Everything centered on Henry. I couldn't get him out of my head. In fact, every moment that I sat in that dormitory room as Mallinkrodt had directed, waiting for whoever else stayed there to return, I felt him breathing, blinking, existing somewhere else, somewhere not too far but as far from me as ever. For every second that ticked by, he was in some other room, doing something or having something done to him, and I wanted to be there by his side. The torture of wondering what was happening, of wanting to be near him but being unable to be, was almost too much. I had to tame that part of me that wanted to run out of the room and start frantically trying doors, bolting through hallways. Reason told me I'd be taken down quickly. There were cameras, and they had resources I couldn't guess at. If they thought I was going to cause trouble, they'd restrict me even more or, as Mallinkrodt had implied, terminate me. I couldn't risk making rash decisions. I had to force my thoughts away from my current impotence and all the terrible images of what might be happening to Henry; I had to focus on more concrete matters or I'd totally lose it.

I tried to go over the information we'd gained. Our goal from the start had been to find out about ourselves, so what had we found? There'd been the article, which both of us had forgotten after running into Slim. That article—it had been about a murdered man whose son had been convicted and sent to Oliphant. We'd fleetingly wondered if Henry were that son, but if that were the case he'd had a family, and the Circuit--that red-haired woman--had said they took in only people without families. So that didn't make much sense. If the Circuit was bent on secrecy, why would they have taken in someone with a high-profile father? And why would they take him back, if Henry were indeed Mr. Hines's son? While the article was an intriguing coincidence, it probably didn't actually have anything to do with us. Additionally, Slim had said that Henry had been on the streets a long time, a scab for the Circuit. He could have been lying, of course, but I still didn't think the Circuit would've messed with some kid who actually had a family.

And then back to that woman. She'd told Henry he was a murderer as nonchalantly as if she'd told him he was a dog-walker. Very good at his job, she'd said. Could I really believe it of Henry? Who'd been so protective of me? Some cruel little voice in my head reminded me that I barely knew him, and that he'd committed larceny as easily and remorselessly as if he'd been doing it his whole life, and that yes, he was at the very least capable of killing someone . . . and even that maybe the only reason he'd been so concerned about me was because he'd hoped I could be of use to him . . . but my heart wouldn't listen to my head. I wanted so much to believe that Henry cared about me--I couldn't even consider what I'd do if he didn't.

And what about myself, anyway? Was I really a member of this Circuit, too? If so, I would have been at Oliphant for good reason. I would have committed crimes, too, just like my old roommates had. But Henry had said he'd felt something when that woman had told him he belonged here, and I still felt nothing. This place wasn't familiar to me, at least, not yet. And even with all we'd heard from Slim and from that woman and from these men, we still hadn't been told why our minds were gone. The woman had actually said that she didn't know why we couldn't remember, that Henry had just gone missing. Slim had said the same thing. But someone, somewhere had to know what had happened to us. Someone had sent us to Oliphant. That Mr. Aguado had certainly known about that and had tried to keep Henry there, hadn't wanted him to remember, yet . . . he was lying. They were all lying. They didn't want us to know what they'd done to us.

My stomach lurched. I'd tried to stop thinking about Henry and focus on myself, but everything came back to him. He was most definitely in danger. Mr. Aguado was going to lie to him for certain. He did know why Henry was at Oliphant. He did know why Henry couldn't remember. These Circuit people had to be lying to us. I instinctively stood and moved to the door, but then I stopped. Looking for Henry was still a stupid idea.

I took deep breaths, tried to calm the anxiety inside. To be rational. If Mr. Aguado had known that Henry's remembering was dangerous, then it would've made sense to put him in Oliphant, so wouldn't Henry's escape have messed up his plans? Wouldn't he just want to get rid of him at this point? So why keep him around? And even more, why would that woman talk to Henry as if he were the greatest? Oh God--what if they had gotten rid of him?

No. No, no, no. I would've known it. I don't know how I would've known, but I would've felt it. There was something in me that was so sure Henry was alive, that he was even nearby. It was like--like my body knew he was still breathing, still close. It couldn't just be wishful thinking; we were somehow connected. I'd know if he were gone. That gave me some reassurance but not much. Because whatever all of this was, I knew that these people were manipulating us. They had some end game, even if we didn't know it, and Henry, who I'd thought was so strong, had been too willing to believe what they'd told him. That worried me most of all.

When the other girls did finally come into the room, I'd worked my thoughts into a frenzy; I could hardly sit still. I knew I had to do something, at some point, but what that was, I didn't know. I'd decided to wait until I could gain more understanding of how this place operated and try to go from there, but truthfully, I was beginning to lose hope. The longer we were apart, the deeper they could be hiding him from me. I wished Henry were with me--he always seemed so certain. I hadn't had to think much when I was with him; I'd been perfectly happy to let him make the decisions.

The girls in my room, though—there were three. Two were black, and one was white. One of the black girls was really tall and thin. Her name was Daisha. She was thirteen and very pretty, told me she'd been brought in about a week ago. She was extremely quiet, though. Brittany was the other black girl. She was shorter than me and certainly younger--I guessed about eleven--but she had a ridiculous attitude, always snapping at the other girls; she reminded me of Roxie, just a lot of energy that, if misdirected, could be problematic. And Sapphire was the white girl. She was only nine years old, and she told me she'd picked her own name because she couldn't remember being called anything other than girl. The three of them accepted me into the room well enough, but because I didn't tell them much (half because I couldn't and half because I didn't want to), they didn't say a lot to me. On my part, I was almost embarrassed to be in a room with them. I was certainly older than all of them; even if I didn't know my age, my body alone revealed that I was at least fifteen or sixteen. So when they came back from wherever they'd been and went about their showers and clothing changes, I just sat on one of the beds and tried to figure out the right questions to ask them in order to gain information.

Then there was Pilar.

I met her about an hour after the other girls had come into the room. She'd burst through the door without any sort of warning, startling all of us. She was a short, solid, dark-featured girl, most likely around sixteen or seventeen, and she made it very clear that under no circumstances was I to do anything to defy or humiliate her. She explained that she was responsible for our room, and that we had to listen to her or suffer consequences. Each room in each hallway housed about three or four girls or boys, and an older recruit was in charge of each, making sure the younger and newer ones followed rules and schedules and such. When I asked her where she stayed, she wouldn't answer, and it became clear to me that this was part of the security system, here. The older recruits reported and spied on the younger.

When she left, I was alone with the other three. The fact that they were younger than I was gave me more confidence than Pilar had. I'd felt stupid having to listen to her, as if I were one of these children, but I didn't fear these three would find me suspicious if I asked some basic questions. So I tried. What I found out wasn't much. During the day, they went to various training exercises, based on where they'd been placed, but they couldn't give me much information on what they did in those training sessions. For meals, their food was brought to them, to their bedroom, and indeed, as we sat and talked, Pilar returned to deliver us dinner on trays. The food wasn't bad; it was better than the cafeteria food at Oliphant, at least, but it still was likely a microwaved meal. I wondered, as I tried to force myself to eat a bit, how long I'd been out of it. Henry and I had entered with Slim at dawn and gone straight to that woman's office. We couldn't have been there more than half an hour before we'd tried to escape and been shot by that stupid desk attendant, and I hadn't been awake for that long. So I must've been knocked out for at least six or seven hours. That perturbed me; sitting there with my tray, on a bed, I inadvertently placed a hand on my chest where the gun had shot me. It was slightly sore.

Concerned, I put my tray to the side and rose from my bed, saying I had to use the restroom. When I got in there, I shut the door and lifted my dress over my chest. Between my breasts, an inch or two beneath my collarbone, was a round red spot about the size of a dime. Leaning closer to the mirror, I saw that there was a tiny, dark dot in the middle of it, as if a needle had punctuated my skin there. I'd been injected with something. Why I hadn't thought to look earlier was beyond me; I supposed I'd been so wrapped up in thoughts of Henry. Had he wakened, yet? Had he been angry that I wasn't there?

I sighed, looked at my face in the mirror, and lowered my dress in sudden embarrassment. I was frustrated for being embarrassed by myself, my own body, but I didn't feel like I knew it. In some ways, it still felt foreign to me. I wasn't sure I was the person I saw reflected there.

Unable to return to eat whatever was on that tray, I turned the hot water way up in the shower and spent several minutes just letting the heat wash over me, trying to ascertain if what I'd felt the moment I'd lost consciousness--that static touch from Henry--whether it'd been real or some part of a dream.

After showering, I put my old clothing back on. Part of me wanted to throw it in the laundry basket that was in the bathroom and throw on one of the boring jumpsuits hanging in the closet, but I was afraid I wouldn't get my own clothes back. As much as I didn't like the shirt dress, it was the only thing of my own I'd arrived with, and it reminded me of being in that cabin with Henry. I couldn't lose myself entirely, here. The television screen was on when I came back into the room. I was surprised to find some very normal-looking program streaming on the television. The girls had a remote and control over what they watched. I just hadn't expected to see any sort of freedom, here. And they'd stacked their trays by the door, so I did as well. They talked a little and laughed with one another, and thought the whole thing still felt like another detention facility, there was something softer in it.

Pilar came in a little while later to collect the trays and give each girl a little cup. She gave me one, as well, grunting, "Pill-popping time!"

I looked into the cup she'd handed me and saw a small white pill at the bottom. "What is this?"

"It's a vitamin," she snapped. "Take it."

I tried to hand the cup back. "No, thanks. I'm fine."

"Take it."

I noticed the other three girls watching me, waiting to see what I'd do. I didn't want to get into it with Pilar, didn't want to give her a reason to complain about me. But I also didn't want to take that pill.

"Trust me, you want the pill," Brittany said, spotting my doubt.

Pilar glanced her way, and I took that opportunity to turn a little to the side, tip the cup back as if I were taking the pill, but let the thing actually fall behind my shoulder. When Pilar looked back to me, she gave me a narrowed-eyes look before snatching the cup back and, thankfully satisfied, walking away.

"What's it do?" I asked the others once Pilar had left. "Is it really a vitamin?"

Sapphire gazed my way with her large eyes. "It makes you feel so good!"

"I don't know if it's a vitamin or not," Brittany added, "but she's right--you won't regret it. Best thing they give us, here."

That sounded weird, to me . . . but I wasn't worried about it. My hand surreptitiously closed over the pill on the blanket behind me and slipped it into my pocket. "Why did you come here?" I asked them, breaking them away from their television show. "Do you like it?"

Brittany swung herself around to face me fully. "I've been here nine months. It's eight million times better than the street, trust me. They feed you, and they let you watch stuff, and you get to see your friends and go out sometimes, like they take us to the park and out for ice cream and stuff. Almost like regular people stuff. But the best part is the vitamin. Just wait--see how you feel in about twenty minutes. Girl, you won't want to ever go back."

She turned back to the television. I studied the three of them, then stood and looked at Daisha, who was on the bunk above mine. She'd seemed nice enough, so I took the risk of standing between her and the television. "You just got here, right? But you're older. When did they say you could move to the other place, the one for older teens like us?"

Daisha was lying on her stomach, head propped on her hands at the foot of her bed so she could watch the television. But she gave me a shy smile when I spoke to her. I'd added the "teens like us" bit to build a camaraderie between us, hoping she'd be more likely to talk to me. "People out there, they were hurting me," she confided right away, and I was a little taken aback. "Making me do things I didn't want to do. Here, they're angels. I really believe that. They're helping us learn how to live on our own. How to get stuff, take care of ourselves."

"That's . . . nice. But when do you get to move out of here? Don't you want to go with the older people, like Pilar?"

"When I finish my first job, do it right, they told me. But I'm fine where I am. I don't worry about much."

She shifted a little to try to see around me, and I figured that was all I'd get from her. I didn't want to annoy any of them. Not yet, anyway.

I couldn't watch whatever they were watching; I couldn't just lie there and act as if things were some kind of normal. I went to the bathroom several times, and I paced a little, which the others didn't seem to notice, and then, likely about those twenty minutes later that Brittany had mentioned, I began to notice that the girls were in some sort of a trance. At first, they just kind of rolled languidly on their beds, looked up to the ceiling, smiled. They said a few simple things to one another, about how good times were coming or something, and they giggled a little, but then they were out of it. And not asleep--their eyes were open, and they appeared conscious, but their minds were floating somewhere far off, and their bodies were in such a state of lethargy that when I picked up Sapphire's wrist, it just dropped like a rock back onto her bed, and when I pinched Brittany's leg, she didn't notice at all.

Cameras. I realized that if there were cameras in the rooms--as there likely were--someone would notice I hadn't reacted the way these girls had, would maybe guess I'd skipped the pill. I had to pretend. So, moving through the room, I began to slow myself down, act a little tired, and then laid down on my own bed and turned toward the wall, wondering how long I'd have to pretend.

It wasn't long. Within five minutes of my climb into bed, the television turned off, and the door opened. I dared not turn around, but I could tell it most definitely was not Pilar. There were at least two or three people whose ages and genders and sizes I couldn't tell, and they seemed to move throughout the room, to each of my three roommates. Someone directed them--I thought it sounded like Mr. Mallinkrodt, but I couldn't be sure. "That one, there. Her arm, this time. No--she's on her third round." Someone approached me, put a hand on my shoulder, and I was sure they'd hear my pounding heart. What would I do if they tried to do something to me? What were they even doing? But the voice saved me before I had to consider any drastic moves: "Not that one. She just arrived. We're not to touch her."

"Sir?" said a female's voice right above me.

"You heard me. Now go on."

"You're certain?"

Someone hit someone else--not a punch, more like an open-handed slap--and then the voice that sounded like Mallinkrodt snapped, "You question me again, I'll halve your ration. Now shut up and let's go."

I waited in the silent darkness for several moments after they'd left, wanting to be sure they weren't going to return. My breathing slowed, finally, and my body relaxed, but my mind was racing. Whatever they were doing . . . it was something sinister. I couldn't guess what it was, but I couldn't stay here, that was certain. It was only a matter of time before they realized I wasn't taking that pill, playing their game. I had to try to find Henry. I'd do it tonight, as soon as I was sure it was late enough to afford me a better chance of sneaking out unseen.