The Institute Read online

  For the second time, Stackhouse was too dumbfounded to speak.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Good. We’ll be in touch to fine-tune the details.”

  With that, the boy was gone. Stackhouse set the phone down carefully on his desk. He noted that his hand was trembling slightly. Part of that was fright, but it was mostly fury. We’ll be in touch, the boy had said, as though he were some hotshot Silicon Valley CEO and Stackhouse a paper-pushing underling who had to do his bidding.

  We’ll see about that, he thought. We’ll just see.

  42

  Luke handed the box phone to Tim as if glad to be rid of it.

  “How do you know he has fake ID?” Wendy asked. “Did you read it in his mind?”

  “No,” Luke said. “But I bet he has plenty—passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates. I bet a lot of them do. Maybe not the caretakers and techs and cafeteria staff, but the ones on top. They’re like Eichmann or Walter Rauff, the guy who came up with the idea of building mobile gas chambers.” Luke looked at Mrs. Sigsby. “Rauff would have fit right in with your people, wouldn’t he?”

  “Trevor may have false documents,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “I do not.”

  And although Luke couldn’t get into her mind—she had closed it off to him—he thought she was telling the truth. There was a word for people like her, and the word was zealot. Eichmann, Mengele, and Rauff had run, like the opportunistic cowards they were; their zealot fuehrer had stayed and committed suicide. Luke felt quite sure that if given the opportunity, this woman would do the same. As long as it was relatively painless.

  He climbed back into the van, being careful to avoid Evans’s wounded foot. “Mr. Stackhouse thinks I’m coming to him, but that’s not right.”

  “No?” Tim asked.

  “No. I’m coming for him.”

  The Stasi Lights flared in front of Luke’s eyes in the growing gloom, and the van’s sliding door rolled shut on its own.

  THE BIG PHONE

  1

  As far as Beaufort, the interior of the van was mostly silent. Dr. Evans did try to start a conversation once, again wanting them to know that he was an innocent party in all this. Tim told him he had a choice: either shut up and get a couple of the oxycodone tablets Dr. Roper had provided, or keep talking and endure the pain in his wounded foot. Evans opted for silence and the pills. There were a few more in the little brown bottle. Tim offered one to Mrs. Sigsby, who dry-swallowed it without bothering to say thank you.

  Tim wanted quiet for Luke, who was now the brains of the operation. He knew most people would think him nuts for allowing a twelve-year-old to create a strategy intended to save the kids in that tunnel without getting killed themselves, but he noticed that Wendy was also keeping quiet. She and Tim knew what Luke had done to get here, they had seen him in operation since, and they understood.

  What, exactly, was that understanding? Why, that aside from having a yard of guts, the kid also happened to be a genuine bottled-in-bond genius. These Institute thugs had taken him to obtain a talent that was (at least before its enhancement) little more than a parlor trick. They considered his brilliance a mere adjunct to what they were really after, making them like poachers willing to slaughter a twelve-thousand-pound elephant to get ninety pounds of ivory.

  Tim doubted if Evans could appreciate the irony, but he guessed Sigsby could . . . if she ever allowed the idea mental house-room, that was: a clandestine operation that had lasted for decades brought down by the very thing they had considered dispensable—this child’s formidable intellect.

  2

  Around nine o’clock, just after passing the Beaufort city limits, Luke told Tim to find a motel. “Don’t stop in front, though. Go around to the back.”

  There was an Econo Lodge on Boundary Street, its rear parking lot shaded by magnolias. Tim parked by the fence and killed the engine.

  “This is where you leave us, Officer Wendy,” Luke said.

  “Tim?” Wendy asked. “What’s he talking about?”

  “About you booking a room, and he’s right,” Tim said. “You stay, we go.”

  “Come back here after you get your key,” Luke said. “And bring back some paper. Have you got a pen?”

  “Of course, and I have my notebook.” She tapped the front pocket of her uniform pants. “But—”

  “I’ll explain as much as I can when you get back, but what it comes down to is you’re our insurance policy.”

  Mrs. Sigsby addressed Tim for the first time since the abandoned beauty parlor. “What this boy has been through has made him crazy, and you’d be crazy to listen to what he says. The best thing the three of you could do is leave Dr. Evans and me here, and run.”

  “Which would mean leaving my friends to die,” Luke said.

  Mrs. Sigsby smiled. “Really, Luke, think. What have they ever done for you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Luke said. “Not in a million years.”

  “Go on, Wendy,” Tim said. He took her hand and squeezed it. “Get a room, then come back.”

  She gave him a doubtful look but handed him the Glock, got out of the van, and headed for the office.

  Dr. Evans said, “I want to emphasize that I was here under—”

  “Protest, yes,” Tim said. “We got that. Now shut up.”

  “Can we get out?” Luke asked. “I want to talk to you without . . .” He nodded at Mrs. Sigsby.

  “Sure, we can do that.” Tim opened both the passenger door and the slider, then stood against the fence dividing the motel from the closed car dealership next door. Luke joined him. From where Tim stood, he could see both of their unwilling passengers, and could stop them if either decided to try making a run. He didn’t think that was very likely, considering one had been shot in the leg and the other in the foot.

  “What’s up?” Tim asked.

  “Do you play chess?”

  “I know the game, but I was never very good at it.”

  “I am,” Luke said. He was speaking low. “And now I’m playing with him. Stackhouse. Do you get that?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Trying to think three moves ahead, plus counters to his future moves.”

  Tim nodded.

  “In chess, time isn’t a factor unless you’re playing speed-chess, and this game is. We have to get from here to the airfield where the plane is waiting. Then to someplace near Presque Isle, where the plane is based. From there to the Institute. I can’t see us making it until at least two tomorrow morning. Does that sound right to you?”

  Tim ran it in his mind, and nodded. “Might be a little later, but say two.”

  “That gives my friends five hours to do something on their own behalf, but it also gives Stackhouse five hours to re-think his position and change his mind. To gas those kids and just take off running. I told him his picture would be in every airport, and he’ll buy that, I think, because there must be pictures of him somewhere online. A lot of the Institute people are ex-military. Probably he is, too.”

  “There might even be a photo of him on the queen bitch’s phone,” Tim said.

  Luke nodded, although he doubted if Mrs. Sigsby had been the type to take snapshots. “But he might decide to slip across the Canadian border on foot. I’m sure he has at least one alternate escape route all picked out—an abandoned woods road or a creek. That’s one of those possible future moves I have to keep in mind. Only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  Luke rubbed the heel of his hand up one cheek, a strangely adult gesture of weariness and indecision. “I need your input. What I’m thinking makes sense to me, but I’m still only a kid. I can’t be sure. You’re a grownup, and you’re one of the good guys.”

  Tim was touched by that. He glanced toward the front of the building, but there was no sign of Wendy yet. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “That I fucked him up. Fucked up his whole world. I think he might stay just to kill me. U
sing my friends as bait to make sure I’ll come. Does that make sense to you? Tell me the truth.”

  “It does,” Tim said. “No way to be sure, but revenge is a powerful motivator, and this Stackhouse wouldn’t be the first to ignore his own best interests in an effort to get it. And I can think of another reason he might decide to wait in place.”

  “What?” Luke was studying him anxiously. From around the building, Wendy Gullickson came with a key card in one hand.

  Tim tipped his head toward the van’s open passenger door, then brought his head close to Luke’s. “Sigsby’s the boss lady, right? Stackhouse is just her ramrod?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Tim said, smiling a little, “who’s her boss? Have you thought of that?”

  Luke’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little. He got it. And smiled.

  3

  Nine-fifteen.

  The Institute was quiet. The kids currently in Front Half were asleep, aided by sedatives Joe and Hadad had handed out. In the access tunnel, the five who had started the mutiny were also sleeping, but probably not deeply; Stackhouse hoped their headaches would be fucking them up most awesomely. The only kids still awake were the gorks, rambling around almost as if they had somewhere to go. Sometimes they made circles, like they were playing ring around the rosie.

  Stackhouse had returned to Mrs. Sigsby’s office and opened the locked bottom drawer of her desk with the duplicate key she had given him. Now he held the special box phone in his hand, the one they called the Green Phone, or sometimes the Zero Phone. He was thinking of something Julia had once said concerning that phone with its three buttons. This had been in the village one day last year, back when Heckle and Jeckle still had most of their brain cells working. The Back Half kids had just offed a Saudi bagman who was funneling money to terrorist cells in Europe, and it had totally looked like an accident. Life was good. Julia invited him to dinner to celebrate. They had split a bottle of wine before, and a second bottle during and after. It had loosened her tongue.

  “I hate making update calls on the Zero Phone. That man with the lisping voice. I always imagine him as an albino. I don’t know why. Maybe something I saw in a comic book when I was a girl. An albino villain with X-ray eyes.”

  Stackhouse had nodded his understanding. “Where is he? Who is he?”

  “Don’t know and don’t want to know. I make the call, I give my report, then I take a shower. There would only be one thing worse than calling on the Zero Phone. That would be getting a call.”

  Stackhouse looked at the Zero Phone now with something like superstitious dread, as if just thinking of that conversation would make it ring in his—

  “No,” he said. To the empty room. To the silent phone. Silent for now, at least. “Nothing superstitious about it. You will ring. Simple logic.”

  Sure. Because the people on the other end of the Zero Phone—the lisping man and the greater organization of which he was a part—would find out about the spectacular balls-up in that little South Carolina town. Of course they would. It was going to be front-page news across the country and maybe the whole world. They might know already. If they knew about Hollister, the stringer who actually lived in DuPray, they might have been in touch with him for all the gory details.

  Yet the Zero Phone hadn’t rung. Did that mean they didn’t know, or did it mean they were giving him time to put things right?

  Stackhouse had told the man named Tim that any deal they made would depend on whether or not the Institute could be kept a secret. Stackhouse wasn’t fool enough to believe its work could continue, at least not here in the Maine woods, but if he could somehow manage the situation without worldwide headlines about psychic children who had been abused and murdered . . . or why those things had taken place . . . that would be something. He might even be rewarded if he could manage a cover-up that was watertight, although just keeping his life would be reward enough.

  Only three people knew, according to this Tim. The others who had seen what was on the flash drive were dead. Some of the ill-starred Gold team might be alive, but they hadn’t seen it, and they would maintain silence about everything else.

  Get Luke Ellis and his collaborators here, he thought. That’s step one. They might arrive as soon as 2 AM. Even one-thirty would give me enough time to plan an ambush. All I’ve got on hand are techs and widebodies, but some of them—Zeke the Greek, to name just one—are hard guys. Get the flash drive and get them. Then, when the man with the lisp calls—and he will—to ask if I am handling the situation, I can say . . .

  “I can say it’s already handled,” Stackhouse said.

  He put the Zero Phone on Mrs. Sigsby’s desk and sent it a mental message: Don’t ring. Don’t you dare ring until three o’clock tomorrow morning. Four or five would be even better.

  “Give me enough ti—”

  The phone rang, and Stackhouse gave a startled yell. Then he laughed, although his heart was still beating way too fast. Not the Zero Phone but his own box phone. Which meant the call was coming from South Carolina.

  “Hello? Is it Tim or Luke?”

  “It’s Luke. Listen to me, and I’ll tell you how this is going to work.”

  4

  Kalisha was lost in a very large house, and she had no idea how to get out, because she didn’t know how she’d gotten in. She was in a hall that looked like the residence corridor in Front Half, where she had lived for awhile before being taken away to have her brains plundered. Only this hall was furnished with bureaus and mirrors and coat racks and something that looked like an elephant foot filled with umbrellas. There was an endtable with a phone on it, one that looked just like the phone in their kitchen back home, and it was ringing. She picked it up, and since she couldn’t say what she had been taught to say since the age of four (“Benson residence”), she just said hello.

  “Hola? Me escuchas?” It was a girl’s voice, faint and broken up by static, just barely audible.

  Kalisha knew hola because she’d had a year of Spanish in middle school, but her scant vocabulary didn’t include escuchas. Nevertheless, she knew what the girl was saying, and realized this was a dream.

  “Yes, uh-huh, I can hear you. Where are you? Who are you?”

  But the girl was gone.

  Kalisha put the phone down and kept walking along the hall. She peered into what looked like a drawing room in an old-time movie, then into a ballroom. It had a floor made of black-and-white squares that made her think of Luke and Nick, playing chess out in the playground.

  Another phone began to ring. She hurried faster and entered a nice modern kitchen. The fridge was plastered with pictures and magnets and a bumper sticker that said BERKOWITZ FOR PRESIDENT! She didn’t know Berkowitz from a hole in the wall, yet she knew it was his kitchen. The phone was on the wall. It was bigger than the one on the endtable, certainly bigger than the one in the Benson kitchen, almost like a joke phone. But it was ringing, so she picked it up.

  “Hello? Hola? My name is—me llamo—Kalisha.”

  But it wasn’t the Spanish girl. It was a boy. “Bonjour, vous m’entendez?” French. Bonjour was French. Different language, same question, and this time the connection was better. Not much, but a little.

  “Yes, wee-wee, I hear you! Where are—”

  But the boy was gone, and another phone was ringing. She dashed through a pantry and into a room with straw walls and a packed dirt floor mostly covered by a colorful woven mat. It had been the final stop for a fugitive African warlord named Badu Bokassa, who had been stabbed in the throat by one of his mistresses. Except he’d really been killed by a bunch of kids thousands of miles away. Dr. Hendricks had waved his magic wand—which just happened to be a cheap Fourth of July sparkler—and down Mr. Bokassa went. The phone on the mat was bigger still, almost the size of a table lamp. The receiver was heavy in her hand when she picked it up.

  Another girl, and this time clear as a bell. As the phones got bigger, the voices got clearer, it seemed. “
Zdravo, cujes li me?”

  “Yes, I hear you fine, what is this place?”

  The voice was gone, and another phone was ringing. It was in a bedroom with a chandelier, and this phone was the size of a footstool. She had to pick up the receiver with both hands.

  “Hallo, hoor je me?”

  “Yes! Sure! Absolutely! Talk to me!”

  He didn’t. No dial tone. Just gone.

  The next phone was in a sunroom with a great glass roof, and it was as big as the table it sat on. The ringing hurt her ears. It was like listening to a phone channeled through an amplifier at a rock-and-roll gig. Kalisha ran at it, hands outstretched, palms tilted upward, and knocked the receiver off the phone’s base, not because she expected enlightenment but to shut it up before it burst her eardrums.

  “Ciao!” boomed a boy’s voice. “Mi senti? MI SENTI?”

  And that woke her up.

  5

  She was with her buds—Avery, Nicky, George, and Helen. The others were still sleeping, but not easily. George and Helen were moaning. Nicky was muttering something and holding out his hands, making her think of how she’d run at the big phone to make it stop. Avery was twisting around and gasping something that she had already heard: Hoor je me? Hoor je me?

  They were dreaming what she had been dreaming, and considering what they were now—what the Institute had made them—the idea made perfect sense. They were generating some kind of group power, telepathy as well as telekinesis, so why wouldn’t they share the same dream? The only question was which one of them had started it. She was guessing Avery, because he was the strongest.

  Hive of bees, she thought. That’s what we are now. Hive of psychic bees.