Innocence and Fear Chapter Three
Third chapter of my Substack exclusive novel
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
So I got the feedback that these chapters are a little too long, so starting with Chapter Four, the chapters will be split in half and come out twice a month! Happy Reading!
Chapter three
Fabian heard the knock at his door and knew it was most likely Miette. He had spent the time between seeing her in the meal hall and when she was to come to his room cleaning. He had cleaned all the Surge cans off of every surface and moved laundry to the hampers. He closed all the notebooks scattered all over the room, each with scribbles and bits of notes in them. Fabian had even turned on a Meat Beat Manifesto CD a little loud. He had two purposes for this. One was that he liked to listen to music when he was forced to clean. The other was because, after everything he had read, he suspected they might record the dorm rooms in some respect. He didn’t want what he was about to tell Miette to be heard by whoever was listening, maybe watching. He had found a remote server where most of the camera’s controls were. He also found a copy of the blueprints of the school the last time they had renovated it, right before the school had first opened four years earlier. He searched for it to find out if there was a room where security tapes were kept. The blueprints had been incomplete, though. The blueprint of the house had been labeled two three and four, but the floor that was shown on the blueprint labeled “2” had been the basement, then the first floor had been labeled “3” and so on. He wondered if it was just a mistake or if there was another floor whose blueprint was curiously absent. He had been looking around every file he could find since two days before and a lot of things were strange like this. He kept noticing incomplete patterns, incomplete sets, and things that just didn’t quite add up. He tried not to let all of it overwhelm his mind as he walked to the door. He opened the door and Miette was standing there, still in her school uniform, but the prim school jacket had been replaced by the optional black uniform sweater with the initials “P. A” embroidered in red on the right breast.
“Hi,” she stood in front of him. He looked out into the hallway and saw the camera on the ceiling near his doorway.
“Thanks for coming. I just didn’t get our last homework.” He said, loud enough so that the camera most likely heard it, but not so loud that it would sound forced. He then moved to the side and opened the door wider. She stepped in and he could smell a hint of smoke on her. She walked into the center of his room and stood there, glancing around. He closed the door and met her in the center of the room. The music was still playing, a little too loud to converse comfortably. He put his finger over his lips for only the slightest moment, hinting her to stay quiet for a moment. He then leaned in close to her. He could feel her beginning to shrink away as he did so.
“I think someone could be listening to us.” His voice was small. He hoped she had heard him. She leaned back and looked into his eyes.
“Yeah totally, I can help you with that.” As she spoke, he saw her looking around the room. He walked over to his desk, which held his large PC. He reached to the stack of notebooks and grabbed the red pen he had rested on his beige keyboard. He opened a notebook and scribbled a few sentences on a blank page.
“This problem right here.” He shoved the notebook into Miette’s hands. He watched her read what he had written. It read: “The cameras are everywhere. If we speak to each other softly and we stay close to each other, they may not hear us. We should keep the music on. Try to act like we are studying” She looked up at him. He was pretty sure she understood his message. She looked around the room, brown hair moving as she turned her head from side to side. She handed him the notebook back. Then she walked over to the bed then sat down on it, and crossed one leg over the other.
“Yeah, sit here. I’ll explain it to you.” She said a little too loud. He sat next to her on the bed, which was made for the first time since he had come to the school in September.
“Thanks! I knew you could help.” He was careful to bring the notebook with him. Once they were sitting next to each other, she leaned in. It almost seemed like she might be about to tell him a secret or kiss him. He couldn’t help but feel a little excited. Even though he was a little concerned about what he had found, it was all a sort of fun. He liked he would get to solve mysteries with this cute girl.
“You noticed the camera’s too…I mean why are there so many?” Her face read as sober. The jovialty of it that danced over her face a moment before was gone.
“I don’t know why they are watching us all, but I think it’s not normal. I read through some emails. I haven’t gotten to every account, but I cracked Patton’s personal email, I think. From what I read there, there seem to be cameras everywhere.”
“Why? What did you read there?”
“She gets alerts when students do certain things….”
“What kind of things?”
“Weird things, like when certain students go certain places. I’ve seen every student’s name in those emails. I kind of had to skim them after a while there were so many, but she gets new ones every day from an account marked as Gcsecuritymax. But some names show up more than others.” He spoke quickly and as quietly as he thought he could.
“What kind of things do they report to her?”
“Well, don’t freak out…” He was a little freaked out himself and knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable with the information he was about to give her.
“What?” Her eyes squinted a bit, then in a loud voice, “No, see you’ve made a mistake in this line. You’ve got a basic logic error.” She then looked up with enormous eyes and long, dark eyelashes. She was trying to look like she wasn’t worried. He had never seen her look anything less than confident. He didn’t like to make her look this way, he decided after he had told her everything, he would try to make her smile again.
“The last of these emails was today, just after we spoke in the dining hall. The email said something like ‘Belman and Van Wik seen conversing, possible rendezvous between them later in the day.’ He stopped for a moment, “And then something about ‘there will be further observation of this interaction.’ Or something, but we show up a lot in these ‘reports’ Patton gets every day.” He watched her look down at her lap. She folded her hands across her chest.
“Who else do they talk about this much?”
“Oh, you are right, I didn’t even catch that.” He spoke to anyone who might be listening. Then she spoke softly again. “Me, you, and… that guy Sean in our English class, Carina Licea, you know her, right? Agnes, Kelvin, Jamie Turner, and like five or six others who I can’t remember…but I started an Excel document that counts how many times they mention each student. They mentioned us over twenty times in the past three days.” He stopped talking to let her register what he had said. She didn’t speak for a few minutes. The CD ended, and he put another in and continued to wait for her to speak.
“That’s—That’s odd.” She said. “I like this song…I like Fear Factory too.” Fabian looked forward to just…talking to her normally. He had no friends at Patton Academy other than Kelvin, and most of what he talked about with Kelvin was machines and computer parts. But Kelvin and him both were “outcasts” here and at home, so it seemed natural they would be friends. He wondered if Miette could be his friend as well. She seemed to like some of the same stuff he did from what he knew of her. He liked her French accent, it was very cute. That made him think of something.
“We can speak in French if you want to. I’m not fluent, but I’m pretty good.” She didn’t turn to look at him.
“The people you named…I’ve been reading some email too, for two weeks…” she said in perfect French. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes mostly…” Sloppy French rolled from his lips. He had never been so happy that his parents had sent him to a private school in elementary school that taught the students in French and English, and he had kept up with it. “You have been reading emails…maybe if we speak in French it will be harder for them to understand…but again, mine is limited and my accent is probably terrible.” He rubbed the back of his head as he spoke.
“You spoke well, don’t worry. How do you know French?”
“I learn languages fast. I know some Italian and Spanish as well…I don’t know. I enjoy figuring coded things out. It’s kind of a hobby.” He paused. She nodded at him. He cleared his throat. “So you have been reading emails for two weeks? Have you found out where on the mail server the deleted emails go yet?” He knew from class that the girl was brilliant with computers, but he wanted to see what she was capable of. She seemed to regard him for a long moment.
“The mail goes to another server when it’s deleted. I’m working on that currently,” she said this plus more to him, but he couldn’t make out the end.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“It’s funny, the people that you said they bring up most are often spoken about in a few different accounts I’ve gotten into. They keep saying we are all ‘blessed’.” She stopped for a moment, then put a finger to her mouth and seemed to think. “I thought it was weird that there were so many cameras, so I started poking around. I thought at first it just meant we were all the ‘gifted’ kids who came to school because of our umm.. talents.”
“Why do you think they care so much about how we are all interacting? Do you think it’s because they want us to stay happy?” He knew that wasn’t the reason when the words left his mouth.
“I don’t know…we should find out why they are spying on us.” She was almost slurring her speech.
“If they spy on us, they deserve for us to return the favor, right?” it sounded like he was joking, but he was quite serious.
“I noticed Patton keeps receiving emails referencing something that has the initials ‘GC’. It’s referred to as if it’s an entity or a group of people.” She had switched to English again, out of habit.
“I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who got a weird feeling from all the umm…security here.”
“I can’t help myself. I just like to get into things.” She had the look of a clever animal as she spoke. She had a pleasant smile, Fabian decided, even though some of her teeth seemed a little out of order. For a moment, he wanted to just talk about something normal, but he knew it would be too much of a jump in topics.
“I can’t help myself either. I can’t tell you why, but I just don’t trust this place. I feel like there is something being hidden from us…maybe it’s just that they have uber-security…but I wonder why?”
“I’m telling you, there is more under the surface of this place. Some emails were strange. Let’s dig a little deeper and meet back in a few days.”
“Hopefully we find out there is just an overzealous chief of security.” His eyes darted about. “I thought it was strange that you need your personal login and code to use any sort of machine here, and the swipe ID cards to enter the pool and computer lab. You can’t even use the freaking phones here without your pin number. What do they think we are going to do?”
“Maybe they are afraid we will do what we have already done…” Miette said in French. He knew she was right, and now he was glad it was a Friday and he would have two free days to squeeze more secrets out of the place. “We should tell the other kids they keep talking about.” She said matter of fact. He swallowed hard. They were still sitting so close to each other on the bed. He tried to talk like he had figured out the logical issue she had pointed out.
“No, that’s a terrible idea…let’s just keep this between us for now.” It came out harsher than he had meant to.
“I am going to tell Carina…she’s my best friend and I think the more people watching them watch us, the better.”
“I’m afraid they will know we know, and then…then they could get even more guarded, lock things down more…I don’t know…just seems like a bad idea.”
“I’ll just tell Carina for right now, I can’t explain it…but she just knows things. She can read me too well. She will know I’m hiding something from her.” She said, leaning towards him a little.
“Ok, but no one else for now…especially not that Jamie guy…he’s just one of the rich kids, just happens he is fantastic at stats too.”
“OK, Carina can help us. She is …well, she is good at finding things out, watching people. I guess you could call it street-smart. Plus, she will want to know why I’m on the computer more than usual.”
“So let’s meet again on Monday. I’ll try to find out where the security tapes are stored, and I’ll try to find the closed circuit room too…pretty sure there is one.” He told her about the weird labeling of the school blueprints and something he had seen in a student’s E-mail. The email had mentioned. “Don’t want them to end up like Quinyetta.” He had searched through all the accounts he had access to and there was no further mention of the name. But it had struck him as weird.
“I’ll try to get into some more accounts, and I’ll see if I can get into more teacher’s machines as well. I want to see if every teacher here is watching us as close as the people we already know about, Patton and the random un-named security people, that is.”
“I saw nothing strange in a couple of teachers’ emails, but maybe there is more on their machines. If I have time, I’ll try to compromise those teacher machines as well.” Fabian said. “Should we try to get into the student’s email next?”
“We might as well, but leave Carina’s email out of it. Trust me, I told her about some of this already and she didn’t know anything. When I told her about some of this, she was surprised.”
Fabian thought about Carina. He didn’t know her and maybe had spoken two words to her before, which he thought may have been a mumbled “excuse me,” in the hall. But he was a little intimidated by her. His six-foot-two inch frame towered over the girl who wasn’t over five foot eight, but her presence was formidable. He could just tell she had seen shit before, been through shit. She seemed like a fighter. He had heard rumors whispered before class about her starting fights with some of the rich kids at the school. People were also whispering rumors about her being unstable and having been taken out of a mental institution because of her excellent musical skills. He didn’t want to judge the girl on any of these things. He didn't want to judge her based on rumors since he himself had been considered a little crazy at some point. But something about the girl made him feel cold in his chest. When he looked at her, he understood she was beautiful, but her dark blonde hair was often hanging limply down her back and her bright green eyes always seemed angry and sharp. He wondered to himself if perhaps she was too pretty and if her perfect diamond face and large pouting lips were just too much for people to not want her or want to be as beautiful as her. She was a fighter for sure, and even though she was cold and aggressive seeming, there was a strength to her. He sighed. It seemed he would have to interact with Carina if he wanted to get closer to Miette. He couldn’t lie to himself. He was not thrilled about that fact.
“Ok, thanks for your help, I think I understand now!” He said. “We’ve been here too long. I don’t want them knowing we talk this much.”
“Oh, I’m glad I could help.” She spoke in a loud voice. She got up off the bed and moved towards the door of his room. She glanced around at his posters and patted his gigantic box of a computer monitor, as one might do to an obedient dog. When they reached the door, he turned the brass knob and opened it for her. She walked out the door but turned around, almost running into his chest.
“Monday, same time, here,” were the actual words. “Bye!” she said in a louder voice.
“Same time, same place…” He breathed. “Bye, see you in class. Thanks again.” He watched as she moved down the hallway, her arms gracefully swaying at her sides. He couldn’t believe that they had both just been on the same page. With her, it seemed like he didn’t have to explain much. Somehow, everything she had seen had led her to the same belief about Patton Academy. Something was going on and they needed to find out what. He thought meeting like spies and getting worked up over strange emails was silly, but he decided it was still enjoyable, even if they suspected it was a plot involving them. But it was kind of fun. And he wanted to spend more time with Miette. It had been a odd reason for them to talk, and all they had discussed were strange messages and cameras, but he felt a little like he was floating. He wanted to float away with her.
*****
When Miette got back to the girl’s dorm, she knocked on Carina’s door first before going to her own room. She could hear what sounded like tiny far-away bells from behind the door. The melody they made was haunting yet somehow innocent sounding. Miette had always thought it was funny that the music Carina made often was so highly sensitive because Carina was not a person to wear her heart on her sleeve. To most people, Carina may have seemed like she only had one or two emotions, anger and perhaps suspicion. Miette knocked twice and heard the music stop. It sounded almost like it was coming from a different dimension. A private little world that Carina escaped to that she alone ruled. It seemed Carina only felt safe in this other dimension guarded by music. Miette felt honored that such a closed person would open up even a little for her. Carina made Miette feel safe, and she considered Carina the sister she never had. There was some shuffling inside the room. Miette stared at all the drawn “STAY OUT” signs on red construction paper, the words written in deep black Sharpie scrawl. The door opened a small sliver, and Miette saw one of Carina’s green eyes peek through the open crack. When Carina saw who it was, she opened the door and motioned for Miette to come in by moving her thin arms in a wave.
Miette stepped into the dark room and felt what she always felt. The sense that someone or something was watching her. She had felt watched as soon as she had noticed all the cameras at Patton Academy, but in Carina’s room, it was different. There was almost a shift in the atmosphere. The smell of cigarettes and musky incense filled her up. Whatever was present and watching in Carina’s room was darker and not as organized as whoever or whomever was watching everywhere else on campus. Miette sat in the brown leather office chair at Carina’s desk. Carina leaned over her to save her work on the computer.
“How did it go with Fabian?” Carina asked, her tone a little sour. Miette looked around, feeling paranoid.
“He said people are watching us.” She wrung her hands together until he could almost feel the friction. “All the time…and I think he is right…you know all the cameras and those weird things I told you I found on the server…it just makes sense.” She realized she was talking quickly.
“Of course they are.” She didn’t lower her voice at all.
“Wait, what? What do you mean?” Miette asked. Carina smiled at her, showing rows of perfect teeth that at that moment seemed a little too sharp. She opened the left desk drawer to the desk Miette sat at. She pulled out something wrapped in an old black t-shirt. She handed it to Miette. She unwrapped it, unsure if what the shirt contained was fragile, but her face twisted in confusion when she opened the shirt. In her hands appeared to be a tiny machine. Miette turned it over with long fingers and saw a mechanical lens eye on the bottom. It was a miniature camera.
“What? Where did you find this?” Carina walked to the far side of the room near the blacked-out windows and pointed straight up. There was a vent in the ceiling.
“In there…”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Miette asked, still shocked.
“I just found it while you were away.” Miette was unsure if this was the truth or not. “When you started telling me about all the weird code words and cameras and all that…I just thought,” Carina paused. “I just thought about back in San Diego there were a bunch of cameras at my school so I figured since there were so many here, maybe they put one in the rooms too…” Carina said still smiling with a bit of a glint in her eye. She motioned to the screwdriver on the desk.
“I don’t know if you should have done that…” she was still whispering. Now that she knew there might be cameras in every room, she wondered if there were multiples in every room. She glanced around everywhere. She couldn’t see well because the room was so dark, and her anxiety was very high.
“At least they aren’t listening to us now.”
“We cannot be sure of that,” Miette said. “This just makes me more certain that something deeper is going on. Fabian and I are going to figure out why they are watching us.” She paused, then tried to calm herself until she realized she was trembling. “Carina, there is a handful of us that are being watched closer than others…me and you and Fabian are on the list of people. Whoever ‘they’ are… they are watching almost every move we make.” Carina didn’t look surprised.
“Why do they care what I do…especially in my own room?” Carina sounded angry. Her face twisted into the face she had when she was dealing with most of the people at the school.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” She filled her friend in on what she and Fabian had discussed, and Carina just became more and more still as she spoke. Miette thought she and Fabian might be overreacting with the whispering and assumptions of being watched. But after seeing the small camera Carina had found, she was glad they had been cautious. She convinced herself it was nothing. The staff was just protective because of the wealthy children attending Patton Academy. Maybe they wanted to make sure those from lesser stations were behaving themselves. But then she thought of Jamie. He was a rich kid and was also being called “blessed” in email communications.
“It’s probably all some big misunderstanding, but don’t tell anyone this…” She reached out so she was touching her friend’s shoulder. Carina looked and made a face as if to say, Dummy I have no one to tell. Miette responded to this, “I know you won’t.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open for anything weird. I’ll listen to what people are saying. Maybe one of those rich kids knows why this place seems so interested in spying on us.”
“I need some magic.” She didn’t know why, but she had a terrible feeling. It felt like a certain doom. She had wondered what the catch was to get a full ride to Patton Academy, and she hoped it only went as far as them watching her a little too close. But something felt off. Something about the whole situation made her feel unsteady and unsafe. She listened as Carina played back the song she was working on through the nice new speakers Patton Academy had gifted her. She ran through ways to get more information in her mind, Carina’s music passing through her like a psychic vibration. This song made her imagine being in a black castle in a dark land, but she was thinking of weaknesses in the security at the school. She wondered how hard it would be to get total access to the headmistress’s computer, then from there the security team, maybe even teachers. She felt as though there was a web between all the adults at the school. She just wanted to see how tight it was weaving around her and Carina and Fabian.
*****
Elena Patton sat in her plush office decorated in deep blood red and leather. She had gotten an email from her Alpha security that one of the “blessed” had somehow found and disabled a bug in their dorm. She would have placed money on it being Miette or Fabian, but to her surprise, it was the most damaged one, Carina. She believed broken people were often resourceful, but she couldn't understand why Carina searched for surveillance. She wondered if it had been Miette who had given her the idea. She didn’t feel any sort of genuine worry, though. Benjamin had told her they would be in her room in a few days to replace it. He told her they would get Carina out of the room by claiming they thought there was mold in the vents. She felt a little skeptical that Carina would leave that easily. She had watched the girl. Hurt people rarely fall for falsities, real or imagined after they are hurt enough. She noticed Carina inspect her food closely, and she rarely talked to anyone except the music professor and Miette. Elena had even told Nicolas to befriend the girl and Carina had shut him down within seconds.
Elena Patton stared down at Carina’s file. She had read it before but had read it again. Trimberg would be unhappy if he heard about this development. It wasn’t so bad that Carina had removed a camera. What was bad about the situation was that Carina would most likely alert Miette to the cameras in private areas, such as private dorm rooms. This would lead to Miette becoming suspicious of the staff and security at the school. And now that Miette had become friends with the other ‘blessed’ Fabian. She knew this could be a little dangerous to everything working as well as it did at the school. They both were so gifted with computers, both were “curious” about things that they should have not have been able to access. She wondered how long she had before Trimberg demanded they all be “educated.” It pained her to think about the children going through that process, but it could also lead to being able to reap more of the children’s talents for the company…if they cooperated.
She leaned back in her handsome leather chair. She placed her fingertips together and considered how things could unfold. She ached a little. She hated it when things got messy. She endeavored to keep everything structured and methodical, but there were so many intricacies in her life. She didn’t like when Trimberg had to come out of the shadows, but sometimes to keep order he had to cull the disorderly. She hoped if it came to that, he would be more gentle than he had been with Quinyetta. She thought about what a waste that had been. She lit up a long Virginia Slim cigarette and pulled the marble and brass ashtray closer to her. She looked at the digital files of the students she was concerned about. She wondered if it was time for the red watchers to make lists.
