Variant

The main foyer inside was ringed with students, mostly sitting against the walls or on the stairs. There were a few cardboard boxes of food that Havoc had dragged up from the cafeteria. Without any clear idea of what was going to happen, they didn’t really feel compelled to fulfill their contracts, so they just left the unprepared food-some still frozen-for us to fend for ourselves. I don’t think anyone complained.

It was Isaiah who had called the meeting, and he sat on a stone bench by the front door, a notebook in hand. We were going to be discussing our negotiations with the school. The room was silent, everyone determined to hear every word.

Isaiah raised an eyebrow when he saw Becky and me sitting together on the floor. She looked away.

“So what’s the most important thing that we want?” he asked. He wrote a heading across the top of the paper and underlined it.

“We want to get out of here,” Curtis said. “All of us.”

Isaiah drew a bullet point but didn’t continue. “We can’t just take that to them. This is a negotiation. All of us leaving gives them nothing.”

“What?” Carrie leaned forward. “We can’t make a compromise about that. We can’t say ‘let half of us go.’”

Isaiah shook his head. “Then all we’re doing is making a demand, not negotiating. And call me crazy, but I don’t think that we want to make demands of a school that kills people.”

One of the Society girls raised her hand. “What if we start with something simple, like ask them why we’re here?”

Isaiah nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. That’s better.”

“I think it’s obvious why we’re here,” Oakland said. He was slouching in his chair, wearing a hooded sweatshirt instead of his uniform. “We’re being researched. This is some big stupid psychological experiment.”

Isaiah raised an eyebrow. “This is obvious?”

“Of course it is,” he said. “Why do you think that all this weird stuff happens? Why do they lock the doors and leave us outside? It’s all just to see what we’ll do. And these robots are part of it.” He pointed over to me. “Maybe they wanted to see what he’d do if he had a girlfriend, so they programmed Jane to like him, and then they wanted to see what would happen if the girlfriend died, so they sent Dylan.”

No one said anything, but Isaiah looked unconvinced.

“I’m serious,” Oakland said. “Why else would they have one robot beat the crap out of another one? Those things can’t be cheap.”

Mason spoke up, but quietly. “If they wanted to see what happens when someone’s girlfriend-or boyfriend-dies, they didn’t need to make robots do it.”

I didn’t look at Becky. She was perfectly still and silent.

“What about being trained?” Hector asked. “Why else would they make us play paintball? There aren’t any cameras in the woods, so it can’t be part of a research experiment.”

Curtis spoke next. “I think it’s safe to say that wherever there are androids there are cameras.”

“Yeah,” Oakland said. “And here’s another thing. If we’re being trained for something, then what is it? No one ever leaves here, and no one is getting any better at anything. If this is a training program then it’s got to be the most expensive, most worthless training ever.”

Mouse nodded. “And if they just want to train a bunch of super soldiers, why not program the androids to do that?”

Isaiah jumped in, loudly, to stop anyone else from talking. “I think this is why we need to ask them why we’re here. Let’s just ask.”

Rosa stood. She was carrying a worn notebook and a small bag. Isaiah continued to speak, but Rosa interrupted.

“Can I say something?” Her hands were shaking.

A few people nodded.

“I need to explain,” she said. Our eyes met for an instant, but she looked away, staring at the floor. Tears were flowing down her face now. Carrie stood, but Rosa waved for her to stop.

She opened her notebook. With a quivering voice, she spoke.

“I’ve been in that room before,” she said.

Whispers erupted around the room, and Rosa glanced up, fear and guilt in her eyes. “I promise I didn’t know that anyone was a… robot. I didn’t know, I swear.” She looked back at her notebook. “It was more than a year ago, and I was doing maintenance. I was in the library, all alone, and I had all the tools with me. I decided to open a vent and see where it went. I thought maybe it would go down into wherever the closets go.”

Everyone was silent, hanging on Rosa’s every word. Her fear seemed to be increasing, though.

“I came out in that room. There weren’t any people in there then, but there were a lot of other things. Lots of computers. I looked all over but then I heard something, like someone was coming. I got scared and ran.”

Mason spoke. “I saw you leave there.”

Rosa didn’t look up. “I didn’t have time to look at the computers, but I grabbed the only thing I could find before I ran. Just one piece of paper. I wrote down what it said in my notebook.”