The Chamber of Five (12 page)

“Then act like one,” she said.

“You’ve ruined me.”

“You’ve ruined yourself, and I won’t have you ruin my son.”

His expression changed then as he regained his composure. He straightened his collar, adjusting his tie. “This won’t work. I will not have you destroy me. Either of you. I’m a congressman of the United States of America, and I’ll be damned if this will happen.”

“You’re not above the laws you make, Daniel,” she said.

“That’s what you don’t understand, Tiffany, and that’s what Jason will never understand. I am.”

“I’m pressing charges.”

Three minutes later, my mother proved herself right. She opened the door to two police officers, and five minutes after that, my father was handcuffed and led to a police car.

He spent the night in the jail he’d cut the ribbon on.

“H
EY
, S
INGLETARY, DID
you get your posters done?”

Singletary looked away from me, studying the student parking lot. We stood at the city bus stop across from the school. He held his bus pass in his hand, and the expression on his face was typical; if a smooth slate of stone could somehow have a look of contempt, that would be it. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?”

I furrowed my brow, as usual in the dark with the guy. “About what?”

He faced me, hair in his eyes, his tone soft. “If you ever come to my home again, I’ll come to yours.”

“I was trying to warn you.”

“I don’t need warning.”

“Kennedy and Carter. They …” I hesitated. “They want you out of the school.”

He smiled. “So?”

“So they were planning something to get you out. But things got screwed up.”

“And I take it you were a part of things.”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “So you’ve become the god who stands up for injustice and wrongdoing by rebelling against
the man.
” Humor lit his eyes. “You don’t make a good vigilante, Jason. Believe me. You suck at it.”

“The system is bent, and I’m doing something about it.”

“Let’s just get one thing straight, Jason. I don’t need you or your causes or anything else, and I don’t give a shit about your Chamber and what your grand plan is. This school is exactly like the world, and you aren’t going to change anything.”

“I can change it.”

“No, you’ll just become it. That’s what people like you don’t get. It’s like rigged dice. You might roll a four, but it’ll always flip back to a six.”

“Then why partner up with us?”

“Last I heard, my business was none of yours.”

“Something is going on at this school, and—”

He cut me off. “Your dad was on the news. Sounds like a great guy,” he said, searching my face. “I’ll bet you make a great punching bag.”

Even though I had a huge urge to smash him, I didn’t. The whole school knew about it, but unlike the others, who politely ignored dirty laundry being publicized, Singletary capitalized on it. The bus pulled up, opening its doors, and I stared at him. “Why are you such a prick?”

A smile, thin and confident, slithered across his face. “Those who believe in fair are the ones who lose,” he said, looking at me. “And why I’m a prick is none of your business.”

My stomach squirmed. Those words clicked in my brain. “What did you just say?”

He stepped up the stairs, ignoring me, and as the doors closed, I watched him walk down the aisle and sit. He stared at me. No smile, no anger, nothing. Just a flat, dead stare through the dirty window of a dirty bus.

T
HOSE WHO BELIEVE
in fair are the ones who lose
. I spent hours in my room that evening, racking my brains, and finally, I couldn’t sit any longer. I snuck downstairs, grabbed my keys, and left.

A chill went down my spine as I stood in the darkness of the Chamber. The silence was complete, eerie, and as I made my way over to a lamp and turned it on, nervous adrenaline pumped through my veins. I squeezed my fists, releasing tension and forcing myself to calm down. But there was a foreboding in me. Something deep and black and as dangerous as the dead stare Thomas Singletary had given me when the bus pulled away. He knew things he shouldn’t.

Carter Logan had said those words when we’d talked in this room, and now, as I looked around, my mind reeled. How had he known? I took a breath, then sat in one of the chairs
surrounding the table, thinking about everything that had happened in there.

Elvis. The vodka and shot glass. The lead pipe. The twisted words of Carter. Steven Lotus and his fear. Kennedy and his genetic subhuman dysfunction. Woodsie and his strategies. Brooke.

Brooke. Oh God.

I groaned.
You enjoyed the show?
When Singletary had said that, it hadn’t registered with me. The show. With Brooke and her blouse. He’d known about it, just like he’d known what Carter said to me. He didn’t need warnings from anybody, because he
knew
.

I exhaled, leaning my head back, closing my eyes, and remembering Singletary’s file.
He’s a hacker
. A computer whiz. Electronics. Technology. He was brilliant. A brilliant, self-made criminal. I’d thought he was immune to fear, some kind of psychotic wrong-side-of-the-tracks mutant, but he wasn’t. You can’t fear the unknown if you know the unknown, I thought. And that’s why I was here. He wasn’t magic or psychotic, he was smart.

I opened my eyes, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, then I got up, looking around. The secret was in this room, and I’d find it. I searched then, under the table and chairs, in the lamp shades, between the books on the shelves.

From one corner of the room to the next, I made my way around, and then I saw it. Above the heavy drapes on the far side of the wall. Right at the joint where the ceiling began. A small black dot, no bigger than a dime. Pay dirt.

I dragged a chair over and stood on it, studying the thing. Noting its tiny glass screen, I knew it was a camera, and I swallowed.
He’d seen everything, and my mind flashed to Brooke, shame coursing through me. I hopped down, leaving it be, and in another five minutes I’d found the microphone, hidden on the inside edge of a picture frame holding a painting of Thomas Jefferson.

Both were wireless, and I knew enough about wireless to know there had to be a control unit somewhere. I sat down, putting the microphone on the table and thinking.
Singletary knew about the order to break his arm
. I leaned back. Singletary was the one who’d left the pipe with the rose taped to it, because Singletary was the one who attacked Carter. He’d known everything, and the pieces all fell together. All except one question. The big question. Why?

Why would Singletary spy on the Chamber in the first place? He said he didn’t care about it, didn’t care about anything at Lambert, but he did. He cared a lot. Enough to do this. Enough to…

“Out late, huh?”

I jumped, spinning around as my heart pistoned out of control. Singletary stood in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

He shrugged, carefully closing the door. “I figured you’d figure it out.” He pointed to the microphone on the table. “Looks like you might not be a complete idiot.”

I studied him as he walked across the rug and took a seat across the table from me. In the deep cushioned chair, he looked like a twelve-year-old kid, but unlike any twelve-year-old I’d ever met. “You knew the whole time. About the file. Your file. And me.”

He nodded. “And by the way, you have
no
idea how much Carter hates you.”

I bristled. “And now you’re playing these games, and it doesn’t bother you that Carter thinks I’m the one doing it.”

“Doesn’t bother me at all.” He smiled. “Actually, I think it’s sort of funny.”

“I’ve been the one protecting you, asshole.”

“You’re pretty crappy at it.”

“Tell me what this is about. All of it.”

He smirked. “Entertainment.”

“Busting an arm is entertainment?”

“Gets boring around here.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“He was going to bust mine, so I figured I’d give him my version of pay it forward.” He stared at me, cocking his head, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Is that wrong, Jason? Aren’t you doing the same?”

“No, I’m not. You broke his arm. I just want to win an election.”

He slouched in the chair, waiting for me to go on, but nothing came. He pointed at my face. “Have you ever hit your dad back?”

“This isn’t about my dad.”

“Come on, Jase, we’re like bros now, right? We can talk.”

I clenched my jaw.

He laughed. “Of course you haven’t hit the bastard back. But …,” he said, eyeing me, “I want to know why you haven’t.”

“Because.”

“Because you’re afraid, right? Because
hitting your father
is wrong, and little Jason here is afraid of doing the wrong thing.”

I squirmed.

He leaned forward. His voice, sinister and smooth, whispered across the table. “Want to know what happens when you’re not afraid anymore, Jason? Want to know what happens when the fear is gone?”

I looked away, rolling my eyes. “Sure. Fire away.”

He sat back, and just for a split second, he reminded me of Carter. “When you aren’t afraid anymore, you realize that a whole lot of shit that is wrong isn’t really wrong. You realize that beating the shit out of your father so badly that he’d never lay another finger on you isn’t wrong. It’s
justice.
”

I smirked. “Yeah. Justice that would land me in juvie.”

“What if you weren’t afraid of juvie? What if what was
right
was the only thing that mattered?”

I shrugged. “Listen, if people just did what they felt like, everybody would be killing everybody and we’d be living in chaos. That’s why we have laws, and you broke the law when you broke his arm.” I frowned. “We’re civilized. That’s what separates us from the animals.”

He chuckled. “Dude, you are really messed up in the head, you know that? We’re not civilized, we just pretend to be. The predators still kill, man, and it ain’t the meth-dealing banger on the corner packing a gun or some middle-class crybaby storming a school with an AK-47. It’s the people sitting behind big desks making decisions who kill. They just do it slowly.” He stared at me. “Guys like your dad can ruin lives a thousand times easier than guys like me, so don’t give me your moral guilt trip about what’s civilized and what’s not.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I’m trying to change that. At least here, I am.”

“You’re not changing anything.”

I set my chin. “Yes I am.”

“Carter was right.…” He paused. “Remember his little speech the first day you were chosen? About the lines of power? About the real purpose behind life being power and control?” He smiled. “He’s right, and you can’t change it. You can shift it or move it around, but it remains the same in the end. One person controlling another.” He grunted. “The little man will always get the shaft, and that’s just it. Nada. Nothing more. Your dork friend Elvis is one of them, and you don’t like that, so you think you’re doing the right thing.”

“And you’re not one of them?”

He nodded. “I know exactly what I am, but the only difference is that I know the rules are rigged, man, and I reject them. I don’t throw the dice anymore. Got my own.”

“That’s not all true.”

He studied me. “You know why I’m poor, Jason?”

I looked away, reminded of my father’s private tirades about keeping the poor in their places. The social order.

“Because they need poor people, and they’ve built a system around it. They need their garbage picked up and their burgers cooked and their lawns mowed and their shit shoveled, and they need to keep us where we are, and you can move things around all you want, but you’re never going to change the fact that Carter is right. People love controlling other people.”

I flushed, angry because he was so right and so wrong at the same time. “Bullshit. Look at you. You’re brilliant. You could get out of it. That’s what America is about, right? It’s why you’re at Lambert.” I grunted. “Besides, half the poor people in this
country are poor because they like getting free shit from people who work their asses off. Ever heard of welfare?” I sneered.

He laughed, and for the first time, I saw real emotion on his face. Deep, intense, and angry. “Dude, you’re so fucking stupid you just buy into it. They
made
it so we
need
it. They made it to keep people on it!” His face went dark then, and his eyes narrowed. “The government has spent seventy years pulling off the biggest lie ever told.” He smirked, the hatred in his expression palpable. “You don’t make people independent by keeping them dependent, and they know it. Your dad and every other politician keep people dependent for one thing. To own them and their votes. Lives don’t matter, man, power does.”

I had nothing to say.

He grinned. “That’s what I thought. You know how he thinks, huh?”

I looked away. “So you want to change it by breaking Carter’s arm. Great. That’s retarded.”

“I don’t want to change anything.”

“Then why go after the Chamber?”

“I’m not.”

A quiet came over the room as I thought about what he’d just said. “I don’t understand you.”

He took a breath, exhaling. “I play my own game.”

“Against what? Who?” I shook my head. “Carter?”

Silence. After a moment, he rose. “Jason, the only reason I’m helping you with this election deal is because it makes my life easier right now. Other than that, it’d be best if you stayed away from me.”

“Why are you at Lambert?”

He nodded at the microphone. “Put that back where you found it, huh?” Then he moved for the door.

“Why’d you tell me this?” I said.

He turned, and in the dim of the lamplit room, his eyes were deep and empty pits. “I don’t know.” Then he was gone.

D
AD’S ARREST MADE IT ONTO
The Late Late Show
as the butt of a few jokes. It must have been a slow news day. As I lay in bed, the clock reading 3:30, I was torn.