The Wicked We Have Done Read Free

determine your morality status.”
    Every action we make—under the radar.
    “Your train will arrive at your destination in approximately one-point-seven hours.”
    And with that, she disappears. But she isn’t replaced by the Flight Train logo. Instead, a documentary rolls.
    A documentary of us.
    There is no narrative, simply a series of news coverage clips starting with Casey’s crime. A boy who buried his father alive.
    Reporters detail the night of the murder, Casey’s mug shot, and his trial. Casey himself pled guilty to the crime while his mother, his aunt, and his closest friends claimed he was being blackmailed. The evidence was nonexistent, the murder weapon—a shovel—never found.
    Casey’s true moral compass remains a mystery.
    I peel myself away from the television to study him. Fists clenched, he stares at the screen with hooded eyes. Gordon’s beside himself with wicked amusement. Valerie, after watching for a bit, rolls her head toward the cabin wall.
    “Why are they doing this?” the kid with the Dahmer glasses whispers, loud enough for me and maybe the boy next to him to hear. “What’s the purpose of this footage?”
    I glance at him. He can’t possibly be older than eighteen. Hell, if I didn’t know the Compass Room had an age minimum, I’d guess he was fourteen. His glasses are sliding down his nose. He juts his chin upward until they fall back into place.
    I don’t know if he’s actually expecting an answer, but I respond anyway. “Either to shame us, or to bring us up to date since we’re going to be interacting.”
    He scoffs. “Well,
obviously
. But why footage of our trials?”
    “To increase tension. Make us skeptical of each other.”
    He wiggles his nose around. “Dammit, I have an itch.”
    “I’d offer to scratch it with my teeth, but—”
    “Nice try, Ibarra. I don’t need footage to be skeptical of you.” He smiles and flicks his head up to swipe the bangs from his face.
    I learn his name from the documentary. Tanner—tried as an adult for pushing a boy off a riverside cliff.
    The footage spans everyone. Erity, the girl with almond-shaped eyes and black, pin-straight hair, convicted of “sacrificing” four girls in the name of witchcraft. Stella, the girl with the golden curls, burned her ex-boyfriend’s house to the ground with his whole family inside. Blaise, a lanky boy on the other end of my row, shot two guys at a college party when he was drunk. Salem, the boy who frighteningly looks like he could be my brother, raped several women. And finally, Jacinda, who killed a family during a car-crash-suicide attempt.
    Of course, they saved the best for last. The date of the graphic flashing across the screen is today. This clip played this morning.
    “Evalyn Ibarra, the most infamous of the younger candidates, has been at the center of practically every national news discussion for the past few months,” says a platinum blonde at a morning news round table. A graphic materializes on the screen behind her. “Our polls show that eighteen percent of Americans think that the Compass Room will find Ibarra innocent, sixty-five percent think that the Compass Room will find her guilty, and seventeen percent are unsure. How about those statistics, Gary?”
    The camera pans out.
    “Well,” Gary says, “I’m going to have to agree with national opinion on this one, Katherine. The case is no stranger to anyone who turns on the television for more than five minutes. And you know how I think the jury would have leaned if the trial had continued and Ibarra
hadn’t
chosen the CR option.”
    “That Ibarra would have been found guilty.”
    “Exactly.”
    “How long do you think she’ll last in the Compass Room?”
    “If we study those who’ve committed crimes of her magnitude and have also been sentenced to CRs, and take what we know of their experience, I’d give her two days.”
    “Two days? You’re only giving her two days?”
    “Look at Anton Freesan and Janice