Sunday

"Do I really have to be locked in my room all the time?" Otto asked Ellsworth on the way to lunch on Sunday.

"For now, yes. Things will get better, though, I promise."

Otto was almost certain that didn't mean what he wanted it to mean, unless Ellsworth was secretly working with Nurse Vickers to get him out of there.

The power went out. Ellsworth and Otto stood in the middle of the hallway which branched off from the center courtyard. The sunlight from the courtyard was the only light in the building, and it was just enough to illuminate the shapes of people shuffling around in the dark.

"What happened?" Otto asked Ellsworth.

"Just a blackout," Ellsworth said.

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Depends on who we have in HOME. Come this way."

"HOME?" Otto asked quietly, not really wanting an answer.

"Yes, this place is called HOME: Holding for Observation and Monitoring of Extremes."

Otto didn't really want to know any more about the place. He still held out hope that he'd be rescued before any more information became necessary.

As they entered the small cafeteria, the lights flickered back on. Two guardsmen with blue painted nose-buttons were posted in the room. There were four round tables, but only three of them were being used. Even so, Otto hadn't seen the room so full before. Dinner, the night before, had only filled two tables and hardly anyone was up for breakfast this morning. But lunch, it seemed, was the big meal of the day.

At the far end of the room was a table laid out elegantly with white linen and silver hotel pans full of food. "The small lady up there behind the serving table is the chef here." Ellsworth pointed to a short, petite woman smiling proudly as people came up for food. She had light brown hair tied back in a pony tail that reached the middle of her back. Her lavender colored nose-button gave her face a glow of childish innocence.

"Hello Rémy, this is Otto. Otto, Rémy."

"Hi!" Rémy said and grabbed Otto's hand from his side to shake it. "How do you like the food?" She asked.

"I haven't had any yet," Otto said, "Well, I mean, not this meal anyway. The others were good."

"Wonderful!" She bounced with excitement as she talked. "Well, tell me what you think of this meal. I have never tried it before, but I've always wanted to. They keep telling me that I am not allowed to buy roe for the sushi rolls because it's too expensive, so I have to keep playing with the recipes to see what I can do that's just as good. Have you ever had roe?"

"Uh, no. What is it?" Otto asked as he picked up a plate and eyed the sushi.

"Don't ask," Ellsworth said before Rémy could open her mouth. "Just be glad there isn't a budget for it."

They filled their plates and turned around to find a seat. At one table sat two boys and two girls that looked to be about Otto's age. None of them had been at dinner the night before or breakfast this morning. They sat leisurely in their seats and smiled as they talked. None of them wore nose casings on their white noses and none of them looked like they were being imprisoned.

Otto took a step towards them. There was one chair left open between the two boys. But Ellsworth nudged him with his elbow and nodded his head the other way.

At the next table over sat the anomalies that Otto had been introduced to at dinner the previous night. Fran and Nickola were two older men and next to them sat a sad young girl named Margo. Everything about this table was in stark contrast to the other. No one here sat leisurely, or even comfortably. It was pitifully obvious that none of them had suffered with the casing before coming here. Their faces were frozen in an uncomfortable sort of grimace. The cafeteria echoed with the sounds of them struggling to eat with it on—chewing, hard breathing, a few whistles through the casing holes, defeated sighs, and every so often, a sob from the young girl who looked quite miserable. It was depressing.

Otto let out a heavy sigh and sat down next to Margo. She looked up at him with watery eyes that tried to smile, but failed. Ellsworth sat down on his other side and did his best to lift everyone's spirits with a genuine smile all around. It didn't have much of an effect on anyone. Otto looked back at the other table.

"Why don't they have to wear nose casings?" Otto asked, nodding towards the fun table.

"They're not rogues. They've elected to become weaponized buttons," Ellsworth said. "This is where they're monitored and examined before moving on into training."

"Monitored and examined?"

"Yeah... Didn't you take a Button-Ed class in school? I thought that was still a requirement," Ellsworth said.

"Yeah, but they never said anything about this place."

"Well, they wouldn't. But they should have said something about the diversity of nose-buttons and the way we study them."

Fran shook his balding head. The wrinkles around his eyes were made deeper by his nose casing pushing his loose skin together. "Schools these days," he mumbled.

Nickola rolled his eyes. He was younger than Fran by maybe a decade, but his hair was beginning to gray around his ears and his lips were beginning to droop, although that could have been from the immense sadness that everyone at the table felt.

"When I was in school," Fran continued, "we never had a class that taught about our nose-buttons. And dust readers were damn expensive! You wanna know how I figured out how my button worked?"

"No one wants to know, Fran," Nickola said.

"I pushed it and hoped it wouldn't make me go blind," Fran said. "I knew it had to do something crazy, seein' as how it was white and all—and I didn't cover it up neither! But we lived in a tiny, know-nothing place, so no one gave a damn that it was white. And when the weaponized buttons started cracking down on unregistered anomalies, the whole town pitched in to keep me free. But that's probably because, by then, they'd all pushed my button at one point or another."

"Why? What does your nose-button do?" Otto asked.

The old man smiled broadly, pinching his lips against the nose casing on his face. "Why, it makes people fall in love!"

"Oh," Otto said. "That's nice."

The man smiled even bigger, showing his teeth, which were yellowed and crooked. Otto couldn't help but smile back. Nickola just shook his head.

The power went out again.

"Wasn't me!" Nickola yelled at the guardsmen. He raised his hands in the air. The guardsmen pointed their flashlights at him, but the flashlights were unnecessary. The cafeteria had large windows on the far wall which let in an ample amount of light. The guardsmen didn't say a word. They scanned the room with their flashlights as if to say, "we're watching you all," and then switched them off and remained at their posts in the shadowy room.

"I don't remember much of Button-Ed class," Otto said, turning back to Ellsworth. "It was a long time ago." He remembered anatomical drawings of the nose-button with its bundle of nerves connected directly to the brain. He remembered the boredom. And he remembered learning very little.

The power came back on.

"Is your family coming to visit you today?" Fran asked.

Otto jerked up at the question, not sure how he was going to answer. But the question wasn't directed at him. Fran was looking at Margo.

Margo nodded silently in response.

"That's nice," Fran said.

After Lunch, Ellsworth led Otto next door to the recreation room. It was a small room with two card tables, a foosball table, a bookcase filled with worn and faded books, a few faded armchairs scattered around the room, and a couch that faced an outdated TV.

The same two guards came in the room and took up standing positions next to the door, just like they had in the cafeteria.

The other rogue anomalies filtered into the room one at a time. The young registered anomalies did not. They continued down the hall towards the courtyard where a weaponized button and a medic button waited for them.

"Wanna play a game of cards with us?" Fran nudged Otto as he walked in the door.

Otto smiled politely at him. He didn't want to play, but it was hard to say no to Fran.

"You don't have to. Why don't you and Margo play a game of foosball or something. I'm sure she'd like that."

"Stop trying to set people up, Fran." Nickola sat down at a card table and started shuffling a deck.

Otto looked up at the foosball table. Margo slouched in an armchair near the Foosball table and twisted one of the poles back and forth in boredom. She was too young to enjoy the company of Fran and Nickola and, like Otto, was not welcome near the registered anomalies. She looked up at Otto with a kind of hope that filled her eyes and pushed her brows up. But she neither approached him nor said anything.

In the corner of the room, curled up on top of another armchair, was a little mound of an anomaly. Otto had seen him in the cafeteria just a minute earlier. He had sat alone at a third table. Otto hadn't given him a lot of thought. This anomaly didn't wear a nose casing, so he must not have been a rogue. But he hadn't gone down the hall with the other registered anomalies.

Ellsworth nodded his head towards the young man and walked over to introduce him. "This is Pieter," Ellsworth said, putting a tender hand on him. Pieter flinched and looked up at Otto. His eyes looked like two puddles on either side of his anomaly white nose-button. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two years old, but the lines of grief around his eyes made him look worn down. Otto had never seen such a melancholy anomaly.

Pieter didn't say a word to Otto. He gave him that one dejected gaze and then collapsed back into his huddle. Ellsworth didn't say any more. He walked away quietly as if Pieter was sleeping. Otto followed suit.

Margo looked at Otto again and touched the foosball table in a silent question. Otto nodded.

As the two set up to play, Ellsworth sat down with Fran and Nickola for a card game. The door opened and in walked a young woman with long dark hair that must have weighed more than she did. Her nose-button was painted red and she wore a uniform that said HOME staff. She tucked her skirt in as she sat down at the card table and smiled at the others.

"How has your day been, Ms. Cypress?" Ellsworth said.

Ms. Cypress let out a little sigh and nodded her head. "Always something to keep me busy," She said.

"Were you the one dealing with the power outages?" Nickola asked.

"No, actually. I thought you might have been responsible for that," she slid her eyes over to him as if to see through any lie he might try to tell.

"I would never!" Nickola said.

"Well, in any case, I was the one dealing with the three residents who thought they could escape while the power was out. It's been one hell of a morning."

Otto couldn't help but listen in on everything that was said at the card table. He was so close to them that his elbow nearly hit Fran in the head. But Margo was lost in the game—so excited to have someone else her age to play with.

"Do you play a lot of foosball?" She asked.

"Not really," Otto said. "Maybe once or twice before."

"Well, you're better than those two," she said, nodding her head towards Fran and Nickola. "I played them both at the same time and still beat them."

They played two games together. Margo won them both. "That's okay!" She kept saying—not wanting to discourage her only chance at a new friend. "We'll play again. You'll get better."

After the second game ended 9 to 3, Otto sighed loudly and sat down on one of the armchairs.

"Let's try again!" Margo said, "You're getting better. I bet you'll do great!"

Otto smiled weakly, but didn't get up.

"I'll play slower, how's that?"

"That's okay," Otto said, "Maybe a little later."

"How about if I show you a few tricks? It'll make things a lot easier for you."

"In a little bit. Hey, does that TV work?"

"Yeah, but you won't want to be on it when the registered anomalies come back. They get really possessive of the TV. And they're all into this really stupid show."

As if on cue, the registered anomalies walked in the door. Without acknowledging anyone else, they went straight to the couch and turned on the TV.

"I guess that means I'll be seeing my family soon," Margo said, looking at the clock on the wall.

"What?"

"They usually come at this time. Hey, thanks for playing with me."

"No problem."

Ms. Cypress escorted Margo to see her family in the cafeteria when they arrived. Otto took her seat at the card table and watched the men play. Behind him, the registered anomalies laughed at some corny show, happy to ignore him completely. And in the corner of the room, Pieter sat in an armchair staring off into space. No one acknowledge him or looked in his direction. He had become just another piece of worn down furniture, neglected in the corner.

"What's wrong with Pieter?" Otto asked Ellsworth once they were back in his room.

"He's been here longer than anyone. He was pretty much raised here."

"Why?"

"No one knows what his nose-button does."

"How is that possible?"

Ellsworth shrugged. "It's a mystery."

Otto slumped over on his couch in empathetic sadness. "That's awful." And then he had a worse thought: That would have been me. If Clara had left him in that hospital, he would have been here much earlier. And that would have been what he would look like—an inanimate pile of a boy, waiting for death.

Ellsworth had barely left the room when Clara appeared standing beside his couch again. "Hello, Otto," she said with a smile. She looked better than she had before. From the flower clip in her hair, to the matching ones on her shoes, she was back to her well composed self. Except her eyes. Her eyes looked tired and red, which was accentuated by her medic red nose-button. "How are you doing in here?" She asked as she sat down next to him.

"Have you found my parents?" Otto asked.

"Yes, I have. I've spoken with your father. How are you doing?"

"What about my mother?"

Clara's face drooped. "I'm sorry, Otto. She's been sent to prison."

"Well, get her out! Just like you're going to get me out. You're going to get me out of here, right?"

"Otto," Clara put a hand on his shoulder. "It's not that easy. I can't get into the prison."

"Why not?"

"They have a guard that can shut me down."

Otto began to cry.

"Oh, Otto, I'm so sorry." She put her arm around his shoulders and pulled him in for a hug, but he didn't want it.

"Why didn't you get her out sooner?"

"There are limits to what I can do, Otto. And these people are getting smarter about keeping me out."

"Then get me out now!"

"I don't have a safe place for you to go, yet. Listen, Otto. You have to hang on for a little bit longer."