Only they thought he was just being paranoid about that guy Hollister, and that wasn’t good. For now he’d have to hope they were right, and Hollister was nobody special. They probably were right. After all, the Institute couldn’t have guys everywhere, could they?
“Okay, but first I need to tell you something and show you something.”
“Go for it,” Tim said. He leaned forward, looking intently into Luke’s face. Maybe he was just humoring the crazy kid, but at least he was listening, and Luke supposed that was the best he could expect for now.
“If they know I’m here, they’ll come for me. Probably with guns. Because they’re scared to death someone might believe me.”
“Duly noted,” Tim said, “but we’ve got a pretty good little police force here, Luke. I think you’ll be safe.”
You have no idea what you might be up against, Luke thought, but he couldn’t try to convince this guy anymore just now. He was just too worn out. Wendy came back and gave Tim a nod. Luke was too beat to care about that, either.
“The woman who helped me escape from the Institute gave me two things. One was the knife I used to cut off the part of my ear that had the tracker in it. The other was this.” From his pocket he drew out the flash drive. “I don’t know what’s on it, but I think you should look at it before you do anything else.”
He handed it to Tim.
12
The residents of Back Half—the front half of Back Half, that was; the eighteen currently in Gorky Park remained behind their locked door, humming away—were given twenty minutes of free time before the movie started. Jimmy Cullum zombie-walked his aching head to his room; Hal, Donna, and Len sat in the cafeteria, the two boys staring at their half-eaten desserts (chocolate pudding tonight), Donna regarding a smoldering cigarette she seemed to have forgotten how to smoke.
Kalisha, Nick, George, Avery, and Helen went down to the lounge with its ugly thrift-store furniture and the old flatscreen, which showed only prehistoric sitcoms like Bewitched and Happy Days. Katie Givens was there. She didn’t look around at them, only at the currently blank TV. To Kalisha’s surprise, they were joined by Iris, who looked better than she had in days. Brighter.
Kalisha was thinking hard, and she could think, because she felt better than she had in days. What they had done to Helen’s headache—Avery, mostly, but they had all pitched in—had helped her own. The same was true of Nicky and George. She could see it.
Take the place over.
A bold and delicious idea, but questions immediately arose. The most obvious was how they were supposed to do it, when there were at least twelve caretakers on duty—there were always more on movie days. The second was why they had never thought of this before.
I did, Nicky told her… and was his mental voice stronger? She thought it was, and she thought Avery might have also played a part in that. Because he was stronger now. I thought about it when they first brought me here.
That was as much as Nicky could manage to tell her mind to mind, so he put his mouth to her ear and whispered the rest. “I was the one who always fought, remember?”
It was true. Nicky with his black eyes. Nicky with his bruised mouth.
“We’re not strong enough,” he murmured. “Even in here, even after the lights, we only have little powers.”
Avery, meanwhile, was looking at Kalisha with desperate hope. He was thinking into her head, but hardly needed to. His eyes said it all. Here are the pieces, Sha. I’m pretty sure all of them are here. Help me put them together. Help me build a castle where we can be safe, at least for awhile.
Sha thought of the old, faded Hillary Clinton sticker on the back bumper of her mom’s Subaru. It said STRONGER TOGETHER, and of course that was how it worked here in Back Half. That was why they watched the movies together. That was why they could reach across thousands of miles, sometimes even halfway around the world, to the people who were in the movies. If the five of them (make it six, if they could work on Iris’s headache the way they had worked on Helen’s) were able to create that united mental force, a kind of Vulcan mind meld, shouldn’t that be enough to mutiny and take Back Half over?
“It’s a great idea, but I don’t think so,” George said. He took her hand and gave it a brief squeeze. “We might be able to screw with their heads a little, maybe scare the hell out of them, but they’ve got those zap-sticks, and as soon as they jolted one or two of us, it would be game over.”
Kalisha didn’t want to admit it, but told him he was probably right.
Avery: One step at a time.
Iris said, “I can’t hear what you guys are thinking. I know you’re thinking something, but my head still hurts bad.”
Avery: Let’s see what we can do for her. All of us together.
Kalisha looked at Nick, who nodded. At George, who shrugged and also nodded.
Avery led them into Iris Stanhope’s head like an explorer leading his party into a cave. The sponge in her mind was very big. Avery saw it as blood-colored, so they all saw it that way. They ranged themselves around it and began to push. It gave a little… and a little more… but then it stopped, resisting their efforts. George backed out first, then Helen (who hadn’t had all that much to contribute, anyway), then Nick and Kalisha. Avery came last, dealing the headache-sponge a petulant mental kick before withdrawing.
“Any better, Iris?” Kalisha asked, without much hope.
“What’s better?” It was Katie Givens. She had drifted to join them.
“My headache,” Iris said. “And it is. A little, anyway.” She smiled at Katie, and for a moment the girl who had won the Abilene Spelling Bee was in the room.
Katie turned her attention back to the TV. “Where’s Richie Cunningham and the Fonz?” she asked, and began rubbing at her temples. “I wish mine was better, my headache hurts like poop.”
You see the problem, George thought to the others.
Kalisha did. They were stronger together, yes, but still not strong enough. No more than Hillary Clinton had been when she ran for president a few years back. Because the guy running against her, and his supporters, had had the political equivalent of the caretakers’ zap-sticks.
“It helped me, though,” Helen said. “My own headache is almost gone. It’s like a miracle.”
“Don’t worry,” Nicky said. Hearing him sound so defeated scared Kalisha. “It’ll be back.”
Corinne, the caretaker who liked to slap, came into the room. She had one hand on her holstered zap-stick, as if she had felt something. Probably did, Kalisha thought, but she doesn’t know what it was.
“Movie time,” she said. “Come on, kiddies, move your asses.”
13
Two caretakers, Jake and Phil (known respectively as the Snake and the Pill), were standing outside the screening room’s open doors, each holding a basket. As the kids filed in, those with cigarettes and matches (lighters weren’t allowed in Back Half ) deposited them in the baskets. They could have them back when the show was over… if they remembered to take them, that was. Hal, Donna, and Len sat in the back row, staring vacantly at the blank screen. Katie Givens sat in a middle row next to Jimmy Cullum, who was lackadaisically picking his nose.
Kalisha, Nick, George, Helen, Iris, and Avery sat down front.