“Luke, it will never work. If we go there, the van may be waiting at the airport, but if this Institute is what you say it is, the two of us will be ambushed and killed when we get there. Your friends and the other kids, as well. That leaves Wendy, and she’ll do her best, but it will be days before anyone shows up there—I know how law enforcement works when something comes up outside of normal protocol. If they find the place, it will be empty except for the bodies. They may be gone, too. You say they have a disposal system for the…” Tim didn’t know exactly how to put it. “For the used kids.”
“I know all that,” Luke said. “It’s not about us, it’s about them. The kids. All I’m buying is time. Something’s happening there. And not just there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m stronger now,” Luke said, “and we’re over a thousand miles from the Institute. I’m a part of the Institute kids, but it’s not just them anymore. If it was, I never could have pushed up that guy’s gun with my mind. Empty pizza pans were the best I could do, remember?”
“Luke, I just don’t—”
Luke concentrated. For a moment he had an image of the telephone in their front hall ringing, and knew if it was answered, someone would ask, “Do you hear me?” Then that image was replaced by the colored dots and a faint humming sound. The dots were dim rather than bright, which was good. He wanted to show Tim, but not hurt him… and hurting him would be so easy.
Tim stumbled forward into the chainlink fence, as if pushed by invisible hands, and got his forearms up just in time to keep from dashing his face.
“Tim?” Wendy called.
“I’m okay,” Tim said. “Keep your eyes on them, Wendy.” He looked at Luke. “You did that?”
“It didn’t come from me, it came through me,” Luke said. Because they had time now (a little at least), and because he was curious, he asked, “What was it like?”
“A strong gust of wind.”
“Sure it was strong,” Luke said. “Because we’re stronger together. That’s what Avery says.”
“He’s the little kid.”
“Yes. He was the strongest one they’ve had in a long time. Maybe years. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m thinking they must have put him in the immersion tank—given that near-death experience that enhances the Stasi Lights, only with none of the limiting injections.”
“I’m not following you.”
Luke didn’t seem to hear him. “It was punishment, I bet, for helping me get away.” He tilted his head toward the van. “Mrs. Sigsby might know. It might even have been her idea. Anyway, it backfired. It must have, because they mutinied. The Ward A kids have got the real power. Avery unlocked it.”
“But not enough power to get them out of where they’re trapped.”
“Not yet,” Luke said. “But I think they will.”
“Why? How?”
“You got me thinking when you said Mrs. Sigsby and Stackhouse must have their own bosses. I should have figured that out for myself, but I never looked that far. Probably because parents and teachers are the only bosses kids have. If there are more bosses, why wouldn’t there be more Institutes?”
A car came into the lot, passed them, and disappeared in a wink of red taillights. When it was gone, Luke continued.
“Maybe the one in Maine is the only one in America, or maybe there’s one on the West Coast. You know, like bookends. But there might be one in the UK… and in Russia… India… China… Germany… Korea. It stands to reason, when you think of it.”
“A mind race instead of an arms race,” Tim said. “That’s what you’re saying?”
“I don’t think it’s a race. I think all the Institutes are working together. I don’t know that for sure, but it feels right. A common goal. A good one, sort of—killing a few kids to keep the whole human race from killing itself. A trade-off. God knows how long it’s been going on, but there’s never been a mutiny until now. Avery and my other friends started it, but it could spread. It might be spreading already.”
Tim Jamieson was no historian or social scientist, but he kept up with current events, and he thought Luke could be right. Mutiny—or revolution, to use a less pejorative term—was like a virus, especially in the Information Age. It could spread.
“The power each of us has—the reason they kidnapped us and brought us to the Institute in the first place—is just little. The power of all of us together is stronger. Especially the Ward A kids. With their minds gone, the power is all that’s left. But if there are more Institutes, if they know what’s happening at ours, and if they were all to band together…”
Luke shook his head. He was thinking again of the phone in their front hall, only grown to enormous size.
“If that happened, it would be big, and I mean really big. That’s why we need time. If Stackhouse thinks I’m an idiot so eager to save my friends I’d make an idiotic deal, that’s good.”
Tim could still feel that phantom gust of wind that had shoved him into the fence. “We’re not exactly going there to save them, are we?”
Luke regarded him soberly. With his dirty bruised face and bandaged ear, he looked like the most harmless of children. Then he smiled, and for a moment didn’t look harmless at all.
“No. We’re going to pick up the pieces.”
8
Kalisha Benson, Avery Dixon, George Iles, Nicholas Wilholm, Helen Simms.
Five kids sitting at the end of the access tunnel, next to the locked door giving (not that it would give) on Front Half’s F-Level. Katie Givens and Hal Leonard had been with them for awhile, but now they had joined the Ward A kids, walking with them when they walked, joining hands when they decided to make one of those rings. So had Len, and Kalisha’s hopes for Iris were fading, although so far Iris was just looking on as the Ward A kids circled, broke apart, then circled again. Helen had come back, was fully with them. Iris might be too far gone. The same with Jimmy Cullum and Donna Gibson, whom Kalisha had known in Front Half—thanks to her chicken pox, she had been around much longer than the usual residents there. The Ward A kids made her sad, but Iris was worse. The possibility that she might be fucked up beyond repair… that idea was…
“Horrible,” Nicky said.
She looked at him half-scoldingly. “Are you in my head?”
“Yeah, but not looking through your mental underwear drawer,” Nicky said, and Kalisha snorted.
“We’re all in each other’s heads now,” George said. He cocked a thumb at Helen. “Do you really think I wanted to know she laughed so hard at some friend’s pajama party that she peed herself? That’s an authentic case of TMI.”
“Better than finding out you worry about psoriasis on your—” Helen began, but Kalisha told her to hush.
“What time is it, do you think?” George asked.
Kalisha consulted her bare wrist. “Skin o’clock.”
“Feels like eleven to me,” Nicky said.
“You know something funny?” Helen said. “I always hated the hum. I knew it was stripping my brains.”
“We all knew,” George said.
“Now I sort of like it.”
“Because it’s power,” Nicky said. “Their power, until we took it back.”
“A carrier wave,” George said. “And now it’s constant. Just waiting for a broadcast.”
Hello, do you hear me? Kalisha thought, and the shiver that shook her was not entirely unpleasant.
Several of the Ward As linked hands. Iris and Len joined them. The hum cycled up. So did the pulse in the overhead fluorescents. Then they let go and the hum dropped back to its previous low level.