Chapter 12
Quill
“Please, Quill… please…”
“WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?”
Al Campbell merely shakes his head, actual tears bubbling up in his eyes.
He’s lying in a hospital bed, his leg stiff and bandaged before him, staring at me helplessly. I’ve spent the past twenty minutes waving a gun to his face, but it’s starting to feel like I’m not going to get my answer before history class.
“I went to your house yesterday afternoon,” I rehash, pacing furiously around the room. “Your idiot piece of shit son wasn’t there. He sent me that text message and then, just, what… evaporated? His stuff is all gone. You know where he went. You must know. So FUCKING TELL ME.”
“Quill, I…” He pauses as I train my gun on him. “Quill, he’s just a kid. He made a mistake. He shouldn’t have sent that text, but he didn’t mean a single word of it.”
“He beat her up,” I spit out. “He beat my girl up. He had no right to lay a hand on her.”
“He didn’t know she was your girl, Quill. He would never have crossed that line if he’d known.”
“He knew. Everyone at school knows. She’s mine. She’s fucking mine.”
“Quill, please.” Al Campbell twists his hands nervously in his lap. “Please. Ray was telling me that he didn’t know you were together. You’ve always bullied her, and—”
“Because she’s MINE!” I roar, and he puts his hands in front of his face, as if that can possibly protect him from the bullet that I’m just itching to let loose.
“I’m allowed to do what the fuck I want to her.
No one else is. I made that fucking clear the very first day of high school.
He crossed that line, and he’s going to fucking pay for it. ”
“Okay, Quill. Okay. I hear you.” Al Campbell is still nervously eyeing my gun.
One of his hands keeps edging toward the emergency button on the bedside table, but each time he gets near it, I cock my gun threateningly.
“We’ve really gone above and beyond to make things pleasant for you, Quill.
Yeah? I took you off the experiment. The rules that apply to most soldiers don’t apply to you.
Don’t make Tragen regret that. Don’t make him regret not using you the way he started to, and—”
Campbell suddenly goes beet red and then stops talking. I’m not a curious guy. In fact, I guess I’m pretty much the polar opposite of Piper. But something about him suddenly seeming more nervous about what he’s accidentally let slip than about my gun makes me pause.
“How did Tragen start using me?” I question.
“Now, now, Quill,” says Campbell, as if I’m being the unreasonable one.
“No need to bring that up. It’s over and done with.
Okay? You can move on to other things, like this girl of yours…
whom Tragen has no idea about, I swear,” he adds slightly too hastily, in a way that might have had alarm bells ringing in my mind if I hadn’t been focused on way too many things at once.
“And even if he did, he’s not going to be holding you to the same rules as other soldiers, okay, Quill?
You’re allowed to have a girlfriend. The other soldiers aren’t, but you are, Quill. Yeah?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I hiss out, as he looks at me in momentary confusion. His face clears when I add, “She’s mine.”
“Okay, fine, she’s yours.” I can actually hear the invisible eye roll as he speaks, but then he reddens. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Of course she’s yours, Quill. Of course. Now, why don’t you go and, uhm, enjoy her? It’s a nice day out, and—fuck! Okay, okay!”
I’ve just walked around to the side of his bed and pressed my gun to his temple. “You have two ways of getting out of this situation alive,” I growl. “Tell me what Tragen started doing to me, or tell me where your motherfucking son is.”
Campbell lets out a loud breath of relief. “Okay. I’ll tell you what Tragen started doing,” he says at once.
I guess he assumes I’ve changed my mind about killing his son. He clearly doesn’t know me very well.
“Do you know how Tragen whips his soldiers into line?” he questions, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief as I very slightly lower my gun.
I shrug. “He trains them, I guess. He trains them to obey.”
“Yes, he does train them. But not to obey. To fear.”
“Okay.” It definitely feels true. In training, the slightest mistake gets severely punished. And when we graduate high school and become full-fledged soldiers, punishment gives way to death.
Talk in formation, walk out of rhythm, show up five minutes late—you’re dead.
The degree of your fault doesn’t matter. The same extreme fate awaits whether you’ve fucked up a contract or whispered to another soldier during a drill.
Inexplicably, I’ve always escaped Tragen’s punishments. Maybe he recognizes in me a person who just doesn’t do fear.
“We train soldiers until all they have left is fear,” continues Campbell. “And I’ve theorized that soldiers would be a lot better at carrying out contracts if that fear was removed.”
I frown in confusion. “But… why? If all they have is fear, then removing that means…”
“Exactly,” beams Campbell proudly. “They’d have nothing left. They’d turn into pure killing robots. The perfect weapon.”
I take a step back, my eyes widening.
“And you wanted to turn me into a killing robot? Me?”
“No, no,” clarifies Campbell nervously, his eyes noting my hand as it tightens around my gun. “You see, we needed some variables. Two properly-conditioned trainees, and then you and Finn Austen, who don’t fit the mold. But we took you off the experiment after that Sunday night, when…”
“Wait,” I interrupt. “What Sunday night? It was last Wednesday.”
“Right, right, that’s what I meant to say.”
From the way his eyes are darting furtively from one side of the room to the other, I can tell he’s lying.
“Sunday night, my hands were covered in blood. But I don’t know why.” I wave the gun around threateningly again. “Can you tell me why?”
“Yes,” he gulps. “Yes. You see, we’ve been testing you. We injected you with the drug a number of times. The memory loss—that’s a side effect of the drug. But it’s nothing. Totally benign, I swear. We just wanted to see if you could carry out contracts while under the effects of the drug and—”
“A contract?” I repeat. “I had a contract Sunday night?”
“Yes, your first one. It went perfectly. You shot a man. You did very well, but we took you off the team, because you behaved erratically after… you didn’t return to Devil Tower, you went to, uhm…”
I’m so surprised by the first part of his sentence that I tune out the rest. “I… I killed a man?”
He looks surprised, and that surprise is quickly followed by worry. “I’m sorry, Quill. I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize it would have such an effect on you… We always thought you’d take to contracts very well, and… and I’m so sorry that we had you kill someone…”
“I don’t care about that,” I spit out.
I don’t care that I killed someone. I care that I wasn’t awake for it.
Campbell stares at me, clearly at a loss to understand my reaction, but he doesn’t say a word.
Meanwhile, I’m still reeling from the information. I killed someone. I’m a killer.
That thought makes a giddy sort of feeling surge through my veins, even as I continue to regret not having mentally been there to enjoy it.
The giddiness only intensifies, edged with pure relief, as it proves once and for all that I did not cause Piper’s bruises.
I was busy elsewhere, ending someone’s life.
I would gladly kill a thousand people, and be asleep each and every time, if it meant not hurting Piper.
That is, not hurting her that way.
There are a whole lot of other ways I would happily hurt her.
The thought sends a small smile to my lips that has Campbell looking more confused than ever.
Remembering him, I whip my gun around and face him.
“Quill,” he stammers, “you… you promised. You promised.”
“I did,” I agree. “This bullet is not meant for you.”
“Who…” Campbell swallows with difficulty. “Who is it meant for?”
I look thoughtfully at my gun. “You know, Campbell, I don’t care about your stupid little experiments. I don’t care about being on your team, or off it. Right now, what I care about is that I killed someone without knowing it.”
“Right,” he nods. “I get that, Quill. I get it. Really.”
“It bothers me. I want the first person I kill to be for me, not Devil. Do you understand?”
“Yes. No.” Campbell frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, can we say that the killing on Sunday night doesn’t count? Can we say that?”
“Sure, Quill, we can say that. Sure.” Campbell nods once more, apparently ready to say anything if it means appeasing me.
“Good.” I put the gun into my back pocket and turn toward the door. “Good, because I want the first person I kill to be your son. And to answer your previous question,” I add, as he lets out a loud gasp, “this bullet is meant for your wife, if she doesn’t tell me where he is.”
Then I slam the door shut, drowning out his loud pleas.