SYLO (THE SYLO CHRONICLES) (30 page)

I walked tentatively to the chair but didn’t sit.

“Once again,” he began. “Why were you out on the water last night?”

“What do you want to hear?” I said. “I told you. I was trying to escape.”

“Why?”

“Are you serious? What don’t you get? There’s no virus. I know that. So that means we’re prisoners. Not just in this camp, the whole island. We’re cut off from the rest of the world and I want to know why.”

“Who helped you escape?” he asked.

“Nobody. It was just the three of us.”

“The boats you used belonged to Michael Sleeper. Did he plan the escape?”

“No! He was arrested before I even got to his house. You must know that.”

“Was the escape planned before that?”

“No.”

“Tell me who else was involved.”

“Jeez, dude,” I said, frustrated. “You can ask me the same questions over and over, but I’ll keep giving you the same answers because it’s the truth.”

The door to the outside opened and two more medical guys in white jackets entered.

“Oh, man,” I said. “Again? What else do you want to squeeze outta me?”

“Please remove your clothing,” one of the guys said.

I looked at Granger, who had his eyes on his tablet. Glancing to the door, I saw the SYLO guard with his hand resting on his holstered pistol. I decided to cooperate.

“You’re not gonna use Q-tips again, are you?”

“No,” was the medical guy’s simple answer.

I took off my jacket and handed it to the first guy. He immediately searched through it, turning out all of the pockets. They did the same with my pants and my shirt. Whatever it was they were looking for, it wasn’t part of my physical body—which meant that Kent had just saved me by asking for the Wiffle ball. He must have known I would be searched.

I didn’t have to drop my boxers, I’m happy to say. The two were satisfied that I wasn’t carrying anything suspicious and handed my clothes back.

“Get dressed,” the first guy said and the two left.

“What was that for?” I asked Granger.

“A random check.”

“What did you expect to find?” I asked as I got dressed. “A weapon?”

“Information,” was Granger’s curt answer.

“How often are we going to be having these little chats?” I asked.

Granger’s answer was to turn out the light. The clear glass turned back into a mirror.

“Okay! See you next time!” I called out cheerily. “I’ll have the same answers for you!”

The SYLO guard opened the door and motioned for me to leave. I stepped out of the hut to see that it was getting dark. It may have been warm but it was autumn and the days were growing shorter. The guard led me back through the now-empty recreation area toward another gate in the fence. I followed silently until I caught sight of something beyond the fence near the food tent.

“Stop,” I said to the guard.

He spun around as if surprised that I would challenge him. His gaze traveled to what I was looking at.

“Can I have a minute?” I asked.

The guard hesitated as if unsure of what to do. Finally, he relaxed and said, “Make it quick.”

He stayed put while I walked to the fence. It was the longest walk I’d ever taken. Part of me wanted to get there faster, the other part wanted to turn and run in the other direction. My feet felt leaden, but I kept moving until I was standing right at the fence…directly across from my mother.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said softly. “How are you doing?”

Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

I didn’t know what to say.

“I heard you would be by this way,” she said, her voice cracking. “I wanted to see you.”

“Quinn is dead,” I said flatly.

Mom closed her eyes as if the words physically hurt her.

“I know,” she said in a soft whisper.

It was all I could do to keep from crying myself. This was my mother. I loved her. She had taken care of me my entire life. She didn’t even want me to play football for fear I might get hurt and here she was standing on the other side of a fence from me in every way possible.

“Why?” was all I managed to say.

She opened her mouth, but didn’t answer.

“Did you know all along?” I asked. “Is that why we moved to Pemberwick? Was this all part of some plan?”

It seemed as though it was physically painful for her to keep the words in, but she did.

“Talk to me,” I begged. “Why can’t you tell me?”

I was starting to lose it. As much as I didn’t want to cry, I couldn’t help myself. Once I gave in to my emotions, I couldn’t hold back and the waterworks began.

“You can tell me the truth,” I said, pleading. “I mean, why not? It’s over for me now, right? I’m in prison. What harm can I do here? I just want to know what’s happening. You owe me that.”

Her tears flowed too. I honestly believe that it pained her not to tell me what I wanted to know, but something was preventing her. She wasn’t allowed to talk to a prisoner, even though he happened to be her son.

“Tell me!” I shouted.

The SYLO guard walked up behind me, took my arm, and said, “That’s it. Let’s go.”

“No,” I bawled and pulled away. My defenses were gone. I had become a desperate, lost little boy.

“Mom!” I screamed, my throat already sore from crying. “You’re supposed to watch out for me! How could you let this happen?”

Mom put her hand up on the fence and said, “You’re safe here. Tell them whatever it is they want to know.”

“But I don’t know anything! You never told me anything! Mom, what is happening?”

She pressed closer to the fence as if she wanted to get through to hold me. At least that’s what I hoped she was doing. I couldn’t be sure of anything. Not anymore.

“Tucker?” she said, crying. “Don’t trust anyone.”

Those words cut through to me. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted her to tell me that everything was going to be fine and that she and Dad would take care of things and explain it all. Instead, she issued a warning.

My tears stopped. My head cleared. That was the moment that I fully accepted the truth.

I was completely on my own.

“Really?” I asked. “Does that include you?”

Mom winced like I had punched her in the stomach. It felt good—and made my heart ache.

“C’mon,” the guard said and pulled me away from the fence.

“I love you!” Mom called, sobbing.

I didn’t turn back and it killed me not to. I loved her too. She was my mother, for God’s sake. But she wasn’t taking care of me. Not anymore.

“That was a mistake,” the guard said. I sensed a touch of compassion.

He led me through the gate and along another corridor of fencing until we reached yet another fairway and a large, temporary wooden structure. He opened the door and gestured for me to go inside.

“What happens here?” I asked. “More questions? More searches? More tests?”

“It’s your barracks,” he said flatly.

Oh.

Inside were two rows of cots along the walls. It looked like a military barracks, with a small locker at the foot of each bed.

“Take number fifteen,” he said. “Soap and towels are in the locker. There are clean socks and underwear too. Leave your clothes on top and they’ll launder them overnight. There’s a library in back next to the bathrooms. Take what you want. Three-minute showers. Lights out at twenty-one hundred hours. Breakfast call at oh seven hundred. Any questions?”

“Yeah. Why am I here?”

He left without answering—no big surprise.

I counted forty bunks in all, twenty on each side. I wondered if any of them belonged to Kent. A few guys read in bed while others showered. With nothing else to do, I wandered to the library. It wasn’t much, maybe a hundred paperbacks tucked into a corner of the tent in a cheap bookcase, but it was more proof that this
operation had been planned and prepared for. The books were brand new. Most of the bindings had never been cracked. They had been chosen, collected, and shipped to Pemberwick for the purpose of being used by prisoners in this camp.

I grabbed
The Catcher in the Rye
, one of my favorites. I sat on bunk fifteen and tried to focus on it, but it was a no-go. It felt too odd to be doing something as normal as reading. I was more interested in watching as the other men wandered in. I didn’t recognize any of them. Like in the food tent, nobody spoke and I wasn’t about to break the tradition. I decided to take a shower and grabbed a towel out of the footlocker, along with a new toothbrush and flip-flops. I put my clothes on top of the locker and went to the bathrooms.

It looked pretty much like the showers at school, with pump soap and shampoo dispensers on the wall. I took a quick shower in water that wasn’t quite warm enough, brushed my teeth, and headed back to my bunk.

My clothes were gone. So were my cross-trainers. It struck me as a pretty effective security trick—taking the clothes from prisoners at night so they don’t have anything to wear in case they decide to jump the wall at midnight. It made me wonder what Kent’s escape plan was and if we were going to go at night. I couldn’t imagine going anywhere wearing old-man white boxers and flip-flops.

I stretched out on the cot, let the squeaky springs settle, and stared up at the tent’s ceiling. I was exhausted in every way imaginable. There was no telling what the next day would bring. I had to rest and be ready. I hoped for a long night of sleep with no nightmares because I sure couldn’t stop them when I was awake. Sleep
would be the only thing to stop me from seeing the image of my mother on the far side of that fence, not helping me. That would stay with me for a long time, maybe as long as the sight of Quinn about to jump from that boat…and disappearing in a lethal flash of light.

“No worries, my friend,” I whispered aloud. “Somebody’s gonna pay for that.”

I didn’t care who heard me.

By the time the lights went out, I was long gone.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was to the sound of another horn. It was the wake-up alarm. I opened one eye to see that all of my bunkmates were quietly rising and getting dressed.

True to the soldier’s words, my jeans, shirt, sweatshirt, socks, and underwear were on the locker at the foot of my bed, freshly cleaned and folded. Even my cross-trainers were there and looked as though they had been buffed up a little. It creeped me out that little SYLO elves were scurrying around at night messing with my stuff. I dressed quickly and followed the others out, headed for the food tent. The breakfast experience was pretty much a duplicate of dinner, only with scrambled eggs, bacon, wheat toast with jelly, and juice.

Tori sat in the same spot. I tried to get a seat across from her but there were too many ladies crammed in. All I could do was walk by and give her a little smile. She winked. I took that to mean that she was doing okay.

I found a seat not far from Kent but we didn’t speak. When breakfast ended, he made a motion with his head as if I should
follow him. The whole group was let back out into the recreation yard, where everyone quickly went about their business of doing nothing. I walked to the far end of the fairway and up to the fence where I had confronted my mother. I’m not sure why. Maybe I was hoping that she had come back to see me.

She hadn’t.

I scanned the compound to see that every so often a SYLO soldier would approach one of the inmates and lead them into a hut. I had to believe that everyone went through random interrogations the same as me, which was probably why nobody spoke to anybody else. If they had any secrets, Granger would do his best to get it out of them.

“It’s why we’re all here,” Kent said. He had walked up behind me without my realizing it. “They’re afraid of us.”

“Of us?” I repeated, incredulous.

“They’re afraid of what we know.”

“I don’t know anything,” I argued.

“They don’t know that,” Kent said. “And who knows what anybody else knows?”

“That makes no sense,” I said.

“C’mon,” Kent said and took out the Wiffle ball. “Let’s just have a catch.”

“Is this allowed?” I asked. “I mean, nobody else is—”

“So let’s give ’em something to think about,” he said. Kent was back to being the cocky son of privileged parents. For once, I didn’t mind.

He tossed me the loaded ball, and I tossed it back. It was about as innocent a scene as you could imagine. At least that’s what I
hoped. I also hoped that the guards didn’t notice the odd wobble of the loaded ball.

“There’s something about to happen,” Kent said. “Something big and they’re afraid somebody might scuttle it. That’s why we’re here. We’re the suspects. They’re looking for somebody to rat on somebody else and smoke the troublemakers out.”

“I heard them call it an event,” I said, showing Kent that I wasn’t totally in the dark about what was happening. “Do you know what it is?”

Kent shook his head. “And I haven’t met anybody else who does either, but that doesn’t stop SYLO from asking.”

“How did you get the, uh, the…?” I held up the Wiffle ball. I didn’t want to use the word Ruby in case we were being listened to.

Kent smiled. “Sorry, Rook. I’ve gotta watch my own ass. Until we get outta here, you’re on a need-to-know basis.”

I tossed the ball a few more times while letting his words sink in, then said, “Sounds to me like you might be one of those people who have information they’d like to know about.”