Sometimes the grownups took one of his friends away to give them a test, but Bobby and the others could still feel whoever they’d taken, like when they took Nick and gave him tests on Math and English and Bobby could feel him taking the test and even though Nick didn’t know some of the answers, Nick got them right because he had his friends there in his head.
But then later they took Nick further away and he was GONE from Bobby’s head and Bobby was scared that they had HURT him or KILLED him but they brought Nick back and Nick said they’d only given him special tests and so Bobby felt better.
The next day they took Bobby away and gave him tests on Math and English and Science, and made him play games and solve puzzles and he could still feel all his friends, but then after that they took him to a special room and they closed the door and he COULDN’T FEEL HIS FRIENDS and he started to get scared, but he remembered that Nick had come back and Tim said that all the other boys came back, and so he’d probably come back too.
Then they put a cap over his head and gave him a test of Spanish, at least he thought it was Spanish, because he didn’t know Spanish and he just guessed and did really badly at the test, but that wasn’t his fault if they were testing him on something he hadn’t studied.
And then they took him back to the room with all the others and he was glad when he could feel them all in his head again and they asked him to tell them all about it and he SHOWED them the <TEST> and the <CAP> and the <ROOM> where you couldn’t feel your friends in your head and the <SPANISH> and he was happy he had friends – friends that could understand him and he wanted to always have friends like this.
And that night he dreamed in Spanish and dreamed he was Pedro or Alfonso or Jose and the next day they took him away to the special room again where he couldn’t feel his friends and tested him in Spanish only this time he KNEW THE ANSWERS and even when they asked him questions they hadn’t asked yesterday he KNEW THE ANSWERS TOO.
And he knew it was because of Pedro and Alfonso and Jose and the Nexus in all their heads.
And that night, when they made him go to bed and he lay down and closed his eyes he felt something, another person, far far away, a sad person, alone, a person who felt less like his friends and more like his daddy. And Bobby reached out to that person so sad and so far away and tried to say hello.
19
THE LONG GOODBYE
Mid October
Sam and Jake argued for half the limping journey home.
“But I can be useful,” she said. “I know these kids. I love them. They love me!”
“I know, Sunee,” Jake replied. “I told them. I want you there. But the Mira Foundation is really careful. They’ve had… incidents.”
“There has to be another way.”
“Look, I think I can talk them into it, but it’s gonna take a while.”
“And what, I just wait for you to call? Not knowing when? Or if?”
“You know I want you there.”
“No,” Sam said. “I don’t!”
“Well maybe if you’d fucking let me in, you would,” Jake snapped.
Sam almost dropped him. “Fuck you. There has to be another way!”
Jake took a deep breath. “Sunee, we just have to do what’s best for the kids.”
“What, and that’s ripping away someone who wants to be there for them?”
“Jesus, Sunee, it isn’t just about you!”
“What about Khun Mae? She’s the one in charge, really.”
Jake sighed. “Khun Mae said yes.”
“You asked her before me?” Sam’s voice rose.
“Yeah,” Jake replied. “Because you’re taking it exactly how I expected.”
It was after dawn when they reached the home atop the hill. Silence filled the hours. They spoke just enough to agree on a story for the children. They put on their game faces at the end, smiled and projected happy thoughts.
And the children saw right through them.
Sam begged Jake and Khun Mae for a few days to come up with alternate ideas, then forced herself to think them through.
She could appeal to Ananda for money to keep the orphanage going.
She could go back to Phuket, take Lo Prang up on his offer, start a career as a prize fighter to raise funds.
She could start a charity, ask for donations.
She could sell samples of her own cells and their fourth-generation enhancements on the black market.
She considered each idea, and others, and discarded them all.
Ananda would be watched by the ERD.
She knew nothing about running a charity.
Winning fights for Lo Prang would raise her profile and increase the risk of the ERD finding her. And how long before the mobster asked her to hurt men outside the ring?
And her genetic tweaks… Selling them would mean deaths, somewhere, far away. Deaths of men and women like her, doing their jobs, trying to protect their country or save the innocent. She wouldn’t have that on her conscience, not even to save the orphanage.
In the end she had nothing.
The second night she woke to terror, to thoughts of faceless men bursting in, ripping her away, ripping Jake away, taking the children.
Nightmare!
It pressed down on her even after she woke. She looked at the doorway to her room and masked men appeared – bad men.
No, not real.
Not her nightmare, the children’s. It crested over her, paralyzing her, freezing her to this bed, trembling.
Get up! Sam yelled at herself, and the dream’s hold on her broke.
She forced herself out of the bed. The room was spinning, distorting, the corners alive with shadows of the men who were here to separate them. She lost her balance, fell against the wall, forced herself to clench her mind, push harder. She got the door open, then down the madhouse hallway, shadow hands reaching out to abduct her, reached the door to the room the girls shared, found Jake there already, waking the children, clutching Sarai to his chest.
Sam stumbled further to wake the boys, to project love and safety, to break them out of their terror.
The dream horror receded as the children woke, as Sam and Jake cuddled them, all together in one room now, where they could all see that everyone was safe.
Sam breathed hard, Kit clutched to her chest, beaming out love and safety and assurance to these children, as her head cleared.
Jake’s eyes met Sam’s, held them beseechingly.
Sam just stared at him, her chest still heaving.
The third night she sat on her bed, alone, the bed she hadn’t invited Jake into since he’d been attacked, and read up on the Mira Foundation.
Founded by biotech billionaire Shiva Prasad. The legend who’d risen from his childhood as an orphan in one of India’s poorest and most violent cities – a Dalit, an “untouchable”, a member of India’s lowest caste – to become a ruthless biotech titan. He’d left competitors ruined and underlings scarred process of making his billions. Then in later life he’d suddenly changed, become a philanthropist– a sort of midlife turnaround common among ultra-rich capitalists thinking of their legacy.
She read on. The Mira Foundation ran anti-poverty programs in India, Asia, and Africa. It backed education, nutrition, and vaccination efforts in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Nigeria, Kenya, dozens of other countries. They funded research into next generation bio-crops with higher yield and better nutrition, and open-sourced those they produced. They operated a network of extraordinarily effective orphanages in India and Asia.