Hellbent

“What?” he said.

“Just appreciating it,” she said.

“Eat.”

She looked up at him, cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

Before he could reply, a chime sounded over the wireless speaker system. His head snapped up.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He was already heading back. “Software just hit on David Smith.”

* * *

They stood side by side within the damp concrete walls of the Vault, staring at the monitors. The interconnected web of metadata on display was fascinating.

From the scant information on David Smith and a few photos, the software had made height and weight projections, assessed facial-structure changes, checked hospital intakes, flight and bus records, school registrations, and foster-home placements in targeted regions on the East Coast. These criteria correlating space, time, visuals, database entries, and events had been dynamically created so the machine would heuristically improve itself, learning as it went, ever evolving. Strange algorithms tracked online purchase orders, grouping vehicular-themed Star Wars Lego sets costing $9.95 or less, industrial-strength drain cleaner, bulk-ordered Little Hug Fruit Barrel drinks, Lavex Janitorial brown paper towel rolls, and dozens more items, narrowing the scope even further. These results were paired with Instagram photos and other social-media posts clustered around specific neighborhoods.

A YouTube video of a schoolyard fight at Hopewell High in Richmond, Virginia, posted in September of the previous year had caught a wink of a passing car in the background. Despite the midday glare off the passenger window, a freeze-frame had captured the ear of the boy in the passenger seat, which had been picked apart using precise distances and ratios, measuring the upper margin of the ear canal’s opening to the tip of the lower lobe and the flap of the tragus. It gave an 85-percent probability that the ear belonged to their David Smith.

Two days previous a girl had been adopted out of McClair Children’s Mental Health Center in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood, opening a spot in what had previously been a steady forty-bed population. No new child showed to have been committed at the center since, the population seemingly remaining at thirty-nine. However, a bill from a local health clinic the following week showed a new patient-intake exam, and the number of flu shots administered the next month remained a steady forty.

A child taken into the center under a false claim of domestic violence would have been kept off the books.

The deep-learning software gave a 99.9743-percent likelihood that the mystery patient was the boy previously known as David Smith.

Joey jotted down the address, biting her lower lip, frowning with concentration. The light of the monitors played off her smooth cheeks. Evan watched her, feeling something akin to pride.

She caught him looking. “What?”

He said, “Nothing.”

* * *

All you could hear was the man’s panting.

Blood flecked the floor, the plywood over the windows, the mattresses on the walls. A molar rested on the plastic tarp. The room stank of vomit, body odor, and worse.

Two of the three Arrowhead watercooler jugs were empty. That was ten gallons of fluid forced through Orphan L’s face holes.

Draker lay on the floor curled up in a ball. His head was duct-taped, a slit left open for the nostrils.

Van Sciver squatted, waiting.

Thornhill was balanced on his hands again, doing inverted push-ups.

The guy was the friggin’ Energizer Bunny.

Candy had left to organize the freelancers Van Sciver had called up from Alabama. Things were about to get busy.

Van Sciver finally rose with a groan. He was feeling it in his back.

“Thornhill,” he said.

Thornhill’s boots hit the ground with a thump. He started unwinding the duct tape from L’s head. As he did, a faint tinny music became audible, growing louder with each loop of tape unstripped. At last he got to the final layer, which he tore free, ripping out clumps of L’s hair and splotching his flesh with broken capillaries. The Beats headphones adhered to Draker’s head were now laid bare, Josh Groban blaring “You Raise Me Up” at top volume.

Thornhill turned off the music, tugged off the headphones. He stroked Draker’s hair, pushing the sweat-pasted bangs out of his eyes.

“You did good,” Thornhill said. “Better than Jack could have asked. But this will continue forever.”

Draker managed a single hoarse syllable. “No.”

“You know it’s gotta go this way,” Van Sciver said. “It is what it is and that’s all that it is.”

Draker squeezed his eyes shut and panted some more. He’d developed a tic at the top of his left cheek, the skin spasming, tugging the eyelid into a droop.

“Okay,” Van Sciver said. “Get him back on the bench.”

Thornhill started for the Arrowhead jug.

Draker began to sob.

Van Sciver held up a hand, freezing Thornhill.

This was the glorious moment right before they broke. He let Draker weep. The sound was gut-wrenching, dredged up from the depths.

Thornhill petted his hair. “It’s okay,” he said. “You did good. You did so good.”