Luke’s ear began to ring, but at least his head felt a little clearer. He looked at Priscilla and saw no hesitation. No regret. Zero empathy. Nothing. Luke realized he wasn’t a child at all to her. She had made some crucial separation in her mind. He was a test subject. You made it do what you wanted, and if it didn’t, you administered what the psychologists called negative reinforcement. And when the tests were over? You went down to the break room for coffee and Danish and talked about your own kids (who were real kids) or bitched about politics, sports, whatever.

But hadn’t he known that already? He supposed so, only knowing a thing and having the truth of it redden your skin were two different things. Luke could see a time coming—and it wouldn’t be long—when he would cringe every time someone raised an open hand to him, even if it was only to shake or give a high five.

Evans laid the card carefully aside, and took another from the stack. “How about this one, Luke?”

“I told you, I don’t know! How can I know what—”

Priscilla slapped him again. The ringing was stronger now, and Luke began to cry. He couldn’t help it. He had thought the Institute was a nightmare, but this was the real nightmare, being half out of his body and asked to say what was on cards he couldn’t see and getting slapped when he said he didn’t know.

“Try, Luke,” Hendricks said into the ear that wasn’t ringing.

“I want to go back to my room. I’m tired. And I feel sick.”

Evans set the second card aside and picked up a third one. “What is it?”

“You’ve made a mistake,” Luke said. “I’m TK, not TP. Maybe Kalisha could tell you what’s on those cards, and I’m sure Avery could, but I’m not TP!”

Evans picked up a fourth. “What is it? No more slaps. Tell me, or this time Brandon will shock you with his zap-stick, and it will hurt. You probably won’t have another seizure, but you might, so tell me, Luke, what is it?”

“The Brooklyn Bridge!” he shouted. “The Eiffel Tower! Brad Pitt in a tuxedo, a dog taking a shit, the Indy 500, I don’t know!”

He waited for the zap-stick—some kind of Taser, he supposed. Maybe it would crackle, or maybe it would make a humming sound. Maybe it would make no sound at all and he’d just jerk and fall on the floor, twitching and drooling. Instead, Evans set the card aside and motioned Brandon to step away. Luke felt no relief.

He thought, I wish I was dead. Dead and out of this.

“Priscilla,” Hendricks said, “take Luke back to his room.”

“Yes, Doctor. Bran, help me with him as far as the elevator.”

By the time they got him there, Luke felt reintegrated again, his mind slipping back into gear. Had they really turned off the projector? And he still kept seeing the dots?

“You made a mistake.” Luke’s mouth and throat were very dry. “I’m not what you people call a TP. You know that, right?”

“Whatever,” Priscilla said indifferently. She turned to Brandon and with a real smile became a new person. “I’ll see you later, right?”

Brandon grinned. “You bet.” He turned to Luke, suddenly made a fist, and drove it at Luke’s face. He stopped an inch short of Luke’s nose, but Luke cringed and cried out. Brandon laughed heartily, and Priscilla gave him an indulgent boys-will-be-boys smile.

“Shake her easy, Luke,” Brandon said, and headed off down the C-Level hall in a modified swagger, his holstered zap-stick bumping against his hip.

Back in the main corridor—what Luke now understood to be the residents’ wing—the little girls, Gerda and Greta, were standing and watching with wide, frightened eyes. They were holding hands and clutching dolls as identical as they were. They reminded Luke of twins in some old horror movie.

Priscilla accompanied him to his door and walked away without saying anything. Luke went in, saw that no one had come to take away his laptop, and collapsed on his bed without even taking off his shoes. There he slept for the next five hours.

15

Mrs. Sigsby was waiting when Dr. Hendricks, aka Donkey Kong, entered the private suite adjacent to her office. She was perched on the small sofa. He handed her a file. “I know you worship hard copy, so here you are. Much good it will do you.”

She didn’t open it. “It can’t do me good or harm, Dan. These are your tests, your secondary experiments, and they don’t seem to be panning out.”

He set his jaw stubbornly. “Agnes Jordan. William Gortsen. Veena Patel. Two or three others whose names now escape me. Donna something. We had positive results with all of them.”

She sighed and primped at her thinning hair. Hendricks thought Siggers had a bird’s face: a sharp nose instead of a beak, but the same avid little eyes. A bird’s face with a bureaucrat’s brain behind it. Hopeless, really. “And dozens of pinks with whom you had no results at all.”

“Perhaps that’s true, but think about it,” he said, because what he wanted to say—How can you be so stupid?—would get him in a world of trouble. “If telepathy and telekinesis are linked, as my experiments suggest they are, there may be other psychic abilities, as well, latent and just waiting to be brought to the fore. What these kids can do, even the most talented ones, may only be the tip of the iceberg. Suppose psychic healing is a real possibility? Suppose a glioblastoma tumor like the one that killed John McCain could be cured simply by the power of thought? Suppose these abilities could be channeled to lengthen life, perhaps to a hundred and fifty years, even longer? What we’re using them for doesn’t have to be the end; it might only be the beginning!”

“I’ve heard all this before,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “And read it in what you’re pleased to call your mission statement.”

But you don’t understand, he thought. Neither does Stackhouse. Evans does, sort of, but not even he sees the vast potential. “It’s not as though the Ellis boy or Iris Stanhope are especially valuable. We don’t call them pinks for nothing.” He made a pish sound, and waved his hand.

“That was truer twenty years ago than it is today,” Mrs. Sigsby replied. “Even ten.”

“But—”

“Enough, Dan. Did the Ellis boy show indications of TP, or didn’t he?”

“No, but he continued to see the lights after the projector was turned off, which we believe is an indicator. A strong indicator. Then, unfortunately, he had a seizure. Which isn’t uncommon, as you know.”

She sighed. “I have no objection to you continuing your tests with the Stasi Lights, Dan, but you need to keep perspective here. Our main purpose is to prepare the residents for Back Half. That’s the important thing, the main objective. Any side-effects are not of great concern. The management isn’t interested in the psychic equivalent of Rogaine.”

Hendricks recoiled as if she had struck at him. “A hypertension medicine that also proved able to grow hair on the skulls of bald suburbanites is hardly in the same league as a procedure that could change the course of human existence!”

“Perhaps not, and perhaps if your tests had caused more frequent results, I—and the people who pay our salaries—might be more excited. But all you have now are a few random hits.”

He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again when she gave him her most forbidding look.

“You can continue your tests for the time being, be content with that. You should be, considering that we have lost several children as a result of them.”

“Pinks,” he said, and made that dismissive pish sound again.

“You act as though they were a dime a dozen,” she said. “Maybe once they were, but no more, Dan. No more. In the meantime, here’s a file for you.”

It was a red file. Stamped across it was RELOCATION.

16

When Luke walked into the lounge that evening, he found Kalisha sitting on the floor with her back against one of the big windows looking out on the playground. She was sipping from one of the small bottles of alcohol available for purchase in the snack machine.

“You drink that stuff?” he asked, sitting down beside her. In the playground, Avery and Helen were on the trampoline. She was apparently teaching him how to do a forward roll. Soon it would be too dark and they’d have to come in. Although never closed, the playground had no lights, and that discouraged most nighttime visits.

“First time. Used all my tokens. It’s pretty horrible. Want some?” She held out the bottle, which contained a beverage called Twisted Tea.

“I’ll pass. Sha, why didn’t you tell me that light test was so bad?”

“Call me Kalisha. You’re the only one who does, and I like it.” Her voice was the tiniest bit slurred. She couldn’t have drunk more than a few ounces of the alcoholic tea, but he supposed she wasn’t used to it.

“All right. Kalisha. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugged. “They make you look at dancing colored lights until you get a little woozy. What’s so bad about that?” That came out tha.

“Really? Is that all that happened to you?”

“Yes. Why? What happened to you?”

“They gave me a shot first, and I had a reaction. My throat closed up. I thought for a minute I was going to die.”