It wasn’t like we all didn’t already know what the college campus looked like. Unless something had changed, it seemed like an odd thing to go do. We all put shoes on and grabbed a jacket since it was almost fall, and even though we had been stuck inside the whole time, I could see by the changing colors of the leaves outside that the temperature was probably getting cool. When we got down to the main floor, David was there waiting for us with another half-dozen or so guards. He must have been really worried about the possibility that we would try to escape because he always seemed to have a complete entourage of guards with him. Almost like a tiny, private army that accompanied him anytime he let us out.
“Ready?” David asked me as he walked over to me and held out an arm.
He was crazy if he thought I would take it willingly. I could feel my boys practically bristle and swallow their growls behind me, and the guards looked like they were ready to jump into action with a solid beat-down if necessary. But, David simply kept his arm out and a grin on his face, as if he knew he had backed me into a corner.
Take his arm, or watch the men I loved get beat like pieces of shit.
Ugh, fine.
I took David’s arm simply to avoid any unnecessary conflict, although the feeling of touching him made me want to chop my own arm off when we got back to the dorms.
“Good girl,” David sneered as he interlocked his elbow with mine.
Yep. You’re going to lose your arm for that one.
David and I walked in front of the rest of them as he led us all out of the building and onto the campus grounds. Michael, Adam, and Julian walked right behind us and it made me feel better knowing that all three of them were in an arm’s reach of me. The gaggle of Lineage security guards flanked them on both sides, and two of the guards walked behind them in the rear as if we were an enclosed, moving box of bodies making our way across the campus.
The campus itself looked very different, which I guessed was the point of the tour after all. David had actually built an entirely new infrastructure that joined the campus with overhead walkways and additional pathways with new signage. There were more buildings on the campus than before and as we crossed over to what would have been the Goldshire campus, I could see that it was now just a continuation of Lineage. Anything that had contained the Goldshire colors or logo was now gone and changed to represent only the Lineage marks.
He had successfully combined both of the colleges into one, and Goldshire was no more.
“Impressive,” Adam said from behind us, though I could hear the bitterness in his voice. “You managed to make the campuses one big, ugly academy that you can pretend to be king over.”
The word king made David shudder. I felt it in his arm that was against my body and it reminded me of our childhood days and his insistence that the insect genocide was a necessary act to make him the butterfly king.
Maybe if we had just stuck to puzzles, we wouldn’t be here right now.
David snorted in some sort of arrogant laugh. “If you think this is big and ugly, just wait until the real part of your tour starts.”
I had no idea what the hell that meant, but I knew none of us would like it.
We walked toward what used to be Goldshire’s old gymnasium. Except once we got inside, we could clearly see that it wasn’t a gymnasium any longer. The giant space had been converted into what looked like the equivalent of a high-tech lab or factory of some sort; maybe both. There were huge machines and conveyer belts that were all moving and whirring, and long tables lined with workers that looked like they had those science kits we used to get in AP science class, the ones with all the test tubes and beakers and the little Bunsen burner that heated things up. I could hear Michael take a quick breath in as we all stood at the edge of the building and stared.
“Well,” Michael said proudly. “What do you think?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you aren’t trying to discover a new flavor of soda with all this tech and equipment,” Julian said.
He knew very well what it was that David had made during the time he had us all tucked away and imprisoned like birds in a cage. David had used our father’s fortune to build exactly what he said he would build: a drug manufacturing plant.
“It’s quite perfect actually,” David said as he let go of my arm and began walking ahead of us to point to things and show us what he was so proud of creating. “There are two buildings just like this one, both quaintly arranged and geared-out to the max, as well as fully operational and staffed. In a matter of days, I will be producing the first run of my new drug.”
“What new drug?” Adam asked as we followed behind him and tried to visually take in the disturbing surroundings.
“I call it Prisma. Cool name, huh? It’s a hallucinogenic so I thought the name was fitting; makes you see things as if you are looking through a kaleidoscope, but a lot more fun. I mean, coming down off it isn’t so much fun. In fact it’ll kill you if you don’t do it right. But that’s what I’m here for,” he said as he lifted his hands in the arm like he was a god. “To make sure that nobody ever has to come down from it.”
Michael shook his head and sighed. “This is too big for you to keep a tight handle on. This whole thing is going to come crashing down around you in time.”
“Quite the optimist, aren’t you,” David said as he glared at him. “And while I appreciate your critique, I disagree. I have enough people working for me and enough money to run things that this whole show is going to be operational for longer than you will be alive. Which, I realize isn’t saying much, but you get my point.”
David continued ahead of us, as if he were giving some sort of guided tour we signed up for. Man, this idiot really had his head in the clouds.
“All of the manufacturing will be done on-site,” he said as he turned around to look at us again. “I’ve installed both overhead walkways and underground tunnels throughout the entire campus. Which, as I’m sure you could see, now includes both schools. The student population has therefore more than doubled and I will be able to have drug runners distributing my goods to every student on campus with exceptional speed and stealth.”
“What makes you think these kids are even going to want to buy what you’re pushing?” Julian asked as we continued to walk the length of the converted factory.
“Oh they’ll want it,” David grinned. “I’m going to pump it out to every single person on this campus for free at the beginning. They won’t even realize that they’ve had it until their body starts to crave more of it, which of course I will be all too happy to provide to them—at a price. They’ll all drain their bank accounts, and then their parents’ bank accounts, and then I suppose they’ll have to find more creative means to keep themselves supplied. Doesn’t matter to me how they get the money, though. It only matters that they pay for it.”
I felt my stomach curling in on itself, as if my body wanted to literally eat me out of existence.
“You see, Lisette,” David said as he turned to me and smiled a wide, toothy smile when we reached the opposite side of the gymnasium. “It’s perfect. And I know how obsessed you are with perfection sometimes. So, what do you think? Could you see yourself helping me with such a venture? Or, do you still believe you’re taking the moral high ground in all of this?”
4
The new school year season was just a few days away from beginning, and soon the giant and sprawling campus would be filled with unknowing students that were about to get addicted to a life on drugs. And through it all, David’s question kept hanging in my head.
Moral high ground? Why had he said it in such a mocking tone of voice? Surely, he couldn’t possibly think that what he was doing was moral. So, why call me out on something like that?
It gave me nightmares every night as my brain tried to splice through down to its real meaning.
David had let us go back to our dormitory floor, but not without first telling us about the deal we needed to make if we wanted to stay alive. He had no intention of killing either Michael or myself—at least, not yet anyway. In his twisted mind, we were the only family he had left. But he had no problem with the thought of killing Adam and Julian. That was the bargaining chip. If I wanted the two men to stay alive, we would all have to agree to David’s terms; with the guarantee that his cronies would be watching us at every turn, and if we stepped out of line even once, Adam and Julian would pay the price for it with their lives.
The deal was that the only way he would let us all out of our one secluded floor of the building, and keep us all alive, was if we agreed to remain on campus and act as student resident advisors to the incoming onslaught of students. Michael thought it was a stupid request, but I saw the logic in it right away. David didn’t want us to go running to the cops, so this was his solution, much like the offer he tried to give me of joining with him. Which I refused. If he didn’t want to kill us, and yet he couldn’t afford for us to escape and rat him out, then the only solution was exactly what I had predicted it to be.
He wanted us to work for him here on campus.
None of us wanted to do it, of course. None of us wanted to be responsible for the drug addiction of hundreds of innocent people. But there really wasn’t much of a choice. It was either Adam and Julian died while Michael and I got sent back to the stone room, or we agreed to be resident advisors that reported back to David and toed the line.
And since none of my beautiful boys could bring themselves to accept the bargain, I did it for all of us.
“Wonderful,” David said smugly as he stood in the dormitory with us before getting ready to leave. “You’ll all start tomorrow. This arrangement will work as long as you do what you need to do and don’t do anything stupid. Understood?”
After he left, the four of us stood in the common area looking at each other with bewilderment. Michael shook his head and went for the whiskey bottle, and Julian plopped down on the couch.
“How long are we going to do this for?” Adam asked as he started to pace the room while running his hand through his hair.
“As long as it takes until we can find a way to get out of here,” I answered. “Look, I know the situation isn’t ideal, but what choice do we have?”
And when no one answered me, I knew they saw things the way I did. That didn’t mean we were happy about it, though. Especially Michael. He was fucking pissed.
Which is why the common room of the dorm level we were on suddenly ended up with a hole in the far side of the outer wall that faced campus.
The next day, Lineage security guards unlocked all the entryways to our floor. One of them came in to talk to us and told us that they would be removing all of the guards from outside the doors.
“There’s no reason to keep you locked up in here now,” David’s henchman said. “You’re free to wander the entire dormitory building, as well as the campus. But the second you step foot outside the campus we will know, and you won’t make it a second step away alive.”
