My bare feet are quiet on the stone floor as I follow Marcus down the white hallway toward the gymnasium. I wish I'd taken a moment to look for shoes before I left my room. I wish I'd looked through the dresser that my roommate and I are supposed to share. What if it holds information? Tools? Something to help us get out of this place?

Marcus pauses in front of the gymnasium and waits for me to catch up. He laughs when I stop about ten feet behind him. "For a tough girl, you sure spook easy."

"Just being cautious," I say as I trail after him across the threshold.

My voice is amplified by the spacious, brand-new gym. He heads over to the metal basketball rack and grabs a dark-orange ball. He tosses it from one hand to the other, testing its weight. "I wouldn't call picking a fight with Rudolph being cautious."

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. It's fitting, and I approve for a change. Still. "What's with the nicknames? Why can't you just call people by their names?"

"Where's the fun in that?" He dribbles the ball and tosses it at the basket. Swish. It doesn't touch the rim.

"Is that it? Because it's fun?"

Marcus grabs the ball as it bounces back. He dribbles and shoots again. Misses. He chases after it. There's something almost comical about seeing him running around barefoot. But it's not so funny when he turns to me with those hard eyes of his.

"You really want to know?"

It's almost like he's challenging me. "Yes."

"The man who raised me taught me the power behind names." He walks closer. "When you pick out a person's flaw and refer to them by that, you define who they are. And you control them."

I was wrong for thinking Marcus is a dumb brute. He's smart and cunning, and every time he calls me Rose, he reminds me of my vulnerability. My need to protect myself with thorns so no one will know just how weak and damaged I feel inside.

The sound of the basketball hitting the floor ricochets like a gunshot. I hold in a flinch, but the smile he gives me tells me he's seen through me.

"You were raised by someone other than your biological father?" I ask.

He cocks his head. "You're not going to get me to talk that easily."

I try to fit this piece of information into everything I know already, but it's like trying to push a square peg into a round hole. I store it away anyway. "Why'd you bring me here?"

Marcus starts to circle me, the basketball caught in the crook of his arm. His footsteps are silent; if it weren't for the cold prickling at the back of my neck, I wouldn't know he's still behind me. "You ignored my friend request. That hurt my feelings."

I don't like his tone, low and heavy with things I don't understand. "You weren't exactly being friendly."

Marcus chuckles, the sound closer now. "Why'd you come over? Alec? His pretty boy looks got to you? I thought you were a little more inspired than that."

He brushes past me and heaves the ball across the gym. It bounces for a while, bang, bang, bang, and rolls to a stop near the far wall.

"Here's how it's going to be, Rose. You'll join me. Work under me. You'll do exactly as I say. When I say jump, you jump. When I tell you to keep your smart mouth shut, you listen. You'll do everything in your power to make my time here a little easier."

I give him a look that makes it clear I think he's insane. "Why would I do that?"

"Because you care about your friends." He crosses his arms and moves his shoulders up and down. "I'm not forcing you. You're free to do whatever you want. But the next time Rudolph or the others pick on your hillbilly buddy, I'm not going to risk my position to save his sorry ass."

"They're not my friends," I say. I don't—can't—have friends.

He shrugs again. "Your choice."

I should walk out of here right now. That would let him know what I think about his crazy proposition. But I'm rooted in place. I keep picturing the cruelty in Rudolph's eyes. "What makes you think they'll bother Carson again? Are you going to send them after him?"

"You don't know much about guys like Rudolph, do you?"

I ignore the smugness in his voice.

"He's caught the scent of blood," Marcus explains. "He'll come after your boy. He'll probably come after you, too, but knowing your type you think you can protect yourself. Question is, who's going to protect Hillbilly?"

He's tugging on strings I keep hidden, trying to turn me into his puppet. Anger tenses my body, but that's as far as I let it show. He wins if he knows how much he's upsetting me. "Carson isn't my boy or buddy or anything to me. I don't even know the guy. Whatever happens to him has nothing to do with me."

"That's a no?" he asks.

I press my lips together.

Marcus smiles. "Well?"

"Why do you want me to be on your side now? I know you didn't before—when you were trying to get Willow to recruit me. What changed?"

"The winds are always changing. The only options are to ride them out to sea or lose your course."

"How poetic," I mutter.

He throws his arms out, grinning. "I'm a man of many talents."

I think back on the last hour, trying to root out his intentions. Finding connections and making sense of things has always been my first instinct. My comfort. But I can't figure out this enigma before me. And it makes me want to run.

"It's a no," I say.

My answer doesn't seem to bother him. There's a gleam in his eyes when he says, "That's the second time you've turned me down. Don't think there'll be a third."



Willow and Carson are together at a table, eating from plastic bowls. I falter, not sure if I should join them. Unease floods me when I remember the way those punks were pushing him around. Compared to most of the guys in here, Carson is one of the weaker ones. He's not cut out for this place. Maybe none of us are, but him especially.

On the other side of the cafeteria, Rudolph lounges in his chair, one arm slung over the chair of the girl next to him. If he comes after Carson again, I doubt anyone but Marcus can protect him.

Instead of heading over to Willow and Carson, I make a beeline for the stairs. Maybe something has changed in the past half an hour since I went up there. Maybe I'll find a magical exit and get us all out of here. Or maybe I'm just an idiot who can't face people.

I glance back at Marcus's table as I climb the stairs. He's rejoined his group. He's so loud I catch his voice from all the way over here. His expression is so commanding and cocky it's no wonder the others obey him without question.

There must be a catch to his offer. Turning him down was the right choice.

Looking out for myself is always the right choice.



I sit at the top of the stairs for a few hours until restlessness makes me wander back downstairs. As I hit the last step, I meet Marcus's gaze. He's all the way across the cafeteria, but I'd have to be blind to miss that smile on his face. He knows I've been hiding.

I look away and spot Willow waving at me. There's no avoiding her and Carson now, so I walk over and slip into the chair across from her, my neck tight with tension. "You okay?" I ask Carson, as much to appease my guilt as to show concern.

"Yeah. Don't worry about that asshole. I can handle him."

"Are you sure?"

His smile disappears. He stabs his fork through his empty plastic bowl. "Look, I don't want you getting in a tizzy over me, alright? I'm good. Anyway, there's all this new information we need to make sense of. We got eight blocks on each floor and each one of them has six beds. But get this—there're only eighty-nine of us."

"There should be ninety-six if you do the math," Willow says. "Instead there are seven empty beds in seven of the blocks."

"Why are they empty?" I ask.

"That's the real mystery."

I lean back in my chair and drum my fingers against the table. "Maybe we're not all here. Why bother setting up beds if no one is going to sleep in them?"

"To confuse the hell out of us," Carson quips.

I frown at them. "Maybe not. Those other kids might be on the way . . ."

"Or they didn't make it at all," Willow finishes.

Chills race down my spine. Carson looks as startled as I feel. "Let's not get worked up over nothing," I say, feeling the need to bring reason into this. "There could be other reasons they're not here. Assuming they even exist in the first place."

"There's something else," Willow says. "There are eighty-nine of us, right? Everyone we've questioned is from the East Coast—but not all the states in the region. Just specific ones."

"Five, to be exact," Carson says. "Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Connecticut."

She nods. "What do these states have in common?"

Good question. Out of all the states on the East Coast, even those in the whole country, why these five?

"It's possible these states weren't chosen because they're special," I answer, "but that they became so because of us."

Carson gives me a blank look. "Huh?"

"I mean—" I struggle for words. I don't even understand what I'm saying. It's one thing to do word problems in a math book, but this is beyond anything I've tried to make sense of before. The beeping isn't helping.

The beeping.

The sound picks up all around us, peppered by startled exclamations. I jump up just as my bracelet pinches me with electricity. All around kids are flinching and rubbing their wrists.

"What's going on?" someone asks amid the confusion.

The bracelets are beeping again. Then another zap. "God!" Carson exclaims, hopping in place. "This thing stings like hell. Now what do they want?"

I catch Marcus's tall figure in the crowd, and the memory of our conversation this morning floods my head. A cattle grid.

"I know what's going on," I say. Without pausing to explain, I grab Willow and Carson by the arms and start dragging them with me.

"Uh, April?" Willow asks, sounding panicked.

"They're trying to herd us back." I turn to the guys and girls closest to me and shout, "Go back to your blocks! Hurry!"

My command is spread all over the cafeteria, passed on from one panicked group to the next. People start rushing for the stairs. Marcus notices what I'm doing and meets us halfway across the cafeteria.

"It's happening again," I say when he opens his mouth to demand answers.

"What is?"

I'm suddenly on my back on the stone floor, electricity crashing through me. The shock ends quickly, but the excruciating pain lingers forever. The kids around me groan and slur questions at each other, but there's only one chilling thought in my head.

Our bracelets are beeping again. And after the beeping comes the shock. It always does. If they keep shocking us like this, there's no way we're going to make it up those stairs.