Gone

then Sam had known that she was only here because he had broken up his mother’s marriage.
    He felt within him the residue of his rage at his mother. It was childish. Shameful, really. Wrong. And it was the wrong time to be thinking about all that, now, where he was, with what was happening, what was likely to happen.
    What was that phrase of Edilio’s? Cabeza de turco? Scapegoat? He needed someone to blame, and his anger had been building at his mother since long before the FAYZ.
    But as mad as I am, Sam thought, it must be worse for Caine. I was the son she kept. He was the one she gave away.
    When they pulled up, Panda and a couple of kids Sam didn’t know were waiting. They were armed with baseball bats.
    “I want to see Caine,” Sam said as they climbed out.
    “No doubt,” Drake said. “But first we have things to take care of. Line up. Walk single file around the building.”
    “Tell Caine his brother is here,” Sam insisted.
    “You’re not dealing with Caine, Sammy, you’re dealingwith me,” Drake said. “I’d just as soon shoot you. I’d just as soon shoot all of you. So don’t piss me off.”
    They did as ordered. They turned the corner and came to the commons area behind the main building. There was a small performance stage made to look like a gazebo.
    More than two dozen kids lined a low railing around the gazebo. They were all tied to it by a rope leash that gave them no more than a few feet of movement. Neck to rail, like tethered horses. Each of the kids was weighed down by a concrete block that encased their hands. Their eyes were hollow, their cheeks caved in.
    Astrid used a word that Sam had never imagined coming from her.
    “Nice language,” Drake said with a smirk. “And in front of the Pe-tard, too.”
    A cafeteria tray had been placed in front of each of the prisoners. It must have been a very recent delivery because some were still licking their trays, hunched over, faces down, tongues out, licking like dogs.
    “It’s the circle of freaks,” Drake said proudly, waving a hand like a showman.
    In a crusty old wheelbarrow to one side, three kids were using a short-handled shovel to mix cement. It made a heavy sloshing sound. They dumped a shovelful of gravel into the mix and stirred it like lumpy gravy.
    “Oh, no,” Lana said, backing away, but one of the Coates kids smashed her behind the knee with his baseball bat, and she crumpled.
    “Gotta do something with unhelpful freaks,” Drake said.“Can’t have you people running around loose.” He must have seen Sam start to react because he stuck his gun against Astrid’s head. “Your call, Sam. You so much as flinch and we’ll get to see what a genius brain really looks like.”
    “Hey, I got no powers, man,” Quinn said.
    “This is sick, Drake. Like you’re sick,” Astrid said. “I can’t even reason with you because you’re just too damaged, too hopelessly messed up.”
    “Shut up,” Drake snapped. “Okay, Sam. You first. It’s easy to do. You just stick your hands in and then, presto, no more powers.”
    Quinn pleaded. “Sam’s a freak, I’m not, man, I have no powers. I am just a normal person.”
    Sam walked with shaky steps to the wheelbarrow. The kids mixing the concrete looked very unhappy about what they were doing, but Sam didn’t kid himself: they would do what they were told.
    There was a hole dug in the dirt, about a foot long, half as wide, and maybe eight inches deep.
    The cement mixers sloshed a shovelful of concrete into the hole, filling it a third of the way.
    “Stick your hands in, Sam,” Drake ordered. “Do it or pop-goes-the-genius.”
    Sam plunged his hands into the cement. The kid with the shovel dumped a load of wet, heavy cement into the hole and used a trowel to poke it down. Then half a shovelful and the boy used the trowel to smooth it over and return the excess to the wheelbarrow.
    Sam knelt there, hands encased, his brain crazed withdesperate plans and wild calculations. If he moved, Astrid would die. If he did nothing, they would be slaves.
    “Okay, Astrid, your turn,” Drake said.
    Another hole and the same process. Astrid was crying, saying, “It’ll be okay, Petey, it’ll be okay,” through her tears.
    One of the mixers got busy digging a third hole. He did it with quick, practiced moves, slicing the turf with a trowel.
    “Takes about ten minutes is all, Sam,” Drake said. “If you’re going to do something brave, you’ve got about eight minutes.