“I won’t be a problem,” he said. “Whatever you mean to do, I won’t be a prob—”
The screening room doors slammed shut, cutting off his voice and also three of his fingers.
Dr. Hallas turned and fled.
Two other red caretakers emerged from the staff lounge beyond the stairway to the crematorium. They ran toward Kalisha and her makeshift cadre, both with drawn zap-sticks. They stopped outside the locked doors of Ward A, zapped each other, and dropped to their knees. There they continued to exchange bolts of electricity until both of them collapsed, insensible. More caretakers appeared, either saw or felt what was happening, and retreated, some few down the stairs to the crematorium (a dead end in more ways than one), others back to the staff lounge or the doctors’ lounge beyond it.
Come on, Sha. Avery was looking down the hall, past Phil—howling over the spouting stumps of his fingers—and the two dazed caretakers.
Aren’t we getting out?
Yes. But we’re letting them out, first.
The line of children began to walk down the hall to Ward A, into the heart of the hum.
23
“I don’t know how they pick their targets,” Maureen was saying. “I’ve often wondered about that, but it must work, because no one has dropped an atomic bomb or started a world-wide war in over seventy-five years. Think about what a fantastic accomplishment that is. I know some people say God is watching out for us, and some say it’s diplomacy, or what they call MAD, mutual assured destruction, but I don’t believe any of that. It’s the Institute.”
She paused for another drink of water, then resumed.
“They know which kids to take because of a test most children have at birth. I’m not supposed to know what that test is, I’m just a lowly housekeeper, but I listen as well as snitch. And I snoop. It’s called BDNF, which stands for brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Kids with a high BDNF are targeted, followed, and eventually taken and brought to the Institute. Sometimes they’re as old as sixteen, but most are younger. They grab those with really high BDNF scores as soon as possible. We’ve had kids here as young as eight.”
That explains Avery, Luke thought. And the Wilcox twins.
“They’re prepared in Front Half. Part of the prep is done with injections, part of it with exposure to something Dr. Hendricks calls the Stasi Lights. Some of the kids who come in here have telepathic ability—thought-readers. Some are telekinetics—mind over matter. After the injections and exposure to the Stasi Lights, some of the kids stay the same, but most get at least a little stronger in whatever ability they were taken for. And there are a few, what Hendricks calls pinks, who get extra tests and shots and sometimes develop both abilities. I heard Dr. Hendricks say once that there might be even more abilities, and discovering them could change everything for the better.”
“TP as well as TK,” Luke murmured. “It happened to me, but I hid it. At least I tried to.”
“When they’re ready to . . . to be put to work, they’re moved from Front Half into Back Half. They see movies that show the same person over and over. At home, at work, at play, at family get-togethers. Then they get a trigger image that brings back the Stasi Lights and also binds them together. You see . . . the way it works . . . when they’re alone, their powers are small even after the enhancements, but when they’re together, their strength increases in a way . . . there’s a math word for it . . .”
“Exponentially,” Luke said.
“I don’t know the word. I’m tired. The important thing is these children are used to eliminate certain people. Sometimes it looks like an accident. Sometimes it looks like suicide. Sometimes like murder. But it’s always the kids. That politician, Mark Berkowitz? That was the kids. Jangi Gafoor, that man who supposedly blew himself up by accident in his bomb-making factory in Kunduz Province two years ago? That was the kids. There have been plenty of others, just in my time at the Institute. You’d say there was no rhyme or reason to any of it—six years ago it was an Argentinian poet who swallowed lye—and there’s none that I can see, but there must be, because the world is still here. I once heard Mrs. Sigsby, she’s the big boss, say that we were like people constantly bailing out