door to it. Luke had used it, not because he wanted to visit porn sites on the Brod’s computers (although he and Rolf had done just that on a couple of occasions), or watch ISIS beheadings, but simply because the concept was cool and simple and he wanted to find out if it worked. It had at home and at school, but would it here? There was only one way to find out, so he banged the return key.
The Institue’s Wi-Fi munched awhile—it was slow—and then, just when Luke was starting to think it was a lost cause, took him to Griffin. At the top of the screen was Wells’s invisible man, head wrapped in bandages, badass goggles covering his eyes. Below this was a question that was also an invitation: WHICH LANGUAGE DO YOU WANT TRANSLATED? The list was a long one, from Assyrian to Zulu. The beauty of the site was it didn’t matter which language you picked; the important thing was what got recorded in the search history. Once upon a time, a secret passage beneath parental controls had been available on Google, but the sages of Mountain View had shut it down. Hence, the Cloak of Griffin.
Luke picked German at random, and got ENTER PASSWORD. Calling on what his dad sometimes called his weird memory, Luke typed in #x49ger194GbL4. The computer munched a little more, then announced PASSWORD ACCEPTED.
He typed in New York Times and hit enter. This time the computer thought even longer, but eventually the Times came up. Today’s issue, and in English, but from this point forward, the computer’s search history would note nothing but a series of German words and English translations. Maybe a small victory, maybe a large one. For the moment, Luke didn’t even care. It was a win, and that was enough.
How soon would his captors realize what he was doing? Camouflaging the computer’s search history would mean nothing if they could do live look-ins. They’d see the newspaper and shut him down. Never mind the Times with its headline about Trump and North Korea; he ought to check the Star Trib before that could happen, see if there was anything about his parents. But before he could do that, the screaming started out in the hall.
“Help! Help! Help! Somebody help me! SOMEBODY HELP ME, I’M LOST!”
4
The screamer was a little boy in Star Wars pajamas, hammering on doors with small fists that went up and down like pistons. Ten? Avery Dixon looked six, seven at most. The crotch and one leg of his pajama pants were wet and sticking to him.
“Help me, I WANT TO GO HOME!”
Luke glanced around, expecting to see someone—maybe several someones—coming on the run, but the hall remained empty. Later, he would realize that in the Institute, a kid screaming to go home was par for the course. For the moment, Luke just wanted to shut the kid up. He was freaked out, and he was freaking Luke out.
He went to him, knelt down, and took the boy by the shoulders. “Hey. Hey. Take it easy, kid.”
The kid in question stared at Luke with white-ringed eyes, but Luke wasn’t entirely sure the kid was seeing him. His hair was sweaty and sticking up. His face was wet with tears, and his upper lip gleamed with fresh snot.
“Where’s Mumma? Where’s Daddy?”
Only it wasn’t Daddy but DAAAAAADY, like the whoop of an air raid siren. The kid began to stomp his feet. He brought his fists down on Luke’s shoulders. Luke let him go, got up, and stepped back, watching with amazement as the kid fell to the floor and began to thrash.
Across from the poster proclaiming this JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, a door opened and Kalisha emerged, wearing a tie-dyed tee-shirt and gigantic basketball shorts. She walked to Luke and stood looking down at the newcomer, her hands on her mostly nonexistent hips. Then she looked at Luke. “I’ve seen tantrums before, but this one takes the prize.”
Another door opened and Helen Simms appeared, clad—sort of—in what Luke believed were called babydoll pajamas. She had hips, plus other interesting equipment.
“Put your eyes back in their sockets, Lukey,” Kalisha said, “and help me out a little. Kid’s buggin my head like to give me a migraine.” She knelt, reached out for the dervish—whose words had now devolved into wordless howls—and pulled back when one of his fists struck her forearm. “Jesus, work with me here. Grab his hands.”