“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.”

MAUREEN AND AVERY

1

Luke slipped into a nap crowded with unpleasant dream fragments, only waking when the ding-dong went for supper. He was glad to hear it. Nicky had been wrong; he did want to eat, and he was hungry for company as well as food. Nevertheless, he stopped in the canteen to verify that the others hadn’t just been pulling his leg. They hadn’t been. Next to the snack machine was a fully stocked vintage cigarette dispenser, the lighted square on top showing a man and woman in fancy dress smoking on a balcony and laughing. Next to this was a coin-op dispensing adult beverages in small bottles—what some of the booze-inclined kids at the Brod called “airline nips.” You could get a pack of cigarettes for eight tokens; a small bottle of Leroux Blackberry Wine for five. On the other side of the room was a bright red Coke cooler.

Hands grabbed him from behind and lifted him off his feet. Luke yelled in surprise, and Nicky laughed in his ear.

“If you wet your pants, you must take a chance and dance to France!”

“Put me down!”

Nicky swung him back and forth instead. “Lukey-tiddy-ooky-del-Lukey! Tee-legged, toe-legged, bow-legged Lukey!”

He set Luke down, spun him around, raised his hands, and began to boogaloo to the Muzak drifting from the overhead speakers. Behind him, Kalisha and Iris were looking on with identical boys will be boys expressions. “Wanna fight, Lukey? Tee-legged, toe-legged, bow-legged Lukey?”

“Stick your nose up my ass and fight for air,” Luke said, and began to laugh. The word for Nicky, he thought, whether in a good mood or a bad one, was alive.

“Nice one,” George said, pushing his way between the two girls. “I’m saving that for later use.”

“Just make sure I get the credit,” Luke said.

Nicky quit dancing. “I’m starvin, Marvin. Come on, let’s eat.”

Luke lifted the top of the Coke dispenser. “Soft drinks are free, I take it. You just pay for booze, smokes, and snacks.”

“You take it right,” Kalisha said.

“And, uh . . .” He pointed at the snack machine. Most of the goodies could be had for a single toke, but the one he was pointing at was a six-token buy. “Is that . . .”

“Are you asking if Hi Boy Brownies are what you think they are?” Iris asked. “I never had one myself, but I’m pretty sure they are.”

“Yessum,” George said. “I got off, but I also got a rash. I’m allergic. Come on, let’s eat.”

They sat at the same table. NORMA had been replaced by SHERRY. Luke ordered breaded mushrooms, chopped steak with salad, and something going under the alias of Vanilla Cream Brulay. There might be smart people in this sinister wonderland—certainly Mrs. Sigsby hadn’t seemed like a dummy—but whoever made out the menus was perhaps not one of them. Or was that intellectual snobbery on his part?

Luke decided he didn’t care.