The Wicked We Have Done Read Free Page A

Grey. Neither of them lasted longer than forty-eight hours, which we found out in the minimal documentation released after their CR was finished. Their crimes were very similar to Ibarra’s.”
    “But Ibarra is young. Don’t you think the CR has been engineered to take that into consideration?”
    “CRs are designed to terminate the morally corrupt. Think of them as the ultimate lie-detector test. The moral nature of a human doesn’t truly change with age, which was discovered a few years ago by a team of psychoanalysts in Philadelphia, if you remember.”
    “I do.”
    “Ibarra has the same moral arrow as she will when she’s thirty, and if she’s evil, the CR will recognize that.”
    Feeling the eyes of every candidate on me, I glance down. Most are scornful—hate-filled. Even though they committed crimes, I am the queen of darkness.
    They have nothing to worry about. If I’m really
evil
, the CR will make sure that by day two, my heart isn’t beating.
    The footage of my crime rolls. Crying families outside Roosevelt College. Students and professors wailing,
screaming
. FBI, police, bomb squad.
    All storming the school to catch one of the shooters who initiated fifty-six deaths.
    All storming the school to catch me.
    More footage rolls from a prime-time documentary of my crime. I was one of eight who shot up a faculty banquet at the college, the only one who didn’t kill myself—psychologists figure because I chickened out at the last minute.
    They also mention Nick, another shooter, and the fact that we met through Meghan. I was her best friend, he her boyfriend. When we decided to take our lives, we made sure she came with us.
    I hold my breath and wait, wait for the footage to end, wait for everyone in the cabin to tear themselves from me.
    One boy refuses.
    You’re dead,
Casey mouths.
    A little door slides open right behind his head, a robotic syringe jutting forward.
    The needle stabs Casey in the neck. He jerks. “The
hell
?”
    His eyes roll to the back of his head.
    My neck stings, my jaw goes numb, and the inside of the train blurs to nothing.

 
    March 2, Last Year
    Riverview Apartments
    At eight thirty in the morning, the sun filtered into my room, leaves creating geometrical shapes across the sheets and Liam’s bare chest. I rolled to my stomach and brushed the hair from his closed eyes. His chest rose and fell as he slept.
    Waking up to Liam in the morning was a reawakening to my good luck. I always knew that high school sweethearts were a thing of fantasy. Somehow, I had managed to keep mine. Our five-year anniversary was only a few months away.
    I crawled over him. The feeling of my bare skin gliding over his somehow never got old. It didn’t for him either; his skin erupted in goose bumps. He blinked a few times, focusing on me.
    “There is something so sexy about watching you wake up,” I told him. “I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of it.”
    He rolled me over and slid on top of me, his lips finding the stretch of sensitive skin above my collarbone. It was the place he kissed and touched when he was trying to be romantic, because he knew too well that I’d melt beneath him. My hands explored his waist to bring him closer.
    He kissed my jaw and said, “Even when I snore all night?”
    I grinned. “I’m getting used to it.”
    A crash sounded from the kitchen, followed by the ting of a metal bowl rolling across the linoleum.
    “Okay, since you now know that I’m awake, you should come out. If you aren’t screwing, that is,” Meghan hollered. “I made you two breakfast.”
    “Thought I smelled bacon.” Liam rolled off of me, sitting up.
    “Why is she cooking breakfast? She never cooks me breakfast.” I’d given her the keys to my car last night. Liam and I ended up drinking too much and had to take a cab home. She probably crashed into something and was now trying to make up for it, I thought.
    I was the crazy junior who had not only clung to my high school boyfriend,