I heard the Old Man's footsteps coming closer, but he didn't speak. Was he next to me? There was no sound of breathing. Then it hit me. He had faked the footsteps. They were electronic, synthesized sounds, like his voice. This was a man who played with illusions; he wasn't walking toward me.

He had moved away.

It was just me and dead silence in the blackness. I backed up to a light sensor I'd spotted earlier and I pressed it with my palm. The lights came on in pools, spotlighting empty areas, proving that, yes, I was alone in a large, empty room.

I turned around and saw a monitor mounted high on the wall. It displayed the chaos in the lobby. A team of marshals was taking charge, making arrests, cuffing body bank employees.

Stage two. I pressed my pocket alarm again.

"He's gone!" I shouted.

The two backup marshals who had been shadowing me at a distance burst into the room.

"Which way did he go?" the taller one asked.

"I don't know, I couldn't see."

The room had three exits aside from the one behind me. The Old Man could have run out of any of them. The taller marshal took the first door, the other man the second, and I opened the third one. I saw a short hallway that led to a bank of two elevators. The hum told me they were both moving, but there was no light to tell whether they were moving up or down. I pressed the pad and got in the first one that came. I rode it down past the first floor, to the garage level.

I ran out into the dimly lit garage, looking for the Old Man. Plenty of high-end cars were parked close to the elevator, with the less-expensive employees' cars in the farther lanes. I bent down to look for his feet underneath the cars but couldn't see anyone. I wanted to find him and tear that mask off his face, to strip him bare.

I stopped and listened. Maybe he was hiding. I had to quiet my own breathing a moment. A sound, the shuffle of footsteps. I turned around and saw someone in the shadows, against the wall, hiding behind the front of an SUV.

I ran over there. This area was dark. The figure sprinted away from me, but he was cornered. When he got to the rear wall, he slumped down into a squat.

It was Terry, the nurse who wore eyeliner. He was crying.

"Kitten, don't let them arrest me," he said. "I couldn't take jail."

"Help me, and let's see what we can do." I put my hand under his elbow and got him to his feet. "Where would the Old Man hide?"

"He wouldn't hide. He'd just leave."

"Which car is his?"

"Not the car." His pretty eyes looked up. "The heli."

Terry and I raced up the stairs to the roof. I was mad at myself for not thinking of the heli-transport first.

"I just knew this day would come." Black makeup streaked his cheeks.

"Then maybe you should have quit."

We burst through the last door, which led to the roof, and ran out into the cold. The loud sound of the whirling blades and the blast of air hit us in the face like a slap. We squinted as our hair whipped around our faces, and we saw the black-bug heli on a landing pad some twenty feet away. Not yet airborne.

Through the curved window I could see the Old Man sitting behind the pilot, looking away. I ran to the heli, bending low to avoid the blades. The pilot motioned to the Old Man, and he swung around toward me.

His face was that of a mummy from a horror holo.

I stood on the skid, grabbed the door handle, and yanked open the door. The Old Man reached out to pull it closed, and I grabbed his arm.

I held on to the doorframe as I pulled on his coat sleeve. Past him, slumped on the seat beside him, someone was encased in a bag. I couldn't tell their size or gender, or if they were even still alive. Terry was behind me but was unable to get close. It was just me, fighting with the Old Man.

I tugged, pulling him half out of the heli. I reached for the edge of his mask.

"What're you hiding?" I yelled over the roar of the blades.

He held on to the frame of the heli and tried to shove me back with his other hand.

"Where's my brother?" I screamed, and dug my fingers into the side of his face.

He put his foot on my stomach and pushed. I held on.

The pilot pulled out a gun and aimed it at me. I couldn't do anything. I was dead.

But the Old Man pushed his arm away. I didn't know why. The disconnect made me freeze. The Old Man yelled something at the pilot. He worked his controls to lift the heli, me still standing on the skid. In my peripheral vision, Terry waved for me to jump.

We were rising off the ground. If I stayed any longer, I'd have to climb inside. I gave the mask one last tug before I jumped off. It ripped at the side but stayed on. As I fell backward, I saw the Old Man holding the mask to his face as he closed the door.

I landed on my back on the ground. Terry ran over to help. I waved him off. I wasn't hurt-just mad and frustrated at the man who always got away.

Lauren and the attorney and my two marshals joined us, but it was too late. As I watched the Old Man's heli escape into the sky, I was tormented by one question.

Was that Tyler in the bag?

We all joined the chaos happening on the first level of the building. The other marshals had rounded up the employees and lined them up against the wall. Tinnenbaum, Doris, and Rodney each argued their cases, protesting and demanding their cell phones back so they could call their lawyers. The guards, the receptionist, and a few other workers slumped on the floor, resigned. Some were crying. Trax, the tech guy, sat with his head in his hands. One nurse stood screaming at a marshal. In the middle of all this, Senator Bohn spoke directly to a camera as a small two-man crew recorded him.

I went up to Tinnenbaum. "Where's my brother?"

He shook his head. I lurched for him, but the attorney held me back.

"You know how secretive the Old Man is," Doris said. "We'd tell you if we knew."

A marshal intervened. Before I could press them further, everyone's eyes turned to the main door. Several teens with jaw-dropping bodies entered the building. Puzzled expressions distorted their otherwise stunning faces.

Stage three.

"What's going on?" a tall blonde said. "We were told to come here."

"Who told you?" the senator put the microphone in her face.

"He did." A dark-haired boy pointed. "Tinnenbaum."

"I did no such thing," Tinnenbaum said.

The senior renter in the boy's body nodded. "Oh, yes, you did, my man. A privatecast came in on our Prime channel, and you said we all needed to come back to the body bank, that something was wrong with our chips."

"I didn't pay this much to have my youth adventure cut short," the blonde said. "But if there's some kind of recall, let's get it over with, shall we?"

I looked over at Lauren. She smiled. Our fake privatecast had worked. More renters poured into the lobby, all with the same confused expression on their faces. The noise level was getting unbearable as the entitled Ender renters inside teen bodies demanded answers.

Weaving past the others was a familiar face. Madison. Her long earrings dangled under her blond bob as she made her way to us in the center of the lobby. I put my arm around her shoulders and faced Senator Bohn.

"This is Madison," I said to the senator. "She produced that announcement."

The senator shook her hand.

"Where's Trax?" Madison asked.

The tall tech Ender with the shock of wild white hair stood up, his hands cuffed.

"Come on, handsome, take me to my body," Madison said.

A marshal uncuffed Trax but held on to his arm. He followed the tech like a shadow as he led a group of us through the corridors into the bowels of the body bank. It was me, Madison, Lauren and her attorney, and Senator Bohn, with the camera crew shooting all the way. Behind us, most of the grandparents and a large, noisy group of renters in their teen bodies followed.

We finally arrived at a room I had never seen before. Trax called it the waiting room. It was a large space that resembled an ICU, with a circular nurses' station in the center. From there, recliners fanned out like flower petals, each holding an elderly renter. There must have been over a hundred renters, all with their eyes closed and tubes inserted into the backs of their heads connecting them to a computer.

The nurses were shocked to see us but cooperated, perhaps motivated by the presence of the senator and the camera. Some of the renters appeared to have been there as long as two months, judging by the growth of beards and hair. They ranged in age from about 80 to 150.

Madison, with her long legs, sashayed up to a heavyset woman about 125 years old, who was reclining with her eyes closed. Like the other renters, she wore a hospital gown and had a blanket draped up to her waist.

Madison pointed to the large senior and spoke to Trax. "Now be a sport and get me back into my old, fat body. It may not be much, but it's mine."

He pulled over a chair for Madison to sit in. He went to the nurses' station and put his hands on a vertical keyboard. He pressed a series of keys, triggering soft tones. I followed his eyes up and saw a circular computer module hanging directly above him, close to the ceiling. The lights flashed in a sequence for a few moments. And then the lights and the sounds stopped.

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, it was so quiet in the room. Then the large woman in the recliner opened her eyes. Trax went over to her and touched her shoulder.

"All right?" he asked her.

She shook her head as if shaking off sleep. "Never better." She waited for him to unhook her tubes, and then she sat up. "Hello, Callie girl. This is the real me. Rhiannon."

I smiled at her.

The real Madison, the teen donor, was slumped over in the chair with her eyes closed. She was twitching like a cat in the middle of a nightmare. Then she opened her eyes. She was disoriented, her blond bob hanging in her face. She sat up.

"Where am I?" she said in a soft voice. She looked around. "Who are all these people?"

Her voice was recognizable but different.

Rhiannon leaned forward and put her hand on Madison's shoulder. "It's all right, honey, you're back at Prime. Your rental is over."

Some of the renters were not happy with the idea of getting cheated on their rental term. They were getting vocal. The senator, the attorney, and Trax put their heads together. They decided the best and quickest solution was simply to pull the plug.

"All right, everyone sit down on the floor. Now," the senator said.

Only a few of the grumpy seniors in the rental teen bodies obeyed. Trax followed the same sequence he had used a moment earlier to shut Madison down. Any teen who hadn't already been on the floor soon was. The senior bodies started moving in the recliners. The rest of us went to assist the poor teen donors, who had no clue why they were waking up on the floor.

I scanned the crowd. Someone I knew was there, near the back.

Michael.

He was safe. I knelt down beside him.

"Michael?"

He looked at me with a groggy expression. "Cal?" He propped himself up on one arm. "What happened to your face?"

I touched my jaw. "Some serious unfriendlies."

"Does it hurt bad?"

"I'll be all right."

"Where am I?" He sat up and rubbed his head.

"At the body bank."

He took that in. "The body bank. Is my rental over?"

"It's so over." I put my arms around him and held him.

He wrapped his arms around me, and I remembered how safe he made me feel. I buried my nose in his shirt for a moment. I could have stayed like that forever, but my mind was on my brother. If he was there, I would find him.

I helped Michael stand. All the donors were on their feet now, getting oriented.

Lauren came over to me with Senator Bohn, their bodies tense.

"We're not positive, so please don't get your hopes up, but we may have a lead on your brother," the senator said.

The senator and I rushed with Trax and a marshal down a long hallway.

"I didn't know he was your brother." Trax shook his head.

"What about Florina?" I asked. "Is there a girl with him?"

"No, just the boy," Trax said.

As we hurried along, he explained how the Old Man had consulted with Trax earlier that morning. He wanted to know whether the procedure would work on a preteen brain. The discussion had led to a question about the size of the particular brain, and Trax had examined Tyler.

"But I don't know if he's still there." Trax's brows furrowed. "The last time I saw him was seven-thirty this morning. The Old Man moved him around a lot."

"Who's been taking care of him?" I asked.

Trax shrugged.

"Come on. Let's go." I grabbed Trax's arm and pulled him into a jog.