The Hijinks War

40. What Happened to You as a Child?

"What do you have here, boys?"

The voice alone sent chills down my back. Tannen. He fell into step with us as we passed the dining hall and raised an unimpressed eyebrow at me. "You know, I really thought if you were smart enough to escape, you wouldn't be so dumb as to come back."

He was right. Of course he was. I should have listened to Kellen and stayed at camp.

"Was it you?" He peered at me after some time, as we neared the teacher's quarters. "Were you the one who orchestrated all you brats running away?"

As hard as I was glaring at him, I couldn't make my voice come out of my mouth. He smiled dismissively, and mused "You know, I didn't think you idiots had a clue, but I guess I got a little too confident, hmm? Was that my mistake?"

"Writing us off, picking our school, not realizing we've run this place for the last four years. Yeah, we weren't about to lie down and make this easy for you." I seethed angrily. We weren't idiots, and we didn't deserve whatever he planned to do to us.

He looked at me, his eyes narrowing as if reassessing me as one of the wardens opened the doors to the teacher's quarters for him. "Hmn! I've got to say I didn't expect you all to rally that way, or be organized or smart enough to figure a way to sneak out of here without me noticing. But, the thing is, you can't win. So, I'll need you to tell us where to find all your little friends so we can bring them back here."

Fear tumbled in my gut, but resignation to my fate as a lab rat made it easier to throw all my snark at him; I was done for anyways, why be careful now? "So you can torture them with some shitty biochemical experiment, in some substandard 'lab' like a crappy movie villain? You're the idiot if you think that's happening."

The back of his hand smacked against my face and I knew from the throbbing that I'd have a bruise before we got to wherever he was taking me.

"Shitty?" He roared, and then caught himself, flexing his hand as he regained composure. Annoyance settled on his face as he eyed me being dragged past him into the building and up the nearest stairwell. "How the hell do you even know all that? Never mind..."

Pushing me onto the second floor landing, he gestured at the large common space, now full of all kinds of gleaming and sterile equipment. It had once been an inviting, if typically scholarly, room. Overstuffed sofa chairs, dark wood side tables with ugly lamps on them. Now with the three rows of asylum beds, and recently installed fluorescent overhead lighting, it looked cold, sterile and exactly as I imagined an evil scientist's lair would. "There is nothing substandard about our operation, Brat."

I rolled my eyes at his unimaginative bad guy persona. "What the hell happened to you as a child that you think killing kids is okay?" I asked, the coppery taste of blood dripping into my mouth from my split lip.

Surprise crossed his face, and he laughed derisively. "You kids aren't all so innocent; I saw the men that came back from the woods yesterday."

"At least we were defending ourselves against unnecessary force. What are you doing? Revenge on kids for the death of someone who was clearly a little unhinged?"

"He was not!" He raised his hand to hit me again, but caught himself and took a deep breath. He prodded me back into the stairwell and I was pulled back the way we came. "How the hell do you shits know about him anyway?" He said to himself more than me. "My brother loved his work, he lived for it. He knew it would change things for medical science. And your parents stole that from him. Told him it was perverse, and destroyed his work and his lab."

"My mother is a junkie who would love to replace one of the students in your detention hall, and my father is an actor." I snorted as I contradicted him in the same smart ass way I would my mother.