“Punishment?”
Nico nodded. Fresh tears welled in his eyes. “I missed you so much.”
“No one’s ever going to separate us again, Nico. I swear it.”
Over the next few weeks, Nico and I settled into a routine. We were inseparable except when we were in class. Nico had gotten to know a few of the other students and had tried to piece together the puzzle that was our lives, but there were still bits missing that we worked together to fill in.
We learned that Fomalhaut High School was a way station where students were kept when they weren’t on an active program, during which time Production evaluated them for their next assignment. Every student we spoke to had come from somewhere strange. Joon had been surprised to wake up in a castle and discover she was a wizard in training, Carlos had been a rogue grim reaper, and Sophie and Lydia had been twins on opposite sides of a violent and bloody competition to be named their high school’s valedictorian. But most of the students at Fomalhaut High were there because they’d died on their program. Gloria had been the girlfriend of a young woman whose best friend was a girl named Charlie, who was destined to save the world from an unspeakable evil. Gloria had been stabbed in a random act of violence. Alfie died when he fell through the ice trying to reach his best friend, Winter, on whom he’d had an unrequited crush for years. Nara had died when their car was run off the road by an assassin who had mistaken them for someone else. Then there was Lexi, who’d sacrificed her life to help a vampire regain his conscience. Most of the stories were similar. Most students had been secondary characters who, at best, had died to serve as the emotional motivation for someone else, or at worst, had died for no real reason at all.
“This is where they bury their gays,” Nico said after I told him about Lexi. We were eating lunch under the bleachers because, other than the showers, it was the only place we were safe from the prying eyes of Teachers and Production. “We’re disposable to them. Nothing but filler bitches.”
It did seem that everyone at Fomalhaut had been a background character in someone else’s story, but that wasn’t my biggest concern. “Who is Production?” I asked. “How’s any of this legal?”
Nico snorted. “Legal? Are you planning to demand a lawyer?”
“No, but—”
“I don’t care who Production is or about exposing their big evil plan. We need to remain focused on escaping this nightmare.”
Nico was right. Escape remained our primary goal, and he’d come up with a plan. I’d finally managed to gain access to a computer and had learned that we were on an asteroid. The top level was the school, with a dome to hold in the atmosphere and provide the illusion of sky; the second level contained a mall, where students socialized after classes; the third level included the barracks where we slept; and the lower level was heavily secured—students were not authorized to enter. While digging through the computer, I also found out that ships regularly docked with Fomalhaut, dropping off students who died on their programs and transporting students who’d been reassigned by Production to their new shows. Sometimes the ships remained docked for a few days. Nico figured our best chance off the rock was to steal a ship while it was empty. But that was easier said than done. Production monitored our movements, and the loading docks were located on the lower level. We wouldn’t make it down the escalator before being intercepted by a Teacher. It seemed an impossible task, but Nico was undeterred.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked.
Nico leaned his head against my shoulder and sighed. “I don’t know, but we’re smart. We’ll figure it out.”
I frowned at him.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re smart.”
Even if he was right, I wasn’t sure I wanted to escape. Our life wasn’t perfect, but we had each other and I was scared of risking that. It had been different for Nico because he’d died first. He hadn’t been the one left alone on Arcas. He wasn’t the one who’d had to listen to the person he loved suffer in agony as they died. Even when he woke up at Fomalhaut without me, he at least had the comfort of knowing that I was alive. Losing Nico had carved that fear into my bones. It had left indelible scars on my heart. I could think of nothing worse than losing Nico again.
Nico was never going to give up, though. He just wasn’t wired to quit.
Besides, eventually Production would assign us to a new program, and I doubted they’d keep us together. They’d rip out our memories and fill our heads with new ones, and the next time I saw Nico, he wouldn’t recognize me. I’d been serious about never leaving him again, so I redoubled my efforts and eventually found the solution.
Buried deep within the command structure of the operating system that controlled the entire facility was a maintenance program that would reboot all of the robots simultaneously. The upside was that it would clear the way for Nico and me to get to the docks, find a ship, and steal it. The downside was that we would only have two minutes to accomplish our task.
I wanted to tell some of our friends. Help as many of them escape as we could. Nico convinced me that it would be difficult enough with just the two of us, but that we’d definitely fail if we had to shepherd ten or twenty or thirty others. Our best bet was to keep the plan to ourselves, escape, and then find a way to help those we’d left behind. We only made one exception.
I’d met Karen in my third-period class, theoretical atomic, molecular, and chemical physics. She’d been on a supernatural program called Love Craft, about a group of teenage witches who accidentally summon a monstrous deity who offers them immense power in return for the hearts of the lovesick. Karen, who’d been quietly pining over their group’s funny girl, Alethea, died a gruesome death immediately after admitting her feelings to Alethea and discovering the other girl felt the same. Karen was sullen and prone to brooding. She often wiggled her fingers at people and whispered curses at them even after she learned none of what she’d experienced had been real. But we invited her to escape with us because we needed a pilot, and she’d once boasted she knew how to fly.
The three of us spent another week working out the kinks in our plan. We decided to leave on the night of the Homecoming football game because the students and the majority of the Teachers would be attending the mandatory event. We removed the tracking devices from under our skin and planted them on other students so they would be our unwitting alibis. And then, right after kickoff, I executed the command.
We nearly escaped. Earlier that day, I’d identified the perfect ship to steal. A little cruiser. It was small, so it would be easier to pilot, and it was close to the entrance, so we could reach it faster. With the Teachers incapacitated, we raced to the ship, got inside, and fired it up. There was one thing we hadn’t anticipated. We couldn’t release the docking clamps from inside the ship. It had to be done from the control room. We weren’t going anywhere.
The reboot sequence finished while we were still on the ship. Teachers came, took us into custody, and threw Karen into one holding cell and Nico and me into another.
“You’re bleeding again,” Nico said. One of the Teachers had cut a gash in my upper arm during the struggle. It wasn’t serious, but it was bleeding pretty fiercely.
“It’s nothing.”