Eve of Destruction by Patrick Carman Page A

situation.
    Ben had fallen and lay half comatose on the floor of a tunnel. I had to get him aboveground soon or risk having him go into shock. I remember thinking I could actually lose this guy if I screwed things up. He was saying he was fine, but all evidence was to the contrary. He was in some trouble and getting worse.
    Marisa and Kate had narrowly avoided electrocution. They had a mobile camera in a room with a floor that could not be walked on. As bad as that sounded, they were maybe in the best shape of anyone in the underground missile silo.
    Connor and Alex, my crack commando team, had lasted all of twenty minutes on the move and ended up locked inside a room where they were completely useless. I couldn’t help thinking Davis—who was really Rainsford—had done a lot of bad things. And he was desperate, looking for a way out just like us. Could he have already killed Connor and Alex? The guy had been alive a long time. He probably knew ten different ways to kill two teenagers with his bare hands. It was possible.
    Mrs. Goring could return to the observation room main monitor at any moment. I had to be cagey, clever, on my best game. Above all, I couldn’t let her know that Connor and Alex had accidentally let Rainsford and Avery out of that room. She’d be furious. And I couldn’t let her know I’d discovered her diabolical plan. Seven new subjects, only this time, she’d try to work the same trick on herself.
    I was in contact with a girl named Amy. She was oblivious to what was really going on, but she was on the inside. She might show her face again, she might not. Amy was a wild card, maybe my best chance at getting everyone out alive.
    As I stood there breathing, staring at the switch that would bring Rainsford back, I thought about Amy. I wondered what her fear was. And what about the other six? What were they going to be cured of? And then I had another, far worse string of thoughts.
    Mrs. Goring isn’t going to let us out of here. She’s trying to get rid of us, to erase all evidence. There are no vials.
    I hit my palm against my forehead four or five times, trying to shake the bad thoughts out of my head.
    You don’t know what Mrs. Goring is up to. Be careful, Will. Don’t do anything foolish. Don’t fill in blanks where you’re not sure of the answers.
    Being locked inside the central nervous system by a madwoman did have one advantage: I knew everything while no one else did. But it was a big responsibility. I had to be careful with what I knew and who I told. Rainsford didn’t know about my special knowledge. He would assume I was like all the others—a blank slate when it came to the cures. He would play it as if he was Davis, a guy who’d been through the program himself. But I knew the truth: Davis and Rainsford were the same guy. And this guy could not be trusted. No matter what happened, I had to remember some basic facts: Rainsford was a liar and a cheat. He was clever. He’d tricked a lot of people before. He might kill me if I let him get too close.
    I had to think about every word I said, connect all the dots, find a thread that would lead up and out of the missile silo.
    And so it was that when Rainsford spoke to me for the first time in the missile silo, I was not forthcoming with information. I turned the monitor back on, watched as he gazed up at me with piercing eyes, and prepared to be evasive.
    â€œHey, he’s back!” Rainsford said, calling Avery to his side. “We thought we’d lost you.”
    â€œNo, I’m here. Just a glitch with the wiring—it happens.”
    The faulty wiring would be an excuse to go offline whenever I needed to.
    Nice thinking, bro. You’re smarter than you look.
    Thanks, Keith. You don’t know how good that makes me feel.
    Don’t mention it.
    â€œWhere’d you come from?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t even know where to start,” Rainsford