Read Justice for Free Online

In fact, breaking into any of these doors may be nearly impossible. Nearly.
    The lab was the antithesis of everything cold and clean they had previously seen at the Fulbright Academy. Books with broken spines and well-worn covers were stacked in haphazard piles that stretched from floor to ceiling, and unfinished tech projects cluttered every remaining surface. Fulbright suits sprouted thin, stray wires like exposed arteries on an autopsy table, while open-faced motherboards of all sizes and complexities hung on a wall. It was like walking into a horror movie for robots that reveled in the gory side of artificial life, all guts and soldering irons ready for a modern-day Dr Frankenstein to build, destroy, and start again. Fiveseparate dry-erase boards were splattered with diagrams and messily written scientific formulas. Before the largest board, Keyshawn stood deep in thought.
    ‘You made it,’ he said, turning around with a smile. ‘I was slightly worried. This place can be, well, confusing, if you’re not used to it. I take it the suit works, Merlyn?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ said Merlyn, with a giddiness M hadn’t heard from him since their last class with Code, Lawless’s prodigious programming professor. ‘Guys, Keyshawn built this thing especially for me.’
    ‘Well, don’t get a big head,’ Keyshawn said while capping his pen. It was a subtle move that demanded attention. M had seen many different teachers use this exclamation mark to quiet their class. ‘I built one for each of you, coded to your strengths, your weaknesses, and made for only you to use.’
    ‘How?’ asked M, running her hand along one of the empty uniforms, hung up like a pelt to dry.
    ‘The suits react to the serum we administered,’ said Keyshawn with an obvious eagerness to explain the process.
    Good , thought M. The more Keyshawn bragged about Fulbright tech secrets, the more light he would shed on their situation here.
    ‘So there is a higher purpose for that insane roller coaster my body just went on,’ said Jules. ‘What was that amber stuff, anyway?’
    ‘The amber fluid …’ started Keyshawn, but then he paused to carefully choose his words. M knew that meant he was going to dumb it down for them. ‘It carries new chemicals through your body and deposits them along the way.’
    ‘And the chemicals bolster our health,’ finished M as she erased a stray mark on one of the dry-erase boards.
    ‘Yes, some do,’ Keyshawn said excitedly. ‘But some map out the physiological makeup of the cadet. Those chemicals have been designed to serve as wi-fi devices for the body. So let’s say you have an atrophied muscle – the chemical will send messages directly to your suit to ensure that when you use that muscle, the suit does the heavy lifting.’
    ‘Crazy, right?’ said Merlyn. ‘That’s how I remembered the way back here. It’s like muscle memory! And the interface between the suit and the user is so natural that I can’t tell where the suit ends and where I begin.’
    Merlyn may have been in seventh heaven with Keyshawn, but all M heard was that the suit was in control of the user. Which meant if the Fulbrights so wanted, they could turn their cadets into a programmable drone army.
    ‘Why doesn’t Vivian Ware have a uniform like this, then?’ asked M. ‘She wears a knee brace, but your suit would fix her up, right?’
    Keyshawn paused again at her question and M knew he was once again thinking carefully of the best way to phrase his answer. ‘Not everyone here chooses these suits.’
    ‘Because the suits are dangerous?’ asked M.
    ‘No, no, not at all,’ stammered Keyshawn. ‘The suits … well, some people think of them as a crutch. It’s a stoic and outdated way of thinking, if you ask me. The same people might as well use a typewriter and carrier pigeons instead of computers, but it’s hard to argue with that can-do mentality. For Vivian, though, the suit wouldn’t have corrected the issue