Enders(51)

I hurried into the gown while this new woman, short and pasty, watched. She had me lie down on a platform. They put a helmetlike cage over my head and locked it down so I couldn’t move at all. I hated it. It was so restrictive, I could feel my pulse speeding up in the blood vessels in my head. Pound, pound, pound. I wanted to scream.

“Just relax,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere, anyway. Don’t move.”

She pressed another button and a coffin-like cage device encased my body.

“What is this?” I screamed.

With a buzzing sound that made me think of a saw, the platform slid back into the tube-shaped machine. There was no opening at the back. At the front, where I had entered, a panel slid down, shutting off any glimpse of the space outside.

Air started blowing, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I felt like every nerve in my body was on fire. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin, and I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest. The Ender’s voice came through a speaker near my ear.

“Hold your breath until I tell you to breathe again.”

“Starting when?” I asked.

“Now.”

I inhaled and held it for what seemed like a very long time. The machine made loud clanking noises, as if someone was working on the outside with a jackhammer. Just when I was about to burst, she spoke.

“Okay. Breathe.”

This went on for an eternity. Once, she claimed I took a breath too soon and I had to do it all over again. Eventually, the panel opened and she removed the restraints.

I rubbed my neck. I felt completely drained but so relieved to be out of there.

The next test involved one Ender holding a scanner near my head while another Ender monitored a computer to see the results. Of course they grabbed my chip ID number: they did that first thing. But what they were looking for after that, I had no idea.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “What are you trying to see?” They weren’t answering any of my questions. I was their lab rat.



I endured many more tests that examined my physical abilities, my eyesight, my ability to identify smells, tastes, tactile properties. Finally, they finished, or at least I thought so, because they gave me fresh clothes—a T-shirt and olive-colored pants—and gave me back my shoes.

I had to drink a glass of red liquid, and the next thing I knew, I was asleep.

I woke up on the floor of a room with gray padded rubber walls. A foam cushion sat in the corner, a cube that could be used as a stool. And in the opposite corner was a hole in the floor that made a constant vacuuming sound. The toilet.

This was my cell, outfitted so I could not hurt myself.

No projections in here. Or my shoes.

I spotted a security camera in the ceiling and one in the corner, up high. I yelled at it. “I’ve done all your tests. I want to see my friends!”

The camera lens just stared back at me.

There I was, locked up again. I pounded the walls with my fists but only made dull thumps. I screamed. No one answered.

I was far away from the outside world, far away from Tyler. He had to be worried about me. This was all supposed to be over with when the body bank came down. We were supposed to have a normal life, one where he would attend school and play games and fish in the lake. We were going to be a makeshift family, Michael and me and Tyler with Eugenia, a sort of substitute grandmother.

Eugenia. What could she be thinking, with Michael and me gone for so long? Was she calling the authorities? Would she try to comfort Tyler, making up a lie, assuring him we were fine? He’d see right through that.

I missed my little brother. I missed his rabbit-brown eyes, his soft hair, his shy smile. It was so good to see him healthy again, but I hardly had time to enjoy that because suddenly we had to leave the mansion, to run and hide. Had anything changed? It seemed like we were always running and hiding. Only now we ran from bigger and better houses.

What would happen to him if I never came back? Could Eugenia take care of him? Lauren was his legal guardian, but would she actually want to raise him?

I thought about the last time I was locked in a cell. Institution 37. No good had come of that.

How long had I been lying there unconscious? They must have drugged me.

Then I heard a man’s voice in my head.

Callie.

I sat perfectly still, waiting to hear it again.

Can you hear me?

It sounded like Dawson, but I wasn’t positive.

“Who is this?” I asked.

Who do you think it is?

“No games. I have too much time on my hands, so I’ll win.”

It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is that you can hear me.

It was Dawson, I was sure.

How are you feeling?

I remembered he had asked me that before—in that same clinical tone that contained no hint of actual concern.