12
Avery came to his room, concerned, and Luke told him to go away, he needed to be alone for
awhile.
“It was bad, wasn’t it?” Avery asked. “The tank. I’m sorry, Luke.”
“Thanks. Now go away. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay.”
Avery went, considerately closing the door behind him. Luke lay on his back, trying not to
relive those endless minutes submerged in the tank and doing it anyway. He kept waiting for
the
lights to come back, bobbing and racing through his field of vision,
turning circles and
making dizzy whirlpools. When they didn’t, he began to calm. One thought trumped all others,
even his fear that the dots might come back . . . and stay this time.
Get out. I have to get out. And if I can’t do that, I have to die before they take me to Back
Half and take the rest of me.
13
The worst of the bugs had departed with June, so Dr. Hendricks met with Zeke Ionidis in front
of the administration building, where there was a bench under a shady oak tree. Nearby was a
flagpole, with the stars and stripes flapping lazily in a light summer breeze. Dr. Hendricks held
Luke’s folder on his lap.
“You’re sure,” he said to Zeke.
“Positive. I dunked the little bastard five or six times, I guess,
each one fifteen seconds
longer, just like you said. If he could read minds, he would have done it, and you can take that
to the bank. A Navy SEAL couldn’t stand up to that shit, let alone a kid not old enough to have
more than six hairs on his balls.”
Hendricks seemed ready to push it, then sighed and shook his head. “All right. I can live with
that. We’ve got plenty of pinks right now, and more due in. An embarrassment of riches. But
it’s still a disappointment. I had hopes for that boy.”
He opened the file with its little pink dot in the upper righthand corner. He took a pen from
his pocket and drew a diagonal line across the first page. “At least he’s healthy. Evans gave him a
clean bill. That idiot girl—Benson—didn’t pass her chicken pox on to him.”
“He wasn’t vaccinated against that?” Zeke asked.
“He was, but she took pains to swap spit with him. And she had quite a serious case.
Couldn’t risk it. Nope. Better safe than sorry.”
“So when does he go to Back Half?”
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.
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