Sarah Harian - The Wicked We Have Done

Or departure.

Beyond the windows, a train with a direct track to the California Compass Rooms waits for us at the prison station.

I see the protestors through the panes, behind the fence surrounding the station walkway. They pound the chain link with their fists, their signs waving back and forth. Ready for us. Their shouts weasel their way through the bulletproof glass.

We join the line of convicts. Some tall jerk shoots me a teeth-grinding glare. He’s toned—no, more than toned. He could snap my neck in half in his sleep. His sleeves are rolled up, his bare arms freckled by the sun. All that bulk must have come from outdoor physical labor. His square jaw is clenched and not a muscle in his face even dares to twitch, which makes me wonder if he knows who I am, or if his expression is stuck that way. The guards on either side of him walk stiffly, as though they are secretly scared shitless to be near him. “Casey Hargrove, prisoner number 92354, male number five in Compass Room C. Accounted for,” his guard says as he presses his finger to his earpiece.

And then the guard escorting the girl with dimples. “Jacinda Glaser, prisoner number 48089, female number four in Compass Room C. Accounted for.”

“Evalyn Ibarra, prisoner number 39286, female number five in Compass Room C. Accounted for.”

I swear the space around me goes dead quiet for half a second. The doors open.

Vibrant sound gushes into the lobby like water through an empty canyon. I am numb. My guards drag me forward. Jacinda’s fists clench behind her back—delicate fingers and white knuckles.

I evade the wall of noise and tilt my head to the overcast sky—a final fuck you from the universe. When I bring myself back to earth, I wish I hadn’t.

Hundreds scream at us, thrusting boards with contradicting text against the fence.

Compass Rooms = Barbaric

Repent, Child of God

“You will burn in hell for what you’ve done!” someone shrieks.

A woman presses a photo of one of my victims to the chain link. She mouths my name. Evalyn .

It bounces through space, multiplying. Breeding. Evalyn. Evalyn. Evalyn.

The train waits, silent and magnetic—a silver bullet on tracks—ready to shoot us to California in a handful of hours.

I follow the line of prisoners to the turnstile. Jacinda places her thumb on a panel embedded into the arch of the station. A green light blinks brightly above her and she pushes through.

“Miss Ibarra, right thumb, please,” my guard says. I comply, and the turnstile unlocks.

“EVALYN .”

My name again, sharper and angrier than the others.

“I hope it hurts—I hope it fucking HURTS.”

I’m guided up the steps and into the train car.

Seats line the walls, steel cuff armrests waiting for us with open jaws. My guard clips my ear with some kind of listening device and walks me to my seat between Jacinda and a skinny runt of a boy with black, straight hair and Jeffrey Dahmer glasses. There are ten of us all together. Ten candidates between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.

Casey sits across from me. I tilt my head, challenging him. The other candidates are silent—unnaturally so. The cuffs snap over my wrists, and our guards leave.

I recognize two of my company. A girl with a bleach-blonde pixie cut and features that could carve glass sizes me up. Colorful tattoos linger at her pale wrists and disappear into her sleeves. Valerie Crane. Killed three guys and strung up their bodies. A glint of recognition rests in her eyes—she knows who I am, no doubt. We were in the same prison wing. I never spoke with her, though. No one fucked with Valerie Crane. I knew that much.

I also recognize another crazy bastard—an undergrad at some West Coast school. He’d been arrested for drugging and kidnapping several teens and torturing them to death. He was the only one out of his posse who had been caught. Pled innocent, though, with no motive. His name clicks—Gordon—pale and pointy-chinned under a mop of sandy hair.

Wearing a smug grin, he says, “Seems the ladies are a bit more infamous than the gentlemen.” He scans the room, pausing on each of the women.

“Go fuck yourself.” Valerie’s eyes roll to the ceiling, like she’s bored with him.

Next to me, Jacinda smiles.

The quiet rumble beneath us builds as the train takes off. We have no windows, only a row of televisions imbedded into the can-like walls above our seats. They showcase the logo of Flight Express, a corporate chain of high-speed trains. Apparently they have a contract with the federal prison system.

The silence continues. Sociopaths and serial killers are the antitheses of good conversationalists. I lean back in my seat, close my eyes, and wait.

Fifteen years ago, government scientists manufactured an accurate test for morality—an obstacle course, where the simulations within proved whether a candidate was good or evil. It was named a Compass Room.

For ten years, the CR was tested over and over. Criminals were placed inside for a month to see if the CR correctly identified the true threats to humanity. I remember one case. A big, gruff-looking man by the name of Marcus Greene who had accidently killed a family drunk driving, and a petite, middle-aged woman named Fonda Harrington—a psychopath who slaughtered three of her children. The Compass Room successfully pinpointed Fonda as the threat. Over and over again, the CR correctly identified the evil, but even so, the case to implement the rooms continued to be rejected.

A terrorist attack finally convinced the Supreme Court. All charged in the bombing were forced to undergo the Compass Room’s exam. And they were all found to be, as reporters said on the news, “morally tarnished.”

After the law passed, engineers updated the Rooms to kill the wicked. They became the most accurate form of the death penalty ever created.

Other than the fact that they’re built in the middle of experimental wilderness, the public knows very little about Compass Rooms. They know that, through technology, brain waves of the candidates are measured during a simulation. Reactions are evaluated, and like a needle on a compass, the test determines the true morality—the true internal clockwork—of the criminal. If necessary, an execution takes place.

An average of two-point-five inmates survive each CR. Not the best odds.

Survivors are under strict contract to not discuss the details of the simulation. And they all keep their mouths shut, because keeping their contract means a life free of prison. It’s the way the government justifies Compass Rooms in the first place—a month of the simulation is less expensive for society than a lifetime in jail.

Two more CRs are running in simulation with ours, one for those aged twenty-six to forty, and another for forty years and older. It’s why there were so many protestors at the prison today. The CRs have never run simultaneously before, and their existence is still relatively new. People always fight against new ethical technology. Perhaps the hype will die down in a few years when they start to realize that their tax dollars won’t be going toward feeding those who should be dead anyway.

But maybe not.

A chime sounds in my ear, and my eyes flutter open. On the TV screen, a smiling woman with rimmed glasses has replaced the Flight Train logo.

“Good morning, Compass Room candidates.”

A few prisoners sneer in disgust, including Casey. All for good reason. It’s like we’re in line at a theme park, our cabin a waiting room for some science-fiction ride with lasers and flying ships.

“Allow me to verbally prepare you before your simulation begins. The moment we left the station, your one-month sentence began.”