Luke did as he was told. Sitting in the chair was certainly better than being bent over it with his bare butt sticking out. Besides, he was pretty sure what this was. He’d had his eyes examined before. In films, the nerdy kid genius always wore thick glasses, but Luke’s vision was 20/20, at least so far. He felt more or less at ease until Hendricks approached him with another hypo. His heart sank at the sight of it.

“Don’t worry, just another quick prick.” Hendricks hee-hawed again, showing buck teeth. “Lots of shots, just like in the Army.”

“Sure, because I’m a conscript,” Luke said.

“Correct, absolutely correct. Hold still.”

Luke took the injection without protesting. There was no flash of heat, but then something else began happening. Something bad. As Priscilla bent to put on one of those Clear Spots, he started to choke. “I can’t . . .” Swallow, was what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. His throat locked shut.

“You’re okay,” Hendricks said. “It will pass.” That sounded good, but the other doctor was approaching with a tube, which he apparently meant to jam down Luke’s throat if it became necessary. Hendricks put a hand on his shoulder. “Give him a few seconds.”

Luke stared at them desperately, spit running down his chin, sure they would be the last faces he would see . . . and then his throat unlocked. He whooped in a great gasp of air.

“See?” Hendricks said. “All fine. Jim, no need to intubate.”

“What . . . what did you do to me?”

“Nothing at all. You’re fine.”

Dr. Evans handed the plastic tube to Brandon and took Hendricks’s place. He shone a light into Luke’s eyes, then took a small ruler and measured the distance between them. “No corrective lenses?”

“I want to know what that was! I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t swallow!”

“You’re fine,” Evans said. “Swallowing like a champ. Color going back to normal. Now do you or don’t you wear corrective lenses?”

“I don’t,” Luke said.

“Good. Good for you. Look straight ahead, please.”

Luke looked at the wall. The sensation of having forgotten how to breathe was gone. Brandon pulled down a white screen, then dimmed the lights.

“Keep looking straight ahead,” Dr. Evans said. “If you look away once, Brandon is going to slap you. If you look away a second time, he’ll shock you—low voltage but very painful. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Luke said. He swallowed. It was okay, his throat felt normal, but his heart was still double-timing. “Does the AMA know about this?”

“You need to shut up,” Brandon said.

Shut up seems to be the default position around here, Luke thought. He told himself the worst was over, now it was just an eye test, other kids had been through this and they were fine, but he kept swallowing, verifying that yes, he could do it. They would project the eye chart, he would read it, and this would be over.

“Straight ahead,” Evans almost crooned. “Eyes on the screen and nowhere else.”

Music started—violins playing classical stuff. Meant to be soothing, Luke supposed.

“Priss, turn on the projector,” Evans said.

Instead of an eye chart, a blue spot appeared in the middle of the screen, pulsing slightly, as if it had a heartbeat. A red spot showed up below it, making him think of HAL—“I’m sorry, Dave.” Next came a green spot. The red and green spots pulsed in sync with the blue one, then all three began to flash off and on. Others began to appear, first one by one, then two by two, then by the dozens. Soon the screen was crowded with hundreds of flashing colored dots.

“At the screen,” Evans crooned. “The screeeen. Nowhere else.”

“So if I don’t see them on my own, you project them? Kind of like priming the pump, or something? That doesn’t—”

“Shut up.” Priscilla this time.

Now the dots began to swirl. They chased each other madly, some seeming to spiral, some to flock, some forming circles that rose and fell and crisscrossed. The violins were speeding up, the light classical tune turning into something like hoedown music. The dots weren’t just moving now, they had become a Times Square electronic billboard with its circuits fried and having a consequent nervous breakdown. Luke started to feel like he was having a breakdown. He thought of Harry Cross puking through the chainlink fence and knew he was going to do the same thing if he kept looking at those madly racing colored dots, and he didn’t want to puke, it would end up in his lap, it—

Brandon slapped him, good and hard. The noise was like a small firecracker going off both close and far away. “Look at the screen, sport.”

Something warm was running over his upper lip. Son of a bitch got my nose as well as my cheek, Luke thought, but it didn’t seem important. Those swirling dots were getting into his head, invading his brain like encephalitis or meningitis. Some kind of itis, anyway.

“Okay, Priss, switch off,” Evans said, but she must not have heard him, because the dots didn’t go away. They bloomed and shriveled, each bloom bigger than the last: bwoosh out and zip back in, bwoosh and zip. They were going 3-D, coming off the screen, rushing toward him, rushing back, rushing forward, rushing—

He thought Brandon was saying something about Priscilla, but that had to be in his head, right? And was someone really screaming? If so, could it be him?

“Good boy, Luke, that’s good, you’re doing fine.” Evans’s voice, droning from far away. From a drone high in the stratosphere. Maybe from the other side of the moon.

More colored dots. They weren’t just on the screen now, they were on the walls, swirling on the ceiling, all around him, inside him. It came to Luke, in the last few seconds before he passed out, that they were replacing his brain. He saw his hands fly up among the dots of light, saw them jigging and racing on his skin, became aware that he was thrashing from side to side in the chair.

He tried to say I’m having a seizure, you’re killing me, but all that came out of his mouth was a wretched gargling sound. Then the dots were gone, he was falling out of the chair, he was falling into darkness, and that was a relief. Oh God, what a relief.

14

He was slapped out of unconsciousness. They weren’t hard slaps, not like the one that had made his nose bleed (if that had indeed happened), but they weren’t love-taps, either. He opened his eyes and found himself on the floor. It was a different room. Priscilla was down on one knee beside him. She was the one administering the slaps. Brandon and the two doctors stood by, watching. Hendricks still had his iPad, Evans his clipboard.

“He’s awake,” Priscilla said. “Can you stand up, Luke?”

Luke didn’t know if he could or not. Four or five years ago, he’d come down with strep throat and run a high fever. He felt now as he had then, as if half of him had slipped out of his body and into the atmosphere. His mouth tasted foul, and the latest injection site itched like crazy. He could still feel his throat swelling shut, how horrible that had been.

Brandon didn’t give Luke a chance to test his legs, simply grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. Luke stood there, swaying.

“What’s your name?” Hendricks asked.

“Luke . . . Lucas . . . Ellis.” The words seemed to come not from his mouth but from the detached half of him floating over his head. He was tired. His face throbbed from the repeated slaps, and his nose hurt. He raised a hand (it drifted up slowly, as if through water), rubbed the skin above his lip, and looked without surprise at the flakes of dried blood on his finger. “How long was I out?”

“Sit him down,” Hendricks said.

Brandon took one of his arms, Priscilla the other. They led him to a chair (a plain kitchen chair with no straps, thank God). It was placed in front of a table. Evans was sitting behind it on another kitchen chair. He had a stack of cards in front of him. They were as big as paperback books and had plain blue backs.

“I want to go back to my room,” Luke said. His voice still didn’t seem to be coming from his mouth, but it was a little closer. Maybe. “I want to lie down. I’m sick.”

“Your disorientation will pass,” Hendricks said, “although it might be wise to skip supper. For now, I want you to pay attention to Dr. Evans. We have a little test for you. Once it’s finished, you can go back to your room and . . . er . . . decompress.”

Evans picked up the first card and looked at it. “What is it?”

“A card,” Luke said.

“Save the jokes for your YouTube site,” Priscilla said, and slapped him. It was a much harder slap than the ones she’d used to bring him around.