Hendricks smiled a little. “Can’t wait to get rid of him, can you?”

“Actually, no,” Zeke said. “The Benson girl might not have infected him with chicken pox, but Wilholm passed on his fuck-you germ.”

“He goes as soon as I get a green light from Heckle and Jeckle.”

Zeke pretended to shiver. “Those two. Brrr. Creepy.”

Hendricks advanced no opinion on the Back Half doctors. “You’re sure he’s flat as far as telepathy goes?”

Zeke patted him on the shoulder. “Absolutely, Doc. Take it to the bank.”

14

While Hendricks and Zeke were discussing his future, Luke was on his way to lunch. As well as terrorizing him, the immersion tank had left him ravenously hungry. When Stevie Whipple asked where he’d been and what was wrong, Luke just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about the tank. Not now, not ever. He supposed it was like being in a war. You got drafted, you went, but you didn’t want to talk about what you’d seen, or what had happened to you there.

Full of the caff’s version of fettuccini alfredo, he took a nap and awoke feeling marginally better. He went looking for Maureen and spied her in the formerly deserted East Wing. It seemed the Institute might soon be hosting more guests. He walked down to her and asked if she needed help. “Because I wouldn’t mind earning some tokens,” he said.

“No, I’m fine.” To Luke she looked like she was ageing almost by the hour. Her face was dead pale. He wondered how long it would be before someone noticed her condition and made her stop working. He didn’t like to think about what might become of her if that happened. Was there a retirement program for housekeepers who were also Institute snitches? He doubted it.

Her laundry basket was half filled with fresh linen, and Luke dropped his own note into it. He had written it on a memo sheet he’d stolen from the equipment alcove in C-4, along with a cheap ballpoint pen which he’d hidden under his mattress. Stamped on the barrel of the pen was DENNISON RIVER BEND REALTY. Maureen saw the folded note, covered it with a pillowcase, and gave him a slight nod. Luke went on his way.

That night in bed, he whispered to Avery for a long time before allowing the kid to go to sleep. There were two scripts, he told Avery, there had to be. He thought the Avester understood. Or maybe the right word was hoped.

Luke stayed awake a long time, listening to Avery’s light snores and meditating on escape. The idea seemed simultaneously absurd and perfectly possible. There were those dusty surveillance bulbs, and all the times he had been left alone to wander, gathering in his little bits and bobs of information. There were the fake surveillance dead zones that Sigsby and her minions knew about, and the real one that they didn’t (or so he hoped). In the end, it was a pretty simple equation. He had to try. The alternative was the Stasi Lights, the movies, the headaches, the sparkler that triggered whatever it triggered. And at the end of it all, the drone.

When they stop testing, you might only have 3 days.

15

The following afternoon, Trevor Stackhouse joined Mrs. Sigsby in her office. She was bent over an open file, reading and making notes. She raised a single finger without looking up. He went to her window, which looked out on the East Wing of the building they called the Residence Hall, as if the Institute really were a college campus, one that happened to be situated in the deep woods of northern Maine. He could see two or three kids milling around snack and soda machines that had just been restocked. There was no tobacco or alcohol available in that lounge, hadn’t been since 2005. The East Wing was usually thinly populated or not populated at all, and when there were residents boarded there, they could get cigarettes and wine nips from the vending machines at the other end of the building. Some only sampled, but a surprising number—usually those who were the most depressed and terrified by the sudden catastrophic change in their lives—became addicted quickly. Those were the ones who gave the least trouble, because they didn’t just want tokens, they needed them. Karl Marx had called religion the opiate of the people, but Stackhouse begged to differ. He thought Lucky Strikes and Boone’s Farm (greatly favored by their female guests) did the job quite nicely.

“Okay,” Mrs. Sigsby said, closing her file. “Ready for you, Trevor.”

“Four more coming in tomorrow from Opal team,” Stackhouse said. His hands were clasped behind his back and his feet were spread apart. Like a captain on the foredeck of his ship, Mrs. Sigsby thought. He was wearing one of his trademark brown suits, which she would have thought a terrible choice for midsummer, but he no doubt considered it part of his image. “We haven’t had this many onboard since 2008.”

He turned from the view, which really wasn’t that interesting. Sometimes—often, even—he got very tired of children. He didn’t know how teachers did it, especially without the freedom to whack the insolent and administer a splash of electricity to the rebellious, like the now departed Nicholas Wilholm.

Mrs. Sigsby said, “There was a time—long before yours and mine—when there were over a hundred children here. There was a waiting list.”

“All right, there was a waiting list. Good to know. Now what did you call me here for? The Opal team is in place, and at least one of these pickups is going to be delicate. I’m flying out tonight. The kid’s in a closely supervised environment.”

“A rehab, you mean.”

“That is correct.” High-functioning TKs seemed to get along relatively well in society, but similarly high-functioning TPs had problems, and often turned to booze or drugs. They damped the torrent of input, Stackhouse supposed. “But she’s worth it. Not up there with the Dixon boy—he’s a powerhouse—but close. So tell me what’s concerning you, and let me go about my business.”

“Not a concern, just a heads-up. And don’t hover behind me, it gives me the willies. Drag up a rock.”

While he got the visitor’s chair from the other side of her desk, Mrs. Sigsby opened a video file on her desktop and started it playing. It showed the snack machines outside the cafeteria. The picture was cloudy, it jittered every ten seconds or so, and was occasionally interrupted by static frizz. Mrs. Sigsby paused it during one of these.

“The first thing I want you to notice,” she said, using the dry lecture-hall voice he had so come to dislike, “is the quality of this video. It’s totally unacceptable. The same is true of at least half the surveillance cams. The one in that shitty little convenience store in the Bend is better than most of ours.” Meaning Dennison River Bend, and it was true.

“I’ll pass that on, but we both know the basic infrastructure of this place is shit. The last total renovation was forty years ago, when things in this country were different. A lot looser. As it stands, we have just two IT guys, and one of them is currently on leave. The computer equipment is outdated, and so are the generators. You know all this.”

Mrs. Sigsby absolutely did. It wasn’t lack of funds; it was their inability to bring in outside help. Your basic catch-22, in other words. The Institute had to stay airtight, and in the age of social media and hackers, that became ever more difficult. Even a whisper of what they were up to out here would be the kiss of death. For the vitally important work they did, yes, but also for the staff. It made hiring hard, it made resupply hard, and repairs were a nightmare.

“That fritzing is coming from kitchen equipment,” he said. “Mixers, garbage disposals, the microwaves. I might be able to get something done about that.”

“Perhaps you can even get something done about the bulbs in which the cameras are enclosed. Something low-tech. I believe it’s called ‘dusting.’ We do have janitors.”

Stackhouse looked at his watch.

“All right, Trevor. I can take a hint.” She started the video again. Maureen Alvorson appeared with her cleaning basket. She was accompanied by two residents: Luke Ellis and Avery Dixon, the exceptional TP-pos who was now bunking in with Ellis most nights. The video might have been substandard, but the audio was good.

“We can talk here,” Maureen told the boys. “There’s a mic, but it hasn’t worked for years. Just smile a lot, so if anyone looks at the video, they think you’re buttering me up for tokens. Now what’s on your minds? And keep it short.”

There was a pause. The little boy scratched at his arms, pinched his nostrils, then looked at Luke. So Dixon was only along for the ride. This was Ellis’s deal. Stackhouse wasn’t surprised; Ellis was the smart one. The chess player.

“Well,” Luke said, “it’s about what happened in the cafeteria. To Harry and the little Gs. That’s what’s on our minds.”

Maureen sighed and put down her basket. “I heard about it. It was too bad, but from what I hear, they’re okay.”