An icy silence fell. Dawson cleared his throat.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Emma smiled. I went over and took her arm.
“We know chips can explode,” I said. “I saw it happen, at the mall. Someone set it off.”
“That’s different.” She pulled her arm away. “No one’s going to be setting mine off. They’re going to remove it.”
She had a point.
Hyden came over. “It’s proof there’s an explosive component in there.” He gestured to her head. “The webbing of my design is entwined with the explosive.”
“So you do know something about removing the chip after all,” Dawson said.
“It’s like a hundred random cords in a junk drawer,” Hyden said. “I can’t tell you how to untangle them.”
Dawson stared at Hyden a moment. Then he shouted to the Doctor. “Get Emma prepped for surgery!”
Before Emma left, she leaned over to me and whispered, “You should get yours done too. What if they don’t want to take out everyone’s? Better get in while you have the chance.”
She looked the happiest I’d ever seen her as she strolled out of the room with the Doctor, Dawson, and a guard.
Michael came up to me. “Are they really going to do this?”
Hyden shook his head. “It’s insane.”
But I understood everything Emma said. I felt the same way. I wanted more than anything to be normal again. And she was right: we’d never be safe until we were rid of the chips. Someone would always be jacking us or trying to kidnap us to get the chip. And I’d rather be opened by this expert surgeon than some thief.
Still, Hyden, who should have known better than anyone, looked pale at the thought of Emma going under the knife.
“I’d heard maybe the chip would be disabled if someone tried to remove it. To protect the technology, it would self-destruct,” I said to Hyden. “And maybe explode.”
“It was my father’s idea. I found out too late he’d put the explosive in my design.”
He looked distracted. Upset. Michael held my hand to comfort me. Hyden noticed and his eyes reflected pain. I wanted to do something, anything to connect the three of us in this moment, while we waited to hear the fate of one of our own.
I reached out my hand to him.
He looked surprised. Then he walked away.
I knew he couldn’t touch me. But I had to try.
An Ender brought out hot chocolate and sandwiches for us. Hot chocolate? I felt so confused. Were we prisoners or experiments? Were we going to get what we wanted most, to get the chips removed? But then they wouldn’t need us anymore. Maybe we were stupid to hope they would let us go.
All we could do was wait and see how well it worked with Emma. We pulled a table and chairs over into the corner of this huge space, far away from the doors and walls, to feel like we had a little privacy from any hidden cameras. We ate in silence, inhaling the food due to our hunger. Like all the furniture here, the table was totally utilitarian: folding legs, metal. Maybe they’d rented it. This whole place seemed like they’d moved in no more than a couple of months ago.
I sat between Hyden and Michael. When we finished, Michael pulled his chair over to my side. Hyden looked at us with a question on his face.
Michael put his arm around the back of my chair. Hyden got up and walked to the other side of this huge space, far beyond hearing range. I felt sorry for him, because it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t handle touching; it was his curse.
“Hey,” Michael said to me.
He tugged on my hair. He had that look on his face, that caring look that told me he understood how I felt. I was scared for Emma and scared for us. If they were able to get the chip out of her, what would happen next?
I leaned in to whisper to Michael, hoping the room was large enough that any cameras and mikes wouldn’t pick up our conversation. “So if they can get the chip out of Emma, they won’t need her anymore.”
He squinted, as if he was unable to imagine that. “What’re you saying?”
“What will they do with her? She could talk. She knows about this place. She knows about them,” I said.
I stared at the table. It had paint splatters on it. Red. I looked away.
“Don’t even think about that,” he said.
“What would they need with us, if they took the chips out?”
“Nothing,” he said. “So they’d let us go.”
“They’d want to keep Hyden because he invented the chip,” I said.
“You don’t think they bought that story that his dad invented it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You didn’t, did you?”