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  “But didn’t he go through testing right after Dr. Spires died?” I remember Loudin was concerned after that. He ordered all the Scientists to undergo extensive medical testing.

  “Yes, and Magnes was part of that.” James shrugs. “Obviously we missed something.”

  “What about you?” James is one of The Ten. Surely he had to go through the testing as well.

  “Loudin couldn’t allow all of us to go at once, could he?” James leans forward. I have never seen his eyes so light. “He, of course, is first. As is Dr. Williams. I’m in the final group.”

  “What else happened while I was gone?” I look at my friends, all gathered around James’s desk, looking relieved. “And why was I locked in that room for three days?”

  “A day and a half,” Berk says.

  “What?” I know it was three days. I slept twice, through the night.

  “You were there a day and a half.” Berk puts his arm around the back of my chair. “It probably just seemed like three.”

  Did Loudin drug me or manipulate the surroundings just to torture me? I was sure three days passed.

  James clears his throat. Of course. How long I was in the room is of no consequence right now.

  “Everything is on hold while Loudin is being tested.” James’s voice sounds so like John’s right now it makes me ache. “No drugs being manufactured, no preparation for the trip to South America. No surveillance.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” James’s smile is wide. “I have spoken with some of the Scientists over the last few days. I told them about Kristie, about you. I warned them that Loudin’s plan to bring other survivors here would only serve to further inflame his megalomania.”

  “You went to the other Scientists?” My heart feels like it has stopped beating. “They’ll go straight to Loudin.”

  “I went to the Scientists I knew would be sympathetic. Several were like me—close to going with the other five all those years ago. I stayed because Loudin threatened my father. They stayed because they were scared or because they thought maybe Loudin was right. But, like me, they have watched him change over the decades, and they don’t like who he has become.”

  “Why didn’t you go to them sooner?” We could have had an army in place to fight Loudin before he killed Kristie and Nicole. The thought makes me nauseous.

  “I had to be sure.” James sighs. “Like you said, they could have gone straight to Loudin. I couldn’t risk that. I dropped some hints about my concern. They shared concerns of their own. It took time to be able to speak freely.”

  Time in which people I loved were killed. Berk must sense my rising anger because he touches my shoulder and leans over, his voice soft in my ear. “He is helping us, Thalli. He knows Loudin better than any of us do. We can’t change what has past. We have to look to the future.”

  “All right.” I swallow hard. “So now what?”

  “We have three Scientists with us. Four including me.”

  “But Loudin has five.” My math skills may not be superior, but even I can deduce that Loudin still has the majority. “Not to mention the other pods and the other Scientists-in-Training.”

  “Dr. Llanes is responsible for the transports.” James taps on his communications pad. “She is going to make sure your trip to South America cannot happen.”

  Berk smiles and nods at James to continue. “Dr. Wheeler is the Medical Expert. He’ll be taking extra time on Loudin’s exam, making sure he is completely well. The testing will continue for at least another three days.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Dr. Ferguson is working with another Scientist to perfect the Athenian drug.”

  I bite my lip. This seems too good. Is it wrong to doubt that this is all coming together this way? “So we can be sure that it will not be perfected.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We can stop him.” I stand and look at the others. “We can really stop Loudin.”

  I see excitement in my friends’ eyes as we plan the next step.

  CHAPTER 39

  You make it so easy.” Dr. Loudin is behind me, pulling something from my head. I try to move my hands, but they are restrained.

  The fog of sleep—or something else—lifts, and I assess my surroundings. I am in Loudin’s laboratory, strapped to a chair. A screen in front of me has the image of James at his desk, smiling. The last thing I remember.

  I am fully awake now. And horrified. Loudin wasn’t being tested. He was setting us up. Now not only are my friends in danger, but also the Scientists who would have come to our aid.

  Loudin releases the straps on my arms, but he leaves my legs restrained. “That is not footage from a camera.”

  I look at the screen again. Of course it is footage. What else could it be?

  Realization takes root in my stomach, pushing bile up into my throat. I swallow hard to keep from vomiting.

  “This old dog has many new tricks.” Loudin laughs at a joke I do not understand. “This is my newest—yours and Rhen’s work with the music was a breakthrough in so many ways. I already developed the technology to watch dreams, though that is dull stuff down here. Most of you don’t even dream at all. Did you know that? Some of the anomalies that came through did. You, of course, had phenomenal dreams.”

  I am disgusted to know how often and for how long Loudin has been inside my brain, exploring when I didn’t even know.

  “And the Progress simulation.” Loudin is speaking more to himself than to me. “Introducing new ideas to your brain. It was brilliant. And quite convincing.”

  My eyes burn as I remember Stone and Asta, April and Hope—people I thought were real, memories that were programmed by Loudin to determine if I had the ability to leave the State.

  “But could I introduce an idea into your brain and have you dream of it?” Loudin is pacing, his arms punctuating his words. “I can access memories, sure, but that takes so much time, so much to sift through. I needed to know specifics. What do you know, what do you want, what do you hope?”

  I feel naked, violated. No word or thought or action is beyond his grasp. The thought is revolting.

  “And I was able to discover just that. You want to beat me. You want my Scientists to assist your plans. It would be somewhat humorous if it weren’t so mutinous.” Loudin stops and bends down so his face is close enough to mine that I can smell his foul breath. “That will never happen. I have told you before that I will always be a step ahead of you. Now do you believe me?”

  I refuse to respond. I will not give him the satisfaction of hearing the fear in my voice.

  “You see what this belief in a higher power does?” Loudin straightens. “Nothing. It does nothing. Belief in me, however, now that will change your life.”

  I glare at him.

  “I have plans for you, Thalli.” Loudin’s corruption of the Designer’s words makes the blood in my veins feel like ice. “I will use you to do great things. I’m not ready to give up on you just yet, though I could. And I would be justified in it.”

  I close my eyes. I cannot stand the sight of this man.

  “Every time I am in your mind, I am amazed. It is beautiful, really, so complex, so much going on all the time. It was difficult to get you to focus on the scene I created. You wanted to go to the stairwell with Berk, the palace with Alex. It just never stops, does it?”

  I open my eyes. As he speaks those dreams, I recall them. He is right. My mind rarely rests. I wish it did. My mind has given him far too much, and he will take more from it. I want to shut it down, but I cannot.

  “Useful information, all of it.” Loudin raises an eyebrow. “Alex or Berk? Berk or Alex? Sure, you love Berk. But Berk can live without you. Can Alex?”

  Loudin is mocking me, trying to make me angry. I will not allow him to manipulate my emotions. I pray for calm, for my lips to stay shut, for the Designer to intervene. How long will he allow Loudin to be victorious?

  “We’ll talk more about that
later.” Loudin pulls a chair in front of me and sits. “It’s true, Magnes is gone. All those years of training, all the knowledge. Gone. But I devised a way to save the information in the brain. Like saving a video on a communications pad. I can download the contents of a mind. It’s genius, of course. I perfected that in the weeks after Spires died. Couldn’t lose another one like that. I didn’t tell anyone though. Didn’t want them all knowing they were expendable.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “I want to give you an opportunity.” Loudin leans back in the chair. “That brain is valuable, as I have said. It truly is unique. I can’t even get to all that’s in there, it moves so fast, knows so much. Those feelings you have muddle things up, confuse facts with fiction. If we can just get it under control, you could, one day, be one of us.”

  “One of you?”

  Loudin straightens. “A Scientist.”

  What is he doing? More tricks? Or is this a dream? I reach to the back of my head, checking to see if I am under a simulation.

  Loudin’s laugh is forced. “You are awake.”

  “You hate me.”

  “True,” Loudin responds quickly. “But, unlike you, I do not allow my emotions to guide my decisions. You are valuable.”

  “So was Kristie,” I yell.

  “True.” Loudin stands and sighs. “But she was old. She outlived her usefulness, lost it when she left the State to return to the primitive world.”

  “Yet you sought her out when you couldn’t fix the oxygen problem.”

  “One final use of her skills.” Loudin dips his head. “But she was not the same as she once was.”

  I keep my lips clamped together.

  “You are in danger of becoming like her. I want to save you from that fate.”

  “I want nothing more than to become like her.” A family, love, a lifetime of memories in a place that is hers. How I long for that.

  “When will you see that you have been deceived?” Loudin raises his voice.

  “When will you?” I shout back.

  Loudin stares at me for so long I have to look away. He stays there, standing in front of me, unmoving. When he finally speaks, it is quiet.

  “Do not throw away your potential. You want to be stronger. I see it in you. It’s in your dreams. In your emotions. I can help you harness that, achieve it. I am willing to give you a chance to be like me, to study with me and lead with me. I am giving you the opportunity to rule the world. What do you say?”

  I could say yes. I could play along to try to trap him. I could say yes and mean it. I could be like Alex and wait for the chance to be a better ruler than my father.

  “Never.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Have you ever observed an autopsy, Thalli?” Dr. Loudin leans over the body of the dead Scientist-in-Training, Magnes. “It is fascinating. This one will be slightly different. He has been, shall we say, ‘on ice’ for the last few days. I have been working on some other projects and couldn’t get to him right away.”

  Loudin is cutting into the dead man’s chest as he talks, as easily as he would cut into an apple, talking as he makes a Y incision on the torso.

  “You can watch the screen if you’d rather not see it happening live.” Loudin points with his elbow to the wall screen at the far end of the laboratory.

  “Why am I here?” I move away, wanting to rid myself of Loudin’s proximity and of the noxious smell coming from the corpse.

  “We’re moving into the next phase of your education.” He steps aside as a Medical Specialist opens Magnes’s chest cavity. “You need to know more about human anatomy if you are to assist me in my projects.”

  “I do not want to assist you.” I force myself to look at Loudin, his arms deep in Magnes’s body.

  “So you say.” He pulls an organ—kidney?—from the body and lowers it into a waiting steel bowl. “But I refuse to give up on you. You’ll thank me some day.”

  I keep silent. Loudin seems to be ignoring my words anyway. I have told him dozens of times that I do not want to be a Scientist-in-Training, yet he is training me, holding me here on this floor, making me read notes on the communications pad about his cerebral studies. Making me watch an autopsy. Has he finally lost control of his brain? It would be ironic, this man who made the brain the focus of his life work. But I fear he is in complete control of his brain, and he is attempting to be in complete control of me. I cannot escape him. I do not know what is going on outside this floor. He does not answer my questions about Berk, Rhen, Alex, and Dallas. I am afraid to ask about James. I do not know how much Loudin knows about him.

  “The heart.” Loudin holds it up, and I look at the real thing—the image on the screen is large and grotesque. “Look closely. There are no feelings here, no love. It is simply a muscle. A vital one, no doubt. But still. Not something to make decisions with, not something to stake your future on.”

  Loudin drops the heart on a shallow tray and orders the Medical Specialist to take it to the scanner. Soon the image of the inside of the heart is on the screen.

  “Perfectly healthy.” Loudin shakes his head. “A result of living in the State, being formed here, eating our food, breathing our air.”

  He stands beside me, removing the plastic gloves covered with blood and throwing them into a waste receptacle. “I performed the autopsy on my father when I was still in medical school.” Loudin points to the screen. “His arteries were full, so clogged that his heart just stopped beating one day. But he had a poor diet, he was a drunk, there was a history of heart disease in his family. All the odds were stacked against him. He was barely fifty when he died. It’s a shame he didn’t live to see me become the man I am today.”

  He is speaking of my grandfather. I find myself wanting to know more, in spite of his obvious dislike of the man he called father.

  “What was he like?”

  “What was he like?” Loudin’s eyebrows come together. “He was a fool. An angry fool. He lived for the weekends, for the bar down the street. He missed my science fairs and my graduations because he didn’t think they were important. Wanted me to play football, like him. Thought I was weak.”

  I want to ask what science fairs, graduations, and football are, but I don’t want to stop him. Loudin never speaks like this.

  “But I showed him. I became what no one has ever become—the new world leader. And I have corrected the wrongs people like him brought into the world. I overcame my genetics, found ways to evolve past them. I am a better human than my father was. And I am making sure all subsequent humans are better. In every way.”

  I want to disagree, but he is being so open, I choose to swallow my retorts, keep to myself that he is far more like his father than he may choose to believe.

  “Look at this heart.” Loudin again points to the screen. “Really look at it. Memorize it. Clean, clear, strong. No defects.”

  “Extraordinary.”

  “But it’s not.” Loudin turns to me. “It’s quite ordinary here. The science was in place before the War, but we perfected it here, with our genetic manipulation and our oversight, to ensure every person born here would have a heart just like this.”

  “Oh.”

  He pulls up other organs—lungs, intestines, spleen—all, he says, in perfect condition. I find myself pulled into his enthusiasm, imagining what he was like before the War, wondering what he would have been like had he not turned into the man he is now. He could have done so much—saved people like his father perhaps, made lives better.

  “I want you to remember all this.” Loudin points to the trays of internal organs spread around the room. “Because the next autopsy will be on an earth dweller. You’ll be amazed at the differences in his organs.”

  I feel the room sway. “An earth dweller?”

  “Yes.” He washes his hands at the cleaning station. “We have one here that is of no further use.”

  “W-we do?” I grip the back of a chair, not trusting my legs to hold me. Surely he isn’t
going to annihilate Dallas. He wouldn’t.

  “Yes, it’ll be interesting to see how the air and diet above affected him.” Loudin turns to me. “What his heart looks like, compared to Magnes.”

  I cannot speak. My mind is racing, trying to figure out a way to save Dallas, to get him out of here.

  “Yes, yes, an interesting specimen, indeed, your Alex.”

  I fall into the chair. “Alex?”

  “Consider it a gift from me.” Loudin winks at me. “Saves you from having to decide between the two boys.”

  CHAPTER 41

  You can’t annihilate Alex.” I find my voice, and my feet. I rush to Loudin’s side, then stand on my toes so I am eye to eye with this monster.

  “Cannot?” Loudin laughs and takes a step back. “Of course I can. He has served his purpose.”

  “What about the translating?”

  “I didn’t really need him for that.” Loudin shrugs. “As I mentioned, I can transfer knowledge from one brain to another. I can give you his memories if you like. Keep a little piece of him with you always?”

  I close my eyes. This cannot be happening.

  “I admit, I was upset when Magnes died,” Loudin continues, as if I am an Assistant or a camera recording his words. “I hadn’t thought to transfer what he knew. He was healthy. I needed to concentrate on the minds of the remaining Scientists. We are getting older. Our bodies, even with the advances, aren’t as strong as yours.

  “It caught me off guard. And I do not like being caught off guard.” He presses his fingertips together. “But that will not happen again. We will work harder to train our remaining Scientists. We’ll make the necessary adjustments, and the State will be what it has always been.”

  I run to the door. I have to find Alex, warn him. Berk and Rhen helped me escape. We can help Alex.

  But the door is locked. Loudin hasn’t even moved. Even his Assistants remain where they are, completing their tasks, uncaring, unmoved by Loudin’s plans.