"So all this time ...?"

"Ever since I met you, that night in Club Rune," I said weakly.

"No wonder you sounded so young. You are young. But why on earth did you do this?"

I was so drained. Every part of my face ached. My feet hurt. I just wanted to go back to sleep for a million years.

"Because I had to."

She hooked her arm in mine, helping to support me. "Let's get you some painkillers and a hot shower. Then you better sit down and tell me everything."

An hour later, after I had brought Madison up to speed on what had happened, we agreed I should contact Lauren. I showered and changed into clean clothes Madison provided. I was still bruised and swollen, and missing a tooth, but I felt almost human. Not long after, the doorbell rang, and Madison let in an elegant, trim woman wearing a soft pantsuit and pearls.

"Hello, Callie." The woman extended her hand. "You've only known me in Reece, but this is who I really am."

"Lauren." I shook her hand. She was about 150, as graceful as I had imagined.

A senior gentleman in a suit joined us.

"This is my attorney, Mr. Crais. He was also Helena's."

Madison nodded, meeting them for the first time, and then excused herself. "I'll go get drinks."

We sat in the living room. Lauren winced as her eyes scanned my face. "Who did that to you?"

"It was just a fight."

"It's that rough in the institution?" Lauren asked.

"No," I said. "It's worse." I looked at them. There was no way to explain it all now. "It's like this: I'd die before I ever go back there again."

"Don't worry, that's not going to happen. I'm glad you contacted me," Lauren said. "We were trying to locate you."

"You were?"

"I'm sorry about the last time we spoke. You have to understand, I was in shock over the news about Helena."

"I know."

"I'm not at liberty to explain everything yet"-she traded a look with her lawyer-"but Helena was my dearest friend. And I wanted to contact you because now I know that she believed in you."

I wondered what that meant. Had Helena gotten a message to her during a blackout?

"So we came up with a plan," she said.

"We contend that Lauren had been in the process of claiming you when you were admitted to the institution," the attorney said. "So you're not the property of the institution, therefore it's not their prerogative to reassign you to Prime Destinations."

"Even though you were involved in a criminal act-"

"Allegedly," the attorney interrupted.

"Allegedly," Lauren repeated. "If you had been claimed at the time, my legal counsel would have assisted you. That benefit was withheld from you."

"This keeps you legally out of the clutches of the institution and the body bank," the attorney said.

"So you'll be my legal guardian?" I asked Lauren.

"You'll be as free as you wish. I'm just the name on paper."

I felt a pang of disappointment. It was stupid. Why should Lauren take on the burden of really being my guardian? She hardly knew me. It was enough for her to be my guardian on paper.

"The point is to keep you out of the institution so you're at liberty to do whatever you want," the attorney said.

"What I want is to save my little brother," I said. "I think the only way to do that is to take down the body bank."

"We hoped you'd say that," Lauren said.

We all got to work, Lauren and her attorney, Madison and me. I had the idea to create an announcement mimicking the Prime Destinations announcement I had seen. We wouldn't try to duplicate the Old Man, but it was possible to digitally copy the faces of Tinnenbaum and Doris off the original announcement. Then we would put the words we wanted to say into their mouths.

Madison volunteered to create the announcement using her production manager skills from decades ago. She made some calls and assembled an audio/visual team of Ender experts who transformed her five-car garage into a studio. She also hired two Ender tech geeks to break into the system so they could privatecast the production over Prime's designated subscriber channel. This was going to be no small feat, but Madison's deep pockets could fund the manpower and the gear. She wanted to help make up for all her body bank rentals.

I discovered a whole different side to the ditzy Madison I knew.

Meanwhile, Lauren and the attorney were working their cell phones to reach all their contacts. The attorney had a relationship with a Senator Bohn, who they hoped would get involved. He was Harrison's political rival.

That evening, we had a living room full of grandparents of missing body bank donors. But getting them to agree to a plan was a production in itself.

"We have a wealth of resources in this room," Lauren said. "We've got thousands of years of experience: doctors, lawyers, a bodybuilder, even an ex-marshal. And we have deep funds. Now that Callie has pulled together all the information, we finally have a fighting chance to get our children back."

One senior man stood up. "We don't want to stir up trouble. Our grandson is still out there somewhere. Vulnerable."

A thin woman next to him spoke. "If I have to wait another month to get him back, I'll wait. We need Prime's cooperation to find our grandkids."

I stepped in front of Lauren. "You don't understand. I saw Prime's announcement. They're starting a permanency program. Your grandchildren are going to be bought, not rented. You'll never see them again if we don't stop this."

The lawyer jumped in. "Because we have insiders like Lauren, we were able to see the privatecast. That announcement admitted Prime's intention of permanency. Lauren recorded it, and we sent a copy to Senator Bohn. If he can use that to get a judge to issue a stay, it will nullify the president's contract with Prime. If the judge determines that lives are in immediate jeopardy, we can shut them down."

"And what if he can't?" the thin woman asked. "What if they claim the original announcement was doctored, just like you're manufacturing this one?"

At that moment, Madison came into the living room. The seniors grumbled upon seeing her perfect teen body.

"She's a renter!" one of them yelled, pointing at Madison.

"That's right, sugar." Madison flipped her head, swinging her blond bob. "A renter-not a buyer."

I went to Madison and put my arm around her shoulder. "She's on our side. And she's spending a fortune to stop Prime."

The crowd continued to buzz. Lauren put up her hands.

"Please," she said. "We don't want to fight with any renters. If we are to have any chance of shutting down Prime, we're all going to have to cooperate. Because in order to get your grandchildren back, we have to do this quickly, with the element of surprise."

"I have an idea," I said, looking at the thin woman. "The technical expert who altered my chip could testify. He examined my chip and said it could never be removed, that it was permanent. That shows that they always intended this program to be permanent."

The attorney folded his arms and nodded. "That will certainly help."

Lauren's phone rang. She looked at the screen. "It's Senator Bohn."

Lauren put her phone near a small airscreen on a coffee table. Senator Bohn's picture came up for all to see. He was the opposite of dynamic Senator Harrison. Bohn had a kindly face and a gentle smile.

"Senator Bohn, I have you on airscreen," Lauren said. "As you can see, we have a bunch of concerned grandparents here."

"Thank you, Lauren, for notifying me of your progress. And I want to thank your brave donor, Callie Woodland, for exposing Prime."

I smiled politely, but we still had a long way to go.

"Every grandparent who is there, thank you. Working together, we will be able to shut them down and get your grandchildren back, each and every one of them."

I looked at the faces of the grandparents. The senator's presence, even if only on airscreen, was helping to solidify the troops. The power of a charismatic politician.

"I'll be with you every step of the way. We can do this," the senator said. "Let's get them back."

One grandfather, who had been quiet until then, repeated the senator's words. "Let's get them back," he said solemnly.

A woman on the other side of the room stood. "Get them back."

Affirmative murmurs rumbled through the room.

Madison, Lauren, and I glanced at each other, trading hopeful looks. Maybe we could pull this off.

The grandparents left with their instructions. Senator Bohn said he would know by morning if the judge would issue the stay. I watched the production team trying to change Tinnenbaum's mouth so his lips fit the new words they were making him say. It wasn't working.

"It's different when it's a baby or a dog talking. This has to look seamless," Madison said to her team. "It won't work unless it's believable."

Her geek team trying to bust through to the privatecast had an even harder time. I didn't understand it, but they hit some big technical glitch when they came up against an unexpected volcano wall, which frazzled some of their equipment. Madison reminded them that nothing mattered if they couldn't figure out how to get this to the subscribers.

We left them to work it out while I took Lauren and her attorney to Redmond's laboratory. We couldn't find a phone number for him, so we had to arrive unannounced, and it was almost midnight.

As we rode in Lauren's limo, I reached into the purse Madison had given me to see if there was a mirror but came up empty. I asked Lauren for one. She hesitated, then pulled out a compact.

I activated a light over my shoulder. As soon as I looked in the mirror, I understood her hesitation. I looked so strange. Parts of my face were still the flawless work of the body bank makeover team. But then I had one black eye, several bruises, a huge cut with stitches running from jaw to cheek, and, if I pulled my cheek back, a gap where I was missing a tooth.

"Would you like a comb?" she asked.

"Why bother?" I snapped the mirror shut and handed it back to her.

"We can fix all that," she said.

"Let's fix the important things first," I said.

Everything was coming together because we all wanted something. Lauren wanted to find her missing grandson; I wanted to find Tyler and get Michael his body back. Senator Bohn wanted to make Senator Harrison look bad for making the body bank deal with the government, and the lawyer was in it for the money.

I didn't know if this was going to work. If one piece went wrong, if the announcement wasn't believable, or if the geeks couldn't manage to break through and privatecast it, the whole thing fell apart. But what Lauren and those grandparents and I had at stake meant the world, so there was no other choice.

When we got to Redmond's compound, we immediately saw that something was wrong. Bright lights illuminated the building, and two marshals' cars blocked the entrance. A crowd from the neighborhood stood around gawking. I ran out of the limo, with Lauren and the attorney at my heels.

A plume of smoke billowed in the air, but I couldn't see Redmond's building from where I stood. An Ender marshal with short white hair stopped us.

"No access, folks," he said.

"What happened?" Lauren asked.

"Just trying to determine that now," he said. "Please step back."

An Ender wearing overalls and holding back a dog on a chain collar came forward. "Some kid bombed the place. They got nothing better to do than tear down what we build up."

While the marshal was distracted by the Ender, I ran past them to Redmond's building.

"Hey, you, stop!" the marshal shouted.

I rounded the corner of the compound and was stunned by what I saw. The building was blackened and gutted. One corner of the roof was completely gone, as if a monster had bitten it off. Ender firemen were checking the smoldering remains.

I heard firemen assessing the damage inside the building. I ran in.

"Hey, get out of here. It's not safe," one of them yelled at me.

Everything was charred inside: all the monitors and machines, even the ones hanging from the ceiling. The smell of melted computer parts was unbearable. I held my sleeve to my nose. Redmond's burnt and mangled chair was dripping water, like some conceptual art piece. It was all a horrifying, soggy black mess.

"Where's Redmond?" I asked. "The man who lives here."

"We haven't found a body." One fireman looked around, throwing his hands in the air. "Yet."

Redmond was too valuable to kill. And too smart to be caught. I was betting he'd gotten away and was in hiding. We wouldn't have his testimony.

Then I remembered the box.

The firemen were busy taking heat measurements on the other side of the room. I leaned down and pressed my fingers to the pad on the file drawer. I coughed to cover the little click that it made. I peeked inside and used the edge of my jacket to pull out the small metal box. It was light and cool to the touch. I saw he had changed the label from Helena to Callie.

I slipped it into my pocket.

Before any of the firemen could escort me out, I moved to the door. I stopped there and took one last look at the lab. I didn't really know Redmond, having only met him once, but he was sort of my maker, if that made any sense. He was important to me. It hurt to see all his work destroyed this way.

I joined Lauren and the lawyer, who were standing just outside the compound, in the reflection of the marshal's red light. "They said someone saw a kid do this," the lawyer said to me.

"Yeah, some kid with a murderous senior inside," I said. "It's got body bank written all over it."

Fear clouded Lauren's face. I hoped this wasn't going to give her second thoughts about our plans.

"Did they take anything?" the lawyer asked me.