8
This time when she waved her card, she told the elevator to take them to C-Level. “Gosh, what
a pretty day!” she exclaimed as the car began to descend. This
seemed to be her standard
conversation opener.
Luke glanced at her hands. “I see you’re wearing a wedding ring. Do you have kids, Gladys?”
Her smile became cautious. “That’s between me, myself, and I.”
“I just wondered if you did, how you’d like them locked up in a place like this.”
“C,” said the soft female voice. “This is C.”
No smile on Gladys’s
face as she escorted him out, holding his
arm a little tighter than
absolutely necessary.
“I also wondered how you live with yourself. Guess that’s a little personal, huh?”
“Enough, Luke. I brought you juice. I didn’t have to do that.”
“And what would you say to your kids, if anyone found out what’s going on here? If it got,
you know, on the news. How would you explain it to them?”
She walked faster, almost hauling him along, but there was no anger on her face; if there had
been, he would at least have had the dubious comfort of knowing he’d gotten through to her.
But no. There was only blankness. It was a doll’s face.
They stopped at C-17. The shelves were loaded with medical and computer equipment.
There was a padded chair that looked like a movie theater seat, and behind it, mounted on a
steel post, was something that looked like a projector. At least there were no straps on the arms
of the chair.
A tech was waiting for them—ZEKE, according to the nametag on his blue top. Luke knew
the name. Maureen had said he was one of the mean ones.
“Hey there, Luke,” Zeke said. “Are you feeling serene?”
Unsure of how to reply, Luke shrugged.
“Not going to make trouble? That’s what I’m getting at, sport.”
“No. No trouble.”
“Good to hear.”
Zeke opened a bottle filled with blue liquid. There was a sharp whiff of alcohol, and Zeke
produced a thermometer that looked at least a foot long. Surely not, but—
“Drop trou and bend over that chair, Luke. Forearms on the seat.”
“Not with . . .”
Not with Gladys here
, he meant to say, but the door to C-17 was closed. Gladys was gone.
Maybe to preserve my modesty, Luke thought, but probably because she had enough of my
shit. Which would have cheered him up if not for the glass rod which would soon, he felt sure,
be exploring previously unplumbed depths of his anatomy.
It looked like the kind of
thermometer a vet might use to take a horse’s temperature.
“Not with what?” He wagged the thermometer back and forth like a majorette’s baton.
“Not with this? Sorry, sport, gotta be. Orders from headquarters, you know.”
“Wouldn’t a fever strip be easier?” Luke said. “I bet you could get one at CVS for a buck and
a half. Even less with your discount car—”
“Save your wise mouth for your friends. Drop trou and bend over the chair, or I’ll do it for
you. And you won’t like it.”
Luke walked slowly to the chair, unbuttoned his pants, slid them down, bent over.
“Oh yay,
there’s
that full moon!” Zeke stood in front of him. He had the thermometer in one
hand and a jar of Vaseline in the other. He dipped the thermometer into the jar and brought it
out. A glob of jelly dangled from the end. To Luke it looked like the punchline of a dirty joke.
“See? Plenty of lube. Won’t hurt a bit. Just relax your cheeks, and remind yourself that as long
as you don’t feel
both
of my hands on you, your backside virginity remains intact.”
He circled behind Luke, who stood bent over with his forearms on the seat of the chair and
his butt pushed out. He could smell his sweat, strong and rank. He tried to remind himself that
he wasn’t the first kid to get this treatment in the Institute. It helped a little . . . but really, not all
that much. The room was loaded with high-tech equipment, and this man was preparing to
take his temperature in the lowest-tech way imaginable. Why?
To break me down, Luke thought. To make sure I understand that I’m a guinea pig, and
when you have guinea pigs, you can get the data you want any old way you want. And maybe
they don’t even
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