The Mod Code by Heidi Tankersley

Author:Heidi Tankersley [Tankersley, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Heidi Tankersley
Published: 2017-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

32

SAGE

The next morning, the door to Jack’s room was shut and the tranquilizer gun sat outside, leaning against the wall. I knocked. No answer.

Fine. Maybe he was still upset about yesterday. Or annoyed at getting woken up so early. I had no idea, but I picked up the gun and went to work. I pulled the hose, shovel, and bucket out of the foyer closet. Once I’d hooked up the hose, I braced myself for the eruption of noise as I turned on the water, and drug the hose to the first cell.

For the third day in a row, Cym tried to bite me. It was constant jaw snapping while I aimed the gun at her. I’m sure if she got ahold of me, it wouldn’t be pretty—and she tried really hard, every time.

None of our animals back home ever acted so violent. The days I got kicked by a cow or a horse, I never took it personally. But she’s not an animal, I reminded myself. Staring into Cym’s dark brown eyes, I found it hard not to take her glare personally. I felt her hatred, both in her eyes and her scream. It was like she knew I was part of the human race, something slightly different from her now, and that she knew I was the cause of her pain. Which, in some roundabout way, I guess I probably was.

The other mods, I tried to talk to. But not Cym. She was beyond rationalizing with.

My finger pulled the trigger. The tranquilizer dart hit her in the gut and I waited until she slumped to the floor before I opened her cage. The rest of the process was very similar to farm life: the shoveling of poop and spraying of cells.

Only, today, five cells later, I found a modwrog dead in her cage.

She laid at the front of her cell, her chest unmoving, jaw loose and hanging open. One hand was wrapped around a bar, as if she’d been calling for help while she died. I tried to push out the thoughts of Finn, the ticking clock that was now his life, the day he would reach this point if we didn’t get him help. Instead, I focused on the dead girl in front of me.

But I didn’t know what to do, so I went back to Jack’s door and knocked again. When no answer came, I called his name.

Still no answer, so I tried the handle. “Jack,” I said, as I pushed the door open, “I need some help with what to do about this—”

I stopped short when I saw Jack sprawled out on his cot, looking nearly as dead as the modwrog I’d come to tell him about.

My chest contracted. “Jack?”

He groaned unintelligibly, and tried to lift his head. When his lips moved I could barely hear him. “Water.”

I crouched next to his bed. Up close, I could see that his eyes were dilated. Sweat soaked not just his white t-shirt but the sheet below him, too.

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