As he opened the door, she said, “It should have been me. Or George. Not Nicky. He was the one who never gave in to their bullshit. The one who never gave up.” She raised her voice. “Are you there? Are you listening? I hope you are, because I hate you and I want you to know it! I HATE YOU!”

She fell back on her bed and began to sob. Luke thought about going back to her, but didn’t. He had given all the comfort he could, and he was hurting himself, not just about Nicky but in the places where Dr. Richardson had stuck him. It didn’t matter if the woman with the dark hair had taken tissue samples, or put something into his body (trackers made no sense, but he supposed it could have been some sort of experimental enzyme or vaccine), because none of their tests and injections seemed to make sense. He thought again of the concentration camps, and the horrible, nonsensical experiments that had been conducted there. Freezing people, burning people, giving them diseases.

He went back to his room, considered taking one or even two of the Oxy pills, didn’t.

Thought about using Mr. Griffin to go to the Star Tribune, and didn’t do that, either.

He thought about Nicky, the heartthrob of all the girls. Nicky, who had first put Harry Cross in his place and then made friends with him, which was far bolder than beating him up. Nicky, who had fought their tests, and fought the men from Back Half when they came to get him, the one who never gave up.

27

The next day Joe and Hadad took Luke and George Iles down to C-11, where they were left alone for awhile. When the two caretakers came back, now equipped with cups of coffee, Zeke was with them. He looked red-eyed and hungover. He fitted the two boys with rubber electrode caps, cinching the straps tight under their chins. After Zeke checked the readouts, the two boys took turns in a driving simulator. Dr. Evans came in and stood by with his trusty clipboard, making notes as Zeke called out various numbers that might (or might not) have had to do with reaction time. Luke drove through several traffic signals and caused a fair amount of carnage before he got the hang of it, but after that, the test was actually sort of fun—an Institute first.

When it was over, Dr. Richardson joined Dr. Evans. Today she was dressed in a three-piece skirt suit and heels. She looked ready for a high-powered business meeting. “On a scale of one to ten, how is your pain this morning, Luke?”

“A two,” he said. “On a scale of one to ten, my desire to get the hell out of here is an eleven.”

She chuckled as if he had made a mild joke, said goodbye to Dr. Evans (calling him Jim), and then left.

“So who won?” George asked Dr. Evans.

He smiled indulgently. “It’s not that kind of test, George.”

“Yeah, but who won?”

“You were both quite fast, once you got used to the simulator, which is what we expect with TKs. No more tests today, boys, isn’t that nice? Hadad, Joe, please take these young men upstairs.”

On the way to the elevator, George said, “I ran over I think six pedestrians before I got the knack. How many did you run over?”

“Only three, but I hit a schoolbus. There might have been casualties there.”

“You wank. I totally missed the bus.” The elevator came, and the four of them stepped on. “Actually, I hit seven pedestrians. The last one was on purpose. I was pretending it was Zeke.”

Joe and Hadad looked at each other and laughed. Luke liked them a little for that. He didn’t want to, but he did.

When the two caretakers got back into the elevator, presumably headed down to the break room, Luke said, “After the dots, they tried you on the cards. A telepathy test.”

“Right, I told you that.”

“Have they ever tested you for TK? Asked you to turn on a lamp or maybe knock over a line of dominoes?”

George scratched his head. “Now that you mention it, no. But why would they, when they already know I can do stuff like that? On a good day, at least. What about you?”

“Nope. And I hear what you’re saying, but it’s still funny that they don’t seem to care about testing the limits of what we’ve got.”

“None of it makes any sense, Lukey-Loo. Starting with being here. Let’s get some chow.”

Most of the kids were eating lunch in the caff, but Kalisha and Avery were in the playground. They were sitting on the gravel with their backs against the chainlink fence, looking at each other. Luke told George to go on to lunch and went outside. The pretty black girl and the little white boy weren’t talking . . . and yet they were. Luke knew that much, but not what the conversation was about.

He flashed back to the SATs, and the girl who’d asked him about the math equation having to do with some guy named Aaron and how much he would have to pay for a hotel room. That seemed to be in another life, but Luke clearly remembered not being able to understand how a problem so simple for him could be so hard for her. He understood it now. Whatever was going on between Kalisha and Avery over there by the fence was far beyond him.

Kalisha looked around and waved him away. “I’ll talk to you later, Luke. Go on and eat.”

“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t talk to her at lunch, because she skipped it. Later, after a heavy nap (he finally broke down and took one of the pain pills), he walked down the hallway toward the lounge and the playground and stopped at her door, which was standing open. The pink bedspread and the pillows with the frou-frou flounces were gone. So was the framed photo of Martin Luther King. Luke stood there, hand over his mouth, eyes wide, letting it sink in.

If she’d fought, as Nicky had, Luke thought the noise would have awakened him in spite of the pill. The other alternative, that she had gone with them willingly, was less palatable but—he had to admit this—more likely. Either way, the girl who had kissed him twice was gone.

He went back to his room and put his face in his pillow.

28

That night, Luke flashed one of his tokens at the laptop’s camera to wake it up, then went to Mr. Griffin. That he still could go there was hopeful. Of course the shitheads running this place might know all about his back door, but what would be the point of that? This led to a conclusion that seemed sturdy enough, at least to him: the Minions of Sigsby might catch him peering into the outside world eventually, in fact that was likely, but so far they hadn’t. They weren’t mirroring his computer. They’re lax about some things, he thought. Maybe about a lot of things, and why wouldn’t they be? They’re not dealing with military prisoners, just a bunch of scared, disoriented kids.

Staging from the Mr. Griffin site, he accessed the Star Tribune. Today’s headline had to do with the continuing fight over health care, which had been going on for years now. The familiar terror of what he might find beyond the front page set in, and he almost exited to the desktop screen. Then he could erase his recent history, shut down, go to bed. Maybe take another pill. What you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you, that was another saying, and hadn’t he been hurt enough for one day?

Then he thought of Nick. Would Nicky Wilholm have backed out, had he known about a back door like Mr. Griffin? Probably not, almost certainly not, only he wasn’t brave like Nicky.

He remembered Winona handing him that bunch of tokens and how, when he dropped one, she called him butterfingers and told him to pick it up. He had, without so much as a peep of protest. Nicky wouldn’t have done that, either. Luke could almost hear him saying Pick it up yourself, Winnie, and taking the hit that would follow. Maybe even hitting back.

But Luke Ellis wasn’t that guy. Luke Ellis was your basic good boy, doing what he was told, whether it was chores at home or going out for band at school. He hated his goddam trumpet, every third note was a sourball, but he stuck with it because Mr. Greer said he needed at least one extracurricular activity that wasn’t intramural sports. Luke Ellis was the guy who went out of his way to be social so people wouldn’t think he was a weirdo as well as a brainiac. He checked all the correct interaction boxes and then went back to his books. Because there was an abyss, and books contained magical incantations to raise what was hidden there: all the great mysteries. For Luke, those mysteries mattered. Someday, in the future, he might write books of his own.

But here, the only future was Back Half. Here, the truth of existence was What good would it do?

“Fuck that,” he whispered, and went to the Star Trib’s Local section with his heartbeat thudding in his ears and pulsing in the small wounds, already closing, beneath the bandages.

There was no need to hunt; as soon as he saw his own school photograph from last year, he knew everything there was to know. The headline was unnecessary, but he read it anyway:

SEARCH GOES ON FOR MISSING SON OF SLAIN FALCON HEIGHTS COUPLE

The colored lights came back, swirling and pulsing. Luke squinted through them, turned off the laptop, got up on legs that didn’t feel like his legs, and went to his bed in two trembling strides. There he lay in the mild glow of the bedside lamp, staring up at the ceiling. At last those nasty pop-art dots began to fade.