On one of these expeditions (he always tried to look bored and aimless, a kid just passing the time before the next test or being allowed to go back to his room), Luke found a treasure. In the MRI room, which was empty that day, he spied one of the cards they used to operate the elevator lying half-hidden under a computer monitor. He walked past the table, picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket as he peered into the empty MRI tube. He almost expected the card to start yelling “Thief, thief ” when he left the room (like the magic harp Jack the beanstalk boy stole from the giant), but nothing happened, then or later. Didn’t they keep track of those cards? It seemed they did not. Or maybe it was expired, as useless as a hotel key card when the guest it had been computer-coded for checked out.
But when Luke tried the card in the elevator a day later, he was delighted to find it worked. When Dr. Richardson came across him a day later, peering into the D-Level room where the immersion tank was kept, he expected punishment—maybe a jolt from the zap-stick she kept holstered under the white coat she usually wore, maybe a beating from Tony or Zeke. Instead, she actually slipped him a token, for which he thanked her.
“I haven’t had that one yet,” Luke said, pointing to the tank. “Is it awful?”
“No, it’s fun,” she said, and Luke gave her a big grin, as if he actually believed her bullshit. “Now what are you doing down here?”
“Caught a ride with one of the caretakers. I don’t know which one. He forgot his nametag, I guess.”
“That’s good,” she said. “If you knew his name, I’d have to report him, and he’d get in trouble. After that? Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.” She rolled her eyes and Luke gave her a look that said I sympathize. She took him back to the elevator, asked him where he was supposed to be, and he told her B-Level. She rode up with him, asked him how his pain was, and he told her it was fine, all gone.
The card also took him to E-Level, where there was a lot of mechanical shit, but when he tried to go lower—there was a lower, he’d heard conversations about levels F and G—Miss Elevator Voice pleasantly informed him that access was denied. Which was okay. You learned by trying.
There were no paper tests in Front Half, but there were plenty of EEGs. Sometimes Dr. Evans did kids in bunches, but not always. Once, when Luke was being tested alone, Dr. Evans suddenly grimaced, put a hand to his stomach, and said he’d be right back. He told Luke not to touch anything and rushed out. To drop a load, Luke presumed.
He examined the computer screens, ran his fingers over a couple of keyboards, thought about messing with them a little, decided it would be a bad idea, and went to the door instead. He looked out just as the elevator opened and the big bald guy emerged, wearing the same expensive brown suit. Or maybe it was another one. For all Luke knew, Stackhouse had a whole closetful of expensive brown suits. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. He started down the hall, shuffling through them, and Luke withdrew quickly. C-4, the room with the EEG and EKG machines, had a small equipment alcove lined with shelves full of various supplies. Luke went in there without knowing if hiding was an ordinary hunch, one of his new TP brainwaves, or plain old paranoia. In any case, he was just in time. Stackhouse poked his head in, glanced around, then left. Luke waited to be sure he wasn’t going to come back, then resumed his seat next to the EEG machine.
Two or three minutes later, Evans hurried in with his white lab coat flying out behind him. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were wide. He grabbed Luke by the shirt. “What did Stackhouse say when he saw you in here by yourself? Tell me!”
“He didn’t say anything because he didn’t see me. I was looking out the door for you, and when Mr. Stackhouse got off the elevator, I went in there.” He pointed at the equipment alcove, then looked up at Evans with wide, innocent eyes. “I didn’t want to get you in any trouble.”
“Good boy,” Evans said, and clapped him on the back. “I had a call of nature, and I felt sure you could be trusted. Now let’s get this test done, shall we? Then you can go upstairs and play with your friends.”
Before calling Yolanda, another caretaker (last name: Freeman), to escort him back to A-Level, Evans gave Luke a dozen tokens and another hearty clap on the back. “Our little secret, right?”
“Right,” Luke said.
He actually thinks I like him, Luke marveled. How does that fry your bacon? Wait’ll I tell George.
2
Only he never did. There were two new kids at supper that evening, and one old one missing. George had been taken away, for all Luke knew while he himself was hiding from Stackhouse in the equipment alcove.
“He’s with the others,” Avery whispered to Luke that night as they lay in bed. “Sha says he’s crying because he’s scared. She told him that was normal. She told him they’re all scared.”
3
Two or three times on his expeditions, Luke stopped outside the B-Level lounge, where the conversations were interesting and illuminating. Staff used the room, but so did outside groups that sometimes arrived still carrying travel bags that had no airline luggage tickets on their handles. When they saw Luke—maybe getting a drink from the nearby water fountain, maybe pretending to read a poster on hygiene—most looked right through him, as if he were no more than part of the furniture. The people making up these groups had a hard look about them, and Luke became increasingly sure they were the Institute’s hunter-gatherers. It made sense, because there were more kids in West Wing now. Once Luke overheard Joe telling Hadad—the two of them were goodbuddies—that the Institute was like the beachfront town in Long Island where he’d grown up. “Sometimes the tide’s in,” he said, “sometimes it’s out.”
“More often out these days,” Hadad replied, and maybe it was true, but as that July wore on, it was definitely coming in.
Some of the outside groups were trios, some were quartets. Luke associated them with the military, maybe only because the men all had short hair and the women wore theirs pulled tight to the skull and bunned in back. He heard an orderly refer to one of these groups as Emerald. A tech called another Ruby Red. This latter group was a trio, two women and a man. He knew that Ruby Red was the group that had come to Minneapolis to kill his parents and snatch him away. He tried for their names, listening with his mind as well as his ears, and got only one: the woman who had sprayed something in his face on his last night in Falcon Heights was Michelle. When she saw him in the hall, leaning over the drinking fountain, her eyes swept past him… then came back for a moment or two.
Michelle.
Another name to remember.
It didn’t take long for Luke to get confirmation of his theory that these were the people tasked with bringing in fresh TPs and TKs. The Emerald group was in the break room, and as Luke stood outside, reading that poster on hygiene for the dozenth time, he heard one of the Emerald men saying they had to go back out to make a quick pickup in Missouri. The next day a bewildered fourteen-year-old girl named Frieda Brown joined their growing West Wing group.
“I don’t belong here,” she told Luke. “It’s a mistake.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Luke replied, then told her how she could get tokens. He wasn’t sure she was taking it in, but she’d catch on eventually. Everyone did.
4
No one seemed to mind Avery sleeping in Luke’s room almost every night. He was the mailman, and to Luke he brought letters from Kalisha in Back Half, missives that came via telepathy rather than USPS. The fact of his parents’ murder was still too fresh and hurtful for these letters to wake Luke from his half-dreaming state, but the news they contained was disturbing, all the same. It was also enlightening, although it was enlightenment Luke could have done without. In Front Half, kids were tested and punished for misbehavior; in Back Half they were being put to work. Used. And, it seemed, destroyed, little by little.