Page 90 of Freak Camp
After he stopped shaking, the Director moved closer and laid a thin switch over his wrist.“89UI6703, you have no right, no ability, to accurately judge what is and is not important.You find a sign like that, you report it.I don’t care if it’s supported.I think you thought that you were doing what you had been told, but you didn’t.The next time you allow a sign like this to go unreported, I will assume you are protecting the enemy, and your punishments will reflect that fact.Do you understand?”
Tobias dragged in a ragged breath.“Yes, sir.It was an accident, sir.I will report everything, sir.”
“Good.”The Director handed the switch off to the guard.“I’m pleased that you understand your failings.Because this was simply about your stupidity, your punishment will be light.”He nodded to the guard.“Beat his hands like I told you.Make sure the damage isn’t permanent.And muzzle him first.”
Tobias wouldn’t be on a computer for another week, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t continue to research.
He still liked the smell of the library, the musty paper and bindings, and sometimes he could almost hear Becca’s voice in his ear.He hid it better now.He kept the same blank expression whether the Director said he was serving him dinner, or Victor was giving him a choice, or they sent him to the library.He thought that it worked.The beatings had become fewer since he stopped ...wanting this room, the feel of the pages under his fingers, the silent reliability of the words.He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t given it up completely, hadn’t truly let it go—like he had long ago stopped hoping that the Wednesdays would stop, or that his stomach would ever feel full—unless it was because this was the one place and time that he could pretend that Jake would still come back, that his life was just like it had been before the Director.
A dangerous illusion, but one that kept him going.Though he wasn’t certain anymore why he wanted to keep going.
The other reason he liked the library was that he was often alone.Not that that would keep him safe, but the camera in the corner wouldn’t catch him closing his eyes, rubbing his hands, or taking the time to think of nothing at all.As long as he got the work done, no one caught him not working.
When the door opened, he didn’t flinch.
“Freak, you’re going!”Lonny stood at the door and smacked his billy club against his thigh.“The Director says put everything away, you’re not coming back.”
Tobias’s jaw clenched.That could mean anything fromHe doesn’t need what you were researchingtoYou’re not ever coming back to the library.Or worse.
But he didn’t let it show on his face.He closed his books and replaced them on the shelves, mentally filing away the page numbers and notes in case the Director asked.He closed his notebook and set it on the shelf with the rest of the research documents.
The first inkling Tobias got that his luck had run out was when Lonny took a heavy lead line from his belt and snapped one end onto his collar.
Tobias froze, too shocked and horrified to not let it show.
The guard grinned at him.“I told you, freak, you’regoing,” and he jerked the line down hard, sending Tobias crashing to the floor.
He caught himself on his knees, but what was the point of keeping himself together when his luck was gone?Eleven years of surviving, eleven years of clawing onto nebulous hopes, and here was the ultimate outcome.
You’re going.
There was only one place Tobias could possibly be going.It was where witches went for their executions, where monsters went when they couldn’t behave.It was the place freaks went so that hunters could study them until the freaks left in the salted smoke of the incinerators.
Stumbling after the guard down the stairs, Tobias couldn’t stop shaking.What did it matter?What the fuck did it matter anymore?He could feel everything in him shutting down, trying to brace for ...the end.He’d wished for death so often in the last six months, but since the Director had had him put the gun to his own head, he’d understood that was something too good for him to be granted easily.
Instead of taking the door out into the yard, Lonny turned toward Reception.When Tobias tripped again, sheer terror making him unsteady, the guard pulled him up by the collar.Tobias welcomed the more normal form of pain.He had been here before.He had walked this way to interrogations and those brief, lightning-flash moments with Jake.
Lonny stopped outside the resource room, ducked in, and emerged with a short stack of clothes that he shoved into Tobias’s arms.Then he towed Tobias deeper into the dark corridors.Other hallways in Reception were for the important visitors, the ones through which senators and civilians walked; scratched, fluorescent-flickering halls like this were for freaks and guards.Paperwork, Tobias thought.Monster comes in, monster goes out, you have to have the right forms with the right numbers.
At the last door in the hallway, a heavy metal one with sigils keeping demons and other malevolent spirits from crossing the threshold, the guard turned to Tobias and dropped the lead line.“Clothes off.”
Tobias couldn’t tell what he wanted, fast obedience or a show—Lonny could go either way, depending on the day and his mood—so he compromised by going fast but facing him.
When he was naked and shivering under the fluorescents, old gray clothes neatly folded in one pile, the guard pointed his club at the second set Tobias had carried.“Put those on.”
Silently, Tobias crouched for the new clothes.The boxers and jeans—like a hunter wore, like afucking hunterwore, just the thought made his hands shake—were like his usual pants, until he got to the buttons and zippers.He’d opened enough flies that he knew the theory, but doing it to himself was different, his hands stumbling.The shirt’s buttons took a long time to open and then meticulously hook together again, but the guard gave no indication that he would start hitting Tobias with the club he tapped against his thigh.
When Tobias was dressed, head down, hands still, Lonny turned to the door with a grunt and punched a string of numbers into the key box.He waited a few minutes, muttered something into the intercom, and then the red light above the huge iron door turned green.Tobias only half listened.He could probably remember both the password and the number sequence if he had to—lately anything he saw went straight to long-term memory, a Director-induced survival skill—but at the moment he couldn’t care less about what Lonny was doing.
He didn’t know what sick game they were playing with the clothes.Maybe they were dressing him up as a hunter, preparing to beat him to death for the audacity of pretending to be a real person.That would at least be better than being formally studied in Special Research.
Becca had told him never to fear death, to look forward to it as something that would bring him to an infinitely better place where none of the guards would be able to touch him, but Tobias had stopped believing that sometime while Crusher had used the hot irons according to the Director’s cool direction.It was too much to hope for, and he had learned well her other lesson: it was better not to believe in anything that sounded good.Death sounded too nice.He didn’t expect that transition into peace and darkness.Much more likely was the hell of Special Research sliding seamlessly into the hell after life.He doubted there could be much difference.
But when Lonny grabbed the lead line again and jerked Tobias through the open door, everything he had expected shattered into a vast and uncertain lightness.
Standing in the bare white room beyond the door, face in profile, hands in his jean pockets, wasJake.
And Tobias could not imagine death, or hell, or true pain, if Jake were there.
