“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.”
She held up the notebook and then read. “‘I understand your concern about the slowness of the process. However, it is not in the interests of the experiment to instruct them in tactics. Our goal is to have them develop strategies on their own, not to see how well they can learn existing strategies. The fact that they’re still behaving poorly on the sports field should not be viewed as failure of the experiment, but as valuable data to be studied.’”
Rosa finished reading and looked up. The foyer was silent. When someone finally did speak, it was Curtis, asking her to read the words again.
I didn’t know what to think. This was an experiment, like so many had guessed. And we played paintball so that we could figure out strategies ourselves. But the rest still didn’t make sense. That paper only explained paintball, and paintball was only a tiny portion of our time here.
“What happened to the paper?” Isaiah asked.
Rosa’s eyes fell again. “The school asked for it back.”
All of us were stunned, but it was Isaiah who jumped to his feet. “What? The school actually contacted you?”
She nodded.
“What did they say?”
“They just asked for it back—a message on my computer—and they told me I wouldn’t get detention. I gave it back, but I memorized it. I wrote the words down in the notebook later.”
Carrie finally stood and walked to Rosa. “We won’t let them send you to detention now.”
Mouse wasn’t as compassionate. “Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
Rosa wiped tears away with the back of her hand. She looked up at the security cameras. “They were paying me,” she said, hysterical now. “Millions of points. Anything I wanted.” She opened her bag and dumped the contents into her hand. Out spilled every kind of jewelry I’d ever seen on the catalog—necklaces, rings, bracelets, hair clips. There were at least a hundred pieces, falling from her hand and clattering across the marble floor.
Isaiah jumped to his feet. “You were hiding this all because of that?”
Curtis stood. “Shut up, Isaiah.”
“No,” he snapped. “She knew why we were here, and she didn’t tell us because she wanted a lot of cheap chains.”
Rosa was sitting again, shuddering with tears, and Carrie had her arms around her. Isaiah and Curtis were right in each other’s faces. I decided to step in.
“We still don’t have any leverage,” I said, finally speaking up. “I think this whole thing is ridiculous. The school has all the power here and they know it.” I pointed up at a camera twenty feet away. “They’re listening to everything we’re saying right here. They control everything. They can cut off our food if we don’t follow their rules.”
Isaiah spun to me, jabbing his finger into my chest. “That’s why we’re just asking a question. They know that we know there are androids here—and they know that Rosa told us what she saw—so now we’re asking them a question.”
“What do you think they’re going to do? I’ve known about the androids for days, but it’s not like that made them give me answers. They just tried to shut me up—they tried to bribe me, too.”
All eyes were on me, even Rosa’s.
“They gave me five million points,” I said. “I’ve been trying to stockpile supplies in my room ever since. I don’t have much yet. I haven’t checked today, but what do you want to bet my balance is now zero?”
The room was quiet for a minute.
“But doesn’t that prove it?” Isaiah asked. “They were willing to give you and Rosa special treatment because you knew the truth about them.”
“You’re an idiot,” Oakland said, rolling his eyes. “They were willing to give special treatment, but they’re not anymore. They didn’t want him to tell us.”
“Right,” I said, happy for once that Oakland was around. “I had some leverage because they didn’t want you guys to find out what I knew. But, there’s no leverage anymore.”