behind the desk. It’s no shield against the freezing air that blasts the back of my neck, raking icicles down my spine. My whole body clenches as I ease back, just a bit, to see who’s come in. I absorb the most important details: adult man, suit a little too tight, an outline of a holster under his jacket. The tightness in my shoulders doesn’t ease until he holds up some kind of ID badge, and the soldiers give a distracted wave in greeting.
The man’s focused on the kids. His shoes click a quick path toward them. They’ve been sucked into the void of the TV screen after years of separation, and nothing can break them out of it until the man reaches down to turn it off.
“Hey!” protests a kid in a plaid shirt, maybe fourteen at the most. They’ve given them all street clothes, and something about it looks unnatural to me—I wish I didn’t expect to see uniforms, I wish I’d never had to wear mine, but I don’t know how to mentally sort these kids without them wearing who they are and what they can do.
“I know,” the man says, his voice soothing; like he’s speaking to toddlers, not teenagers. “But I have something important I need to talk to you all about.”
I ease back a step, around the corner, toward the dark set of elevators behind me. A soldier passes by, bringing a box of supplies outside. Packing up, heading out. I can already see the direction this conversation is moving, and it cracks what’s left of my heart in half. Because the kids don’t.
“It might…” the man looks up to the ceiling for a moment, gathering his thoughts—or cursing his bad luck. His hands burrow deep into his pants pockets and he rocks back on his heels once, clearing his throat. “We’re hitting the road today. The hotel owners have plans to reopen, and it’s time to get you ready for the next phase of your lives.”
Next phase. Something in me coils so tight, I can’t breathe.
“Where are we going?” the girl sitting beside Mia asks.
Mia hasn’t so much as looked in the man’s direction; although she’s physically present, her mind is clearly skating a million miles away.
“We’re going to Chicago,” the man continues. “You’ll be given the procedure by a very skilled doctor there, and then safely re-homed.”
He seems relieved to have it out, the whole of it. The longer I stare in disbelief, the more it feels like the floor is knocking up against the soles of my shoes, trying to move me forward. To take all of these kids and run.
The procedure? The “miracle cure”? Do these kids even know what it involves—that they’d be letting this doctor drill into their skulls and implant some kind of device that might change who they are, or might one day stop working, or might not even work for them at all?
“I thought we had a choice?” one of them asks, the words trembling only a little. It’s another boy, all bony limbs and untidy hair, his knees drawn up to his chest. This one is even younger than the first. I’d put him at twelve. “That’s what the lady said.”
The man looks up at the ceiling again and taps his fingers against his leg, one at a time. I know what he’s doing now—counting to ten—to, what? Steady his temper? He’s annoyed with these kids? I bristle, feeling my hackles rise. My ribs ache from how hard I’ve wrapped my arms around them.
“There’s no law on the books saying that yet,” the man continues, his voice strained by the effort it’s clearly taking to sound patient and compassionate. “It’s hard to understand, I know—”
No. Nothing about this is hard to understand.
“But you’re our responsibility—you’re officially wards of the transitional government until otherwise notified, and it’s been decided that our wards will proceed with the instructions we were given.”
Unclaimed. Unwanted. And now, everything that they are…undone.
If he’d tried to use the argument that the procedure would make the kids less appealing as targets to snatchers, more appealing to prospective parents fostering and adopting them, I would have understood; I maybe even would have supported the idea just a little bit. But he doesn’t say that. There’s no other reason than because we said so, and I’m so tired of that attitude, that no-explanation explanation.
The man kneels down beside one of the younger girls. She can’t be more than thirteen, and I can see the