The Institute

1

Outside the door of the Institute’s canteen and TV lounge area, Kalisha put an arm around Luke’s shoulders and pulled him close to her. He thought—hoped, really—she meant to kiss him again, but she whispered in his ear instead. Her lips tickled his skin and gave him goosebumps. “Talk about anything you want, only don’t say anything about Maureen, okay? We think they only listen sometimes, but it’s better to be careful. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

Maureen, okay, the housekeeping lady, but who were they? Luke had never felt so lost, not even as a four-year-old, when he had gotten separated from his mother for fifteen endless minutes in the Mall of America.

Meanwhile, just as Kalisha had predicted, the bugs found him. Little black ones that circled his head in clouds.

Most of the playground was surfaced in fine gravel. The hoop area, where the kid named George continued to shoot baskets, was hot-topped, and the trampoline was surrounded with some kind of spongy stuff to cushion the fall if someone jumped wrong and went boinking off the side. There was a shuffleboard court, a badminton set-up, a ropes course, and a cluster of brightly colored cylinders that little kids could assemble into a tunnel—not that there were any kids here little enough to use it. There were also swings, teeter-totters, and a slide. A long green cabinet flanked by picnic tables was marked with signs reading GAMES AND EQUIPMENT and PLEASE RETURN WHAT YOU TOOK OUT.

The playground was surrounded by a chainlink fence at least ten feet high, and Luke saw cameras peering down at two of the corners. They were dusty, as if they hadn’t been cleaned in a while. Beyond the fence there was nothing but forest, mostly pines. Judging by their thickness, Luke put their age at eighty years, give or take. The formula—given in Trees of North America, which he had read one Saturday afternoon when he was ten or so—was pretty simple. There was no need to read the rings. You just estimated the circumference of one of the trees, divided by pi to get the diameter, then multiplied by the average growth factor for North American pines, which was 4.5. Easy enough to figure, and so was the corollary deduction: these trees hadn’t been logged for quite a long time, maybe a couple of generations. Whatever the Institute was, it was in the middle of an old-growth forest, which meant in the middle of nowhere. As for the playground itself, his first thought was that if there was ever a prison exercise yard for kids between the ages of six and sixteen, it would look exactly like this.

The girl—Iris—saw them and waved. She double-bounced on the trampoline, her ponytail flying, then took a final leap off the side and landed on the springy stuff with her legs spread and her knees flexed. “Sha! Who you got there?”

“This is Luke Ellis,” Kalisha said. “New this morning.”

“Hey, Luke.” Iris walked over and offered her hand. She was a skinny girl, taller than Kalisha by a couple of inches. She had a pleasant, pretty face, her cheeks and forehead shiny with what Luke supposed was a mixture of sweat and bug-dope. “Iris Stanhope.”

Luke shook with her, aware that the bugs—minges were what they were called in Minnesota, he had no idea what they were called here—had begun to sample him. “Not pleased to be here, but I guess pleased to meet you.”

“I’m from Abilene, Texas. What about you?”

“Minneapolis. That’s in—”

“I know where it is,” Iris said. “Land of a billion lakes, or some shit like that.”

“George!” Kalisha shouted. “Where’s your manners, young man? Come on over here!”

“Sure, but wait. This is important.” George toed the foul line at the edge of the blacktop, held the basketball to his chest, and began speaking in a low, tension-filled voice. “Okay, folks, after seven hard-fought games, this is what it comes down to. Double overtime, Wizards trail the Celtics by one point, and George Iles, just in off the bench, has a chance to win this thing from the foul line. If he makes one, the Wizards tie it up yet again. If he makes both, he’ll go down in history, probably get his picture in the Basketball Hall of Fame, maybe win a Tesla convertible—”

“That would have to be a custom job,” Luke said. “Tesla doesn’t make a convertible, at least not yet.”

George paid no attention. “Nobody ever expected Iles to be in this position, least of all Iles. An eerie silence has fallen over the Capital One Arena…”

“And then somebody farts!” Iris shouted. She put her tongue between her lips and blew a long, bubbly honk. “A real trumpet blast! Smelly, too!”

“Iles takes a deep breath… he bounces the ball twice, which is his trademark…”

“In addition to a motor mouth, George has a very active fantasy life,” Iris told Luke. “You get used to it.”

George glanced toward the three of them. “Iles casts an angry look at a lone Celtics fan razzing him from center court… it’s a girl who looks stupid as well as amazingly ugly…”

Iris blew another raspberry.

“Now Iles faces the basket… Iles shoots…”

Air ball.

“Jesus, George,” Kalisha said, “that was horrible. Either tie the fucking game or lose it, so we can talk. This kid doesn’t know what happened to him.”

“Like we do,” Iris said.

George flexed his knees and shot. The ball rolled around the rim… thought it over… and fell away.

“Celtics win, Celtics win!” Iris yelled. She did a cheerleader jump and shook invisible pompoms. “Now come over here and say hello to the new kid.”

George came over, waving away bugs as he did so. He was short and stocky, and Luke thought his fantasies were the only place he would ever play pro basketball. His eyes were a pale blue that reminded Luke of the Paul Newman and Steve McQueen movies he and Rolf liked to watch on TCM. Thinking about that, the two of them sprawled in front of the TV and eating popcorn, made him feel sick.

“Yo, kid. What’s your name?”

“Luke Ellis.”

“I’m George Iles, but you probably knew that from these girls. I’m a god to them.”

Kalisha held her head. Iris flipped him the bird.

“A love god.”

“But Adonis, not Cupid,” Luke said, getting into it a little. Trying, anyway. “Adonis is the god of desire and beauty.”

“If you say so. How do you like the place so far? Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“What is it? Kalisha calls it the Institute, but what does that mean?”

“Might as well call it Mrs. Sigsby’s Home for Wayward Psychic Children,” Iris said, and spit.

This wasn’t like coming in halfway through a movie; it was like coming in halfway through the third season of a TV show. One with a complicated plot.

“Who’s Mrs. Sigsby?”

“The queen bitch,” George said. “You’ll meet her, and my advice is don’t sass her. She does not like to be sassed.”

“Are you TP or TK?” Iris asked.

“TK, I suppose.” Actually it was a lot more than a supposition. “Sometimes things move around me, and since I don’t believe in poltergeists, I’m probably doing it. But that can’t be enough to…” He trailed off. Can’t be enough to land me here was what he was thinking. But he was here.

“TK-positive?” George asked. He headed for one of the picnic tables. Luke followed, trailed by the two girls. He could calculate the rough age of the forest that surrounded them, he knew the names of a hundred different bacteria, he could fill these kids in on Hemingway, Faulkner, or Voltaire, but he had still never felt more behind the curve.

“I have no idea what that means.”

Kalisha said, “Pos is what they call kids like me and George. The techs and caretakers and doctors. We’re not supposed to know it—”

“But we do,” Iris finished. “It’s what you call an open secret. TK- and TP-positives can do it when they want to, at least some of the time. The rest of us can’t. For me, things only move when I’m pissed off, or really happy, or just startled. Then it’s involuntary, like sneezing. So I’m just average. They call average TKs and TPs pinks.”

“Why?” Luke asked.

“Because if you’re just regular, there’s a little pink dot on the papers in your folder. We’re not supposed to see what’s in our folders, either, but I saw in mine one day. Sometimes they’re careless.”

“You want to watch your step, or they are apt to get careless all over your ass,” Kalisha said.

Iris said, “Pinks get more tests and more shots. I got the tank. It sucked, but not majorly.”

“What’s the—”

George gave Luke no chance to finish his question. “I’m TK-pos, no pink in my folder. Zero pink for this kid.”

“You’ve seen your folder?” Luke asked.

“Don’t need to. I’m awesome. Watch this.”

There was no swami-like concentration, the kid just stood there, but an extraordinary thing happened. (It seemed extraordinary to Luke, at least, although neither of the girls seemed particularly impressed.) The cloud of minges circling George’s head blew backward, forming a kind of cometary tail, as if they had been struck by a gust of strong wind. Only there was no wind.

“See?” he said. “TK-pos in action. Only it doesn’t last long.”

True enough. The minges were already back, circling him and only kept off by the bug-dope he was wearing.

“That second shot you took at the basket,” Luke said. “Could you have made it go in?”

George shook his head, looking regretful.

“I wish they’d bring in a really powerful TK-pos,” Iris said. Her meet-the-new-kid excitement had collapsed. She looked tired and scared and older than her age, which Luke put at around fifteen. “One who could teleport us the fuck out of here.” She sat down on one of the picnic table’s benches and put a hand over her eyes.

Kalisha sat down and put an arm around her. “No, come on, it’s going to be okay.”

“No it isn’t,” Iris said. “Look at this, I’m a pincushion!” She held out her arms. There were two Band-Aids on the left one, and three on the right. Then she gave her eyes a brisk rub and put on what Luke supposed was her game face. “So, new kid—can you move things around on purpose?”

Luke had never talked about the mind-over-matter stuff—also known as psychokinesis—except with his parents. His mom said it would freak people out if they knew. His dad said it was the least important thing about him. Luke agreed with both points, but these kids weren’t freaked, and in this place it was important. That was clear.

“No. I can’t even wiggle my ears.”

They laughed, and Luke relaxed. The place was strange and scary, but at least these kids seemed okay.

“Once in a while things move around, that’s all. Dishes, or silverware. Sometimes a door will shut by itself. Once or twice my study lamp turned on. It’s never anything big. Hell, I wasn’t completely sure I was doing it. I thought maybe drafts… or deep earth tremors…”

They were all looking at him with wise eyes.

“Okay,” he said. “I knew. My folks did, too. But it was never a big deal.”

Maybe it would have been, he thought, except for being freakishly smart, the kid accepted to not one but two colleges at the age of twelve. Suppose you had a seven-year-old who could play the piano like Van Cliburn. Would anyone care if that kid could also do a few simple card tricks? Or wiggle his ears? This was a thing he couldn’t say to George, Iris, and Kalisha, though. It would sound like boasting.

“You’re right, it’s not a big deal!” Kalisha said vehemently. “That’s what’s so fucked up about it! We’re not the Justice League or the X-Men!”

“Have we been kidnapped?” Praying for them to laugh. Praying for one of them to say of course not.

“Well, duh,” George said.

“Because you can make bugs go away for a second or two? Because…” He thought of the pan falling off the table at Rocket Pizza. “Because every now and then I walk into a room and the door closes behind me?”

“Well,” George said, “if they were grabbing people for their good looks, Iris and Sha wouldn’t be here.”

“Dinkleballs,” Kalisha said.

George smiled. “An extremely sophisticated return. Right up there with bite my wiener.”

“Sometimes I can’t wait for you to go to Back Half,” Iris said. “God will probably strike me dead for that, but—”

“Wait,” Luke said. “Just wait. Start from the beginning.”

“This is the beginning, chum,” said a voice from behind them. “Unfortunately, it’s also probably the end.”

2

Luke guessed the newcomer’s age as sixteen, but later found out he was two years high. Nicky Wilholm was tall and blue-eyed, with a head of unkempt hair that was blacker than black and cried out for a double dose of shampoo. He was wearing a wrinkled button-up shirt over a pair of wrinkled shorts, his white athletic socks were at half-mast, and his sneakers were dirty. Luke remembered Maureen saying he was like Pigpen in the Peanuts comic strips.

The others were looking at him with wary respect, and Luke instantly got that. Kalisha, Iris, and George were no more happy to be here than Luke was himself, but they were trying to keep it positive; except for the moment when Iris had wavered, they gave off a slightly goofy making-the-best-of-it vibe. That wasn’t the case with this guy. Nicky didn’t look angry now, but it was clear he had been in the not-too-distant past. There was a healing cut on his swollen lower lip, the fading remains of a black eye, and a fresh bruise on one cheek.

A brawler, then. Luke had seen a few in his time, there were even a couple at the Broderick School. He and Rolf steered clear of them, but if this place was the prison Luke was beginning to suspect it was, there would be no way to steer clear of Nicky Wilholm. But the other three didn’t seem to be afraid of him, and that was a good sign. Nicky might be pissed off at whatever purpose lay behind that bland Institute name, but with his mates he just seemed intense. Focused. Still, those marks on his face suggested unpleasant possibilities, especially if he wasn’t a brawler by nature. Suppose they had been put there by an adult? A schoolteacher doing something like that, not just at the Brod but almost anywhere, would get canned, probably sued, and maybe arrested.

He thought of Kalisha saying Not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

“I’m Luke Ellis.” He held out his hand, not sure what to expect.

Nicky ignored it and opened the green equipment cabinet. “You play chess, Ellis? These other three suck at it. Donna Gibson could give me at least a half-assed game, but she went to Back Half three days ago.”

“And we will see her no more,” George said dolefully.

“I play,” Luke said, “but I don’t feel like it now. I want to know where I am and what goes on here.”

Nick brought out a chess board and a box with the armies inside. He set the pieces up rapidly, peering through the hair that had fallen across his eyes rather than brushing it back. “You’re in the Institute. Somewhere in the wilds of Maine. Not even a town, just map coordinates. TR-110. Sha picked that up from a bunch of people. So did Donna, and so did Pete Littlejohn. He’s another TP that’s gone to Back Half.”

“Seems like Petey’s been gone forever, but it was only last week,” Kalisha said wistfully. “Remember all those zits? And how his glasses kept sliding down?”

Nicky paid no attention. “The zookeepers don’t try to hide it or deny it. Why would they, when they work on TP kids day in and day out? And they don’t worry about the stuff they do want to keep secret, because not even Sha can go deep, and she’s pretty good.”

“I can score ninety per cent on the Rhine cards most days,” Kalisha said. Not boasting, just matter-of-fact. “And I could tell you your grandmother’s name if you put it in the front of your mind, but the front is as far as I can go.”

My grandmother’s name is Rebecca, Luke thought.

“Rebecca,” Kalisha said, and when she saw Luke’s expression of surprise, she burst into a fit of the giggles that made her look like the child she had been not so long ago.

“You’ve got the white guys,” Nicky said. “I always play black.”

“Nick’s our honorary outlaw,” George said.

“With the marks to prove it,” Kalisha said. “Does him no good, but he can’t seem to help it. His room is a mess, another act of childish rebellion that just makes more work for Maureen.”

Nicky turned to the black girl, unsmiling. “If Maureen was really the saint you think she is, she’d get us out of here. Or blow the whistle to the nearest police.”

Kalisha shook her head. “Get real. If you work here, you’re a part of it. Good or bad.”

“Nasty or nice,” George added. He looked solemn.

“Besides, the nearest police force is probably a bunch of Deputy Dogs and Hiram Hoehandles miles from here,” Iris said. “Since you seem to’ve nominated yourself Head Explainer, Nick, why don’t you really fill the kid in? Jeepers, don’t you remember how weird it is to wake up here in what looks like your own room?”

Nick sat back and crossed his arms. Luke happened to see how Kalisha was looking at him, and thought that if she ever kissed Nicky, it wouldn’t be just to pass on a case of the chicken pox.

“Okay, Ellis, I’ll tell you what we know. Or what we think we know. It won’t take long. Ladies, feel free to chime in. George, keep your mouth shut if you feel a bullshit attack coming on.”

“Thanks a lot,” George said. “And after I let you drive my Porsche.”

“Kalisha’s been here the longest,” Nicky said. “Because of the chicken pox. How many kids have you seen during that time, Sha?”

She considered. “Probably twenty-five. Maybe a few more.”

Nicky nodded. “They—we—come from everywhere. Sha’s from Ohio, Iris is from Texas, George is from Glory Hole, Montana—”

“I’m from Billings,” George said. “A perfectly respectable town.”

“First off, they tag us like we were migrating birds or goddam buffalo.” Nicky brushed his hair back and folded his earlobe forward, showing a circlet of bright metal half the size of a dime. “They examine us, they test us, they give us shots for dots, then they examine us again and do more tests. Pinks get more shots and more tests.”

“I got the tank,” Iris said again.

“Whoopee for you,” Nick said. “If we’re pos, they make us do stupid pet tricks. I myself happen to be TK-pos, but George the motormouth there is quite a bit better at it than I am. And there was one kid here, can’t remember his name, who was even better than George.”

“Bobby Washington,” Kalisha said. “Little black kid, maybe nine. He could push your plate right off the table. Been gone… what, Nicky? Two weeks?”

“A little less,” Nicky said. “If it was two weeks, it would have been before I came.”

“He was there one night at dinner,” Kalisha said, “and gone to Back Half the next day. Poof. Now you see him, now you don’t. I’ll probably be next. I think they’re about done with all their tests.”

“Same here,” Nicky said sourly. “They’ll probably be glad to be rid of me.”

“Strike the probably on that one,” George said.

“They give us shots,” Iris said. “Some of them hurt, some of them don’t, some of them do stuff to you, some don’t. I spiked a fever after one of them, and had the most godawful headache. I was thinking maybe I caught Sha’s chicken pox, but it was gone after a day. They keep shooting you up until you see the dots and hear the hum.”

“You got off easy,” Kalisha told her. “A couple of kids… there was that one named Morty… can’t remember his last name…”

“The nose-picker,” Iris said. “The one who used to hang with Bobby Washington. I can’t remember Morty’s last name, either. He went to Back Half like two days after I got here.”

“Except maybe he didn’t,” Kalisha said. “He wasn’t here long at all, and he broke out in spots after one of those shots. He told me so in the canteen. He said his heart was still beating like crazy, too. I think maybe he got really sick.” She paused. “Maybe he even died.”

George was looking at her with big-eyed dismay. “Cynicism and teenage angst is fine, but tell me you don’t really believe that.”

“Well, I sure don’t want to,” Kalisha said.

“Shut up, all of you,” Nicky said. He leaned forward over the board, staring at Luke. “They kidnap us, yes. Because we have psychic powers, yes. How do they find us? Don’t know. But it’s got to be a big operation, because this place is big. It’s a fucking compound. They’ve got doctors, technicians, ones who call themselves caretakers… it’s like a small hospital stuck out here in the woods.”

“And security,” Kalisha said.

“Yeah. The guy in charge of that is a big bald fuck. Stackhouse is his name.”

“This is crazy,” Luke said. “In America?”

“This isn’t America, it’s the Kingdom of the Institute. When we go to the caff for lunch, Ellis, look out the windows. You’ll see a lot more trees, but if you look hard, you’ll also see another building. Green cinderblock, just like this one. Blends in with the trees, I guess. Anyway, that’s Back Half. Where the kids go when all the tests and shots are done.”

“What happens there?”

It was Kalisha who answered. “We don’t know.”

It was on the tip of Luke’s tongue to ask if Maureen knew, then remembered what Kalisha had whispered in his ear: They listen.

“We know what they tell us,” Iris said. “They say—”

“They say everything is going to be alllll RIGHT!”

Nicky shouted this so loudly and so suddenly that Luke recoiled and almost fell off the picnic bench. The black-haired boy got to his feet and stood looking up into the dusty lens of one of the cameras. Luke remembered something else Kalisha had said: When you meet Nicky, don’t worry if he goes off on a rant. It’s how he blows off steam.

“They’re like missionaries selling Jesus to a bunch of Indians who are so… so…”

“Naïve?” Luke ventured.

“Right! That!” Nicky was still staring up at the camera. “A bunch of Indians who are so naïve they’ll believe anything, that if they give up their land for a handful of beads and fucking flea-ridden blankets, they’ll go to heaven and meet all their dead relatives and be happy forever! That’s us, a bunch of Indians naïve enough to believe anything that sounds good, that sounds like a happy… fucking… ENDING!”

He whirled back to them, hair flying, eyes burning, hands clenched into fists. Luke saw healing cuts on his knuckles. He doubted if Nicky had given as good as he’d gotten—he was only a kid, after all—but it seemed he had at least given somebody something.

“Do you think Bobby Washington had any doubts that his trials were over when they took him to Back Half? Or Pete Littlejohn? Jesus Christ, if brains were black powder, those two couldn’t have blown their noses.”

He turned to the dirty overhead camera again. That he had nothing else upon which to vent his rage rendered it a touch ludicrous, but Luke admired him just the same. He had not accepted the situation.

“Listen up, you guys! You can beat the shit out of me, and you can take me to Back Half, but I’ll fight you every step of the way! Nick Wilholm doesn’t trade for beads and blankets!”

He sat down, breathing hard. Then he smiled, displaying dimples and white teeth and good-humored eyes. The sullen, brooding persona was gone as if it had never been there. Luke had no attraction to guys, but when he saw that smile, he could understand why Kalisha and Iris were looking at Nicky as if he were the lead singer in a boy band.

“I should probably be on their team instead of cooped up here like a chicken in a pen. I could sell this place better than Sigsby and Hendricks and the other docs. I have conviction.”

“You certainly do,” Luke said, “but I’m not entirely sure what you were getting at.”

“Yeah, kinda went off on a sidetrack there, Nicky,” George said.

Nicky crossed his arms again. “Before I whup your ass at chess, new kid, let me review the situation. They bring us here. They test us. They shoot us full of God knows what, and test us some more. Some kids get the tank, all kids get the weird eye test that makes you feel like you’re going to pass out. We have rooms that look like our rooms at home, which is probably supposed to provide some kind of, I don’t know, soothing for our tender emotions.”

“Psychological acclimation,” Luke said. “I guess that makes sense.”

“There’s good food in the caff. We actually order off a menu, limited though it may be. Room doors aren’t locked, so if you can’t sleep, you can wander down there and pick up a midnight snack. They leave out cookies, nuts, apples, stuff like that. Or you can go to the canteen. The machines there take tokens, of which I have none, because only good little girls and boys get tokens, and I am not a good little boy. My idea of what to do with a Boy Scout is to drop him on his pointy little—”

“Come back,” Kalisha said sharply. “Stop the shit.”

“Gotcha.” Nick flashed her that killer smile, then returned his attention to Luke. “There’s plenty of incentive to be good and get tokens. There are snacks and sodas in the canteen, an extremely wide variety.”

“Cracker Jacks,” George said dreamily. “Ho Hos.”

“There are also cigarettes, wine coolers, and the hard stuff.”

Iris: “There’s a sign that says PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. With kids as young as ten pushing the buttons for Boone’s Farm Blue Hawaiian and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, how hilarious is that?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Luke said, but Kalisha and George were nodding.

“You can get buzzed, but you can’t get falling-down drunk,” Nicky said. “Nobody has enough tokens for that.”

“True,” Kalisha said, “but we do have kids who stay buzzed as much as they can.”

“Maintenance drinkers, you mean? Ten- and eleven-year-old maintenance drinkers?” Luke still couldn’t believe it. “You’re not serious.”

“I am. There are kids who do whatever they’re told just so they can use the booze dispenser every day. I haven’t been here long enough to, like, make a study of it, but you hear stories from kids who were here before you.”

“Also,” Iris said, “we have plenty of kids who are working on a good tobacco habit.”

It was ludicrous, but Luke supposed it also made a crazy kind of sense. He thought of the Roman satirist, Juvenal, who had said that if you gave the people bread and circuses, they’d be happy and not cause any trouble. He guessed the same might be true of booze and cigarettes, especially if you offered them to scared and unhappy kids who were locked up. “That stuff doesn’t interfere with their tests?”

“Since we don’t know what the tests are, it’s hard to say,” George told him. “All they seem to want is for you to see the dots and hear the hum.”

“What dots? What hum?”

“You’ll find out,” George said. “That part’s not so bad. It’s getting there that’s the bitch. I hate getting shots.”

Nicky said, “Three weeks, give or take. That’s how long most kids stay in Front Half. At least Sha thinks so, and she’s been here the longest. Then we go to Back Half. After that—this is the story—we get debriefed and our memories of this place are wiped somehow.” He unfolded his arms and raised his hands to the sky, fingers spread. “And after that, chilluns, we go to heaven! Washed clean, except maybe for a pack-a-day habit! Hallelujah!”

“Back home to our parents is what he means,” Iris said quietly.

“Where we’ll be welcomed with open arms,” Nicky said. “No questions asked, just welcome home and let’s all go out to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate. Does that sound realistic to you, Ellis?”

It didn’t.

“But our parents are alive, right?” Luke didn’t know how it sounded to the others, but to him his voice sounded very small.

None of them answered, only looked at him. And really, that was answer enough.

3

There was a knock at Mrs. Sigsby’s office door. She invited the visitor in without taking her eyes from her computer monitor. The man who entered was almost as tall as Dr. Hendricks, but ten years younger and in far better shape—broad-shouldered and muscled out. His skull was smooth, shaved, and gleaming. He wore jeans and a blue workshirt, the sleeves rolled up to display his admirable biceps. There was a holster on one hip with a short metal rod sticking up.

“The Ruby Red group’s here, if you want to talk to them about the Ellis operation.”

“Anything urgent or out of the ordinary on that, Trevor?”

“No, ma’am, not really, and if I’m intruding, I can come back later.”

“You’re fine, just give me a minute. Our residents are giving the new boy a backgrounder. Come and watch. The mixture of myth and observation is rather amusing. Like something out of Lord of the Flies.”

Trevor Stackhouse came around the desk. He saw Wilholm—a troublesome little shit if ever there was one—on one side of a chessboard that was all set up and ready to go. The new intake was sitting on the other side. The girls were standing by, most of their attention fixed, as usual, on Wilholm—handsome, sullen, rebellious, a latter-day James Dean. He would be gone soon; Stackhouse couldn’t wait for Hendricks to sign off on him.

“How many people work here in all, do you think?” the new boy was asking.

Iris and Kalisha (also known as the Chicken Pox Chick) looked at each other. It was Iris who answered. “Fifty? I think at least that many. There’s the doctors… techs and caretakers… the cafeteria staff… um…”

“Two or three janitors,” Wilholm said, “and the housekeepers. Just Maureen right now, because there’s only the five of us, but when there’s more kids, they add another couple of housekeepers. They might come over from Back Half, not sure about that.”

“With that many people, how can they keep the place a secret?” Ellis asked. “For one thing, where do they even park their cars?”

“Interesting,” Stackhouse said. “I don’t think anyone ever asked that before.”

Mrs. Sigsby nodded. “This one’s very smart, and not just book-smart, it looks like. Now hush. I want to hear this.”

“… must stay,” Luke was saying. “You see the logic? Like a tour of duty. Which would mean this is actually a government installation. Like one of those black sites, where they take terrorists to interrogate them.”

“Plus the old bag-over-the-head water cure,” Wilholm said. “I never heard of them doing that to any of the kids here, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“They’ve got the tank,” Iris said. “That’s their water cure. They put a cap on you and duck you under and take notes. It’s actually better than the shots.” She paused. “At least it was for me.”

“They must swap out the employees in groups,” Ellis said. Mrs. Sigsby thought he was talking more to himself than the others. I bet he does that a lot, she thought. “It’s the only way it would work.”

Stackhouse was nodding. “Good deductions. Damn good. What is he, twelve?”

“Read your report, Trevor.” She pushed a button on her computer and the screen saver appeared: a picture of her twin daughters in their double stroller, taken years before they acquired breasts, smart mouths, and bad boyfriends. Also a bad drug habit, in Judy’s case. “Ruby Red’s been debriefed?”

“By me personally. And when the cops check the kid’s computer, they are going to find he’s been looking at some stories about kids who kill their parents. Not a lot, just two or three.”

“Standard operating procedure, in other words.”

“Yes, ma’am. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Stackhouse gave her a grin she thought almost as charming as Wilholm’s when he turned it on at full wattage. Not quite, though. Their Nicky was a true babe magnet. For now, at least. “Do you want to see the team, or just the operation report? Denny Williams is writing it, so it should be fairly readable.”

“If it all went smoothly, just the report. I’ll have Rosalind get it to me.”

“Fine. What about Alvorson? Any intel from her lately?”

“Do you mean are Wilholm and Kalisha canoodling yet?” Sigsby raised an eyebrow. “Is that germane to your security mission, Trevor?”

“I could give Shit One if those two are canoodling. In fact, I’m rooting for them to go ahead and lose their virginity, assuming they still have it, while they’ve got a chance. But from time to time Alvorson does pick up things that are germane to my mission. Like her conversation with the Washington boy.”

Maureen Alvorson, the housekeeper who actually seemed to like and sympathize with the Institute’s young subjects, was in reality a stool pigeon. (Given the little bits of tittle-tattle she brought in, Mrs. Sigsby thought spy too grand a term.) Neither Kalisha nor any of the other TPs had tipped to this, because Maureen was extremely good at keeping her way of making a little extra money far below the surface.

What made her especially valuable was the carefully planted idea that certain areas of the Institute—the south corner of the caff and a small area near the vending machines in the canteen, to name just a couple—were audio surveillance dead zones. Those were the places where Alvorson gleaned the kids’ secrets. Most were paltry things, but sometimes there was a nugget of gold in the dross. The Washington boy, for instance, who had confided to Maureen that he was thinking about committing suicide.

“Nothing lately,” Sigsby said. “I’ll inform you if she passes on something I feel would be of interest to you, Trevor.”

“Okay. I was just asking.”

“Understood. Now please go. I have work to do.”

4

“Fuck this shit,” Nicky said, sitting down at the bench again. He finally brushed the hair out of his eyes. “The ding-dong’s gonna go pretty soon, and I gotta get an eye test and look at the white wall after lunch. Let’s see what you got, Ellis. Make a move.”

Luke had never felt less like playing chess. He had a thousand other questions—mostly about shots for dots—but maybe this wasn’t the time. There was such a thing as information overload, after all. He moved his king’s pawn two squares. Nicky countered. Luke responded with his king’s bishop, threatening Nicky’s king’s bishop’s pawn. After a moment’s hesitation, Nicky moved his queen out four diagonal squares, and that pretty much sealed the deal. Luke moved his own queen, waited for Nicky to make some move that didn’t matter one way or the other, then slid his queen down next to Nicky’s king, nice and cozy.

Nicky frowned at the board. “Checkmate? In four moves? Are you serious?”

Luke shrugged. “It’s called Scholar’s Mate, and it only works if you’re playing white. Next time you’ll see it coming and counter. Best way is to move your queen’s pawn forward two or your king’s pawn forward one.”

“If I do that, can you still beat me?”

“Maybe.” The diplomatic answer. The real one was of course.

“Holy joe.” Nicky was still studying the board. “That’s fucking slick. Who taught you?”

“I read some books.”

Nicky looked up, seeming to really see Luke for the first time, and asked Kalisha’s question. “How smart are you, kid?”

“Smart enough to beat you,” Iris said, which saved Luke having to answer.

At that moment, a soft two-note chime went off: the ding-dong.

“Let’s go to lunch,” Kalisha said. “I’m starving. Come on, Luke. Loser puts the game away.”

Nicky pointed a finger gun at her and mouthed bang bang, but he was smiling as he did it. Luke got up and followed the girls. At the door to the lounge area, George caught up with him and grabbed his arm. Luke knew from his sociology reading (as well as from personal experience) that kids in a group had a tendency to fall into certain easily recognizable pigeonholes. If Nicky Wilholm was this group’s rebel, then George Iles was its class clown. Only now he looked as serious as a heart attack. He spoke low and fast.

“Nick’s cool, I like him and the girls are crazy about him, probably you’ll like him, too, and that’s okay, but don’t make him a role model. He won’t accept that we’re stuck here, but we are, so pick your battles. The dots, for instance. When you seem em, say so. When you don’t, say that. Don’t lie. They know.”

Nicky caught up with them. “Whatcha talkin about, Georgie Boy?”

“He wanted to know where babies come from,” Luke said. “I told him to ask you.”

“Oh Jesus, another fucking comedian. Just what this place needs.” Nicky grabbed Luke by the neck and pretended to strangle him, which Luke hoped was a sign of liking. Maybe even respect. “Come on, let’s eat.”

5

What his new friends called the canteen was part of the lounge, across from the big TV. Luke wanted a close look at the vending machines, but the others were moving briskly and he still didn’t get the chance. He did, however, note the sign Iris had mentioned: PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. So maybe they hadn’t been just yanking his chain about the booze.

Not Kansas and not Pleasure Island, he thought. It’s Wonderland. Someone came into my room in the middle of the night and pushed me down the rabbit hole.

The caff wasn’t as big as the one at the Broderick School, but almost. The fact that the five of them were the only diners made it seem even bigger. Most of the tables were fourtops, but there were a couple of larger ones in the middle. One of these had been set with five places. A woman in a pink smock top and matching pink trousers came over and filled their water glasses. Like Maureen, she was wearing a nametag. Hers said NORMA.

“How are you, my chickens?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re plucking right along,” George said brightly. “How about you?”

“Doing fine,” Norma said.

“Don’t have a Get Out of Jail Free card on you, by any chance?”

Norma gave him a cruise-control smile and went back through the swinging door that presumably led to the kitchen.

“Why do I bother?” George said. “My best lines are wasted in here. Wasted, I tell you.”

He reached for the stack of menus in the center of the table and handed them around. At the top was the day’s date. Below that was STARTERS (buffalo wings or tomato bisque), ENTREES (bison burger or American chop suey), and FINISHERS (apple pie à la mode or something called Magic Custard Cake). Half a dozen soft drinks were listed.

“You can get milk, but they don’t bother putting it on the menu,” Kalisha said. “Most kids don’t want it unless they have cereal for breakfast.”

“Is the food really good?” Luke asked. The prosaic nature of the question—as if they were maybe at a Sandals resort where the meals were included—brought back his sense of unreality and dislocation.

“Yes,” Iris said. “Sometimes they weigh us. I’ve put on four pounds.”

“Fattening us up for the kill,” Nicky said. “Like Hansel and Gretel.”

“On Friday nights and Sunday noons there are buffets,” Kalisha said. “All you can eat.”

“Like Hansel and fucking Gretel,” Nicky repeated. He made a half-turn, looking up at a camera in the corner. “Come on back, Norma. I think we’re ready.”

She returned at once, which only increased Luke’s sense of unreality. But when his wings and chop suey came, he ate heartily. He was in a strange place, he was afraid for himself and terrified about what might have happened to his parents, but he was also twelve.

A growing boy.

6

They must have been watching, whoever they were, because Luke had barely finished the last bite of his custard cake before a woman dressed in another of those pink quasi-uniforms appeared at his side. GLADYS, her name badge said. “Luke? Come with me, please.”

He looked at the other four. Kalisha and Iris wouldn’t meet his gaze. Nicky was looking at Gladys, arms once more folded across his chest and wearing a faint smile. “Why don’t you come back later, honey? Like around Christmas. I’ll kick you under the mistletoe.”

She paid no attention. “Luke? Please?”

George was the only one looking directly at him, and what Luke saw on his face made him think of what he’d said before they came in from the playground: Pick your battles. He got up. “See you guys later. I guess.”

Kalisha mouthed soundless words at him: Shots for dots.

Gladys was small and pretty, but for all Luke knew, she was a black belt who could throw him over her shoulder if he gave her any trouble. Even if she wasn’t, they were watching, and he had no doubt reinforcements would show up in a hurry. There was something else, as well, and it was powerful. He had been raised to be polite and obey his elders. Even in this situation, those were hard habits to break.

Gladys led him past the bank of windows Nicky had mentioned. Luke looked out and yes, there was another building out there. He could barely see it through the screening trees, but it was there, all right. Back Half.

He looked over his shoulder before leaving the caff, hoping for some reassurance—a wave, or even a smile from Kalisha would do. There was no wave, and no one was smiling. They were looking at him the way they had in the playground, when he had asked if their parents were alive. Maybe they didn’t know about that, not for sure, but they knew where he was going now. Whatever it was, they had already been through it.

7

“Gosh, what a pretty day, huh?” Gladys said as she led him along the cinderblock corridor and past his room. The corridor continued down another wing—more doors, more rooms—but they turned left, into an annex that appeared to be your basic elevator lobby.

Luke, ordinarily quite good at make-nice conversation, said nothing. He was pretty sure it was what Nicky would do in this situation.

“The bugs, though… ooh!” She waved away invisible insects, and laughed. “You’ll want to wear plenty of bug-dope, at least until July.”

“When the dragonflies hatch out.”

“Yes! Exactly!” She trilled a laugh.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” She waggled her eyebrows, as to say don’t spoil the surprise.

The elevator doors opened. Two men in blue shirts and pants got off. One was JOE, the other HADAD. They both carried iPads.

“Hi, guys,” Gladys said brightly.

“Hey, girl,” Hadad said. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” Gladys chirped.

“How about you, Luke?” Joe asked. “Adjusting okay?”

Luke said nothing.

“Silent treatment, huh?” Hadad was grinning. “That’s okay for now. Later, maybe not so much. Here’s the thing, Luke—treat us right and we’ll treat you right.”

“Go along to get along,” Joe added. “Words of wisdom. See you later, Gladys?”

“You bet. You owe me a drink.”

“If you say so.”

The men went on their way. Gladys escorted Luke into the elevator. There were no numbers and no buttons. She said, “B,” then produced a card from her pants pocket and waved it at a sensor. The doors shut. The car descended, but not far.

“B,” crooned a soft female voice from overhead. “This is B.”

Gladys waved her card again. The doors opened on a wide hall lit with translucent ceiling panels. Soft music played, what Luke thought of as supermarket music. A few people were moving about, some pushing trolleys with equipment on them, one carrying a wire basket that might have contained blood samples. The doors were marked with numbers, each prefixed with the letter B.

A big operation, Nicky had said. A compound. That had to be right, because if there was an underground B-Level, it stood to reason there must be a C-Level. Maybe even a D and E. You’d say it almost had to be a government installation, Luke thought, but how could they keep an operation this big a secret? Not only is it illegal and unconstitutional, it involves kidnapping children.

They passed an open door, and inside Luke saw what appeared to be a break room. There were tables and vending machines (no sign reading PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY, though). Three people were sitting at one of the tables, a man and two women. They were dressed in regular clothes, jeans and button-up shirts, and drinking coffee. One of the women, the blondish one, seemed familiar. At first he didn’t know why, then he thought of a voice saying Sure, whatever you want. It was the last thing he remembered before waking up here.

“You,” he said, and pointed at her. “It was you.”

The woman said nothing, and her face said nothing. But she looked at him. She was still looking when Gladys closed the door.

“She was the one,” Luke said. “I know she was.”

“Just a little further,” Gladys said. “It won’t take long, then you can go back to your room. You’d probably like to rest. First days can be exhausting.”

“Did you hear me? She was the one who came into my room. She sprayed something in my face.”

No answer, just the smile again. Luke found it a little creepier each time Gladys flashed it.

They reached a door marked B-31. “Behave and you’ll get five tokens,” she said. She reached into her other pocket and brought out a handful of metal circles that looked like quarters, only with an embossed triangle on either side. “See? Got them right here.”

She knocked a knuckle on the door. The blue-clad man who opened it was TONY. He was tall and blond, handsome except for one slightly squinted eye. Luke thought he looked like a villain in a James Bond movie, maybe the suave ski instructor who turned out to be an assassin.

“Hey, pretty lady.” He kissed Gladys on the cheek. “And you’ve got Luke. Hi, Luke.” He stuck out his hand. Luke, channeling Nicky Wilholm, didn’t shake it. Tony laughed as though this were a particularly good joke. “Come in, come in.”

The invitation was just for him, it seemed. Gladys gave him a little push on the shoulder and closed the door. What Luke saw in the middle of the room was alarming. It looked like a dentist’s chair. Except he’d never seen one that had straps on the arms.

“Sit down, champ,” Tony said. Not sport, Luke thought, but close.

Tony went to a counter, opened a drawer beneath, and rummaged in it. He was whistling. When he turned around, he had something that looked like a small soldering gun in one hand. He seemed surprised to see Luke still standing inside the door. Tony grinned. “Sit down, I said.”

“What are you going to do with that? Tattoo me?” He thought of Jews getting numbers tattooed on their arms when they entered the camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. That should have been a totally ridiculous idea, but…

Tony looked surprised, then laughed. “Gosh, no. I’m just going to chip your earlobe. It’s like getting pierced for an earring. No big deal, and all our guests get em.”

“I’m no guest,” Luke said, backing up. “I’m a prisoner. And you’re not putting anything in my ear.”

“I am, though,” Tony said, still grinning. Still looking like the guy who would help little kids on the bunny slopes before trying to kill James Bond with a poison dart. “Look, it’s no more than a pinch. So make it easy on both of us. Sit in the chair, it’ll be over in seven seconds. Gladys will give you a bunch of tokens when you leave. Make it hard and you still get the chip, but no tokens. What do you say?”

“I’m not sitting in that chair.” Luke felt trembly all over, but his voice sounded strong enough.

Tony sighed. He set the chip insertion gadget carefully on the counter, walked to where Luke stood, and put his hands on his hips. Now he looked solemn, almost sorrowful. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

His ears were ringing from the open-handed slap almost before he was aware Tony’s right hand had left his hip. Luke staggered back a step and stared at the big man with wide, stunned eyes. His father had paddled him once (gently) for playing with matches when he was four or five, but he had never been slapped in the face before. His cheek was burning, and he still couldn’t believe it had happened.

“That hurt a lot more than an earlobe pinch,” Tony said. The grin was gone. “Want another? Happy to oblige. You kids who think you own the world. Man oh man.”

For the first time, Luke noticed there was a small blue bruise on Tony’s chin, and a small cut on his left jaw. He thought of the fresh bruise on Nicky Wilholm’s face. He wished he had the guts to do the same, but he didn’t. The truth was, he didn’t know how to fight. If he tried, Tony would probably slap him all over the room.

“You ready to get in the chair?”

Luke got in the chair.

“Are you going to behave, or do I need the straps?”

“I’ll behave.”

He did, and Tony was right. The earlobe pinch wasn’t as bad as the slap, possibly because he was ready for it, possibly because it felt like a medical procedure rather than an assault. When it was done, Tony went to a sterilizer and produced a hypodermic needle. “Round two, champ.”

“What’s in that?” Luke asked.

“None of your beeswax.”

“If it’s going into me, it is my beeswax.”

Tony sighed. “Straps or no straps? Your choice.”

He thought of George saying pick your battles. “No straps.”

“Good lad. Just a little sting and done.”

It was more than a little sting. Not agony, but a pretty big sting, just the same. Luke’s arm went hot all the way down to his wrist, as if he had a fever in that one part of him, then it felt normal again.

Tony put on a Band-Aid Clear Spot, then swiveled the chair so it faced a white wall. “Now close your eyes.”

Luke closed them.

“Do you hear anything?”

“Like what?”

“Stop asking questions and answer mine. Do you hear anything?”

“Be quiet and let me listen.”

Tony was quiet. Luke listened.

“Someone walked by out there in the hall. And someone laughed. I think it was Gladys.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“Okay, you’re doing good. Now I want you to count to twenty, then open your eyes.”

Luke counted and opened.

“What do you see?”

“The wall.”

“Nothing else?”

Luke thought Tony almost had to be talking about the dots. When you see em, say so, George had told him. When you don’t, say that. Don’t lie. They know.

“Nothing else.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

Tony slapped him on the back, making Luke jump. “Okay, champ, we’re done here. I’ll give you some ice for that ear. You have yourself a great day.”

8

Gladys was waiting for him when Tony showed him out of Room B-31. She was smiling her cheerful professional hostess smile. “How did you do, Luke?”

Tony answered for him. “He did fine. Good kid.”

“It’s what we specialize in,” Gladys almost sang. “Have a good day, Tony.”

“You too, Glad.”

She led Luke back to the elevator, chattering away merrily. He had no idea what she was talking about. His arm only hurt a little, but he was holding the cold-pack to his ear, which throbbed. The slap had been worse than either. For all kinds of reasons.

Gladys escorted him to his room along the industrial green corridor, past the poster Kalisha had been sitting under, past the one reading JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, and finally to the room that looked like his room but wasn’t.

“Free time!” she cried, as if conferring a prize of great worth. Right now the prospect of being alone did feel like sort of a prize. “He gave you a shot, right?”

“Yes.”

“If your arm starts to hurt, or if you feel faint, tell me or one of the other caretakers, okay?”

“Okay.”

He opened the door, but before he could go in, Gladys grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around. She was still smiling the hostess smile, but her fingers were steely, pressing into his flesh. Not quite hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to let him know they could hurt.

“No tokens, I’m afraid,” she said. “I didn’t need to discuss it with Tony. That mark on your cheek tells me all I need to know.”

Luke wanted to say I don’t want any of your shitty tokens, but kept silent. It wasn’t a slap he was afraid of; he was afraid that the sound of his own voice—weak, unsteady, bewildered, the voice of a six-year-old—would cause him to break down in front of her.

“Let me give you some advice,” she said. Not smiling now. “You need to realize that you are here to serve, Luke. That means you have to grow up fast. It means being realistic. Things will happen to you here. Some of them will not be so nice. You can be a good sport about them and get tokens, or you can be a bad sport and get none. Those things will happen either way, so which should you choose? It shouldn’t be hard to figure out.”

Luke made no reply. Her smile came back nevertheless, the hostess smile that said oh yes, sir, I’ll show you to your table right away.

“You’ll be back home before the summer is over, and it will be like none of this happened. If you remember it at all, it will be like a dream. But while it’s not a dream, why not make your stay a happy one?” She relaxed her grip and gave him a gentle push. “You should rest a bit, I think. Lie down. Did you see the dots?”

“No.”

“You will.”

She closed the door, very gently. Luke sleepwalked across the room to the bed that wasn’t his bed. He lay down, put his head on the pillow that wasn’t his pillow, and stared at the blank wall where there was no window. No dots, either—whatever they were. He thought: I want my mom. Oh God, I want my mom so bad.

That broke him. He dropped the cold-pack, cupped his hands over his eyes, and began crying. Were they watching him? Or listening to his sobs? It didn’t matter. He was past caring. He was still crying when he fell asleep.

9

He woke up feeling better—cleaned out, somehow. He saw two things had been added to his room while he was at lunch, and then meeting his wonderful new friends Gladys and Tony. There was a laptop on the desk. It was a Mac, like his, but an older model. The other addition was a small TV on a stand in the corner.

He went to the computer first and powered it up, feeling another deep pang of homesickness at the familiar Macintosh chime. Instead of a password prompt, he got a blue screen with this message: SHOW CAMERA ONE TOKEN TO OPEN. Luke banged the return key a couple of times, knowing it would do no good.

“You fucking thing.”

Then, in spite of how horrible and surreal all this was, he had to laugh. It was harsh and brief, but genuine. Had he felt a certain sense of superiority—maybe even contempt—at the idea of kids scrounging for tokens so they could buy wine coolers or cigarettes? Sure he had. Had he thought I’d never do that? Sure he had. When Luke thought of kids who drank and smoked (which was rarely; he had more important things to consider), what came to mind were Goth losers who listened to Pantera and drew lopsided devil horns on their denim jackets, losers so dumb that they mistook wrapping themselves in the chains of addiction as an act of rebellion. He couldn’t imagine doing either, but here he was, staring at a blank blue laptop screen and hitting the return key like a rat in a Skinner box banging the lever for a piece of kibble or a few grains of cocaine.

He closed the laptop and grabbed the remote off the top of the television. He fully expected another blue screen and another message telling him he needed a token or tokens to operate it, but instead he got Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff about the Hoff’s bucket list. The audience was laughing it up at the Hoff’s funny answers.

Pushing the guide button on the remote produced a DirecTV menu similar to the one at home, but as with the room and the laptop, not quite the same. Although there was a wide selection of movies and sports programs, there were no network or news channels. Luke turned the set off, replaced the remote on top, and looked around.

Other than the one leading to the corridor, there were two doors. One opened on a closet. There were jeans, tee-shirts (no effort had been made to exactly copy the ones he had at home, which was sort of a relief ), a couple of button-up shirts, two pairs of sneakers, and one pair of slippers. There were no hard shoes.

The other door opened on a small, spandy-clean bathroom. There were a couple of toothbrushes, still in their cases, on the washbasin, next to a fresh tube of Crest. In the well-stocked medicine cabinet he found mouthwash, a bottle of children’s Tylenol, with just four pills inside, deodorant, roll-on Deet bugspray, Band-Aids, and several other items, some more useful than others. The only thing that might be considered even remotely dangerous was a pair of nail clippers.

He swung the medicine cabinet closed and looked at himself. His hair was crazied up, and there were dark circles (beat-off circles, Rolf would have called them) under his eyes. He looked both older and younger, which was weird. He peered at his tender right earlobe and saw one of those tiny metal circles embedded in the slightly reddened skin. He had no doubt that somewhere on B-Level—or C, or D—there was a computer tech who could now track his every movement. Was perhaps tracking him now. Lucas David Ellis, who had been planning to matriculate at MIT and Emerson, had been reduced to a blinking dot on a computer screen.

Luke returned to his room (the room, he told himself, it’s the room, not my room), looked around, and realized a dismaying thing. No books. Not a single one. That was as bad as no computer. Maybe worse. He went to the dresser and opened the drawers one by one, thinking he might at least find a Bible or a Book of Mormon, like they sometimes had in hotel rooms. He discovered only neat stacks of underwear and socks.

What did that leave? Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff? Reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos?

No. No way.

He left the room, thinking Kalisha or one of the other kids might be around. He found Maureen Alvorson instead, trundling her Dandux laundry basket slowly down the corridor. It was heaped with folded sheets and towels. She looked more tired than ever and sounded out of breath.

“Hello, Ms. Alvorson. Can I push that for you?”

“That would be kind,” she said with a smile. “We’ve got five newbies coming in, two tonight and three tomorrow, and I’ve got to get the rooms ready. They’re down thataway.” She pointed in the opposite direction from the lounge and the playground.

He pushed the basket slowly, because she was walking slowly. “I don’t suppose you know how I could earn a token, do you, Ms. Alvorson? I need one to unlock the computer in my room.”

“Can you make a bed, if I stand by and give you instructions?”

“Sure. I make my bed at home.”

“With hospital corners?”

“Well… no.”

“Never mind, I’ll show you. Make five beds for me, and I’ll give you three tokes. It’s all I’ve got in my pocket. They keep me short.”

“Three would be great.”

“All right, but enough with the Miz Alvorson. You call me Maureen, or just Mo. Same as the other kids.”

“I can do that,” Luke said.

They went past the elevator annex and into the hallway beyond. It was lined with more inspirational posters. There was also an ice machine, like in a motel hallway, and it didn’t appear to take tokens. Just past it, Maureen put a hand on Luke’s arm. He stopped pushing the basket and looked at her enquiringly.

When she spoke, it was just above a whisper. “You got chipped, I see, but you didn’t get any tokens.”

“Well…”

“You can talk, as long as you keep your voice down. There’s half a dozen places in Front Half where their damn microphones don’t reach, dead zones, and I know all of them. This is one, right by this ice machine.”

“Okay…”

“Who did your chip and put that mark on your face? Was it Tony?”

Luke’s eyes began to burn, and he didn’t quite trust himself to speak, whether it was safe or not. He just nodded.

“He’s one of the mean ones,” Maureen said. “Zeke is another. So is Gladys, even though she smiles a lot. There are plenty of people working here who like pushing kids around, but those are three of the worst.”

“Tony slapped me,” Luke whispered. “Hard.”

She ruffled his hair. It was the kind of thing ladies did to babies and little kids, but Luke didn’t mind. It was being touched with kindness, and right now that meant a lot. Right now that meant everything.

“Do what he says,” Maureen said. “Don’t argue with him, that’s my best advice. There’s people you can argue with here, you can even argue with Mrs. Sigsby, much good it will do you, but Tony and Zeke are two bad bumblebees. Gladys, too. They sting.”

She started down the corridor again, but Luke caught her by the sleeve of her brown uniform and tugged her back to the safe area. “I think Nicky hit Tony,” he whispered. “He had a cut and a mousy eye.”

Maureen smiled, showing teeth that looked long overdue for dental work. “Good for Nick,” she said. “Tony probably paid him back double, but still… good. Now come on. With you to help me, we can get these rooms ready in a jiff.”

The first one they visited had posters of Tommy Pickles and Zuko—Nickelodeon characters—on the walls, and a platoon of G.I. Joe action figures on the bureau. Luke recognized several of them right off the bat, having gone through his own G.I. Joe phase not all that long ago. The wallpaper featured happy clowns with balloons.

“Holy crap,” Luke said. “This is a little kid’s room.”

She gave Luke an amused glance, as if to say You’re not exactly Methuselah. “That’s right. His name is Avery Dixon, and ’cording to my sheet, he’s just ten. Let’s get to work. I bet I only have to show you how to do a hospital corner once. You look like a kid who catches on quick.”

10

Back in his room, Luke held one of his tokens up to the laptop’s camera. He felt a little stupid doing it, but the computer opened at once, first showing a blue screen with a message on it reading WELCOME BACK DONNA! Luke frowned, then smiled a little. At some point before his arrival, this computer had belonged (or been on loan, anyway) to someone named Donna. The welcome screen hadn’t been changed yet. Someone had slipped up. Just a tiny slip, but where there was one, there might be others.

The welcome message disappeared and a standard desktop photo appeared: a deserted beach under a dawn sky. The info strip at the bottom of the screen was like the one on his computer at home, with one glaring (but at this point unsurprising) difference: no little email postage stamp. There were, however, icons for two Internet providers. This surprised him, but it was a nice surprise. He opened Firefox and typed AOL log-in. The blue screen came back, this time with a pulsing red circle in the middle. A soft computer voice said, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

For a moment Luke thought it was another slip-up—first Donna, then Dave—before realizing it was the voice of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not a goof, just geek humor, and under the circumstances, as funny as a rubber crutch.

He googled Herbert Ellis and got HAL again. Luke considered, then googled the Orpheum Theatre on Hennepin, not because he was planning to see a show there (or anywhere in the immediate future, it seemed), but because he wanted to know what information he could access. There had to be at least some stuff, or else why give him the connection at all?

The Orf, as his parents called it, seemed to be one of the sites approved for “guests” of the Institute. He was informed that Hamilton was coming back (“By Popular Demand!”), and Patton Oswalt would be there next month (“Your Sides Will Split!”). He tried googling the Broderick School and got their website, no problem. He tried Mr. Greer, his guidance counselor, and got HAL. He was beginning to understand Dr. Dave Bowman’s frustration in the movie.

He started to close down, then reconsidered and typed Maine State Police into the search field. His finger hovered over the execute button, almost pressed it, then withdrew. He’d get HAL’s meaningless apology, but Luke doubted if things would end with that. Very likely an alarm would go off on one of the lower levels. Not likely, surely. They might forget to change a kid’s name on the computer’s welcome screen, but they wouldn’t forget an alert program if an Institute kid tried to contact the authorities. There would be punishment. Probably worse than a slap to the face. The computer that used to belong to someone named Donna was useless.

Luke sat back and crossed his arms on his narrow chest. He thought of Maureen, and the friendly way she’d ruffled his hair. Only a small, absent-minded gesture of kindness, but that (and the tokens) had taken some of the curse off Tony’s slap. Had Kalisha said the woman was forty thousand dollars in debt? No, more like twice that.

Partly because of the friendly way Maureen had touched him and partly just to pass the time, Luke googled I am overwhelmed with debt please help. The computer immediately gave him access to all sorts of information on that subject, including a number of companies that declared clearing those pesky bills would be as easy as pie; all the back-to-the-wall debtor needed to do was make one phone call. Luke doubted it, but he supposed some folks wouldn’t; it was how they got in over their heads in the first place.

Maureen Alvorson wasn’t one of those people, though, at least according to Kalisha. She said Maureen’s husband had run up the big bills before taking off. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but either way, there would be solutions to the problem. There always were; finding them was what learning was all about. Maybe the computer wasn’t useless, after all.

Luke went to the sources that looked the most reliable, and was soon deep in the subjects of debt and debt repayment. The old hunger to know came over him. To learn a new thing. To isolate and understand the central issues. As always, each piece of information led to three more (or six, or twelve), and eventually a coherent picture began to emerge. A kind of terrain map. The most interesting concept—the linchpin to which all the others were attached—was simple but staggering (to Luke, at least). Debt was a commodity. It was bought and sold, and at some point it had become the center of not just the American economy, but of the world’s. And yet it did not really exist. It wasn’t a concrete thing like gas or gold or diamonds; it was only an idea. A promise to pay.

When his computer’s IM chime rang, he shook his head like a boy emerging from a vivid dream. According to the computer’s clock, it was almost 5 PM. He clicked on the balloon icon at the bottom of the machine and read this:

He considered this, then typed.

The reply came at once:

“Take your smiley and stick it up your—”

There was a knock at the door. He went to it, expecting Gladys, but this time it was Hadad, one of the guys from the elevator.

“Want to take a walk, big boy?”

Luke sighed. “Give me a second. I have to put on my sneakers.”

“No problem-o.”

Hadad led him to a door past the elevator and used a key card to unlock it. They walked the short distance to the administration building together, waving away the bugs.

11

Mrs. Sigsby reminded Luke of his father’s oldest sibling. Like Aunt Rhoda, this woman was skinny, with barely a hint of hips or breasts. Only there were smile lines around Aunt Rhoda’s mouth, and always warmth in her eyes. She was a hugger. Luke thought there would be no hugs from the woman standing beside her desk in a plum-colored suit and matching heels. There might be smiles, but they would be the facial equivalent of three-dollar bills. In Mrs. Sigsby’s eyes he saw careful assessment and nothing else. Nothing at all.

“Thank you, Hadad, I’ll take it from here.”

The orderly—Luke supposed that was what Hadad was—gave a respectful nod and left the office.

“Let’s start with something obvious,” she said. “We are alone. I spend ten minutes or so alone with every new intake soon after their arrival. Some of them, disoriented and angry, have tried to attack me. I bear them no ill will for that. Why would I, for goodness’ sake? Our oldest intakes are sixteen, and the average age is eleven years and six months. Children, in other words, and children have poor impulse control at the best of times. I see such aggressive behavior as a teachable moment… and I teach them. Will I need to teach you, Luke?”

“Not about that,” Luke said. He wondered if Nicky was one of those who had tried to lay hands on this trim little woman. Maybe he would ask later.

“Good. Have a seat, please.”

Luke took the chair in front of her desk, leaning forward with his hands clasped tightly between his knees. Mrs. Sigsby sat opposite, her gaze that of a headmistress who would brook no nonsense. Who would treat nonsense harshly. Luke had never met a merciless adult, but he thought he might be facing one now. It was a frightening idea, and his first impulse was to reject it as ridiculous. He quashed it. Better to believe he had merely led a sheltered life. Better—safer—to believe she was what he thought she was, unless and until she proved different. This was a bad situation; that much was beyond doubt. Fooling himself might be the worst mistake he could make.

“You have made friends, Luke. That’s good, a good start. You will meet others during your time in Front Half. Two of them, a boy named Avery Dixon and a girl named Helen Simms, have just arrived. They’re sleeping now, but you’ll make their acquaintance soon, Helen perhaps before lights-out at ten. Avery may sleep through the night. He’s quite young, and is sure to be in an emotional state when he does wake up. I hope you will take him under your wing, as I’m sure Kalisha, Iris, and George will. Perhaps even Nick, although one never knows exactly how Nick will react. Including Nick himself, I should think. Helping Avery acclimate to his new situation will earn you tokens, which as you already know are the primary medium of exchange here at the Institute. That is entirely up to you, but we will be watching.”

I know you will, Luke thought. And listening. Except in the few places where you can’t. Assuming Maureen’s right about that.

“Your friends have given you a certain amount of information, some of it accurate, some of it wildly inaccurate. What I tell you now is completely accurate, so listen carefully.” She leaned forward, hands flat on her desk, her eyes locked on his. “Are your ears open, Luke? Because I do not, as the saying goes, chew my cabbage twice.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?” Snapping it at him, although her face remained as calm as ever.

“Ears open. Mind attentive.”

“Excellent. You will spend a certain amount of time in Front Half. It might be ten days; it might be two weeks; it might be as long as a month, although very few of our conscripts stay that long.”

“Conscripts? Are you saying I’ve been drafted?”

She gave a brisk nod. “I’m saying exactly that. There’s a war going on, and you have been called upon to serve your country.”

“Why? Because every now and then I can move a glass or a book without touching it? That’s stu—”

“Shut your mouth!”

Almost as shocked by this as he had been by Tony’s roundhouse slap, Luke did.

“When I talk, you listen. You don’t interrupt. Are we clear?”

Not trusting his voice, Luke only nodded.

“This is not an arms race but a mind race, and if we lose, the consequences would be more than dire; they would be unimaginable. You may only be twelve, but you are a soldier in an undeclared war. The same is true of Kalisha and the others. Do you like it? Of course not. Draftees never do, and draftees sometimes need to be taught that there are consequences for not following orders. I believe you’ve already had one lesson in that regard. If you’re as bright as your records say you are, perhaps you won’t need another. If you do, however, you’ll get it. This is not your home. This is not your school. You will not simply be given an extra chore or sent to the principal’s office or given detention; you will be punished. Clear?”

“Yes.” Tokens for good boys and girls, face-slaps for those who were bad. Or worse. The concept was chilling but simple.

“You will be given a number of injections. You will be given a number of tests. Your physical and mental condition will be monitored. You will eventually graduate to what we call Back Half, and there you will be given certain services to perform. Your stay in Back Half may last as long as six months, although the average length of active service is only six weeks. Then your memories will be wiped, and you will be sent home to your parents.”

“They’re alive? My parents are alive?”

She laughed, the sound surprisingly merry. “Of course they’re alive. We’re not murderers, Luke.”

“I want to talk to them, then. Let me talk to them and I’ll do whatever you want.” The words were out before he realized what a rash promise this was.

“No, Luke. We still don’t have a clear understanding.” She sat back. Hands once more flat on her desk. “This is not a negotiation. You will do whatever we want, regardless. Believe me on that, and spare yourself a lot of pain. You will have no contact with the outside world during your time at the Institute, and that includes your parents. You will obey all orders. You will comply with all protocols. Yet you will not, with perhaps a few exceptions, find the orders arduous or the protocols onerous. Your time will pass quickly, and when you leave us, when you wake up in your own bedroom one fine morning, none of this will have happened. The sad part—I think so, anyway—is that you won’t even know you had the great privilege of serving your country.”

“I don’t see how it’s possible,” Luke said. Speaking more to himself than to her, which was his way when something—a physics problem, a painting by Manet, the short- and long-term implications of debt—had completely engaged his attention. “So many people know me. The school… the people my folks work with… my friends… you can’t wipe all their memories.”

She didn’t laugh, but she smiled. “I think you might be very surprised at what we can do. We’re finished here.” She stood, came around the desk, and held out her hand. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

Luke also stood, but he didn’t take her hand.

“Shake my hand, Luke.”

Part of him wanted to, old habits were hard to break, but he kept his hand at his side.

“Shake it, or you’ll wish you did. I won’t tell you again.”

He saw she absolutely meant it, so he shook her hand. She held it. Although she didn’t squeeze, he could tell her hand was very strong. Her eyes stared into his. “I may see you, as another saying goes, around the campus, but hopefully this will be your only visit to my office. If you are called in here again, our conversation will be less pleasant. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I know this is a dark time for you, but if you do as you’re told, you’ll come out into the sunshine. Trust me on that. Now go.”

He left, once more feeling like a boy in a dream, or Alice down the rabbit hole. Hadad was chatting with Mrs. Sigsby’s secretary or assistant or whatever she was, and waiting for him. “I’ll take you back to your room. Close at my side, right? No running for the trees.”

They went out, started across to the residence building, and then Luke stopped as a wave of dizziness came over him. “Wait,” he said. “Hold on.”

He bent down, grasping his knees. For a moment colored lights swarmed in front of his eyes.

“You going to pass out?” Hadad asked. “What do you think?”

“No,” Luke said, “but give me a few more seconds.”

“Sure. You got a shot, right?”

“Yes.”

Hadad nodded. “It hits some kids that way. Delayed reaction.”

Luke expected to be asked if he saw spots or dots, but Hadad just waited, whistling through his teeth and waving at the swarming noseeums.

Luke thought about Mrs. Sigsby’s cold gray eyes, and her flat refusal to tell him how a place like this could possibly exist without some form of… what would be the correct term? Extreme rendition, maybe. It was as if she were daring him to do the math.

Do as you’re told, you’ll come out into the sunshine. Trust me on that.

He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.

“Feeling better? Ready to go, my son?”

“Yes.” Luke straightened up. “But I’m not your son.”

Hadad grinned; a gold tooth flashed. “For now you are. You’re a son of the Institute, Luke. Might as well relax and get used to it.”

12

Once they were inside the residence building, Hadad called the elevator, said “Seeya later, alligator,” and stepped in. Luke started back to his room and saw Nicky Wilholm sitting on the floor opposite the ice machine, eating a peanut butter cup. Above him was a poster showing two cartoon chipmunks with comic-strip word balloons coming from their grinning mouths. The one on the left was saying, “Live the life you love!” The other was saying, “Love the life you live!” Luke stared at this, bemused.

“What do you call a poster like that in a place like this, smart kid?” Nicky asked. “Irony, sarcasm, or bullshit?”

“All three,” Luke said, and sat down beside him.

Nicky held out the Reese’s package. “Want the other one?”

Luke did. He said thanks, stripped off the crinkly paper the candy sat in, and ate the peanut butter cup in three quick bites.

Nicky watched him, amused. “Had your first shot, didn’t you? They make you crave sugar. You may not want much for supper, but you’ll eat dessert. Guaranteed. Seen any dots yet?”

“No.” Then he remembered bending over and grasping his knees while he waited for the dizziness to pass. “Maybe. What are they?”

“The techs call em the Stasi Lights. They’re part of the prep. I’ve only had a few shots and hardly any weird tests, because I’m a TK-pos. Same as George, and Sha’s TP-pos. You get more if you’re just ordinary.” He considered. “Well, none of us are ordinary or we wouldn’t be here, but you know what I mean.”

“Are they trying to up our ability?”

Nicky shrugged.

“What are they prepping us for?”

“Whatever goes on in Back Half. How’d it go with the queen bitch? Did she give you the speech about serving your country?”

“She said I’d been conscripted. I feel more like I got press-ganged. Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see, when captains needed men to crew their ships—”

“I know what press gangs were, Lukey. I did go to school, you know. And you’re not wrong.” He got up. “Come on, let’s go out to the playground. You can give me another chess lesson.”

“I think I just want to lie down,” Luke said.

“You do look kinda pale. But the candy helped, right? Admit it.”

“It did,” Luke agreed. “What did you do to get a token?”

“Nothing. Maureen slipped me one before she went off-shift. Kalisha’s right about her.” Nicky said this almost grudgingly. “If there’s one good person in this palace of shit, it’s her.”

They had arrived at Luke’s door. Nicky held up a fist, and Luke bumped it with his own.

“See you when the ding-dong goes, smart kid. In the meantime, keep your pecker up.”