Middle Ground (10 page)

“Hey, Connie.” He addressed the woman standing next to me with a single nod.

She frowned. “No using first names in front of the students,” she reminded him and he nodded apologetically. She rattled off that each floor had a food station stocked with water, tea, coffee, and snacks. I looked back over at the boy while she was listing my choices. Our eyes met and there was recognition on his face. His blue eyes stared at me a little too boldly, and I figured he recognized me.

A single chair was tucked in the corner, black and metal and hardly inviting.

“You take everything back to your room. This is the only place to get warm food.” She pointed to the soup and sandwich options. “All the meals sent to your room are cold. This is your one luxury, so don’t abuse it.”

I almost thanked her but I had the feeling I’d get chastised for it. Connie nudged me back into the hallway and we stopped outside room 415.

“Your tour’s done,” she said with a flat voice as she opened the door for me and I stepped in. “Welcome to the LADC.”

She shut the door and left me alone. I looked around at the stark white walls and felt like I was stuck inside a dream, not quite conscious, like I was hovering between two lives. It was strange standing here without a single thing to connect me to my past life. It made me feel uneven. Unreal. A little transparent.

I collapsed down on my bed and stared at the white ceiling. I took in the new smells, a mix of clean sheets and electronics from all the digital screens. My clothes smelled like bleach. I listened for the new sounds. Every place has its own unique shifts and movements that you need to get accustomed to before you can relax. But I knew I’d never relax here. The only sound was choked silence. It slid over me like a shadow.

No one was going to save me this time.

I felt like a character in a video game, as if someone were watching my life and manipulating my movements with a remote control. I’d entered a world where I’d be running blindly through a barrage of obstacles and trying to dodge blows I couldn’t see coming until they were already on top of me.

I sat on the bed and raked my fingers through my hair. Enough feeling sorry for myself. If there was one thing I’d learned from Justin, it was that change didn’t come by throwing a pity party. You could sit around and wait for life to happen or you could get busy and make it happen yourself. So I got out of bed, turned on my wall screen to a blank document, and spoke out loud, recounting everything I could remember from the last few hours. It seemed important to think, to feel, to use my senses. I paced back and forth and imagined the walls away. I tried to picture the courtyard outside. I pretended I was an undercover journalist sent here to investigate the detention center. If I could capture every event that occurred inside of this place, maybe I could shed some light on what was going on and help other kids in my shoes.

I could view this experience as a lesson instead of as a punishment. It was a relief to put my thoughts in order and reflect on what had just happened. It helped everything make sense. I watched as my voice was converted into words on the screen and my sentences became paragraphs. I saw my story take shape, like a scroll unrolling in front of me.

I stopped talking and looked around at the walls. My words hung there, suspended, and I realized they weren’t safe. Everything I recorded was property of the DC. They were probably reading my words right now. I tried to delete the paragraphs but they clung to the walls. I reached out, as if my hand could sweep them away.

I realized the DC could take anything from me. Even my thoughts. They didn’t want us to reflect in here. They didn’t want us to remember. They didn’t want us to think.

***

There was a knock at the door, and I opened it to find the boy I had met at the food station. His arms were full of sheets and scrubs, piled all the way up to his chin.

He walked in and crammed the clothes onto a single shelf in the closet. Then he glanced around the room.

“Wow,” he said, looking at the wall screens still crammed with my words. “Working on a novel?”

“I think too much,” I admitted.

“Well, this place will cure you of that,” he said.

I looked around at the walls. “I keep forgetting I don’t have to think. Computers do it for me. Thinking just gets you into trouble.”

He studied me. “You’re Madeline Freeman, aren’t you?” he asked.

I nodded at his assumption. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“We never learn people’s names in here,” he said. “The staff refer to you all by numbers. I’ve never recognized anyone before.” He tilted his head to the side. “Your dad couldn’t pull a few strings to get you out?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No,” I said simply, and glanced around. “With his connections I was hoping for at least a penthouse suite. But at least there’s room service,” I noted.

He stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Or maybe he wasn’t used to people having a sense of humor in this place. He cleared his throat.

“Um, we’re not really supposed to talk to the patients,” he said, as if he had to remind himself. “That’s why we never learn your names. It’s a staff rule not to get personal with anyone.”

You mean, not to treat us like we’re human?
I wanted to ask. He motioned for me to follow him and started walking down the hall toward the elevator. I glanced up at the black bulb as we passed under it and imagined eyes inside, yellow and unblinking, staring down at me.

He scanned his keycard and the elevator door opened. I got in and leaned against the metal side. He had to scan his card again and punch in a series of program codes before the elevator agreed to move. He pretended to be interested in staring at his shoes, avoiding my eyes as if he already regretted being friendly. But I wouldn’t give up so easily.

“Looks like I won’t be breaking out of here in this thing,” I noted of the elevator space.

“Not likely,” he said.

I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “Well, there aren’t any windows in this place, as far as I can see. There’s a stairwell. That might be the best plan to escape at this point. Or maybe the air vents, that’s how they always do it in the movies.”

He gazed at me with a poker face. “You think I’m going to give you pointers on how to break out of here?” He stared at me for a few seconds to determine if I was serious or insane. I didn’t know where I was getting the nerve to talk to the DC staff like this.

“Sorry,” I said. I told him I was just tired of being ordered around all day. “I have a low tolerance for following rules.”

“Look where that got you,” he observed.

I shrugged. At this point, I’d sunk as low as a person could. I was officially the world’s biggest loser. The positive side about crashing to the bottom is that you can only rise up.

“What’s your name?” I tested him.

“Only the doctors are allowed to share their names,” he told me. “They don’t encourage conversation in here.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, and looked at the elevator doors. “You must get lonely.”

I could feel him watching me.

“I mean, I’ve known you only a few minutes, but you seem like a people person.”

He cleared his throat again and his tone shifted to professional. “We always escort people to their first counseling sessions. Show you how this place breathes,” he said. The doors slid open and we entered a brightly lit hallway. It looked exactly like the fourth floor: a narrow corridor with rooms spaced at equal intervals.

“Do people live down here?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“Most of these are counseling rooms,” he told me. Our shoes brushed against the shiny linoleum floor. He stopped next to a door with a sign on it that said
IMAGINE YOUR WAY
. He opened the door for me but I hesitated to walk through.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured me. I stepped inside the room. It was completely empty, nothing but bare white walls. As soon as the door clicked shut behind me the screens snapped on. I gasped at the sight. The world around me—the walls, ceiling, and floor—had turned into a forest. Tall pines waved thick arms of needles around me and their branches climbed like ladders until they disappeared into the sky. A cool wind brushed my face. Bright green ferns blanketed the ground, and rocks and fallen logs were covered in thick green moss that looked as soft as fur. A blue sky was visible above, through the shade of branches. It looked like I’d walked inside a fairy tale.

I followed a dirt trail that felt soft and real under my feet. The gravel crunched under my sandals. A slow stream rippled alongside the trail and I bent down to watch the water glide over rocks and sand. I started to relax. Maybe people were wrong about detention centers. Maybe the point wasn’t to scare kids into accepting the digital world but to seduce them into it.

I wondered which emotion was more powerful in the human mind: fear or desire.

I reached my hand down to touch the bubbling stream, and the water was ice-cold and refreshing on my fingers. I brought my fingers to my mouth as if I could taste it but my dream was interrupted when the door buzzed open.

I stood up and a tall woman walked in. She had straight red hair that hung over her shoulders and she wore a long white lab coat. She carried a flipscreen tucked under one arm. She looked around at the rainforest and grinned.

“Interesting choice,” she said, and her voice echoed inside the empty room.

“Choice?” I asked.

I looked around at the scene but when she shut the door the image changed. The lush forest landscape turned into muted brown paint. The floor turned into beige tiles and the ceiling into white plaster and harsh lights. My senses shriveled in response. It was like someone offering you a plate filled with bars of milk chocolate and then taking it away and handing over plain toast.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“This is an imagery screen,” she told me, and raised a hand to point at one of the walls. “It depicts whatever you desire. You were trying to relax when you walked in, so the computer programmed a scene to settle your mood.” I blinked at the walls, stunned that seconds ago the place had looked like a rainforest. She crossed the room, and her high heels clicked loudly on the bare floors.

“I’m Dr. Stevenson,” she told me. She pressed her finger on a panel in the wall and a square, cushioned area, the size of a chair seat, rotated down and formed a right angle with the wall.

“Have a seat,” she said. I walked across the room, my sandals dragging with each step, and sat down. She asked for my hand and I hesitantly offered it to her. Her grip was cold on my skin as she ran my fingerprint along a scanner. She looked over at the wall screen and my name instantly appeared in neon yellow.

“Madeline Freeman,” she stated. Images popped up around me. My entire life was depicted in words, graphs, and pictures. There were profile pictures and yearly school photos. There were images of my family and some of my online friends. There was even a shot of my parents’ wedding picture. My health records were all there, my family tree sprouting up from the ground and billowing out like branches and leaves. There were graphs and charts showing how I stacked up against my peers academically and socially. There were lists of all my grades, my social groups, and my interest groups. All my contacts were noted. It showed where I shopped online. It listed the current classes I was taking—only nine credits to finish and then I could take my DS graduation exams.

She clasped her hands behind her back and studied the information. Her eyes fell on one particular spot and I followed her gaze and saw her reading my criminal record. It showed that I had assisted with a DC interception a few months before and that I was a suspect in what had happened at Club Nino, as well as guilty of aiding in an interception that same night. But the worst crime, the one I committed when I was fifteen years old, wasn’t even listed. My dad was still managing to cover it up.

“Looks like you’ve been running with the wrong crowd,” Dr. Stevenson said. “The digital-school dropouts, as they’re referred to.”

She unraveled a white cord attached to a MindReader and told me to put it on. I did as she asked and pressed the cold metal to my temples until it stuck into place. I felt a tingling sensation from the reader vibrating against my skin.

“To be honest, I’m not interested in your criminal record,” she told me. “This is why you’re here,” she said, and pointed to a chart on the opposite wall. Looking closer, I realized it wasn’t a chart; it was the outline of a human brain.
My
brain. It was split up into two sections, one red and one blue. The blue side was markedly larger. One word next to a percentage labeled each area of my brain:

POSITIVE:
11%

NEGATIVE:
89%

I looked from her to the screen and back, waiting for her to explain.

“Our minds are like energy fields, Madeline,” she said. “They’re controlled by our emotions, which is what I’m measuring right now. As you can see, you harbor mostly negative emotions like fear, anger, anxiety, and hostility. Very unhealthy. These kinds of feelings are toxic. They’re like viruses infecting your mind. If you don’t fight them off, they’ll eventually take over.”

I blinked at the screen. “How can you tell what I’m
feeling?
”

She pointed to the MindReader I wore. “This MR is the center’s own design. The electrodes can analyze emotional activity in your brain, and our modeling system categorizes it.”

“How convenient,” I mumbled.

She studied me. “What was that?”

“Why don’t you
ask
me how I’m feeling? I thought that was the way counseling worked. You ask the questions and I answer them.” I looked back at the screen and wondered what my brain activity for rebellion looked like. It was probably off the charts.

She nodded like she was used to this kind of response. “Technology’s come a long way,” she informed me. “This instrument can measure your brain waves, your blood pressure, and your hormone levels. The neuroscope,” she said, pointing to the electrode, “is one hundred percent accurate. No human being, no matter how intelligent, can compete with that kind of perfection.