"The plate," the woman said.

"Yes, what's the purpose of that plate in your head?"

I looked around the room. Everything was coming into focus. This wasn't some state-of-the-art-medical facility; it was bare and dingy. The walls were gray.

"What hospital is this?" I asked.

"It's not a hospital," he said. "You're in the infirmary."

"In the institution," the woman said. "Now tell us about the plate."

I remembered her. Mrs. Beatty, the head of security. I struggled, but something was holding me down. That was when I saw that my arms and legs were strapped to the table.

"Get me out of here." My head was clearing up fast. "It's a mistake. I have ID. In my purse. I'm really Callie Winterhill. You remember me."

They looked at each other.

"No purse was found in the car," Beatty said. "We did, however, find a gun." She pursed her wrinkled lips. "It tested positive for your DNA and prints."

A rhythmic pulsing pounded in my ears, getting louder by the second.

"And the ballistics report said it's the same gun that shot Senator Harrison," she said.

He had turned me in. Blake must not have been able to stop him. Or maybe Blake hated me, now that I had almost killed his grandfather.

Beatty put the recording device in her pocket. She nodded to the doctor and he added something to my IV. I saw a look of sadness on his face before he left the room. She watched him shut the door and then leaned close so she could hiss in my ear.

"I hate liars." She stared at me, a corona of moles around her eyes.

I could smell her ancient stink, a mix of mothballs and mold. I felt a heavy fog come over me. Panic bubbled from deep down in my gut, but it couldn't rise to the surface.

"What ... did ... you ... give ... me?" I pushed the words out one by one.

She straightened and looked down at me with a nasty smile.

"Welcome to the special private club in Institution 37," she said. "The incarceration ward."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

The next morning, I found myself on the cold concrete floor of a cell that reeked of mildew and urine. I pushed myself up to a sitting position. The right side of my head throbbed with pain. I touched it and felt a bandage. I remembered the doctor, the stitches, the car accident.

I was wearing a baggy gray jumpsuit. A prison uniform.

It was dark, the only light coming from a small window just below the ceiling. There was nothing to sit on. The tiny cell was empty. I stood and leaned against the wall. A hole in the floor in the corner made a constant vacuuming sound. A tight mesh panel in the metal door looked like it would open for food delivery.

Tell me this is not going to be my life.

I stared at the dirty walls and wondered if this was like the quarantine facility my dad was sent to, to die. For all I knew, they used the patients to experiment on. It was horrible, sending them far away from their families just to die out of sight and then be burned or buried in mass graves. We'd all heard the rumors.

As awful as it had been for my mother to die at home, it had to be worse to die in an institution.

Comparing places to die. Had it come to this?

I'd been with her that day. We were walking from our car to the grocery store when we saw the explosion in the sky. It looked like a giant dandelion breaking apart, daytime fireworks that spread and then rained. Toward us.

"Back to the car!" my mother yelled.

We turned and ran. The car seemed miles away, at the back of the parking lot. We should have gone for the store, but it was too late to change our minds.

Someone behind us screamed. I turned to see an Ender running toward us. She put her hands over her nose and mouth so as not to breathe in any spores. I couldn't tell if any had touched her or if she'd already inhaled any. Or if she was just panicked.

I was vaccinated, but still, there were rumors about some Starters not surviving a massive attack.

"Keep going!" my mother screamed. She was right behind me.

She aimed her alarm button like a rapier and I heard the sweet sound of our car doors unlocking.

Our car, our sanctuary, waiting. I opened the closest door and slid across the backseat. I held out my hand for my mother.

"Mom!"

A smile of relief beamed across her face as she grasped my hand. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes shone.

We'd made it.

"It's all right, baby, we're okay now."

She placed one foot in the car, but before she could get inside, a single white spore floated down between us.

It landed on her forearm. She stared at it. We both did.

She died a week later.

The hospitals had closed to spore patients, and every hospice was overflowing.

Days after she died, the marshals took my dad away even though he showed no symptoms, no breathing problems. They knew the odds. But he would Zing us daily from the facility to let us know he was all right.

Then one day I got a message: When hawks cry, time to fly.

It was a code he had set up before he left that meant Tyler and I had to run. The marshals would be coming for us. I wanted to know more. Dad, I Zinged back. Are you sick? Do they know it?

He just repeated the code.

I thought I was going to see him again. I thought he was going to come home. I stared at the stained wall of my cell. A muffled voice floated in from the hallway. A few minutes later, footsteps came to my door. It slid open with a mechanical buzz. Beatty entered my cell, leaving the door open. I could see the shoes of a guard standing just outside.

"Feeling better?" Hatred oozed like oil from Beatty's pores.

I looked at her mole-encrusted face. It was worse than I remembered. She looked a million years old.

"Are you moving me?"

That got a laugh out of her. "You would have gotten a dorm room, but you tried to kill a senator, if you recall."

"Am I getting a trial?" I'd seen them in the holos.

She smiled. "Surely you know unclaimed minors have no rights?"

"We have some rights. We are humans, you know."

"No, you're lawbreakers, squatting in property that doesn't belong to you. The state generously takes the unclaimed and boards you. But you're a criminal now, so you'll be here in lockup, the very center of the belly of the beast. And you'll stay until you come of age."

"Nineteen?" That was an eternity in here.

She nodded, and her eyes twinkled. "You'll be assigned a state lawyer then. Of course, they're overworked, and they don't have time to make much of a case for criminals like you. You'll almost certainly end up in an adult prison."

"Prison, forever?" She was lying. I struggled to breathe, but all I got was foul air.

"Assuming you survive the next three years here in lockup." She folded her arms and smiled. "Few do."

I covered my emotion as best I could. I didn't want to give her the pleasure of knowing what this information was doing to my insides. I wasn't going to ask about my brother, although I was desperate to know whether he'd been institutionalized.

Then, as if she could read my mind, Beatty said, "Where is your brother?"

"I don't know." How did she even know I had one?

"Perhaps I'll look into that. If he's not already institutionalized, then he should be rounded up."

I did my best to keep a poker face.

"I'll figure out what that plate is on your head too. We don't keep secrets here."

She left and the door slid shut. Was I all alone here? What about those other cells-did they hold girls like me? Or were they empty? I couldn't hear anyone. Maybe they knew enough to keep quiet.

I clenched my fists. How could this be legal? I didn't have a bed; I didn't have a blanket. I spun around the cell, looking at the four walls. I spotted a single metal button on one wall. I pressed it, and a short pipe came out. Water. At least I had water. I took a deep breath. I turned my head, put my mouth under the pipe, and drank. The water was metallic and tasted of chemicals, but it was wet.

After three seconds, it shut off. I pressed it again, but nothing happened.

My home for three years. If I survived. I slapped the wall with my palms, over and over.

The next morning, I ached from sleeping on the concrete floor. My head hurt from the car injury, and no one was talking about giving me any painkillers. They did let me out into what they called the yard: an enclosed patch of dirt in the back of the compound. At three o'clock p.m., I was to get twenty minutes of exercise. The regular girls were allowed out for an hour, unless their work furlough duties were off-site.

The yard was filling up with maybe a hundred girls milling around. Some of them played with a ball or sticks. But most walked in groups of twos and threes, speaking in hushed voices. I was searching the crowd for a familiar face when someone tapped me on the back.

I thought it might be Mrs. Beatty, but it was Sara, the girl I had tried to give the sweater to.

"Callie. What are you doing here?" Her face was pained.

"I was arrested."

"Oh, no, what did you do?"

"Nothing." I was now a common criminal, denying my crime. It was easier than explaining everything to a twelve-year-old.

"So it's a mistake?"

"A big mistake."

She cast an eye at one of the armed guards stationed around the perimeter. She linked her arm in mine. "It's better if we keep moving. Is it horrible in lockup? Can the food possibly be any worse than what we get?"

"Is yours black and liquid?" I asked. My stomach growled.

She shook her head.

"Listen, Sara, I'm looking for my brother. His name is Tyler. He's seven. Do you ever see the boys?"

"Sometimes they gather us for some presentation. Or to yell at us. Is he here, in 37?"

"I don't know. He could be."

"I'll ask around. But no promises."

A couple of girls bumped us, pretending it was an accident. I stopped and looked at them. The girl closest to me was the bully who had jumped me near my building and stolen my Supertruffle. Her right hand bore the scars from when she had smashed it into the pavement instead of my face. That was the night I came back from my visit to Prime. So much had changed since then, but not this bully's aggression.

She did a double take at my new and improved face, then recognized me.

"It's you," she said. "You better watch that pretty face."

"Never mind, Callie." Sara pulled me away.

"Bye, Callie." The bully said my name in a singsong voice, now that she knew it.

We glared at each other as friends pulled us in opposite directions. Sara took me over to the wall, where we rested our backs.

"Forget about her. Let's talk about something happy," Sara said.

There was a moment of silence.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Sara asked.

My face warmed from my chin to my forehead. "I did. Sorta."

"So do you or don't ya?"