Monday

Pieter sat alone for all his meals. "He ostracized himself," Ellsworth explained at lunch on Monday. "He wouldn't let any of us near him. Some of the other residents have tried befriending him and Rémy tries to befriend everyone, but he won't come around."

"Maybe I can talk to him," Otto said, feeling brave.

Ellsworth didn't object, but gave him an incredulous look. "If you want to try," he said and began heading in that direction.

"Maybe I should go alone," Otto said.

Ellsworth shrugged. "I'll be over there, then." He nodded towards their regular place and parted from Otto.

Otto stood frozen for a short while, wondering how to go about this. It was different then cheering up Lancret. This man was older than Otto. And Otto knew nothing about him. But he felt a sort of kinship with Pieter. And after what Nurse Vickers had told him last night, he didn't feel like putting on a smile for the others. Suffering with Pieter sounded a lot better. So he sucked in two lungs full of courage and forced himself to sit down next to the stranger.

Pieter eyed him without moving his head.

"I know how you feel," Otto began. This got a sarcastic snort. "Well, maybe I don't really. But I feel like I do. I've been hiding my whole life. It's not that much better than being locked in here. We were constantly afraid of being found out."

Pieter looked like he was brewing something dark inside of him. He answered in a tone lathered in contempt. "I know you rogues. You all come through here every so often. You're in and out in a few months. Either to prison or to become a weaponized button like the others. You'll be out of here in a month or two and I'll still be here. I'll always be here."

"Maybe not." Otto tried to instill a sense of hope into the conversation.

"Of course, I will. There's no use for a button that doesn't do anything. And nobody trusts a button that doesn't do anything. They'll never let me out; can't punish me; can't use me. I'm useless."

Otto was confused. Rogues becoming weaponized buttons? What did that mean for him? Detective Koi said he wouldn't be punished for being a rogue, but he was useless to the weaponized buttons as well. "I might be stuck here with you, then," he said, a little defeated.

Pieter looked up at him for the first time. "Why?"

"My nose-button is useless to them, too."

"It doesn't do anything?" Pieter's posture lifted with the hope of finding someone like him.

"No, it does something... just," he paused, "not something useful."

"What does it do?"

"I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you"

"I told you mine."

"Yeah..."

They stared at each other.

"I don't think I'm supposed to tell."

"Whatever. You rogues are all alike. You think you're better than the rest." And with that, Pieter turned himself away from Otto. The conversation was over.

Otto didn't want to move tables. He still felt sick and listening to Fran's ramblings and Ellsworth's cheerfulness sounded painful. But now that Pieter had written him off, this table felt cold and threatening. Pieter exuded disdain like smoke from a smoldering fire. The longer Otto sat next to him, the more uncomfortable it became. So he picked up his food and returned to the table of rogues.

"Nice try," Nickola said. "But Pieter is a stone. You might as well just leave him be."

"I feel bad for him," Otto said.

"We all do. Kind'a makes you grateful for what you have, right?"

"Is he really going to be stuck here forever?"

"Who knows."

Otto had barely dug into his food when a HOME worker burst through the cafeteria doors. He scanned the tables and then made his way towards Otto and Ellsworth, taking long, stiff strides. When he got to their table, he leaned over to Ellsworth and whispered something in his ear. Ellsworth's eyebrows went up. Then he turned to Otto. "Better finish up your lunch quick," he said, "It looks like you have your first appointment already."

Otto was going to ask a question, but the man standing beside Ellsworth shook his head, eyes wide, in a bad attempt at passing an unspoken message.

"Oookay, I guess we'd better just come back to lunch then," Ellsworth pushed his plate away from himself and stood up. "Better come on, Otto. We'll finish lunch later."

Otto stood up. He didn't know what was going on, but it didn't feel good. He followed Ellsworth and the other man down the hall towards the nexus. Right before the center garden where all the halls met, he was ushered into a room.

It was a doctor's office. The white walls with unhelpful posters of the human body was a dead give-away.

"Otto, this is Dr. Dalle," Ellsworth laid his hand out towards a man in a doctor's coat. "She's our resident physician and a certified dust reader."

"Oh," Otto said. He knew where this was going.

"We're going to have to read your sneeze, Otto," The doctor said in a calm voice. She seemed friendly enough. Her smile was gentle and warm. Unlike the man that had interrupted their lunch, the doctor didn't look worried or nervous about anything. "Would you mind taking off your nose casing and laying down on the bed? This will only take a second."

Otto took off his casing gratefully and laid down on the doctor's bed.

"Hold real still, Otto. Sometimes these readings are skewed when the baby squirms."

Otto held still. He wasn't scared anymore. In fact, he was excited. Perhaps the first dust reader had actually gotten it wrong! His parents never double checked for fear of being turned in.

Dr. Dalle sprinkled white dust over Otto's upturned nose-button. It made him want to squirm a little. He had to fight the instinct to wiggle it off his nose or reach up to brush it away. She kept sprinkling it evenly over the flat surface of his nose-button. Otto could feel it falling into his nostrils, but he didn't sneeze right away. It was just a slight discomfort.

The sneeze came after there was a visible layer over his button. He gasped in air, giving the doctor a second's notice before his head flew forward uncontrollably in a sneeze. At the same instant, several mounted cameras flashed a red light.

Otto laid his head back down and rolled his eyes over towards the doctor. She was staring at the place Otto had sneezed the dust; her face locked in unemotional contemplation of what she had just seen. Otto glanced over at Ellsworth and the lunch-interrupter. Neither of them showed signs of comprehension. And neither of them dared interrupt the doctor.

After a long moment of silence, she walked over to her computer and viewed the photos taken in red light. "Hmmm..." she said, "We're going to have to reposition the cameras a bit and redo the test."

Otto let out a disappointed sigh. "Can I wipe my nose, first?"

She hesitated. "Y-yes. But ever so gently, please."

"Of course." Otto rolled his eyes and reached for a tissue. He knew how to take care of his nose-button.

Ellswoth and the man who had obviously already had his lunch helped the doctor move the cameras to point where Otto had last sneezed. Then they did the test over again, and afterward, they all watched the doctor's face as she stared at where the dust had hung in the air. She thought over what she had seen, and then took a step to her computer and examined what the cameras had caught. Finally, she let out a long sigh. Otto's heart sank towards his spine.

"I'm afraid we're going to have to do it again. This is not getting a clear reading."

Otto didn't know what she meant by 'this,' but he was already losing patience for it all. He could still taste his last bite of lunch, like a phantom in his mouth. His stomach felt cheated. And sneezing again was sure to give him a headache. He grabbed a tissue to wipe his nose clean, and repositioned himself on the bed, hoping this would be the last sneeze before he could finish his lunch.

It wasn't. The doctor performed the test six times in all, growing more uncertain after each one. Finally she sat down in her chair and shook her head. "I'm going to have to take all this to Dr. Piero for further examination."

"What does that mean?" Otto asked without looking at Dr. Dalle. His head hurt and he didn't feel like moving much of anything anymore. He was pretty sure he had whiplash.

"Dr. Piero is a highly respected scholar in the field of dust reading. He'll be able to give a lot more insight into all this."

"Is it really that hard? No one else has to do this six times, do they?"

"Everybody's different," Dr. Dalle said.

Otto took this to mean, "No." He sighed. "Can I go eat lunch now?"

The doctor stood up and fixed her posture. "Of course," she said in renewed professionalism.

Otto gently pulled himself off the bed and onto the floor. He replaced his nose casing under the watchful, nervous eyes of the doctor. Then he and Ellsworth headed back to the cafeteria. "I'm starving!" Otto said in the hallway. "How long were we in there?"

"Only about 20 minutes." Ellsworth was not his normal perky self anymore. He was subdued. Contemplative. Or worried. It made Otto uneasy.

"That wasn't normal, was it." He looked at the floor as he talked.

"Not really."

They entered the cafeteria and found it to be empty except for a few workers cleaning up the last of the food. Otto wilted.

"Don't worry, kid, Rémy will make us something if there's nothing in the back." Ellsworth tried to regain his usual pep, putting on a superficial smile for Otto.

He led Otto to the kitchen,which was not really a kitchen at all. It was more like a pantry. There were shelves all along the back wall filled with fresh produce and ingredients. The shelves were interrupted only by a giant refrigerator door in the far corner. In front of that was a long counter. There wasn't a stove or oven in site. Not even a microwave. There was a coffee maker on the far end of the counter that was just starting to brew a fresh pot of coffee. Rémy was standing next to it, wiping the counter clean and eyeing the rising coffee level.

Ellsworth went up to greet her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders which only came up to his ribcage. "Rémy, this young man and I missed our lunch. Would you mind whipping up something for us to eat?"

"I thought I saw you two in the cafeteria earlier. What happened?"

"We had to miss our lunch for a doctor's visit."

"They're scheduling those during my lunch hour now?" She let out an aggravated sigh.

"Well, this one was last minute."

"Are you okay?" She turned to Otto with big, caring eyes.

"I'm fine."

"Don't worry about it," Elsworth said.

"Well, what would you like to have?" Rémy looked at them each for a response.

"I don't know," Otto said. "Whatever we were eating before was good."

"What was that?"

"I don't know what it was called. Whatever you made today."

"What did I make today? I've already forgotten."

"The casserole thing," Ellsworth chimed in. "Whatever that was."

Rémy opened up her recipe book, which was not really full of recipes, but rather, lists of ingredients for various dishes. "Oh, this one. Yes, I'm not even sure how to pronounce this name. You liked it?" Her smile was childish. "It was my first time making it. I was so afraid I forgot one of the ingredients."

"Did you?" Ellsworth asked.

"I don't know!"

"Well, I liked it in any case," Ellsworth said.

"Alright then. Let me grab the ingredients. Can you read them off to me?"

Ellsworth read off the list as Rémy walked back and forth across the shelves, grabbing cans and bags of food as she went.

Otto watched while she set things out on the table, measured ingredients and poured them into a serving dish. Then she touched it with a single finger which she washed vigorously first and with her opposite hand pressed her nose-button. The room blinked. Or maybe Otto blinked. He couldn't tell. But the dish of raw ingredients was now a casserole—steaming hot and crisped on top.

"There!" Rémy said proudly, "Serve up! But be careful, it's still very hot."

They pulled up chairs around the kitchen counter. Rémy drank her coffee as they ate their lunch.

"I saw you trying to talk to Pieter today at lunch," Rémy said. "That was sweet of you. I keep hoping that one day he'll accept being here and try to have some fun once in a while."

"I'm sure that's hard to do when you know you can never leave," Otto said. "I don't want to be stuck in here forever."

"You won't be," She said.

"You don't know that." Otto didn't mean to sound angry, but the day was wearing on him. Rémy and Ellsworth didn't respond, but Otto heard himself echo inside his own head—curt and on edge.

In the recreational room, Margo was waiting to play foosball again, but Otto's energy was sapped. He felt like curling up in one of the armchairs against the wall like Pieter and slowly fading away from life. But Fran wouldn't have any of that.

"Come sit down, Otto! Ms. Cypress is busy and we need a fourth player. We're going to teach you to play hearts."

Otto obeyed without a word and picked up the cards that were thrown at him. Ellsworth sat beside him and they began to talk Otto through the game. Fran talked loudly about a lot of things—rules to the game, the first time he pressed his nose-button, which card Otto should use, his first love—he slipped back and forth between subjects like a broken TV changing channels every few minutes. But as long as he kept talking, Otto didn't have to think too hard about anything. If he ever put down the wrong card, Fran would pick it up and point to another card in his hand—all without pausing in his speech.

The door opened behind Otto and in walked Ms. Cypress with a new resident. She was a teenager around Otto's age. She wore jeans and a gray hoodie that made a valiant effort to hide her face. But it wasn't enough. Under her hood, Otto found her face. Her skin was dark with copper undertones that made it shimmer. Even her onyx black eyes sparkled. That might have been from the tears that she was biting back. But her most stunning feature that drew every eye in the room was her nose. It wasn't a nose-button at all—it was a nose lever! A short metallic bar rose straight up between her eyes and at the end of that one inch bar was a small handle, the same color as her skin. It ran the width between her eyes and had two small nostrils in it.

She was a rogue. She didn't have a nose casing—none would fit her—but from her look of despair, Otto knew she was a rogue. And he was drawn to her. He couldn't pull his eyes away. Between her sorrow and her exotic peculiarity, Otto felt an unbreakable bond. He decided right then and there that he was going to talk with her. He had to know her name. If there was one person in the world that would understand him, it would be her.

He stood up and put on his best, uplifting smile, ready to greet her as she approached.

The girl didn't see him. She walked past him without lifting her eyes from the ground, slumped into a chair at another table, pulled her hoodie further over her head, crossed her arms on the table, and buried her face in a gray cocoon.

Otto's smile dropped. He sat back down at the table, but continued to watch the gray pile. Her back rose and fell with her breathing. It was the only proof that there was a person inside the clothes.

Nickola let out a loud cackle. "Looks like you've been playing with Fran's nose-button, Otto. But I don't think she has!" He laughed again. No one was laughing with him, but Fran smiled in his direction. Otto tried to smile back in good humor, shrugging off Nickola's comment as a friendly jab. But he did wish it hadn't been spoken so loudly.

Ms. Cypress nodded at Ellsworth as if to say, "She's all yours for now." and walked out of the room. Ellsworth nodded back and eyed the new girl, but decided to leave her alone for now.

Otto continued to play the card game—that is, hold the cards and put down whatever Fran told him to—but he was thinking only of what to say to her and he kept her in the corner of his eye in case she should look up at him.

All the lines that Ruskin had practiced with Otto ran through his head. Otto knew they were mostly trash, but maybe there was one good one in all of it. "Let me light up your night," was one. That wouldn't work. "You turn me on." Nope. Maybe Ruskin wasn't the best one to imitate when it came to girls... or any other social matter, probably.

The game ended. Otto didn't know who won. He didn't even realize he was out of cards.

"Looks like your mind is somewhere else tonight," Nickola said and gave Otto a wink that was in no way subtle.

Otto answered with a weak smile. He excused himself politely and headed over to the new girl's table... and then past her table to the water fountain. And then back towards her table, but past it again to look at the picture on the other wall which he had stared at many times before. He stared blankly at it to give him another chance at building up his courage... and maybe something to say. Then he turned around to try again.

She still had her head down, but every other person in the room was looking up at Otto. Some with scornful frowns, others, like Fran and Nickola, with smiles about to break into laughs. Fran nodded his head towards the new girl in an encouraging kind of way. Then he mouthed the words, "Ask her name," slowly and clearly.

Otto nodded, but it still took him a moment to move. Margo rolled her eyes. Even Pieter was looking on with a contemptuous sort of brood. Otto took one more breath in, walked to her table, and sat down next to her.

She didn't look up.

Worried, Otto looked over at Fran for direction. Fran smiled back, nodded and mouthed the word, "hi," with a little exemplary wave.

"Uh, hi," Otto said to the hoodie.

She flinched, but didn't look up.

Otto looked back at Fran for more help. Then, following his cues, he said, "My name is Otto. What's yours?"

A pair of black eyes peeked out from between folds of gray. Between them, Otto could just make out the top of her nose-lever. "Amelie," she said through her arms.

"Amelie?" Otto said, "That's a pretty name." He gave her his best smile, only slightly warped by the nose casing.

A wrinkle pushed under her eyes—the sure sign of a smile.

Otto beamed. "So..." he glanced at Fran, unsure how to continue.

Fran let out an exasperated sigh and pointed at the deck of cards and then at the TV and the Foosball table. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"So... Do you want to play foosball?" Otto asked, rather proud of himself for being able to interpret non-verbal dialogue.

She shook her head, no.

"Cards?"

She shook her head, no.

"TV?"

She shook her head, no.

Otto frowned. "I don't suppose you want to talk, either."

She shook her head, no.

The power went out. "I didn't do it!" Nickola said, raising his hands for the guardsmen to see.

"Looks like Ms. Cypress has her hands full," Ellsworth said. "Perhaps I should go see if I can help." He got up to leave.

As he was walking out, Detective Koi walked in. Her eyes glided over the room, lit only from the one very small window, before coming to rest on Otto. "Otto could I talk to you for a moment?" She motioned him out of the recreational room from where he sat across from Amelie, and walked him back to his room so that the two of them could speak in private. "How are you holding up, Otto?" she asked as they made their way down the hall.

Somewhere on the other side of the building, rogues were struggling to escape. The echoes of voices and the scuffle of shoes on the cement floors traveled through the building, across the courtyard, and down the hall to where Otto and Detective Koi walked solemnly to his room.

Otto rolled his eyes at her. He didn't want to talk to her. She had broken promises with him and he didn't trust her. She had said he would be able to see his foster parents, but that hadn't happen. She said she'd tell him what her nose-button did and she failed on that one too.

"Not so good, huh?" She said. They reached his room just as the power flickered back on and sat down together on the couch. "I understand."

"No, you don't. You don't understand anything," he said coldly.

"I understand a little bit. Weaponized buttons are anomalies too, you know. And my button might not be as dangerous as yours, but it is dangerous.

I know what it's like as a kid to be afraid of your own button. And my parents were always trying to keep me safe from myself. I know the feeling of paranoia and fear and I know what a nose casing feels like."

"But you had a future in law enforcement. What do I have?"

"Well, let's talk about that. I came to talk to you about your blood work. You don't have to answer any questions and this meeting isn't on any police record, but just listen to me." She sat down on the end of Otto's bed keeping a respectable distance between herself and him. "Mr. and Mrs. Monet are not your real parents." She paused to study his reaction.

Otto rolled his eyes. This had been old news since 4th grade.

"I won't ask you if you knew. And I won't ask you if you know who your real parents are because I do and that's enough."

This caught Otto by surprise. He looked up at Detective Koi with wide eyes. He didn't want to submit to the conversation, but the years of curiosity were pressing on him. "You know who they are?"

"Yes. Otto, I've been looking for you since the night you were born. It's almost cruel that you were this close all these years. I've been sending out your information to places as far away as Canada."

"Who are they?"

"I have someone contacting them right now. I'm sure they'll want to meet you."

"But who are they?" Otto asked again.

"Andrew and Julia Warhol," said Detective Koi.

"Warhol." Otto turned that name over in his head. It was sounded so foreign.

"I'll send word when I find out about arranging a meeting for you all," Detective Koi said as she got up to leave.

"Wait! What about my foster parents?"

Koi turned to face Otto, unsure of what he meant.

"Can I see my foster parents?" Otto asked. "I haven't seen them since..." He stopped to count the days backwards on his fingers; and then forwards, since he wasn't quiet sure what day it was. He only knew that he was dragged out of school on a... well, he wasn't too sure about that either. He was already losing track of everything except meal times.

Detective Koi sat back down on the couch. "Do you know what your foster father's nose-button does?" She asked, being considerate of the term that Otto used to refer to his kidnappers by.

"Yes," Otto spat back. "Why? Do you think he'd dare press it around me? Why would anyone want to purposefully trigger my button?"

The detective didn't have a chance to answer.

"Besides," Otto continued, offended at the implications of the detective, "We're all forced to wear these nose casings."

"I understand, Otto. It just makes a lot of people nervous, that's all."

"Why? We've been living together for years and have been careful enough to keep the world safe. Do you think we're so careless? Or suicidal?"

"Okay, Otto. I'll arrange it for you. But you understand, it'll have to be supervised, not just for nose-button reasons, but because we are very careful about what information might get passed from one rogue to another."

"Fine."

Detective Koi got up to leave again.

"What about my foster mother?" Otto asked. "I want to see her too."

"That I can do," she said without turning around. She put her hand on the door. "Do you want to go back to the recreational room? Or are you going to stay here?"

"What does your nose-button do?"

"What?"

"You told me you'd tell me what it does," he said feeling confident about the situation.

She smiled at him—not a mean smile, but one that understood his frustration. "Shotguns, Otto. It gives me shotguns. Now picture a toddler with shotguns. That's the fear I grew up with."

She walked Otto back to the recreational room, silent all the way. She thought about the next step on her to-do list while Otto thought about what it meant to meet his real parents. He had always wanted to see them; to know that they were out there somewhere, surviving okay without their son. But meeting them? He had never thought about meeting them. Meeting them in the outside world would have ruined everything that the Monets had done for him. It would have ruined the Monets. Otto had never wanted to hurt the Monets. They had always been so good to him. They loved him. But as it was, the Monets were already ruined. Otto managed to do that with a sneeze. So meeting his real parents wasn't going to hurt anything. Right?