They talked a bit about their schools before they had been torn out of their normal lives—regular schools, so far as Luke could tell, not special ones for smart kids—and about their favorite TV programs and movies. All good until Iris raised a hand to brush at one freckled cheek, and Luke realized she was crying. Not much, just a little, but yeah, those were tears.

“No shots today, but I had that damned ass-temp,” she said. When she saw Luke’s puzzled expression, she smiled, which caused another tear to roll down her cheek. “They take our temperature rectally.”

The others were nodding. “No idea why,” George said, “but it’s humiliating.”

“It’s also nineteenth century,” Kalisha said. “They must have some kind of reason, but . . .” She shrugged.

“Who wants coffee?” Nick asked. “I’ll get it if you—”

“Hey.”

From the doorway. They turned and saw a girl wearing jeans and a sleeveless top. Her hair, short and spiky, was green on one side and bluish-purple on the other. In spite of this punk ’do, she looked like a fairy-tale child lost in the woods. Luke guessed she was about his age.

“Where am I? Do any of you know what this place is?”

“Come on over, Sunshine,” Nicky said, and flashed his dazzling smile. “Drag up a rock. Sample the cuisine.”

“I’m not hungry,” the newcomer said. “Just tell me one thing. Who do I have to blow to get out of here?”

That was how they met Helen Simms.

2

After they ate, they went out to the playground (Luke did not neglect to slather himself with bug-dope) and filled Helen in. It turned out that she was a TK, and like George and Nicky, she was a pos. She proved this by knocking over several pieces on the chessboard when Nicky set them up.

“Not just pos but awesome pos,” George said. “Let me try that.” He managed to knock over a pawn, and he made the black king rock a bit on its base, but that was all. He sat back and blew out his cheeks. “Okay, you win, Helen.”

“I think we’re all losers,” she said. “That’s what I think.”

Luke asked her if she was worried about her parents.

“Not especially. My father’s an alcoholic. My mother divorced him when I was six and married—surprise!—another alcoholic. She must have figured if you can’t beat em, join em, because now she’s an alkie, too. I miss my brother, though. Do you think he’s all right?”

“Sure,” Iris said, without much conviction, and then wandered away to the trampoline and began to bounce. Doing that so soon after a meal would have made Luke feel whoopsy, but Iris hadn’t eaten much.

“Let me get this straight,” Helen said. “You don’t know why we’re here, except it maybe has something to do with psychic abilities that wouldn’t even pass an America’s Got Talent audition.”

“Wouldn’t even get us on Little Big Shots,” George said.

“They test us until we see dots, but you don’t know why.”

“Right,” Kalisha said.

“Then they put us in this other place, Back Half, but you don’t know what goes on there.”

“Yup,” Nicky said. “Can you play chess, or just knock over the pieces?”

She ignored him. “And when they’re done with us, we get some sci-fi memory wipe and live happily ever after.”

“That’s the story,” Luke said.

She considered, then said, “It sounds like hell.”

“Well,” Kalisha said, “I guess that’s why God gave us wine coolers and Hi Boy Brownies.”

Luke had had enough. He was going to cry again pretty soon; he could feel it coming on like a thunderstorm. Doing that in company might be okay for Iris, who was a girl, but he had an idea (surely outdated but all the same powerful) about how boys were supposed to behave. In a word, like Nicky.

He went back to his room, closed the door, and lay down on his bed with an arm over his eyes. Then, for no reason, he thought of Richie Rocket in his silver space suit, dancing as enthusiastically as Nicky Wilholm had before dinner, and how the little kids danced with him, laughing like crazy and singing along to “Mambo Number 5.” As though nothing could go wrong, as if their lives would always be filled with innocent fun.

The tears came, because he was afraid and angry, but mostly because he was homesick. He had never understood what that word meant until now. This wasn’t summer camp, and it wasn’t a field trip. This was a nightmare, and all he wanted was for it to be over. He wanted to wake up. And because he couldn’t, he fell asleep with his narrow chest still hitching with a few final sobs.

3

More bad dreams.

He awoke with a start from one in which a headless black dog had been chasing him down Wildersmoot Drive. For a single wonderful moment he thought the whole thing had been a dream, and he was back in his real room. Then he looked at the pajamas that weren’t his pajamas and at the wall where there should have been a window. He used the bathroom, and then, because he was no longer sleepy, powered up the laptop. He thought he might need another token to make it work, but he didn’t. Maybe it was on a twenty-four-hour cycle, or—if he was lucky—forty-eight. According to the strip at the top, it was quarter past three in the morning. A long time until dawn, then, and what he got for first taking a nap and then falling asleep so early in the evening.

He thought about going to YouTube and watching some of the vintage cartoons, stuff like Popeye that had always had him and Rolf rolling around on the floor, yelling “Where’s me spinach?” and “Uck-uck-uck!” But he had an idea they would only bring the homesickness back, and raving. So what did that leave? Going back to bed, where he’d lie awake until daylight? Wandering the empty halls? A visit to the playground? He could do that, he remembered Kalisha saying the playground was never locked, but it would be too spooky.

“Then why don’t you think, asshole?”

He spoke in a low voice, but jumped at the sound anyway, even half-raised a hand as if to cover his mouth. He got up and walked around the room, bare feet slapping and pajama bottoms flapping. It was a good question. Why didn’t he think? Wasn’t that what he was supposed to be good at? Lucas Ellis, the smart kid. The boy genius. Loves Popeye the Sailor Man, loves Call of Duty, loves shooting hoops in the backyard, but also has a working grasp of written French, although he still needs subtitles when he looks at French movies on Netflix, because they all talk so fast, and the idioms are crazy. Boire comme un trou, for instance. Why drink like a hole when drink like a fish makes much more sense? He can fill a blackboard with math equations, he can reel off all the elements in the periodic table, he can list every vice president going back to George Washington’s, he can give you a reasonable explanation of why attaining light speed is never going to happen outside of the movies.

So why is he just sitting here and feeling sorry for himself?

What else can I do?

Luke decided to take that as a real question instead of an expression of despair. Escape was probably impossible, but what about learning?

He tried googling the New York Times, and wasn’t surprised to get HAL 9000; no news for Institute kids. The question was, could he find a way around the prohibition? A back door? Maybe.

Let’s see, he thought. Let’s just see. He opened Firefox and typed in #!cloakofGriffin!#.

Griffin was H. G. Wells’s invisible man, and this site, which Luke had learned about a year ago, was a way to get around parental controls—not the dark web, exactly, but next door to it. Luke had used it, not because he wanted to visit porn sites on the Brod’s computers (although he and Rolf had done just that on a couple of occasions), or watch ISIS beheadings, but simply because the concept was cool and simple and he wanted to find out if it worked. It had at home and at school, but would it here? There was only one way to find out, so he banged the return key.

The Institue’s Wi-Fi munched awhile—it was slow—and then, just when Luke was starting to think it was a lost cause, took him to Griffin. At the top of the screen was Wells’s invisible man, head wrapped in bandages, badass goggles covering his eyes. Below this was a question that was also an invitation: WHICH LANGUAGE DO YOU WANT TRANSLATED? The list was a long one, from Assyrian to Zulu. The beauty of the site was it didn’t matter which language you picked; the important thing was what got recorded in the search history. Once upon a time, a secret passage beneath parental controls had been available on Google, but the sages of Mountain View had shut it down. Hence, the Cloak of Griffin.

Luke picked German at random, and got ENTER PASSWORD. Calling on what his dad sometimes called his weird memory, Luke typed in #x49ger194GbL4. The computer munched a little more, then announced PASSWORD ACCEPTED.