The Annihilation of Foreverland

skin, you might like that better, you know with racism and everything. It might make things easier.”
    The old man pointed the needle at Zin, then Danny. Back to Zin. His eyes darted back and forth with the needle.
    “We didn’t hurt you boys,” he said. “No one got hurt.”
    “Oh, no. That Haystack was a blast,” Zin said. “We loved freezing our balls off.”
    “But you didn’t get hurt, we just make you uncomfortable so… so…”
    “So you could what?” Zin said. “So you could kill us with kindness. You’re demented. You’re the ones sick in the head. You’re the ones that deserve to die.”
    “You wasted your lives!” The old man dropped the table leg and held the syringe with two hands like he was going to squirt it at them. “Maybe it wasn’t your faults, but it didn’t matter. You were going nowhere, your lives were a waste of time, you didn’t need your bodies to continue a life of misery. Trust me, you were heading for a lot more suffering than that Haystack. You would’ve ended up in jail or killing someone or something worse. The Investors have lived good lives, they’ve helped a lot of people, and they deserve your bodies a lot more than you.”
    “It’s murder, and you know it,” Danny said. “I don’t care what you say.”
    “You choose to leave your body,” the old man said. “You reached for the needle, you went inside it. We didn’t make you, it doesn’t work that way. You have to want to leave your body. All we did was make it uncomfortable and you did the rest.”
    Danny thought about the two splotchy purple lines down the front of Reed’s chest where the bars had crushed him. He wouldn’t cooperate. So they killed him.
    Danny pulled Zin back and shoved the corner of the bed against the back wall, pinning the old man in the corner. “Knock the needle out of his hands, Zin. Just don’t hurt him. Not yet.”
    “Are you kidding, I’m going to knock the brain out of his head.”
    “No, don’t. I want him tied up and alive. He doesn’t deserve to die, not yet. I want him alive when the authorities get here—”
    The old man genuinely laughed. “Stupid kids. No one’s going to find this place. It’s been operating for over thirty years, you think a couple rogue teenagers are going to bring it down? There are trillions of dollars that protect it. The rich stay rich, son. And they stay alive.”
    Zin swiped at the needle, narrowly missing. The old man tried to back up further but continued to smile. They couldn’t charge him with that needle and they’d wasted enough time. Danny wheeled the bed back a few feet, put his weight into it and shoved it like a battering ram into the old man’s gut. He picked his leg up to absorb the blow at the same time Zin took a full swing. He caught the old man on the hand, knocking the syringe into the wall. It skittered across the floor.
    Danny pulled the bed out. “Grab some of those wires, Zin. We’ll lace his ass to the bed—”
    “That’s enough, boys.”
    It was the one voice that could freeze them.
    The Director stood in the doorway with his hand in his pocket.

68
    “I need you boys to step over to the booth.” The Director pointed to the observation window. “Just do as I say.”
    Danny didn’t move. Zin was fingering the stick like he was deciding if the next pitch would be a strike.
    “Boys, you realize I’ll knock you into next week.” He wiggled the hand in his pocket. “And it won’t be any kinder than what you’ve done to the Investors. Now step away from the bed and plant your backs to the wall. Do it, now.”
    The Director stared them down.
    The man had exceptional skills, some sort of hypnotic spell he cast just by looking. It didn’t matter if it was a rich, power-hungry oil baron or a juvenile delinquent, he knew how to get people to do what he wanted them to do. And the boys did just that.
    Zin lowered the stick and followed Danny. Neither one of them turned their back on the Director. It wouldn’t matter, all the power he needed was in his pocket, the miniature controller that activated trackers. And the boys knew it.
    “Are you all right, Mr. Jackson?”
    Was he all right? The island was filled with troubled youth. An occasional uprising wasn’t surprising, but when half the Investors drop dead and two little maniacs show up with a stick to knock his brains out his ear? No, Mr. Jackson was a little less than all right.
    But the Director had arrived. He would put things back in