before throwing up. Most of the V’s were still there, standing near Jane’s body defensively, like they had to protect her from the onlookers. Like she was still one of us.
She was never one of us.
I closed my eyes and put my face in my hands. No one could argue anymore that things here were pretty good and that we should make the most of it. Things here were a lie. We couldn’t trust one another. No one could have friends. No one could be in love.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I looked up to see Gabby gesturing over to the hallway. The gang leaders had arrived.
The five of them—Curtis, Carrie, Oakland, Mouse, and Isaiah—all stood together, cautiously surveying the room.
I stood, moving to the crowd around Jane’s body. “Hey, guys, clear out for a second.”
Slowly and numbly, the group filed toward the door. Some of their eyes lingered on Jane while others simply stared at the floor. Mason moved to the far side of the room, by the tall cabinets, and leaned against the wall.
Isaiah was the first to move, leaving the four others behind and striding up to Jane’s body. “What’s the big deal? We already knew she was dead.”
I grabbed him by the arm—harder than was necessary, but I wanted him to feel it—and yanked him to the other side of the table. Then, my hand on the back of his neck, I shoved his face close to Jane’s torn ear.
I couldn’t see his eyes, but all his struggling suddenly stopped.
The metal was as visible and gleaming as it had been that night, but the small lights I’d seen by the cable ports were now dark.
I shoved Isaiah away and then motioned for the other four. Curtis’s and Carrie’s hands were clenched tight. They walked ahead, while Oakland and Mouse followed behind. I moved out of the way to give the four of them a clear look.
Oakland swore, almost inaudibly. Mouse’s eyes jumped from Jane’s body to me, back to Jane. Carrie timidly reached her hand out and touched Jane’s arm with her fingertips.
Curtis looked up at me. “How long have you known about this?”
“Since that night.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
I opened my mouth to speak, and my voice cracked. “It was Jane,” I managed to say. “Who would have believed me?”
“You should have said something,” Mouse snapped. “We deserved to know.”
I took a breath. “You would have trusted me about this?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, but her voice was weak.
Oakland’s fingers had followed the cables from Jane’s head to the computer beside her. The screen was dark.
I stepped closer to the table. I wanted to touch Jane’s hand but couldn’t bring myself to. “It means that if I was fooled by Jane—and I was completely fooled by Jane—then who else in this school might be a… like her.”
Oakland’s eyes met mine, his face pale. No one said anything, though I saw Oakland steal a quick glance at Mouse.
To cut the silence I began talking. I told them the entire story—Laura and Dylan coming out to find us, the attack, my attempts at resuscitation, and then the awkward and terrifying trip down into this room.
“What did the computer say?” Oakland asked. “When she plugged in.”
“It was some kind of damage report. It listed a bunch of code numbers—I don’t know what they meant.”
He turned to the computer and touched one of the keys. The screen flickered and then lit up, as though it had only been on standby.
I stepped closer to read it, looking over Mouse’s shoulder as the five leaders clustered around the screen. Hector, behind us, asked what it said.
“Just numbers,” Curtis answered. “A list of codes.”
The entire screen was filled with the same types of numbers I’d seen before, when Jane had first plugged herself in. Except for the last line. “At the end,” I told Hector, “it says ‘Recommended Action: Transfer and Permanent Deactivation Due to Extensive and Irreparable Damages.’”
Carrie breathed a soft, heartbroken moan and put her hand to her eyes.
Suddenly Mason gasped. “Holy—Guys, you’d better look at this.”
We all turned.
He was facing the tall cabinets, staring at something inside.
Mouse was the first to cross to him. “What is it?”
He swung the door open. “See for yourself.”
It was dark, but the shape inside was unmistakable. It was a person.
Dylan. He was strapped against a board, almost vertical, with thick nylon belts holding him up-wrapped at his knees, waist, and chest. His eyes were open, but they were as lifeless as Jane’s. A cable ran from his ear as well, plugged in to a small digital panel on the side of the cabinet. However, unlike hers, his ear looked as though it had been cut away carefully.
Oakland swore again, but it was Isaiah who seemed the most distraught, stepping forward and peering closely into Dylan’s face, inspecting the hole in his head.
Mason, suddenly shaken into awareness, began throwing the other cabinets open. There were four of them, and two had the same board inside, with leather straps ready to hold another person—another android. The other two cabinets were locked.
“What about Laura?” Isaiah asked, looking at us, dumbfounded. His mouth hung open slightly, and his eyes were wide and expectant.