Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (23 page)

“We’ll see,” she says, in a way that tells me she has no intention of letting me talk to either one of them.

I’ve come to look forward to the running and jumping. Every night, they take me back to my room and leave me there to stare at the walls, but at least during the testing sessions I have something to do. I’ve taken to pulling
a Linda Hamilton from
Terminator 2
. You know, the one in which she spends her time in the mental hospital doing pull-ups and getting fit, so when the time comes for the Terminator to travel back in time again and bust her out, she’s ready.

I don’t have a cyborg in sunglasses coming for me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be ready.

I snag a pen from Dr. Billings when he’s not looking, and sometimes I write as much as I can on the stiff, harsh sheets of paper towels from the bathroom. I fold them into tiny squares and hide them behind my dresser drawers. It does occur to me that they might be watching me. Hidden cameras or peepholes drilled behind the mirror on the wall. I don’t care. If they want to confiscate my scribbled accounts of everything that’s been happening, they’re going to do it, anyway.

I like the manipulatives less than the obstacle courses, even when they get more and more complicated. Dr. Billings times me, and every time I complete one of the complicated puzzles faster than the last, he jumps up and down and crows a little. Sometimes, I deliberately mess them up to screw with his results, but he doesn’t seem to notice that it’s on purpose.

“It’s okay, Velvet,” he says. Sometimes, he pats my head or shoulder. “You’ll get it better the next time.”

I still have no idea what, exactly, they’re testing me to see, just that every day the routine’s the same. Breakfast.
Then the testing area, where they weigh and measure me and fit me with that headband that keeps track of my brain waves. Then they assign me different physical tasks until lunchtime. Then the cafeteria, where I load up on food and kind of gorge myself. Maybe that’s why the after-lunch time with the manipulatives is so boring for me—I’ve eaten myself into a food coma, and all I want to do is sleep.

Today, they had spaghetti and meatballs on the menu. Garlic bread. Salad with oil and vinegar dressing. I gobble second portions of all of it, especially the meatballs. I know they have to be soy or something, but they’re so good, so much like the ones my mom used to make, that I eat until I’m bursting.

“Can’t I just take a nap?” I slump in the straight-backed chair they put in the room for me. No cushions. Hard metal. It should deter me from wanting to sleep, but it doesn’t.

“No nap. But if you finish up the testing in good time, you might get to go back to your room earlier.” Dr. Billings gestures, and the door opens. Jenny brings in what looks like an old tape recorder, the kind with round plastic wheels and thin plastic tape, except this one doesn’t have any tape in it. Just two small silver pegs.

She puts it on the table and gives me a look I can’t figure out. I can’t understand Jenny at all, to be honest. She hardly ever says a word, but at the same time, her looks could kill
a cobra. I never know if she hates me or Dr. Billings or just life in general.

“All right, Velvet. We’re going to run you through a series of scenarios, okay? And I want you to gauge your emotional responses. Anytime you feel a happy reaction, I want you to twist the left-hand dial. When you feel a negative reaction, twist the right-hand dial. Okay?”

“What do the dials do?”

“They record your reactions. That’s all.” Dr. Billings has a certain soothing way of talking sometimes, usually when he’s not telling me the whole truth about something. He has it now, so I give him a wary glance. Jenny won’t look at me at all.

I sit at the table, a hand on each of the knobs. He begins talking, slow and soft. Kind of like the eye doctor … only instead of “Which is better: right or left?” Dr. Billings is asking me about how different things make me feel.

“Puppies.” That’s a left.

“Ice cream.” Another left.

“School.”

I look at him. “What if it’s not a good or bad?”

“Pick the stronger feeling.”

I choose right, though honestly I never hated school the way lots of kids did, at least not until the final days, and that was more because I was so burned out doing everything else that school didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

The list goes on and on. My parents, Opal, Dillon. Left, left, left.

“ThinPro.”

That’s a sharp twist to the right, for sure.

“Winter. Spring. Fall. Summer. Heat. Cold. Darkness.”

I twist the dials left or right, depending on what’s going on. Dr. Billings makes his notes. I’m bored and tired, but right before I ask him how much longer, he says:

“Tony.”

I hesitate. When I saw him last week in the cafeteria, I was happy. And once upon a time, Tony made me very happy. But he’d also made me really sad, too.

I twist the left-hand dial.

“Tell me about Tony, Velvet. He was your high school boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“And you had a special relationship, yes? How’d you get along with his mother?”

Right-hand twist, for sure.

“Tony speaks highly of you. Did you know that?”

I twist the left dial. “I’m glad.”

“He says that even though you broke up with him because he cheated on you, he always really thought you were, and I quote, ‘fantastic.’ ”

I hesitate. It’s nice to know Tony thinks so, but remembering finding him in the school library with another girl still
stings and might for a really long time. I twist the right dial.

“Very good.” Dr. Billings makes a note in the file.

“He did say you were a terrible kisser, though,” Jenny pipes up.

My fingers twitch on the right dial again.

Dr. Billings shakes his head. “Teenage boys can be so rude. Velvet, I’d like you to imagine that every time you twist that right-hand dial, you’re sending an electric shock straight to Tony. Okay?”

Frowning, I take my hands away from the dials. “What?”

“Hands back on the dials, please. I want you to imagine you’re shocking him every time you twist it.”

“Can’t I imagine I’m shocking someone else?” I picture Dr. Donna.

Dr. Billings keeps his soothing tone. “It will be more helpful if you picture Tony. Okay? Jennifer, as difficult as it might be for Velvet to hear this, we do have more information for her about Tony, isn’t that so?”

“Yeah. My younger sister is best friends with Carly Tillman.”

I don’t know her, so I don’t twist either dial.

Jenny sighs, looking put out. “She’s the girl who was making out with Tony in the library.”

“Don’t forget to twist the dials,” Dr. Billings says.

I give it a slight twist to the right.

“My sister says that Carly told her that she and Tony used to laugh about you.”

Another harder twist to the right.

“She says that it was all over the school about what a loser you were, having to live in assisted housing, because you were a Conorphan and all that. And Tony pitied you, but didn’t know how to break up with you. Because he thought you were such a loser, you’d never find another boyfriend—”

Right. Right. Right.

I think of how I went into the library, needing to talk to him, and found Tony lip to lip with that other girl. And they’d laughed about me? Laughed?

Right. Hard. Then harder.

“Can you describe what you’re feeling, Velvet?”

“I’m really mad. And hurt. But mostly mad!” I twist the right dial.

“And imagining that Tony’s getting an electric shock every time you twist the dial—how does that make you feel?”

“Good.” It does. I twist it harder, biting on my lower lip a little.

“You’d like to hurt Tony? The way he’s hurt you?”

“Yeah … I guess so.” I twist the dial, thinking of a buzz and an electric tingle of sparks.

“Would you like to be able to hurt anyone who hurt you this way?”

I twist the dial. And again. Over and over, thinking of all the things that have made me sad or mad over
the past year. “Yeah! I guess I would.”

Dr. Billings pulls the cord on the blinds covering a window. I’m expecting one-way glass again, but this time I’m on the other side of it, looking to another white room, identical to the one I’m in. Same furniture, even.

Tony’s on the other side of the glass.

He’s just sitting down in a chair identical to mine. In front of him is a box that looks similar to the one in front of me, but instead of two silver knobs, it’s got a bunch of wires coming out of it, and all of them connect to him.

I don’t have to hear him to know he’s screaming. His mouth is wide open, his head thrown back. I’m out of my chair and away from that box on the table before Dr. Billings can say another word. Tony slumps as soon as I let go of the dial, and I press myself against the wall as far from the window as I can get.

I clutch my stomach, thinking I’m going to hurl up all the food from lunch. My breath comes fast in my throat, scratching it. My tongue’s suddenly so dry, I can’t even wet my lips.

“Sit back down, Velvet. Put your hands on the dials.”

“I’m not going to shock him!”

Dr. Billings gives me a strange, sort of sad smile. “You’ve been shocking him all this time. And you said yourself that you’d like to be able to hurt someone who hurt you.”

“That was before I knew I was really doing it.” I shake
my head, still feeling sick, though Tony seems to be recovering all right.

The woman who was with him in the cafeteria is offering him water and a cloth to wipe his face. She puts her hand on his shoulder as though to comfort him. To my disgust and sorrow, Tony starts to cry.

“Why is he doing this?” I look at Dr. Billings, who doesn’t seem to take offense to my accusatory glare. “Did he know what could happen?”

“Yes. Of course. He had to sign a waiver, like all of our volunteers. As for why, I’m told the pay is quite good, the benefits attractive. And I believe, in Tony’s case, he’s trying to get some help for his family. His mother, particularly. I’m sure you can understand that.”

I shake my head again. I didn’t sign any waiver, and though it’s not the first time I think Dr. Billings isn’t telling me the truth, it’s the first time I feel like he’s flat-out lying. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have any choice, Velvet. Sit down.”

“I won’t. You can’t make me.”

“Tony signed up for this; he knew what was going to happen. If you don’t do it, he doesn’t get paid. And he doesn’t get to help his mother.”

I don’t move even a fraction of an inch toward the table. “What’s wrong with his mother?”

“She’s one of the unfortunate number of people who’ve succumbed to one of the later waves of Contamination,”
Dr. Billings says, and now I know for sure he can’t be telling the truth.

“Tony’s mom never drank ThinPro. Never. I guarantee it.”

He is silent for a moment. “All it takes is one sip, Velvet.”

In the other room, Tony is still pale and sweating, but he’s wiped his face. No matter how angry I ever was at him, there’s no way I can twist that dial now. Even if it were Tony’s mother in the chair, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Velvet, I’m telling you that you need to sit in that chair and turn the dials, and administer a mild shock to the volunteer in the other room. He is prepared for it. In fact, he wants you to continue. See?”

In the other room, the woman bends to murmur something into Tony’s ear. He lifts his head and looks at the glass. His mouth is slack, eyes dull. But he nods.

“She could’ve said anything to him. That doesn’t mean he’s okay with this. And I’m definitely not, not even if he is. No.” I stand firm for the first time since they’d tried to starve me for three days. Now I wish I hadn’t been so easily bought for the price of a bowl of soup and some bread.

Jenny looks up from the table, where she’s been messing around with a bunch of different instruments that they like to use to test my reflexes. Something in my expression
sends her a step or two back. Without a word, she leaves the room.

“C’mon now. You don’t want me to have to take away your privileges, do you?”

“You mean food and water? You mean my basic human rights? Is any of this even legal?” I gesture around the room. “Keeping me like this, against my will?”

“Oh, it’s legal. Entirely.” Dr. Billings nods.

“I’m not sick.”

“No. But you are … special.”

“Is that what you write on that clipboard?”

Before he can stop me, I snatch it from his hand. His handwriting is scrawling and hard to read, and I have to keep him from grabbing it back by pulling it away from him as I dodge him, getting far enough to scan what he’s been writing about me.

There are long lists about strength, agility, progress in motor function and reaction to stimuli.
Reflexes, superior
stands out to me.
Adrenaline levels, elevated
.

Dr. Billings yanks the clipboard from my hand. He’s breathing hard and sweating, red-faced. “Give me that!”

“Don’t I have a right to know what you’re doing with me?” I could grab the clipboard from him if I wanted to. He knows it, too. I can see it on his face.